Visit

My family’s visit has come to an end and i dropped them off at the airport this morning. I officially dislike all flights that leave from the airport before noon due simply to the fact that they make me wake up early to get people to the airport in time for their flights. Actually, it’s not that I dislike the flights, it is that i sincerely dislike the people who decide booking a flight that early in the morning is a good idea. Dad, I’m talking to you.

This past week was a lot of fun with everyone in town. I learned the my sister is terrible at dancing when we went out to the dance hall. The dancehall actually turned out to be a crazy experience that kept on giving the next few days. I forgot to close out my tab and went back that night. They had just closed and no one was allowed back in even though there were still people in the building. That’s fine, I can respect the rules. I went back the next day like I was told and found there was no one there. Fine, I can deal with that. I went back again that night and was told they don’t know where my card was and they don’t remember seeing my name on any of the cards left over night. So, you guys lost my card? Interesting. I’m traveling next week, too which means I can’t get a replacement for a few weeks. I brought my Debit card, so at least I have a way to get to my money.

Last week we went to the water park that is not too far away and had a great day out there! We went on a Wednesday so it wasn’t as crowded as it typically is on weekends. We still had to wait in line for a good long while to ride anything, but it was a nice day of relaxing and swimming with everyone.

Saturday morning, we went for a quick run and then headed out to a friend’s house for Swedish pancakes. They were a lot like crepes and not a whole lot like pancakes, but they were delicious whatever they were! It was a great way to kick off the weekend even if the people I dragged out to the run with me weren’t any sort of excited about waking up at 0520 to go out and run before the sun became unbearably hot.

Family

To start this weekend off, two of my friends and I decided we were going to go for a ten mile run. Well, it was more that I decided I wanted to go for a run and dragged two of my most willing/gullible friends into going. It was a great idea and was going to be super awesome, but then we also decided to play volleyball and go dancing the night before. I thought for sure the plan would fall apart there, but we managed to persevere. Let me run you through how the weekend went:

On Friday night, we decided to go play volleyball at nine and then head out to some good old country dancing from there. No big deal (I had mostly forgotten that there was going to be run in the morning) except that meant we were going to be out until around 0230 or 0300 on Friday night. The next morning I was pretty confused as to why my alarm was going off at 0500.

The only reason I was able to wake myself up and drag myself out of bed was because I knew there was another person across town doing the same exact thing with just as little sleep to meet me and I was NOT going to be the one who had to cancel it. I turns out, when I got there, that was the exact same reason she got out of bed and dragged herself down to the road we ran on.

One of the friends we ran with hadn’t gone out for a legitimate run in around five years. That means ten miles MIGHT have been a little much to start out with (and I think his joints, muscles and bones might now agree with me) but he managed to finish and he was a trooper about it.

After the run, I turned right around and went up to a river nearby to float down with a few friends. I was vastly underprepared for the float and ended up just going down in the same clothes I had run in which was kind of nice because at least then they weren’t smelly and sweaty for the drive home. We only had one injury for the float trip too; one of the guys dislocated his shoulder when he went over a small waterfall.

After floating, I went home, showered and then went to pick up my parents and sister who flew in for the week!

We managed to wake up for church today and then head out to lunch at a local Vietnamese noodle soup place we all really like. I was pretty hilarious to watch my (very non-Vietnamese) family attempt to understand the concept of Pho and bubble tea.

Awesome

This week was filled with more awesome than I can really even explain! It turns out I have some awesome friends and roommates here who are an absolute blast to hang out with and they make our time together pretty much nothing short of spectacular. The fun started on Thursday.

My roommate wanted to go camping for his birthday (and a lot of the group really like to go camping) so I told him to throw something together and I would get the tents and food squared away.

We left Friday after work and headed out of town just a couple hours away. I the car, everyone said that our antics have made them really good last-minute packers and takes all the stress out of going out of town. One of the girls said she was asked at work where she was going camping and she realized she had no idea. She had just thrown some clothes and a toothbrush in a bag and was going to get in the car with us wherever that car was headed.

When we got to the town near the campground, we stopped for food at a local Mercantile and met a person we promptly dubbed Steve the butcher cowboy. We have no idea what his real name was, but he was wearing a cowboy hat and working behind the tiny deli counter (this is a small town, the grocery store wasn’t much bigger than the downstairs of the house). We got tons of food and headed to the one checkout counter. As we were checking out, the sweet lady who was ringing us up asked if we were going to the street dance tonight. Not knowing anything about street dances, we asked what it was. Basically, they close the street down for the evening and have a live local band play music while everyone just listens to the music or dances. We also found out that the campground we were staying at had a dance that night at the pavilion on the water. Now, we had our CHOICE of dances to go to!

We went back that night to the street dance after an awesome chicken dinner and had a great time there!

Saturday, we got up, cooked breakfast (a delicious bacon wrapped, jalapeño and cream cheese stuffed pork roll that Steve the butcher cowboy sold us) and headed out for a 3.25 mile hike. We came upon a cave with crystals in it and spent a few minutes looking around. Before finally packing up and heading down to the river to laze in the water for a little while before heading home. We stopped at Chick-fil-a on the way home to finish off a great camping trip.

That night, we went and saw the new Transformers movies which more than made up for the epic talk-fest that was the second movie. There was more than enough spectacular alien robot battles to keep everyone satisfied!

Today, church was at a local homeless shelter as part of my church’s outreach program. After church, we had lunch with all the residents and then I started heading home. As I pulled into my driveway, I got a call asking if I wanted to go for a bike ride with two of the people from small group. Heck, yeah I do!

We turned it into a swim/bike/run with 1500yd/13mi/2mi and then went to get some fruit smoothies to cap off a phenomenal weekend!

All of that plus we have two more days off to celebrate this nation’s freedom and independence!

Settle

Back home and settling in after finding out it takes a long time to out away all the stuff you lived in for a month without quickly running out of room. When I was in the garage, I had no closet which was a convenient excuse for why there were things all over the floor. After all, people can’t get mad at you when they realize you only store things on the floor because levitating shelving hasn’t been invented yet. Now that I’m in a real room, it is a lot more complicated to put things away all at the time. I don’t think I like it as much.

Because my travels had an indeterminate ending date, I was required to do a lot of things at work in order to leave. Now that I’m back, it takes a certain amount of patience and understanding to go and get everything turned back on and working before I actually go into the office. The past week has been remarkably similar to when I first arrived at work a few years ago and no one really understood what they needed to do with me. I doesn’t inspire a whole lot of confidence in the systems we use, but they are all we have at the moment so I have to have some sort of faith in them.

I got the opportunity to contact a few of my friends who are overseas for various reasons be they for work or pleasure and once again technology pulled through for us. It always makes me grin when someone can be a nation or ocean away and I can still keep up a conversation with them as if they were in a room right down the hall. I don’t often get to talk to a lot of them, so seeing them smiling and laughing is always a good time!