Today has been one excellent homecoming for me. Seeing as how I am from Indiana, of course, I would be thrilled that our first stop was in Indianapolis. I got to see my favorite teachers and staff at my old school, go home for the first time since Christmas for a cook out, and spend some excellent quality time with my family.

After spending our second night in the RV, we awoke from a great sleep and felt ready to explore the Indiana School for the Deaf. While Jed stayed behind to work on editing video and update the DeafNation website, I gave Branic and Katose a full tour of my alma mater. The two of them had never been to ISD, so I felt it was necessary to make sure they saw all ISD had to offer.

I took them into the classroom of the teacher who impacted my life in more ways than I could imagine, Mary Kovatch. Mary has 33 years of teaching English under her belt and carries with her more than enough knowledge, experience, and wit to make a lasting impact on every one of her students. I owe her my love and passion for writing. After several hugs and jokes, she started talking about how proud she was of me for going on this tour as a writer, and how she has seen me grow in the last six years. When she said that, I thought to myself that the only person she should be proud of was herself.

The next stop on my impromptu “welcome” tour of the school, was ISD’s TV production studio, which has some of the most elite equipment found in schools across the country. Students taking the TV Productions class at ISD produce weekly news segments, shows, and commercials, all of which is broadcasted to more than 40 closed-circuit televisions across campus. After visiting the studio, I also decided to show Branic and Katose the Distance Learning lab. Here, ISD teacher Daniel Smith teaches several ASL classes to high school students. What’s the catch? There are no students in the classroom. Just a big screen TV, video conferencing equipment, and other cool gadgets enable Smith to teach an entire language to a classroom of students who are miles away. Once we satisfied our curiosity of actually seeing a class in session, we decided to visit my old science teacher.

Teresa Huckleberry, who has been teaching at ISD for well over 30 years, believes strongly in education outside of the classroom. Her science classes have an exquisite program in which she collaborates with NASA to develop different hands on activities which promote experience and personal growth beyond the scope of science. These activities include growing and cultivating tomato plants which are grown from seeds that were sent into space by NASA and exposed to radiation outside of our atmosphere. These seeds, which were placed in a special canister and stowed away on the Space Shuttle, were sent back to ISD for the students to experiment with. The resulting information is then reported to NASA’s Life Sciences department and is included as part of their data in their research. This amazing opportunity to contribute to the exploration of space is awarded all students who take classes with Huckleberry, which included me in my days at ISD.

Of course, after spending the day touring ISD, we were all tired and ready to relax and have a good time. We drove to Fishers, just outside of Indianapolis, to my home for a cookout which was thrown by my fantastic family. More than 80 people came to wish us luck on the tour, swim, eat great food, and socialize. It was great seeing many of my family friends, old teachers, and others who were a part of my life in Indiana, no matter how small. I gave the guys on the crew a tour of my house, and they got a kick out of seeing my brother Jon’s bedroom. His room is decorated in a “Route 66″ style, with license plates he has collected over the years from more than 25 states forming the border of his room. It was fitting for us to see a room that that celebrates life on the road. It would have been nice if Jon had cleaned his room before we visited it, but that’s ok, Jon. We still liked your room. We would like to say thank you to all the people who came to the cook out for their excellent company and the delicious dishes you brought. Extra thanks goes to my parents, Gary and Brenda, for hosting such an excellent cook out!

Branic and Katose have long since gone to sleep. We are parked for the second night at the Indiana State Fairgrounds and Jed and I are still up at 2 am working on recording the day’s events. He is busy editing the many hours of video that Branic shot today, while I am busy putting the finishing touches on my third journal entry. Our work in editing and writing has been interrupted on several occasions, because we keep sharing the many ideas we have to even further improve our summer tour. We are constantly looking for more ways to further ensure its success. We’re still managing to get our work done, though.

It’s a funny feeling I have right now, since I’m in my hometown of Indianapolis. I suppose you could say that I’m at home in my home away from home.

I think?

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