the great trip (mid) west

A little peak at where I've been and what I've been up to for the last two weeks!

Iowa

Illinois

Michigan

a long awaited update (perhaps I flatter myself too much!)

So, I guess the last significant update into my day to day life was written way back in the beginning of July. (Was that only a month and a half ago???) So, I figured it was about time for another!

I was in Florida for just under six weeks. I went down to be a summer nanny for the wonderful girls I used to care for before I left to do Transit and their wonderful baby sister who was born while I was gone and their wonderful cousins who live in Jacksonville. I think I can safely say that everyone involved had a great summer.

We were right on the beach, as you can see from this picture. This is the spot where I did quite a lot of reading when I was "off duty," not bad, huh? The summer was full of sand and water and sun and origami and reading time and ice cream and the dynamics of little girl relationships and naps and trips to the park and trips to the girls' Papa's tree farm and good food and all kinds of other fun things like getting caught in the rain almost every time I went out for a walk in the evenings. And big, beautiful rainbows.

No summer would be complete without a trip to the zoo and this one included petting and feeding sting rays. (Their "stinger" had been trimmed, apparently much like you would trim your fingernails.)

We drove back to Charlotte on the 29th of July, I think. It was definitely a Wednesday. And that evening I booked my flight to Ireland. I fly into Dublin on the 12th of September and will make my way north to Belfast where I will be living until I find a job or run out of money which I project will be sometime in December! No, seriously, I'm heading to Belfast to job hunt and make connections and do some volunteering and have committed to stay through December, which hopefully will give me enough time to find a job so I can stay forever, or at least two years which is how long my visa will be issued for.

So, naturally, I'm excited and nervous and thinking about packing way more than I'm actually doing the packing. And I'm sure to run out of time to do several of the many things I have projected to finish before I leave. So it's all rather exhilarating and tiring.

On a sort of side note I saw movies 24 and 25 of the summer this week. Time Traveler's Wife with my sisters, Laura and Emily, and Nights in Rodanthe with my mom.

I feel a bit like Clare in the Time Traveler's Wife. (If you haven't seen the movie or read the book I'm going to be giving away plot here...) In the scene where Henry travels to and from the bathroom. She's very pregnant, but has tried to keep herself from hoping about this baby because she has lost so many before. Henry comes back from travelling to the future where he meets their daughter, Alba. He tells Clare all about her and she says, "You mean it's all going to be all right?" It was such a moving scene and I feel like her. There's this thing that I've been dreaming about and hoping for and working towards for so long, but because it's been so long it's so very hard to understand that it's really happening. That the dream is becoming reality. I think it can't be true.

But in three weeks from today I'll be sitting (well, sleeping actually) in Belfast. And I'll never again have to cry when I leave Ireland because I don't know when I'll be coming back. It's all rather overwhelming.

So anyway, that's my update.

the contents of my purse

1) blue and white little girl's hair clip
2) diaper and wipes
3) toddler sized t-shirt
4) sippy cup
5) wind-up inch worm
6) discarded bag from Claire's Accessories
7) plastic harmonica
8) lollipop
9) ballerina hippo finger puppet
10) baby einstein travel discovery cards
11) crackers
12) two empty boxes of raisins

more women should dress like us

So two weekends ago I visited my youngest sister Lacy in Tennessee where she goes to college. We had a great weekend. On Friday we went into Chattanooga and explored the city a bit. Fabulous independent bookstore where I found a copy of Pablo Neruda's Love Poems and Lacy found a wonderful little journal with birch trees. We saw The Proposal which was entirely predictable, but still enjoyable. We had great salads at Panera for dinner then crossed The Walnut Street Bridge for some ice cream from Clumpy's. The sunset from the bridge was beautiful and we just sat and enjoyed the evening. We walked past a man who said to us, "Good evening girls. Ya'll look great. More women should dress like you." We decided this must be because of our impeccable fashion sense and not because he thought we looked slutty. Sunset from the Tennessee River

Lacy

The Walnut Street Bridge

Sisters

On Saturday we went hiking in the Cherokee National Forest which was an adventure! The first half hour or so was fine, just following the trail and crossing the stream on rocks and fallen logs a couple times. Then we had to climb up the side of the mountain. That's when it got a bit interesting. As much as I love trail walking scrambling through the brush and decaying leaves full of large insects and possibly snakes is not my favorite thing. We made it down to our destination, a beautiful waterfall where we had lunch and soaked up the day and Lacy swam in the pool at the base for a while. (A short while as it was VERY cold.) When we decided to head back was when the fun really began. Lacy couldn't find the trail. You loose it on the way in and then have to climb back up to where you leave it to head back out. We were scrambling up and down and across the side of the mountain for a good 15 minutes when we came across an army back pack that had been lost or dropped or something. It had been there for a week or maybe less. Animals had gotten into it and strewn the contents. Prescription medicine, tins of food, a large package of ivory soap. And a machete. That was slightly disconcerting as we were half expecting to stumble on a body or hear the weak cries of an injured soldier. Anyway, I got tired of going back to the waterfall to start again and pushed ahead, blazing a trail in roughly the right direction. After a few minutes Lacy, who was lower down than me, called out, "I found the real trail!" Which was a huge relief to both of us! The rest of the day was taken up with snow cones and movies and easy dinners.

Giant millipedes were everywhere!

Lacy swimming in the pool.

Sisters

The waterfall and me

Staring up at the sky... This was my view!

The Waterfall

Snail and mushroom on moss

On Sunday we meandered our way to Atlanta where I caught a plane to Jacksonville, Florida. I'll be here until the 30th of July. So far, we're having a blast.

The Beach

I got back Sunday from a working beach trip. The girls were great and we had a fun, albeit exhausting, trip. We were out on the beach and in the pool and went to their grandfather's tree farm where we rode gators all around the 300 acre property. I had Saturday off and spent it laying on the beach reading. And burning. It was a lovely day for which I am still paying... OUCH!

I wanted to share something really cool that happened on the trip; A couple Sundays ago at church we had a special offering for Zao Water, a project that raises funds to dig wells in Africa. I felt compelled to give, and not just my standard special offering amount, something big, something challenging. And I did, while saying, "Ok Lord, I trust you. It's your money anyway so you're going to have to provide that much more for me to go to London." On the beach trip I was given double the amount I put in that offering.

Great is your faithfulness oh Lord!