Wednesday, March 22, 2006

What to post about?
Well, it is 10:35pm right now, and that means that in exactly 17 hours and 25 minutes I have to be at RDU International Airport to fly to Miami, where we will catch our flight to Costa Rica! That's right: 4 A.M.!

I am staying, along with Rachel, with a family that consists of a stay-at-home-mom, retired-teacher dad, and two sons: 26 yrs old and 13 yrs old.

I am packed, except for one pair of pants that's being washed and a few items for my carry-on bag.

Other than that, life is mostly ho-hum, as I anxiously await the arrival of my final two college descisions. These two places, and the money they want to offer, actually impact where I go next year a lot.

Jennie, my mom's really good friend, who might as well be family is in the ICU at Raleigh Community Hospital. She has kidney failure (they're functioning at 10%), pancreatitis, and still suffers from pulmonary fibrosis. There may also be problems with her liver and other organs, but they are unable to do the tests properly (I'm not entirely sure why, but I trust the doctors, so I'm sure they have a good reason). I'm really worried about her, and she can't eat or drink anything because her kidneys and pancreas can't handle it. In fact, she can't even swish water around in her mouth and then spit it back out because that makes her pancreatic enzyme things activate, which puts pressure on the pancreas and makes the problem worse. It's all way complicated. Anyway, so I'm staying at her house right now, and taking care of her dogs and cat: Max, Misty, Finney and Ginger (cat). My golden retriever is here with us too, and she's being a great friend to M, M and F in their time of hardship without their beloved owner.

I guess that's about all. Ms. Greenwalt is going to be our keynote speaker at graduation in June!! Speaking of, for anyone who's interested, graduation is June 8! :)

That's about it. I guess I'll head to bed--- gotta rest up for Costa Rica, where it is a balmy 85 degrees.

Monday, March 13, 2006

  • SLA was great!
  • Enviro-thon is on Friday!!! (I spent Saturday morning at Duke Forests, at a perscribed burn site and at a logging site...very cool).
  • Got in to UNC-G (4 down, 2 to go...still waiting to hear from American and Chapel Hill)
  • Friday evening Spanish Honor Society had a movie night--- watched Frida, ate good food--- tons of fun, even if a couple of us fell asleep during the movie...
  • Threw 20 feet, 1 inch in shot-put at the meet on Thursday; threw 41 feet in discuss!
  • have 4 major projects/papers due this week-- I'll be glad when it's over
  • Costa Rica in less than 2 weeks!

That's all. God bless- Lindsay

Tuesday, March 07, 2006

Okay, so I'm leaving for Costa Rica in like 3 weeks!!! I am soooo excited! And what's also super exciting is that I am going on a mission trip this summer with my youth group. We're going to Pasadena, California to run a VBS program for innercity kids. It's going to be awesome.

So I spent the weekend at Topsail Island with the mission team, prepping for the trip. We spent most of the weekend democratically deciding on our team covenant, including objectives and team verse(s). I'll try to give a brief run-down of the weekend.

We got to the church at 5:30 (the specified time) only to find that none of our adult leaders had shown up yet...so we waited. And at about 6, they showed up, one by one. We didn't leave the church until about 6:40pm, or so, even though we were supposed to have left by 6pm and arrived by 8:30. We finally got to Topsail at about 9:30, and we wandered around in the dark trying to find our condos. We found them-- one for the girls and one for the guys. There were 7 female students, and three female leaders, plus my youth minister's 10-month old, Elisha. There were three bedrooms (2 double beds, 1 set of bunk beds and 2 pull-out couches). I ended up, much to my delight!, in the room with my youth minister and Elisha. The guys (seven guy students and 3 guy leaders) had their own condo, but we congregated for meetings and meals in the girls' condo. Elisha woke us up (and by us, I mean the two of us in our room) at 5:30am, and his mother didn't find it all that amusing. I, however, thought the situation delightful and enjoyed being up at dawn with this darling little baby.
We spent the day writing our team covenant and playing games. We only went down on the beach once, because it was so cold. I did wade into the water until it was just above my knees. My jeans were unmistakably wet after that. Dinner Saturday night was homemade spaghetti and meatballs, compliments of Carlye, Cameron and me. I was in charge of the pasta, and Cameron of the sauce (and meatballs). The boiling water splashed onto my hand once, but Cameron said I only got 1/2 point for that injury (we get points for injuries-- its a game-- based on creativity, though they can't be purposeful, and seriousness), but but when the Ragu sauce splashed onto her hand, she got 1 point. I told her that wasn't fair because the Ragu sauce was at least 100 degrees cooler than the water, but she didn't listen. Oh well.

The car ride back to Chapel Hill was one of the most interesting and most fun experiences of my life, and I would tell you about it, but you wouldn't understand half of what was going on. You really had to be there. Let' s just say that between Ben, a youth leader, and Emma, Cameron, Tim and me, (and Brownie, the teddy bear), the screaming, music playing, shutting-windows-on-people-who-stick-their-heads-out-the-windows, spanish-speaking, stupid-joke-telling (and more) never ends. It was quite the adventure, and quite the bonding experience. (In fact, I think I'm all bonded-out with these four people...but there's still 16 others on the team I need to bond with! I'll update you more as we get closer to the dates of our trip!!!!