A Whirlwind of Activity

The Valentine's Banquet (with Ruth)

only my new favorite dress ever. (with Janelle)

Alright. So I thought I'd start off with some fun pictures from the Valentine's banquet, which was a huge success. We served about 45 people, the kids were great, and we all enjoyed dressing up. It was 50's themed - most of the girls went more for the poodle skirt or Pink Ladies look, I simply looked like a housewife. Works for me! I found the dress last minute in a little shop near my apartment, and fell in love with it.

Earlier that week, we had our house-warming party. I invited about 25 people, expecting maybe 2/3 of them to actually come. I was wrong. All but 3 people showed up, so we had a very full house. I made lasagna (a Pioneer Woman recipe, slightly altered), which was a huge hit, and loved being able to host a party. It was great to have people over, and to show off my new apartment. The Superbowl was the next evening, and was also so much fun. A whole bunch of us were at a friend's house, with loads of junk food, watching the game projected on the wall. Janelle is a huge Colts fan, and sadly watched as the Colts lost. Now, I'm not an avid Saints fan or anything, but Reggie Bush plays for them, and I love USC players. Should one eventually end up with Dallas, however, I won't root for them. That's a little much. And while I'm on the subject of football, I got some devastating news this past week - the Eagles let Brian Westbrook go. Westbrook is one of my all-time favorite players. I absolutely love him. So when I saw this, I just about cried. All I can say is that as long as he stays away from Dallas, I will root for whatever team he plays for, should he decide to continue playing.

Ok. Outside of school, loads of homework, and a lot of choir rehearsals, I've slowed down my weeks considerably. I found that I was way too busy, and I wasn't handling it all that well. So I kept my schedule relatively free, and went on a day-by-day basis again. I spent time with some old friends, hanging out and cooking and talking, and had a lot more quiet time.

A little over a week ago, 5 of us rented a car (that was a debacle. seriously.) and skipped out of town on Saturday to go hiking. I did the wadi last November, but it was a chance to get out and spend some time with friends, as well as an opportunity to try out my vibrams. We left at 730 in the morning, drove down to the Dead Sea, and set off. It was a beautiful day. My shoes were awesome for rock climbing and bouldering. So much so that I went off climbing crazy rocks that my mother would not approve of, and it was so much fun! Last time I got wedged in this crack trying to get up this rock, this time, I did it with ease. I really love my vibrams. You should all try them out. We enjoyed lunch by the waterfall, I had some great one-on-one time with one of the other girls, and then we headed back around noonish. As we approached the end of the hike, we ran into a bunch of goats and some kids on donkeys leading them around. There were also some incredibly adorable baby goats that Janelle and I got to pet. Then the goats chased us. Or maybe the kids were telling them to, I don't know. But it was kind of funny. We drove back to the city, dropped everyone off, and I went off to meet with some other friends before church. It was a wonderful time away.

This week has been crazy in its own right, but in a good way. I got to spend a lot of time with Ruth on Tuesday, hanging out for a bit, staying for dinner and a movie. Another friend of mine celebrated her 25th birthday this week, and I loved being able to celebrate that with her and some other friends. I had 3 choir rehearsals this week - Monday, as usual, Wednesday, a sectional, and last night, in preparation for a concert next Wednesday. We had off of school on Thursday, which was really nice. I also left Thursday afternoon for the youth retreat, getting back last night. The retreat was awesome. The speaker connected really well with the kids, and was really funny, the worship team did an excellent job, and the kids really enjoyed all the activities we planned for them. There were about 80 kids there, and they loved the shirts. I was really nervous about that, but it went really well. It was so much fun seeing my pieces of art everywhere. It was raining the entire weekend, so we were constantly wet, but we didn't let that dampen our spirits. We had a castle activity - there's an ancient castle in Ajloun, where we had a challenge to find leaders, collect puzzle pieces, all while several team members were blind-folded. It was good fun. We also had a photo scavenger hunt and a talent show, in which the leaders all performed a number from the Sound of Music, to the kids' great amusement. We had a game of ultimate frisbee, lots of Dutch Blitz, and finally, packed the kids onto the buses and shipped them back to the city. I was in a van with a couple other leaders and some of the equipment, leaving right after the bus. Except we couldn't start the car. We ended up push-starting the car, which was a funny sight. I got back, unpacked, finally had dry feet for the first time in 3 days, then went off to choir rehearsal. I was exhausted, but managed to make it through. Luckily, I have today and tomorrow to recuperate before going back to school on Tuesday.

In other news, Horton, one of my favorite teachers from high school (she taught the Autistic kids and was the JV coach for lacrosse), had a baby boy this past week. Congrats!!!

Coming up: wadi pictures!!!, my first Dozan concert, and a trip to the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts for free pastries and conversations with the chefs.

New Apartment!

Finally.... Here are some pictures of my new apartment! Lets start on the roof.

...the view...

Now in the apartment, we've got a dining room table!

The formal sitting room

The informal sitting room (also known as the warm room)

When it's cold, we put up farshi to insulate and block off the warm room to keep it nice and toasty

Now, this kitchen is huge. SO much better than the last one. We can fit a whole ton of people in here, and there's even enough room for a table! And there's counter space....

Big perk: a real washing machine!!!! No more filling it with water by hand or draining into the toilet...

My room!!!

I have a desk! And lots of pictures. They make me smile :]

... and I finally have a mirror that isn't hidden inside of my wardrobe.

So that's about it for pictures! Janelle's (my new roommate) room is out my door to the left, and we both have our own bathrooms. I absolutely love the roof access, it's great to sit out there in the sunshine and read a book, or do homework, or just to sit and enjoy the quiet.

New update coming soon. Until then, enjoy the pictures!

I'm....... Moving Out!

OK, so its a been a while. Things on my end have been absolutely crazy. First of all, the Eagles did not win. They lost, again, to all their fans' disappointment. It was a sad night indeed.

As most of you know, I like to paint shirts. A whole lot. It's a hobby of mine. Last summer, I hand painted more than 20 shirts for Aisling's ultimate frisbee team. It was so much fun, though quite time-consuming. This winter, I outdid myself. Before I left Jordan, we had a leaders' meeting about a youth retreat in February, and next thing I knew, I had volunteered to make and bring back all the shirts for the retreat. In the taxi on the way, I was kicking myself. Sure, I love painting shirts, but 85? What was I thinking? But when I got home, and started making designs and buying the shirts, I knew exactly what I had been thinking - that this was gonna be awesome.

So we bought 85 shirts. Black for the leaders, then yellow, teal, purple, and green for the team colors. Then we worked on the design. The company that makes my screen printer (Yudu, the best birthday present ever) makes some cool base designs. We took one of those and added theme words from the retreat to it, then made the screen. We grabbed the paints, my very wise mother made me cover the floor with plastic, and then started painting. After a while, I got into a system, and cranked out all the shirts in a couple days. We then decided that the shirts needed a design on the front as well, so we played around on photoshop for a while, made a new screen, stuffed all the shirts with newspaper, and cranked them out. The sweatshop opened and closed with plenty of time to spare. See more pictures here...

The lease on our house is up in July, so I had to pack up all my things before I left (things would've been thrown out if I hadn't...). I enlisted both Helena and my mother to help out, and got everything packed. I also threw out enough junk to fill a small dumpster. Turns out all sorts of things had accumulated in my room over the 2 years that I lived there.

My mother demonstrated her amazing packing skills once again by fitting all the shirts and my own clothes into 2 duffel bags, both just over 30 lbs each. How she managed to do that, I will never know. With sad hearts, I left to go back for my last semester at Kelsey. I got through security with no problem, got on the plane to JFK, when we were told that the AA terminal at JFK was being evacuated, everyone was being de-planed and re-screened. There was no telling when we would be able to get there. I managed to get to the front of the line to try to get me there in time to make my connection in time, and managed to convince the guy that it was of the utmost importance that I be on the last plane to JFK that evening. So I was. I made it to my connection just in time to board. The flight was long, as always, but we got there and all of bags arrived.

I spent the next week in the house on my own, seeing as I no longer had a roommate. I still hadn't found a new one, and I was starting to look at other options. I registered for my 4th semester classes (!), lead my first small group solo, and took a short trip up to Ajloun to scout out the youth retreat site. On Thursday (the 21st), I heard from my small group co-leader, Janelle, and she told me that her roommate had suddenly moved out, and wanted to know if I was still looking for a roommate, since she now had an opening. We talked details over the weekend, I talked to my landlord about my lease, and by that Monday (the 25th) it was official: I was moving out. I started packing, and by Tuesday night, almost the entire place was packed and ready to go. I started school on that Tuesday as well, but I'm not so sure about what happened in classes, I was a little distracted. After class on Wednesday, I moved all my stuff into Janelle's apartment. Our apartment is huge, compared to my old one at least. I have my own bathroom, you can fit like 10 people in the kitchen, there's roof access, and I even have to take more than 3 steps to get from my bed to my desk (I have a desk!). It is a little farther from school, about a 10 minute walk in the morning instead of a 3 minute walk, but I really love the location. I'll get some pictures of it up soon :]

On the 25th, I also officially became a member of Dozan wa Awtar, a prestigious choir here in Jordan. I originally had wanted to try out for it a year ago, but was thwarted by the mono invasion. I also got to go on the choir retreat to the Dead Sea that weekend. We left early Friday morning, and started off with some hilarious ice-breakers, involving cartwheels, yelling, dancing like various pop artists... We sang a lot, and the music sounded awesome. I can't wait to hear what it sounds like when we know the music! We performed a few pieces for the guests, went out for dinner, and then had some dancing lessons on the grass later at night. I even taught them how to "strip the willow". (For those who don't know, it's a popular reel-like dance in Scotland, a ceilidh thing) We went to bed late, got up early, sang some more, then had group skits. We were split into groups, given a piece of music that we had to learn, and then had to perform as part of a skit. They were ridiculous. We're all a little weird in our own ways, which definitely made things interesting. We left Saturday evening, having made new friends and no longer feeling self-conscious or shy around any of the other members.

Yesterday was a bucket of fun. I got to hang out with Ruth and Janelle over a pot of chili and biscuits made from scratch. This week is also "Wild Scotland" week here in Jordan. I went with some choir friends to the Cultural Center for a night of Scottish Music. It was excellent. Musicians from Scotland were flown in, and worked with some local artists, who learned some of the Scottish pieces, as well as the Scots learning some Arabic pieces. It really made me miss those rolling green hills and that thick, Scottish brogue. Today, we had a "snow" day. There was apparently snow in West Amman, so classes were cancelled. No snow where I live, but hey, I'll take it.

So, coming up: this Saturday, we're having a house-warming party!, baking in a real kitchen, a Valentine's Banquet for the parents at AIC (put on by the youth), more choir rehearsals, and the Superbowl this Sunday!!!! It will be awesome. It starts at 1:30 am. Here comes the all-nighter.