Purdue Drop Off Trip

Thursday Aug 18: As my email to family stated earlier this week , the somewhat dreaded moment had arrived. We left Thursday the 12th to take Sam to Purdue. We left JC late afternoon so we only drove to St. Louis for the night & on into West Lafayette Friday morning. Got to town about 1:30 and after eating started working on our list of things to do. Sam is going to try to establish residency in Indiana (to eventually qualify for in-state tuition) so we stopped by the Motor Vehicle dept to transfer his drivers license. Getting his license didn't work out however because I had accidently mis-typed his name as San instead of Sam on his insurance card and they wouldn't accept it as legit. Grrrr- Government! Sorry, but that's pretty darn picky! We also found out that he had to take a 50 question test, which was never disclosed to us when we called earlier last week. Being one who never wants to fail a tests, Sam said he would at least like to review the book before taking the test. Anyway, we temporarily gave up on that and went to a nearby Old Nat’l Bank (Chris's bank) branch office and opened a checking account & ordered a credit card. We then explored around campus and West Lafayette & per the hotel receptionist's recommendation had pizza at Arni's Pizza. (We were told this was the best pizza in Indiana & it was good but we don't think it probably is) Alice then insisted we get back to the hotel for the debut of Monk's new season- of course!

Saturday we were up and at’m and heading for Earhart (yes- Amelia's) dorm at 8:00- Sam's check-in time slot. We were one of the first ones to move in because we had lots and lots of volunteer help hauling his stuff 3.5 stories up to Rm 409. We started unpacking, making the bed, & getting the room set up. By 10:30 it was pretty well put together & we were starved so we walked over to Union to get some breakfast. Then, as all parents w/students do- we headed to WalMart. By the packed nature of our car, I thought we pretty much brought everything he needed but $200+ later, I guessed we didn't. I labelled it as Sam’s Xmas-in-August event. (Lately he's seemed to have a lot of Xmas's!) We had to stop at the bookstore also to buy Purdue tshirts for everyone. With the frig and all of his dorm storage slots all filled up, I thought we were done. Nope another stop at Target for more! Alice & I attended the parent orientation session on campus at 3 then we hung out on campus & at dorm until we went to dinner at Lafayette Brewery downtown at six. Sam had some activities in PM so we headed back to the hotel.

Sunday we headed back out to campus to exercise and then back to the hotel to shower. Sam was understandably not interested in showering with all the chaos at the dorm. (Lots of parents were checking out the restrooms during move-in) His roommate- Greg Self arrived and moved his stuff into the room while we were cleaning up. Greg is also an Engineering Honors student from near Charlottesville VA. He & his mom flew out so he only brought a couple suitcases of clothes & personal items with the intent to buy everything else he needed here. Sam got a hold of Greg & he & his mom joined us for lunch at Triple XXX - this legendary hole-in-the-wall restaurant near the Purdue campus. (It's name sounds like a strip club!) It's a pretty unique place- there are no chairs and tables- just bar stools & counters & it had good and cheap food. They have been featured on "food network" & are famous for their homemade root beer, peanut butter topped hamburgers, & other signature items.

We dropped Sam back at the dorm then Alice and I took off for Indy to see our college friends- the Porters. We had a great evening at Porters with great food and great company and didn't get back to Lafayette until 11:30PM. It couldn’t have been a nicer visit.

By Monday I finally realized why Alice wanted 4 days to drop Sam off at school. If we hung around long enough, we would become bored & tired of one another and Sam would be truely ready for us to leave & that was just about the case! At 7:30AM we dropped by the dorm, said good-bye and headed out on our 10 hour return trip. It went ok w/us arriving home at 5PM to our remaining (& abandoned-for-4-days) children.

Later