Get the fireworks ready, I hear Bethany is coming home!

   Movies seem to always portray the immense celebrations and merriment towns undertake to welcome home a returning college student, this is perfectly portrayed in movies such as "The Graduate" or "Christmas with the Kranks", (Is it bad to use these two movies together to prove a point- I know my brother will not approve, but o well this isn't his blog now is it!). As I was saying in these two movies the respective neighborhoods threw parties and such in honor of the young minds returning to their roots. Of course this is what happened to me. While landing in the teeny airport in Long Beach I noticed "Welcome Home Bethany!" scrawled out on the plane runway in orange traffic cones. Then while for waiting for my bags, a Mariachi band came around the corner holding "Welcome Back" balloons and serenading me with a song I couldn't quite understand (I barely passed out of Spanish...). I am not even done. The kicker on the cake came when my mother turned onto our street. Streamers hung from tree to tree, synchronized fireworks littered the air, and all the neighborhood folks were outside their houses waving and smiling with tears of joy running down their faces. Yes... Tears! Have I also mentioned I am a liar?
     The real story of my arrival home is much different. After an extremely awkward plane ride ( with no free snacks I might add!), and my mother "not seeing" me standing outside on the 100 yard strip of pickup at the airport ( she will not confess it but I think she just didn't recognized me, shhh!) , I returned home.
     I guess I didn't expect it to, but my home town did not change... at all. It did look different though. I was somewhat astounded by how beautiful Southern California was, I guess 18 years of living here was not enough to know that. It wasn't until I lived somewhere else that my eyes were really opened!
     Back to the story- So coming home was hard. I had just said goodbye to all my new wonderful friends, and my best friend of 10 YEARS! Sadly her family moved far far away, but luckily with modern technology she is just a click away!
      This past month my mother has become my staple friend, and we have recently started up a new summer project- a puzzle! I am pretty cool huh huh, guys?
      While doing this puzzle, which I might add is extremely hard, I got to thinking where puzzles originated and how. Well as is turns out puzzles were first used to teach children geography. The first puzzle was created in 1767 by the Englishman, John Spilsbury. This puzzle was a picture of the world. Spilsbury created this tool of learning by attaching a map onto a piece of wood and then cutting the countries out. According to Anne D. Williams and her history of jigsaw puzzles, these learning tools became an adult pastime as well in the early 1900s. But this new form of entertainment came at a cost. A cost most could not afford on the average $50 a month salary. Puzzles, back in these times, cost an average of $5, and were much harder than they are now. Maybe we are just becoming dumber and the puzzle industry keeps having to make their product easier to keep sales up...
      Interestingly the Great Depression was a boom time for puzzles. Not only did they lower in price significantly, but they also gave people positive feelings of accomplishment during extremely difficult times.
     I could keep ranting about the history of jigsaw puzzles, but as I suspect you probably have a life. As for me, I think I will go work on my puzzle :) Thank you John Spilsbury!

Here is my mom diligently working on our seemingly impossible project!