This post was written for one week ago, but of course I
forgot to post it. >_<
Hello.
SO sorry it took me so long to update. When you have busy
weeks and only about five hours of internet on Sunday and that’s it, it’s hard
to remember to write... >_>
ANYWAY...Friday marked the halfway point of my time here at
the undisclosed location. xD Six whole weeks. It’s flown by...doesn’t seem like it’s been this long. I guess I’ll just
try to give you a week-by-week summary; nothing too long since I’m leaving for
church in less than an hour.
Week one was filled with games and such, sorta like
icebreakers, so that we could all get to know each other. If I remember right,
we went on a hike to a lake which most people who had seen real lakes decided looked more like a pond. But it was really nice
out there, and we all got to drink from the place where the stream that fed the
lake (thus making it a lake, if I remember right....) came out of the ground.
It was really cool. xD
Week two...uh...classes started that week, I think. I think
it was the Bible class we’re taking here. We had one teacher for a while, and
then the professor we all rather dreaded arrived. I shall not reveal his name,
as it would reveal my location, but suffice it to say that many people were
rather scared of him. I was seriously expecting someone who looked like a drill
sergeant. The night he arrived, we all sat in the classroom for quite a long
time, as his flight was delayed. People kept shouting “HE’S COMING!” every time
they saw anyone approaching. After several false alarms, we grew rather lax,
and the time he really came was the
time when many of us gave up trying to sit up super straight and generally act
like people who really wanted to make a good impression. Of course. Fortunately, when he walked into the room, he more
strongly resembled the kindly next-door neighbor of six years I had before I
moved. Nevertheless, he’s very good at questioning your ideas, no matter
whether they’re right or wrong, making you really think about them. I walked
out of that classroom feeling like I’d never had a real thought in my life! xD
Around this time, approximately the end of the second? week,
my friend Skylar got sick with what I think was the flu. Of course, the next
morning, I was also sick with it,
along with two or three other people. On the bright side, I’d stayed up playing
Slap with the chef and two of the other students for several nights in a row,
and I was pretty tired and needed time to sleep...which is very rare here at the undisclosed location. So I lay in bed all
day, actually thanking God for my being sick, because not only did I get to
face my fear of the stomach side of the flu (which I got only very mildly, thank goodness), I actually
got to sleep!!!!!! xD I was back in class the next day, but it was really nice
just to relax for a while. And my friends were awesome. One has already
graduated college and is already a nurse, so she gave me vitamins and advised
me on how to get well. (As the undisclosed location lacks any sort of medical
personnel whatsoever, she’s basically taken on the role of nurse here.) My
roommate was really nice and went to get her for me in the morning when I first
realized I was sick. And one of my Slap friends made me toast for dinner. ^_^
Anyway...enough about this. Sunday we went to host homes
from the church we’re attending, where we had lunch and got to use the Internet
and had the opportunity to get to know some of the church people better. Turns
out my host family was from the same state that I’m going to college in, so
they were telling me I’d love it there, et cetera. ^_^
The next week, I’m pretty sure we had more
classes...everything’s sort of a blur of class, games of pool in the game room,
maybe some excursions places. I think I went to Walmart (nearest Walmart is an
hour away...) during week 3 and bought yarn and a crochet hook and learned to
make hats from my roommate and one of the mentors. As the specifics are sort of
melding together, I’m going to summarize what we did. Amid English Lit,
politics, and church history classes, we worked twice weekly on improvement
projects here on the property. I’ve sanded and stained part of the building I
stay in, dug ditches, pulled weeds, helped in the kitchen, assisted in
organizing a tool shed...basically done a bunch of different things. We went to
a town about 1.5 hours away on my roommate’s birthday and went shopping.
There’s a really awesome bookstore there, a used bookstore where the books are
piled haphazardly and several rows deep. It’s basically a place that looks like
it used to be a house, but someone filled it with books and made a few walkways
through them. xD It’s AWESOME.
We also went camping, about a week after I was sick. I wound
up in a six-person tent with only one other girl. We woke up in the middle of
the night freezing cold, and after she went outside to walk around for a while,
to try to warm herself up, she came back in and reported that it was actually
warmer out there than it was in the tent! We wound up sleeping under the stars
for the rest of the night. It was really beautiful ^_^
We’ve also been to the Great Sand Dunes, which is basically
a bunch of sand dunes sitting randomly in the middle of the rocky mountains. We
went sand sledding and sandboarding...I went down a rather large sand dune on
the sand sled and got my ears, eyes, and nose FILLED with sand. But it was
really fun anyway xD And it was absolutely BEAUTIFUL.
And we got to go to Walmart after that. Before coming here,
I never realized how exciting a trip to Walmart could be...
Oh! And last weekend, the worship pastor from the church
allowed a group of us to play for the service. I got to play keyboard/piano for
maybe...six or seven songs? It was a really cool experience, something I’ve
always wanted to do, but haven’t had many opportunities to. I’m pretty sure we
get to play every other week, which I’m really excited about ^_^
So, that’s basically life here. Class, class, and more
class; work crews; the occasional excursion to somewhere in the relative
wilderness, or Walmart, or town; music... And many, many, many games of Risk. A bunch of us wound up starting a game about
three days ago, and it’s become what I think is probably a nightly thing. Last
night I wound up playing both normal Risk and Lord of the Rings Risk. After
allowing myself to die in the regular Risk game, I focused on my LotR game.
LotR Risk is a four-person game. My friend Sam and I were playing using plastic
Elves, riders of Rohan, and eagles, while two of my other friends, at one point
during the game jokingly dubbed Sauron and Saruman (even though ‘Saruman’ was a
girl...) played using plastic orcs, Nazgul, and cave trolls. xD
We spent quite a long time on this game, both playing it and
complaining about the innacuracies of the map. One of the mentors even pulled
out his copy of The Two Towers to compare the map to the board. xD
It came down to me and Sauron. I had nearly all my plastic
Elves in Mirkwood, and he owned everything else. xD So we basically pushed both
our armies into the middle of the board and fought one huge battle. He had
maybe...a five to seven times larger army, so he beat me, but the Elves fought
valiantly. xD It was very entertaining.
Anyway, so now I’m sitting here, having slept in the
classroom as my roommate is sick (there’s a horrible cold going around...), and
writing this blog post. Tonight will probably either involve yet another game
of Risk, or watching a movie and discussing it with a group of people. Aside
from American football on Thanksgiving (I don’t even watch American
football, normally...), I don’t get
television here. The torturous part is that the new seasons of Touch and Doctor Who came out. Since I’ve been here. I’ve tried downloading
one of the Doctor Who episodes, but the internet is torturously slow, so I
probably won’t get it for another six weeks. That’s no big deal, as I still
need to finish the rest of the seasons....*cough*...and we’re not really
supposed to watch TV or movies here (but some people do, and you don’t really
get in trouble as long as you don’t watch them when you’re supposed to be
studying or exercising or something. I’d watch it at night, during free time,
when many people go to bed anyway, so it wouldn’t take away from anything...)
...
Anyway, it’s fifteen minutes before church, and I need to
get ready, so I’ll sign off for now. Fare thee well, friends, and until next week!
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