On the road to Missouri

We are happily ensconced in Columbia, Missouri for the Stephens College Summer Film Workshop. Getting to Columbia is no easy feat, as it resides just off I-70 almost exactly halfway between Kansas City and St. Louis. Although it is only a 3 hour flight to Kansas City, it requires another 2-2 ½ hour shuttle ride by freeway to get to the town itself.

That said, I spent almost my entire trip driving across the middle of Missouri wallowing in the shear open space. I could easily se myself stopping the van and simply walking across the open hay fields and through the deep green woodlots. How could there be so much open space and so few people?

Columbia itself has all the amenities expect and required of a large college town, but still maintains the feeling of a small town. You have free wifi at a number of establishments, the typical college bars, healthy restaurants, BBQ joints and, of course, an almost limitless supply of pizza outlets.

The weather here is warm, but not nearly as humid as I expected. This is a pleasant surprise. I wasn’t looking forward to sweating through all my clothing in a couple of days. Doing laundry while away is bad enough, without having to do it many times over.

Tonight, as I was sitting with Joe watching Harry Potter in the dorm lounge, he excitedly shouted, “I see lightening bugs!” Indeed, there were hundreds floating above the large lawn outside the dorm – doing what lightening bugs do. We were unsuccessful in catching any, but we will have many more nights to try before we leave. We also saw a large bat hunting insects in the warm night air. He seemed quite a bit larger than those we typical see in California.

Tomorrow the other staff start casting the film they will be shooting next week and we will all meet our students for the first time. Since I am only instructing, during the shoot itself I have some meetings scheduled with other executives and staff here at the college. I will be holding mini-workshops for them on podcasting and how it might become a part of their on-going educational and marketing outreach. I am really looking forward to this, and my full-scale seminar for the workshop students. You all know how much I love talking about, and doing, podcasting.

More in the days to come!