WHEW! It's been like forever since I've updated my blog! I'm sorry, I've been so busy with everything, life has been crazy busy!
So I'll start off with Russia, because I'm sure that's where everyone wants to me start ;)
Friday February 22nd (Day 1) of our trip, we wake up to a snow storm happening outside. This causes some issues due to the fact that we are departing from Boston and not Providence, so we rush to get everyone together and hop on a train from Providence to Boston instead of having people drive us to the airport. We get through security and everything fine and have a few hours to wait now at the airport. I believe we got there around 4pm and our flight left at 7pm. Lucky for me, I brought the game of Catch Phrase which we all played for a while (it sure does come in handy when traveling with groups of people, I must say!). Our flight was only delayed by like 45min so we all get on the plane. There are 8 of us, 6 girls, a guy and my pastor. On our first flight which was set up 2 by 4 by 2 seating in the rows, we got 2 sets of 4 for seating which was great but we ended up sitting on the tarmac for 2-3 hours waiting our turn to leave. Then our flight was 6 hours long or so and we got to Amsterdam and missed our connection. Thankfully, praise God! that another flight was headed towards Moscow in a half hour and we were lucky to catch it. Now, flying out of Amsterdam is crazy because you have to go through security again! We made it into Moscow, and headed through customs. You were not allowed to speak or smile when handing your passport to the Russian official, my roommate, Allison, and I were the only 2 out of 8 that had not been to Russia before. We get through customs and hurry off to go find our bags. Someone had already picked up one of ours that we had to go steal back and then of course, Pastor Andy's bag never left Amsterdam and he was assured that it would be put on the next flight to Nizhny Novogard which was our destination city. A tour guide and driver and van picked us up and took us to this nice restaurant for dinner. It was like family style and there was a wedding reception going on as well. By the way, at this point, it is officially Saturday evening because Moscow is 8 hours ahead of RI and for you Idahoans, thats 10 hours and for you Californians, thats 11 hours! After dinner, we headed to the train station and got on an overnight train. We had sleeping cars that slept 4 people each. We got in and everyone pretty much crashed.
Sunday morning around 7am, we arrive in Nizhny and get picked up by our host family with a van and car, much to everyone in the van's delight (teehee), the van had no seats in the back and instead had dining chairs that were not bolted to the ground. This provided much entertainment. The 8 of us were staying at a church dorm/hostel with the 6 girls in 1 room and the 2 guys in the other. Sunday mainly consisted of us going to 2 different church services and having fellowship with youth there. It was a great start to the week!
The rest of the week, we visited various schools and a dorm to give presentations on what life in America is like and what college life in America is like. At the end of the presentation, students were allowed to ask us various questions and that was quite entertaining. Then we invited the students to a church party that we were going to have that Friday. Our main focus for the week was to establish a relationship between the students and the few churches there. Our interpreter also taught an English class and we made 2 special visits to that class and did some exercises and interacting with the students like acting out popular Russian phrases and English phrases, picking apart the meanings of crazy sayings and other fun language activities.
On Thursday, we made a special trip to a nearby town about 1-2 hours away. This town, that starts with a Z and sounds like Zavuljah (def not spelled that way though), was the town that the past years mission team had stayed in and there was a special church family there that was in the process of building a church and it was amazing to see what progress they had done on it!
Another activity we did a lot was that we had about 50 4 x 6 cards with pictures on them of like various landscapes, people settings, and other various life applying things on them and we had students pick out cards in answer to our questions and had them explain. This activity is called Solarium and opens up people to deeper conversations and leads conversations to talking about God. So this activity was pretty fun.
One student/woman that was about 32 or so had invited us to her "flat" for lunch one afternoon. So part of our group went. She lived in a town about 1-2 hours away by bus. She had a lovely lunch laid out for us with various salads and amazing desserts. She also made her own wine and "juices" and had us try her gooseberry juice. I'll tell you one thing, it wasn't juice! We all laughed about that for a while and it was an amazing cultural experience to see how someone would live. This woman lived alone which is unusual and she had a garden and grew most of her vegetables and pickled/canned them for the winter months.
Some of the funny things about Russia....? Well, first toilets are quite entertaining over there! You never know what you are going to get to use! Plus, you often times have to pay about 50 cents to get about 1 square of toilet paper to go in a hole! That's right! A hole! Another thing, public transportation. We mainly used this method to get around (pictures to come) and we would get on a bus and it was jam packed!!! Wall to wall people, no use holding on, we were squeezed in tight enough there! Everyday we ate most of our meals in the church kitchen with a older Russian lady. Since it is winter, most of our meals consisted of soup and then something else such as barley and beef or pasta and chicken or a salad. However, with every meal we ate tons and tons of cabbage, by the end of the trip, we were all cabbaged out!
The weather was not too bad, actually it was the first time anyone in my group really saw the ground in Russia since the snow was melting. It made everything really icy and several of us made good habits of falling! Yes, that would include me with my amazing ability of having no balance! I enjoyed providing entertainment though to my fellow friends and Russians!
One little problem we encounted in the middle of our trip was that one of our team members encounted a kidney stone problem and got to experience a Russian hospital (oh fun!!).
Friday evening, we took the overnight train back to Moscow and spent Saturday touring around Moscow with 3 missionaries, 1 of whom was from El Paso, Texas and another was from Las Cruces, New Mexico, places that I had just visited last year! We spent Saturday night at Hotel Cosmos which was a hotel built in 1979 for the French for when the Olympics came. It was a nice hotel.
It was pretty smooth traveling heading home and we didn't really have any problems, thankfully. Overall, the trip was amazing and I had a blast and I definitely learned a lot about myself and got a deeper understanding of the European lifestyle. There really aren't enough words to describe all the feelings that I got out of Russia.
Jet lag was entertaining to experience and definitely took a few days to get used to. I'm already almost done with my second week of my 3rd trimester at school. Time is just flying by like crazy! In my next posting (which will be this weekend, promise), I'll tell what classes I'm in and other things that have been happening in my life!
Hope everyone is doing well!
Showing posts with label Adventures. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Adventures. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Saturday, February 16, 2008
Life is crazy but good, right?
It has almost been 2 weeks since I have last updated, after talking to some people, most like a long version of the blog and a few like the short version, so here is a long version, if you want the short version, email me.
So I left off pretty much around superbowl weekend. I have been so busy with life and just working on trying to grow up to be the woman that God wants me to be!
First, there has been a huge addition and change in my life and that is my awesome friend, Jacqui, who means a lot to me even though we've only been friends for 2 weeks, I know she is going to be a lifelong friend, she means so much to me already! We get together every night and read the Bible together and discuss what we have just read and basically have our own little Bible study. We also talk about our days and making sure that the other is doing ok and not having any problems with anything. She lives in my dorm so its awesome to have her close by, haha not to mention we keep each other in line for all the crazy things we do and all that mischeif that we get into!
Life has been pretty busy for me. I am getting ready to head into a week of finals then on Friday I will be departing off to Russia. I will make sure and squeeze in another blog posting before I head off to Russia though.
Classes this trimester have been really difficult and I have started to become a little burned out feeling with my really full course load. I made sure to drop a class for next trimester so I can take things easy and possibly seek out a job!
A recap of my classes from 2nd trimester:
Hospitality Accounting-learned all the basic fundamentals of accounting with restaurants and hotels from doing daily cash reports, to creating various income statements and balance sheets, balancing a checkbook and knowing what to expect with errors on it, and various other fun things! This class has been difficult for me with all the stuff to memorize and all the right patterns and formulas.
Hospitality Law-there are so many things involved with running a hotel or restaurant, that it is crazy! There are so many technical terms and little details that it is really hard to remember all these things! This class was also a really difficult class for me!
Career Management-this class was a simple time consuming class where I created a version of my college resume and learned about job networking and other various career based things.
Marine Biology-this class was jam packed of lectures and lots of notes to be taken! Along with various nature films, some things were very fascinating to learn about and who knew that there was so much to be found in the ocean! This class was moderate for me and just challenged me when I had to learn all the special species names and phylum names for critters!
Front Office Operations-this class was all about how to operate a front desk of a hotel! I learned how to use one of the various check in/check out reservation computer programs, I learned how to do night audit (where a person closes all the accounts for the day and balances things out) and hotel forecasting (planning on how full your hotel will be and getting the best occupancy percentage possible) along with basic understanding of various areas in the hotel. This class contained a big project of creating your own full service hotel and creating a theme for it. I did mine based on a Jungle theme with exotic tree house rooms overlooking a jungle.
Guest Service Systems-this class was all about writing papers based off the teachers lectures. The teacher was a very colorful teacher and brought various teaching methods into his lectures which made things entertaining at times and you never knew what to expect from the teacher based upon all his various moods!
So other than taking those 6 classes, I also participated in a few clubs. I am in Club Manager's Association of America which deals with clubs such as country clubs, yacht clubs, art clubs etc. and I am co-secretary for this club.
I also am in Christian Student Fellowship and we have our weekly Tuesday Night Truth (TNT) meetings which are great since it is filled with worship, fellowship with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and an awesome message presented by Pastor Andy!
Other highlights of my weeks are going to church on Sunday mornings followed by lunch at the mall foodcourt! Also, group lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Pastor Andy, Melissa, Dan, Corey and anyone else we can find that happens to be downtown at the right time!
Since I am so busy, I can hardly remember all the key things that have been happening but here are some key events from the past couple of weeks!
I was happen to be blessed with the opportunity to go to a monthly event called Mug and Muffin which is where all the ladies of my church gather together to go over a book of the Bible. For the month of January, we went over the book of 1 Peter. 1 Peter is an amazing book of the Bible and really touched me! I would highly recommend reading it and so far it is one of my favorite books of the Bible!
Another fun thing is when Melissa, Corey and I all get together and head to the store to buy dinner fixings then we head to someone's house and make dinner together then watch a movie together! It is great fun and quite entertaining!
Valentine's Day was great as this was my first Valentine's with a special someone! We went to dinner and the movies. We saw the movie Definitely Maybe which is a good chick flick presented from a guy's point of view. Corey got me flowers and chocolate. He is so good to me and it amazes me as how he always manages to know how to make me smile, he sure does know how to turn my bad days into good ones!
My roommate situation has worked out really well, I am starting to become good friends with Allison and we already have a lot of special memories of crazy things that we have done together! My other roommate have a real basic relationship which is fine.
I'm sure there are plenty of other things, but that is all for now and I'll be sure to post another update right before I head off to Russia! I hope everyone is doing great and I hope everyone has had a great month so far! Please, I would love to hear from you and to hear what's new with you and how things are going! Take care everyone & God bless!
So I left off pretty much around superbowl weekend. I have been so busy with life and just working on trying to grow up to be the woman that God wants me to be!
First, there has been a huge addition and change in my life and that is my awesome friend, Jacqui, who means a lot to me even though we've only been friends for 2 weeks, I know she is going to be a lifelong friend, she means so much to me already! We get together every night and read the Bible together and discuss what we have just read and basically have our own little Bible study. We also talk about our days and making sure that the other is doing ok and not having any problems with anything. She lives in my dorm so its awesome to have her close by, haha not to mention we keep each other in line for all the crazy things we do and all that mischeif that we get into!
Life has been pretty busy for me. I am getting ready to head into a week of finals then on Friday I will be departing off to Russia. I will make sure and squeeze in another blog posting before I head off to Russia though.
Classes this trimester have been really difficult and I have started to become a little burned out feeling with my really full course load. I made sure to drop a class for next trimester so I can take things easy and possibly seek out a job!
A recap of my classes from 2nd trimester:
Hospitality Accounting-learned all the basic fundamentals of accounting with restaurants and hotels from doing daily cash reports, to creating various income statements and balance sheets, balancing a checkbook and knowing what to expect with errors on it, and various other fun things! This class has been difficult for me with all the stuff to memorize and all the right patterns and formulas.
Hospitality Law-there are so many things involved with running a hotel or restaurant, that it is crazy! There are so many technical terms and little details that it is really hard to remember all these things! This class was also a really difficult class for me!
Career Management-this class was a simple time consuming class where I created a version of my college resume and learned about job networking and other various career based things.
Marine Biology-this class was jam packed of lectures and lots of notes to be taken! Along with various nature films, some things were very fascinating to learn about and who knew that there was so much to be found in the ocean! This class was moderate for me and just challenged me when I had to learn all the special species names and phylum names for critters!
Front Office Operations-this class was all about how to operate a front desk of a hotel! I learned how to use one of the various check in/check out reservation computer programs, I learned how to do night audit (where a person closes all the accounts for the day and balances things out) and hotel forecasting (planning on how full your hotel will be and getting the best occupancy percentage possible) along with basic understanding of various areas in the hotel. This class contained a big project of creating your own full service hotel and creating a theme for it. I did mine based on a Jungle theme with exotic tree house rooms overlooking a jungle.
Guest Service Systems-this class was all about writing papers based off the teachers lectures. The teacher was a very colorful teacher and brought various teaching methods into his lectures which made things entertaining at times and you never knew what to expect from the teacher based upon all his various moods!
So other than taking those 6 classes, I also participated in a few clubs. I am in Club Manager's Association of America which deals with clubs such as country clubs, yacht clubs, art clubs etc. and I am co-secretary for this club.
I also am in Christian Student Fellowship and we have our weekly Tuesday Night Truth (TNT) meetings which are great since it is filled with worship, fellowship with fellow brothers and sisters in Christ and an awesome message presented by Pastor Andy!
Other highlights of my weeks are going to church on Sunday mornings followed by lunch at the mall foodcourt! Also, group lunches on Tuesdays and Thursdays with Pastor Andy, Melissa, Dan, Corey and anyone else we can find that happens to be downtown at the right time!
Since I am so busy, I can hardly remember all the key things that have been happening but here are some key events from the past couple of weeks!
I was happen to be blessed with the opportunity to go to a monthly event called Mug and Muffin which is where all the ladies of my church gather together to go over a book of the Bible. For the month of January, we went over the book of 1 Peter. 1 Peter is an amazing book of the Bible and really touched me! I would highly recommend reading it and so far it is one of my favorite books of the Bible!
Another fun thing is when Melissa, Corey and I all get together and head to the store to buy dinner fixings then we head to someone's house and make dinner together then watch a movie together! It is great fun and quite entertaining!
Valentine's Day was great as this was my first Valentine's with a special someone! We went to dinner and the movies. We saw the movie Definitely Maybe which is a good chick flick presented from a guy's point of view. Corey got me flowers and chocolate. He is so good to me and it amazes me as how he always manages to know how to make me smile, he sure does know how to turn my bad days into good ones!
My roommate situation has worked out really well, I am starting to become good friends with Allison and we already have a lot of special memories of crazy things that we have done together! My other roommate have a real basic relationship which is fine.
I'm sure there are plenty of other things, but that is all for now and I'll be sure to post another update right before I head off to Russia! I hope everyone is doing great and I hope everyone has had a great month so far! Please, I would love to hear from you and to hear what's new with you and how things are going! Take care everyone & God bless!
Monday, February 4, 2008
Superbowl Weekend Update!
Yep! The Pats just lost to the Giants. I just got home from a great superbowl party full of college age friends and other amazing people at my pastor's house. My pastor and his family are such wonderful people and I'm truly blessed to know them!
I have been so busy lately, I've barely had time to eat and sleep! There is only 2 weeks of classes left before finals, teachers are giving out big, fat projects that require a lot of work and research and often times a lot of work with groups.
I just got over being sick, at least everyone had it at once, apparently here in Providence for the public school system, they give the elementary school students a week off in February for the students to be separated and to let the schools air out because everyone gets so sick.
Some highlights from my week?
Spending time with my guy...hanging with great friends and taking crazy bus trips (what would I do without public transportation!?)...running around Wal-Mart trying to kill an hour because of bus schedules by chasing fellow friends with stuffed animals (haha who let 3 crazy girls loose)...getting lost in a tiny town of Middletown, Rhode Island....and so many more!
I hope everyone had a great week and I'll try to keep you guys updated!
I have been so busy lately, I've barely had time to eat and sleep! There is only 2 weeks of classes left before finals, teachers are giving out big, fat projects that require a lot of work and research and often times a lot of work with groups.
I just got over being sick, at least everyone had it at once, apparently here in Providence for the public school system, they give the elementary school students a week off in February for the students to be separated and to let the schools air out because everyone gets so sick.
Some highlights from my week?
Spending time with my guy...hanging with great friends and taking crazy bus trips (what would I do without public transportation!?)...running around Wal-Mart trying to kill an hour because of bus schedules by chasing fellow friends with stuffed animals (haha who let 3 crazy girls loose)...getting lost in a tiny town of Middletown, Rhode Island....and so many more!
I hope everyone had a great week and I'll try to keep you guys updated!
Sunday, January 6, 2008
1st Weekend Back In RI!
I had a great and smooth day of flying, just long and tiring however. I was so happy to see a familiar face at the Providence Airport waiting to pick me up. Melissa, my amazing friend and sister in Christ, picked me up and took me to her apartment where we hung out and had a great night together!
Corey, my guy, picked me up on Friday to take me back to my dorm. Its been a tad bit hard getting back into the swing of things but I'm managing good and my pain from the sledding accident is getting better everyday. Friday night, I hung out with Melissa, had a great dinner together then we ran around downtown Providence exploring things. It was so much fun learning new things. Then I capped off my night by seeing the movie Alvin & The Chipmunks which was a really cute movie!
On Saturday, I worked on catching up on my sleep. Then I went with a group of friends from my hall, West Hall to go get my roommate, Allison, from the airport. The airline left her luggage behind at JFK airport so we reluctantly went home without it. Allison and I ordered pizza and grabbed another friend to play a board game together. It was great catching up with friends again!
On Sunday, I went to church and grabbed lunch with friends. Melissa dropped Allison and I off at our dorm where I worked on organizing and unpacking some more along with doing some homework. Then I went with Melissa to go pick up our other friend Carrie from the airport. While we were at the airport, instead of doing short term parking, we were sitting in the terminal where you are required to actively load passengers. Melissa left me with the car to go find Carrie. The cop monitoring things came over and was like move the car! I said I cannot it is my friends. Melissa was not answering her phone. The cop said you have 2 minutes to move it then he went to the front of the car and got the license plate and make/model of the car. As soon as he did that, I hopped into Melissa's car and took off. I finally got ahold of her and was like um, I have your car and I'm making a loop, be back shortly. It was quite funny to say the least. Afterwards, the three of us grabbed dinner together and had a great time catching up!
I'm going to call it a night for now! School is starting again tomorrow and I have to get back into the grind! I hope everyone had a Happy New Year!!
Corey, my guy, picked me up on Friday to take me back to my dorm. Its been a tad bit hard getting back into the swing of things but I'm managing good and my pain from the sledding accident is getting better everyday. Friday night, I hung out with Melissa, had a great dinner together then we ran around downtown Providence exploring things. It was so much fun learning new things. Then I capped off my night by seeing the movie Alvin & The Chipmunks which was a really cute movie!
On Saturday, I worked on catching up on my sleep. Then I went with a group of friends from my hall, West Hall to go get my roommate, Allison, from the airport. The airline left her luggage behind at JFK airport so we reluctantly went home without it. Allison and I ordered pizza and grabbed another friend to play a board game together. It was great catching up with friends again!
On Sunday, I went to church and grabbed lunch with friends. Melissa dropped Allison and I off at our dorm where I worked on organizing and unpacking some more along with doing some homework. Then I went with Melissa to go pick up our other friend Carrie from the airport. While we were at the airport, instead of doing short term parking, we were sitting in the terminal where you are required to actively load passengers. Melissa left me with the car to go find Carrie. The cop monitoring things came over and was like move the car! I said I cannot it is my friends. Melissa was not answering her phone. The cop said you have 2 minutes to move it then he went to the front of the car and got the license plate and make/model of the car. As soon as he did that, I hopped into Melissa's car and took off. I finally got ahold of her and was like um, I have your car and I'm making a loop, be back shortly. It was quite funny to say the least. Afterwards, the three of us grabbed dinner together and had a great time catching up!
I'm going to call it a night for now! School is starting again tomorrow and I have to get back into the grind! I hope everyone had a Happy New Year!!
Wednesday, January 2, 2008
The Special Guy in My Life & Garden Valley, Idaho!
Yes! I have a boyfriend and he's great! He's from Connecticut and we met at church, what a great place to meet someone special :) I know he reads my blog so I don't want him to go too crazy with all my compliments of him, so feel free to email me if you want!
This year for New Year's, my parents, brother, and I all headed up to the mountains where we had no cell or internet communication, so peaceful to be cut off from the world. It helped even more that Idaho Power had issues on January 1st and we pretty much had no power during that whole day and night, which made it so very nice to have no technology or anything, just a family of 4 sitting and chatting, passing the time!
We rented this beautiful cabin that came with its own private pool! The pool was outside and was heated geothermally with Idaho's great natural hot springs water!! The cabin was so accommodating for our family and can accommodate up to like 12 people, so we had tons of room!!!
Of course it got really chilly in Garden Valley but we had so much fun with all the snow and the pool! We rang in the new year drinking champagne and that night, temps fell below zero degrees!! BRRR!!!!
We did so many fun things!! Like taking fun walks around surrounding cabins and making our own sledding runs! I would have to say that if you plan on making your own sledding run or using a road for one, don't use one that has a bridge or one that has a lot of road signs along it! Yeah, we had a little accident, my dad and I were going down the road on a sled together, we picked up extreme speed (15-20mph) and slide off the bridge. We both thought that we were done for at that point but God was watching out for us and let us hit a speed limit sign instead. The sled hit the sign first and split down the middle and hit me next. Just some really bad bruises and issues with walking for the next couple of weeks, but life goes on!!
Now, I'm in Boise, packing up my stuff and getting ready for flying out tomorrow, bright and early!
This year for New Year's, my parents, brother, and I all headed up to the mountains where we had no cell or internet communication, so peaceful to be cut off from the world. It helped even more that Idaho Power had issues on January 1st and we pretty much had no power during that whole day and night, which made it so very nice to have no technology or anything, just a family of 4 sitting and chatting, passing the time!
We rented this beautiful cabin that came with its own private pool! The pool was outside and was heated geothermally with Idaho's great natural hot springs water!! The cabin was so accommodating for our family and can accommodate up to like 12 people, so we had tons of room!!!
Of course it got really chilly in Garden Valley but we had so much fun with all the snow and the pool! We rang in the new year drinking champagne and that night, temps fell below zero degrees!! BRRR!!!!
We did so many fun things!! Like taking fun walks around surrounding cabins and making our own sledding runs! I would have to say that if you plan on making your own sledding run or using a road for one, don't use one that has a bridge or one that has a lot of road signs along it! Yeah, we had a little accident, my dad and I were going down the road on a sled together, we picked up extreme speed (15-20mph) and slide off the bridge. We both thought that we were done for at that point but God was watching out for us and let us hit a speed limit sign instead. The sled hit the sign first and split down the middle and hit me next. Just some really bad bruises and issues with walking for the next couple of weeks, but life goes on!!
Now, I'm in Boise, packing up my stuff and getting ready for flying out tomorrow, bright and early!
Monday, November 19, 2007
SUPRISE! I AM HOME!!!!!
Guess who came knocking on their parents' doorstep at 10:30 at night?? ME!!!! I came home for break since I had the time off from school. My parents did not know I was coming and my 2 partner in crimes helped me out with my suprise.
My mom was screaming and jumping up and down with shock before she pulled me in for a big hug! Dad, however, did not seem so suprised which is ok, I got one parent out of the deal right?
Of course, I enjoy suprising people so I made sure to suprise my aunt Rose and grandparents and it worked well because I got 2 of the 3 to scream as well.
Yes, this was overwhelming a tad bit with me moving on Thursday night and then flying home Saturday but I managed just fine. I'll be in town until Friday morning, so if you want to hang out or anything just give me a call or shoot me an email!
My mom was screaming and jumping up and down with shock before she pulled me in for a big hug! Dad, however, did not seem so suprised which is ok, I got one parent out of the deal right?
Of course, I enjoy suprising people so I made sure to suprise my aunt Rose and grandparents and it worked well because I got 2 of the 3 to scream as well.
Yes, this was overwhelming a tad bit with me moving on Thursday night and then flying home Saturday but I managed just fine. I'll be in town until Friday morning, so if you want to hang out or anything just give me a call or shoot me an email!
Tuesday, November 6, 2007
My Amazing Weekend!
This past Friday, I met up with my collegiate church group known as CSF (Christian Student Fellowship) at 2pm. I was very excited, we were going away for the weekend to Vermont for an event called Fusion where other collegiate church groups were meeting for the weekend.
I arrive and two of my friends/group members approach me and ask if I can drive a car with a clutch and if I was comfortable doing so. I replied yes and was handed a set of car keys. Apparently, we had an extra car but no one was able to drive it because it was a clutch.
The drive up to Vermont was so beautiful with all the fall leaves on the trees, God's handiwork is so amazing. It was not too terribly long of a drive, about 4 1/2 hours or so.
The conference was happening in Burlington,Vermont which is practically on the border of Vermont and New York. We had 4 church sessions which were pretty amazing. We stayed in the Fairfield Inn which was a nice hotel that suprised us all when they provided us with an extra room for free (you just can't expect 4 guys to be willing to share a room with 2 beds).
There were the pastor, his wife, and their 2 kids, then their were 4 guys and 6 girls. Out of the whole group, there were only 2 freshman and me and the other freshman got along really well and I see a bright future friendship with her.
Some activities that we did:
First Night:
Bonfire after church with smores. The bonfire was so hot that we practically burned our eyebrows off trying to roast the marshmellows.
Saturday Afternoon:
Exploring downtown Burlington which happened to be called Church Street. Church Street is a mixture of 4 city blocks filled with shops and then also a 2 floor indoor mall with anchor store such as Macy's.
The drive home was amusing for me because I started to understand east coast driving and all its craziness. For instance, I was going about 20-25mph over the speed limit and I blew past several cops, at least one of them that I know of were clocking, I was shocked when the cops did not pull me over. I was following some other group from church and I was keeping up with traffic and yes I was being blown off the roads at times as well for when I dropped my speed way down.
Then to top off the weekend, 4 of us got together and had Sunday dinner together. Such a great ending!
This weekend was absolutely amazing and I thought that it was a really great way to start the week out!
I arrive and two of my friends/group members approach me and ask if I can drive a car with a clutch and if I was comfortable doing so. I replied yes and was handed a set of car keys. Apparently, we had an extra car but no one was able to drive it because it was a clutch.
The drive up to Vermont was so beautiful with all the fall leaves on the trees, God's handiwork is so amazing. It was not too terribly long of a drive, about 4 1/2 hours or so.
The conference was happening in Burlington,Vermont which is practically on the border of Vermont and New York. We had 4 church sessions which were pretty amazing. We stayed in the Fairfield Inn which was a nice hotel that suprised us all when they provided us with an extra room for free (you just can't expect 4 guys to be willing to share a room with 2 beds).
There were the pastor, his wife, and their 2 kids, then their were 4 guys and 6 girls. Out of the whole group, there were only 2 freshman and me and the other freshman got along really well and I see a bright future friendship with her.
Some activities that we did:
First Night:
Bonfire after church with smores. The bonfire was so hot that we practically burned our eyebrows off trying to roast the marshmellows.
Saturday Afternoon:
Exploring downtown Burlington which happened to be called Church Street. Church Street is a mixture of 4 city blocks filled with shops and then also a 2 floor indoor mall with anchor store such as Macy's.
The drive home was amusing for me because I started to understand east coast driving and all its craziness. For instance, I was going about 20-25mph over the speed limit and I blew past several cops, at least one of them that I know of were clocking, I was shocked when the cops did not pull me over. I was following some other group from church and I was keeping up with traffic and yes I was being blown off the roads at times as well for when I dropped my speed way down.
Then to top off the weekend, 4 of us got together and had Sunday dinner together. Such a great ending!
This weekend was absolutely amazing and I thought that it was a really great way to start the week out!
Monday, September 17, 2007
Sunday's Big Game!
I volunteered to work at the Patriots verses the Chargers game with a group called something along the lines of Society for Advancement of Management, aka SAM. All SAM members were supposed to meet at the TACO (pronounced Tay Co not TACO :D) building.
I get there at the assigned time and no one was there. Two guys finally show up that I recognized from the SAM meeting and they said something about getting emails to meet at another lot. I hop in with them and we drive to the other lot where sure enough, one of our advisors were waiting. The others finally arrive and we pile 2 more people (guys meaning now I'm in a car full of guys, score!) into the car that I was in and we headed off. The guys of course were hungry so we thankfully stopped somewhere for brunch as it was nearing 2pm and thank goodness we did stop because we didn't end up eating until 9pm that night.
Our group has to get to the event 3-5 hours in advance just so the coordinators have a semi clue as to what is going on. My group was supposed to do ushering but we got stuck with ticket taking. The ticket lines were separated by male and female so we could see the gender ratio. I, of course, got the male express line (meaning no bags). I just love drunk guys! Hey baby! or Hey Darling or Hey Love etc. from them, but that was just the beginning.
After we chowed down we got re deployed out to work. This time we were separated. My new job was red line duty. What that means is that the stadium sells up to 5,000 standing room only tickets for about 50 bucks a pop. What a way to make money! So, there was certain areas they could not go, such as down the walkways and some walkways were created so seat ticket holders would have a place to walk. My job was to check those seat ticket holders' tickets and make sure nobody was on the wrong side of the line. That's when I got to experience drunk guys at a football game. Thankfully, I had a supervisor Mike with me pretty much the whole time so nothing too bad could happen.
Since the Patriots were so far ahead, people started pouring out during the 4th quarter and one of the guys from my group came to me. I do not know how to spell his name but this is how it sounds, Surall, and he is from Connecticut. Surall and I go down the huge ramps to where we had eaten to try to find our group. We of course were not supposed to go that way and we had to go back up the ramps to get to our final destination. However, everyone in the stadium were using these ramps to get out and we were like 2 fish going upstream. Surall leads the way and starts shouting, excuse me coming through (he most likely came from a big city because I do not think I would have thought to say that). We finally make it to where we need to be and find our group.
It was a great night and great learning experience, however, I didn't get to watch too much of the game, but I'm pretty sure we are are going to the game next week, I do not know if I am going to go since I didn't come home until 1:15am (someone dropped me off) and I had classes at 7:10am. We'll see how this goes!
I get there at the assigned time and no one was there. Two guys finally show up that I recognized from the SAM meeting and they said something about getting emails to meet at another lot. I hop in with them and we drive to the other lot where sure enough, one of our advisors were waiting. The others finally arrive and we pile 2 more people (guys meaning now I'm in a car full of guys, score!) into the car that I was in and we headed off. The guys of course were hungry so we thankfully stopped somewhere for brunch as it was nearing 2pm and thank goodness we did stop because we didn't end up eating until 9pm that night.
Our group has to get to the event 3-5 hours in advance just so the coordinators have a semi clue as to what is going on. My group was supposed to do ushering but we got stuck with ticket taking. The ticket lines were separated by male and female so we could see the gender ratio. I, of course, got the male express line (meaning no bags). I just love drunk guys! Hey baby! or Hey Darling or Hey Love etc. from them, but that was just the beginning.
After we chowed down we got re deployed out to work. This time we were separated. My new job was red line duty. What that means is that the stadium sells up to 5,000 standing room only tickets for about 50 bucks a pop. What a way to make money! So, there was certain areas they could not go, such as down the walkways and some walkways were created so seat ticket holders would have a place to walk. My job was to check those seat ticket holders' tickets and make sure nobody was on the wrong side of the line. That's when I got to experience drunk guys at a football game. Thankfully, I had a supervisor Mike with me pretty much the whole time so nothing too bad could happen.
Since the Patriots were so far ahead, people started pouring out during the 4th quarter and one of the guys from my group came to me. I do not know how to spell his name but this is how it sounds, Surall, and he is from Connecticut. Surall and I go down the huge ramps to where we had eaten to try to find our group. We of course were not supposed to go that way and we had to go back up the ramps to get to our final destination. However, everyone in the stadium were using these ramps to get out and we were like 2 fish going upstream. Surall leads the way and starts shouting, excuse me coming through (he most likely came from a big city because I do not think I would have thought to say that). We finally make it to where we need to be and find our group.
It was a great night and great learning experience, however, I didn't get to watch too much of the game, but I'm pretty sure we are are going to the game next week, I do not know if I am going to go since I didn't come home until 1:15am (someone dropped me off) and I had classes at 7:10am. We'll see how this goes!
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
Tuesday's Crazy Adventure to Wal-Mart
Tuesday, it rained and rained and rained, I had to wear 4-5 different outfits. I'm so getting a rain coat! And it only rained when I was going from class to class. How convenient!
By the night time, the rain had calmed and my roommate and I heard rumor that cars were broken into on the freshman parking lot. So we took the bus to the Harborside campus (we live on the Downcity Campus). Her car was safe and sound and we decided we would go to Wal-Mart fast to print some pictures. She and her friend who helped her move in, had went to Wal-Mart around here. She started driving and after a while, couldn't remember or really recognize where we were (no we weren't bright enough to print out a mapquest). We stop at a gas station where there were 2 cop cars (I don't know if anything was going down or not but one cop for sure was "chilling" inside). The cop mentioned 4 or 5 Wal-marts around and finally directed us to one. Of course, with our luck, the photo printing machine was broken! But we had decided to get some cleaning supplies and other life essentials for our dorm room. We bought a new shower curtain and a few rugs to spruce our blah dorm room. After our fun shopping at Wal-Mart, we headed out. Once again we got lost. My roommate calls her friend up who remembers practically everything even though he was only here for 3 days. He gets us close but we are still lost and a huge problem is that there are not any street signs and if there is, it is faded and unreadable. I get a hold of one of my friends back in Idaho to mapquest me home, and he finally figures out where we are and gives me directions. Well we missed the street and ended up in another city, so I call my friend again and he goes through the directions and follows a map street by street. Thanks for helping us by the way! We were getting so frustrated!
By the time we got home, it was really late and we had started our little adventure at 7pm. So both of us thought that was pretty funny especially with the fact that we could have just walked to the mall to print the pictures out and instead we drove all the way to Wal-Mart.
By the night time, the rain had calmed and my roommate and I heard rumor that cars were broken into on the freshman parking lot. So we took the bus to the Harborside campus (we live on the Downcity Campus). Her car was safe and sound and we decided we would go to Wal-Mart fast to print some pictures. She and her friend who helped her move in, had went to Wal-Mart around here. She started driving and after a while, couldn't remember or really recognize where we were (no we weren't bright enough to print out a mapquest). We stop at a gas station where there were 2 cop cars (I don't know if anything was going down or not but one cop for sure was "chilling" inside). The cop mentioned 4 or 5 Wal-marts around and finally directed us to one. Of course, with our luck, the photo printing machine was broken! But we had decided to get some cleaning supplies and other life essentials for our dorm room. We bought a new shower curtain and a few rugs to spruce our blah dorm room. After our fun shopping at Wal-Mart, we headed out. Once again we got lost. My roommate calls her friend up who remembers practically everything even though he was only here for 3 days. He gets us close but we are still lost and a huge problem is that there are not any street signs and if there is, it is faded and unreadable. I get a hold of one of my friends back in Idaho to mapquest me home, and he finally figures out where we are and gives me directions. Well we missed the street and ended up in another city, so I call my friend again and he goes through the directions and follows a map street by street. Thanks for helping us by the way! We were getting so frustrated!
By the time we got home, it was really late and we had started our little adventure at 7pm. So both of us thought that was pretty funny especially with the fact that we could have just walked to the mall to print the pictures out and instead we drove all the way to Wal-Mart.
Monday, September 10, 2007
Plymouth, Massachusetts & Monday's Events!
Sunday, my roommate and I headed out to Plymouth, Massachusetts. To do this, we had to catch a bus to the other JWU campus then find her car parked on Lot E. We did this quite smoothly and I had mapquest directions printed out for our destination. My roommate had needed to go to Sam's Club to get some new glasses/contacts. Plymouth is about an hour away from Providence but is a really pretty drive. We didn't see any of the big cities, but with the pleasant drive, it didn't matter much. So that whole trip made Sunday afternoon a nice day.
Monday, I had my classes~English Communication (Speech), Food Safety & Sanitation, & Literature. My speech class, I think anyhow, is going to be fun. Today we got into groups and I met some new people. Then there was Bingo going on over at the other campus so I hopped onto a JWU bus and went. It was free to get in and a large possibility of winning some decent prizes. Sure enough, I won the first bingo and the prize was a case of water and some crystal light juice powder packs to go. I was happy about that! Now I have a paper I have to finish up then I'm off to hit the hay!
Monday, I had my classes~English Communication (Speech), Food Safety & Sanitation, & Literature. My speech class, I think anyhow, is going to be fun. Today we got into groups and I met some new people. Then there was Bingo going on over at the other campus so I hopped onto a JWU bus and went. It was free to get in and a large possibility of winning some decent prizes. Sure enough, I won the first bingo and the prize was a case of water and some crystal light juice powder packs to go. I was happy about that! Now I have a paper I have to finish up then I'm off to hit the hay!
Monday, September 3, 2007
My Starbucks Adventure with Big Mike
God works in mysterious ways!
So, I'm at Starbucks and this is my second new blog. Feel free to read them in any order. But don't forget to read the other one titled "My New Life"
I get to Starbucks, order a coffee so I could be a good paying patron while using their internet. I set up my laptop and this big black guy comes over. By the way, I feel like a minority at times since the east coast has a way more diversed crowd of people. This black guy, who we will name Big Mike, was saying something that I could hardly hear. I was like speak up what do you want (I was nice about it!). He said he just returned from Europe, couldn't figure out his laptop and didn't want to hassle it. I said what do you need to access, he said his verizon account. I took a chance and since Starbucks was packed enough it seemed safe.
Big Mike logs into his account and doesn't know a whole lot about computers and is amazed at my skills. He has a pre paid verizon on the go cell account which is amazing and I almost feel like changing to it. If you really want to know all the goods about it let me know and I'll tell you about it, I don't want to put any more people to sleep tonight ;)
But this pre paid on the go thing is amazing and is great for people that are going to be international and so forth. So in that way, God was presenting an answer to me on something that I was worried about and that was how am I supposed to communicate with family while I'm overseas without spending a ton of money.
But we get done with that and Big Mike introduces himself and he says, my name is Big Mike but they all call me Tiny Bear. Then he shows me his arms and on one arm he has Big Mike tatooed into it in a nice writing. On his other arm, he has Tiny Bear tatooed onto it. Big Mike goes on to the say that he is running around downtown a lot so if I ever see him, I should feel free to say hi. To me, it almost gives me a sense of security to know someone that runs around the city because one day I might run into trouble and Big Mike might be there to help me. Who knows, God works in mysterious ways!
So, I'm at Starbucks and this is my second new blog. Feel free to read them in any order. But don't forget to read the other one titled "My New Life"
I get to Starbucks, order a coffee so I could be a good paying patron while using their internet. I set up my laptop and this big black guy comes over. By the way, I feel like a minority at times since the east coast has a way more diversed crowd of people. This black guy, who we will name Big Mike, was saying something that I could hardly hear. I was like speak up what do you want (I was nice about it!). He said he just returned from Europe, couldn't figure out his laptop and didn't want to hassle it. I said what do you need to access, he said his verizon account. I took a chance and since Starbucks was packed enough it seemed safe.
Big Mike logs into his account and doesn't know a whole lot about computers and is amazed at my skills. He has a pre paid verizon on the go cell account which is amazing and I almost feel like changing to it. If you really want to know all the goods about it let me know and I'll tell you about it, I don't want to put any more people to sleep tonight ;)
But this pre paid on the go thing is amazing and is great for people that are going to be international and so forth. So in that way, God was presenting an answer to me on something that I was worried about and that was how am I supposed to communicate with family while I'm overseas without spending a ton of money.
But we get done with that and Big Mike introduces himself and he says, my name is Big Mike but they all call me Tiny Bear. Then he shows me his arms and on one arm he has Big Mike tatooed into it in a nice writing. On his other arm, he has Tiny Bear tatooed onto it. Big Mike goes on to the say that he is running around downtown a lot so if I ever see him, I should feel free to say hi. To me, it almost gives me a sense of security to know someone that runs around the city because one day I might run into trouble and Big Mike might be there to help me. Who knows, God works in mysterious ways!
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