My Texas

Even though I might be a world traveler and had many different experiences in different cultures and understand the world a fair bit more than some people, there are still something I think or believe that make no sense at all. Like my love for Texas, before moving to Comfort, I had only ever been in the airport in Houston once before this in April of grade 11 when I was on my way to Guatemala. My love for Texas is so random and the things that I thought about Texans were way way off. So here are the random things I thought about Texas and the Texans that live here--

·         All barns (mainly everywhere in the world) are red – so not true. Sitting on the back deck of the dorm I can see a huge white barn. White. Of all colors to paint a barn, they wanted it white. Weird.

·         They all like country music – no way Jose! I was talking to one of the maintenance works, Levi and he hates country music and he has only ever lived in Texas other than that one year where he lived in B.C. going to Capernwray Harbour. I don’t understand why he doesn’t like country music.

·         All Texans drive trucks – there are a lot of nice cars down here. Everyone drives a nice car, there are few ugly, beat up cars here and most of them are black. That totally doesn’t make sense since it’s so hot here the sun would make the car super-hot inside. There are trucks here but not as much as I thought there would be.

·         They all ride horses into town – that always happens in the movies. But apparently not in real life.

·         They all wear cowboy hats – not so much. A lot of them actually wear ball caps, which is cool too but not really cowboy-ish.

·         The girls have long blonde hair – just jokes! But actually most of them have long hair but all different colors.  

·         They all must be tan – no no. Some of these people are not tan at all, I am pretty white and wow they are super super white.  

·         The guys all drink black coffee – not true! I drink black coffee and there coffee is not the same color as mine. But there coffee down here is not overly tasty at all.

·         All Texans have a thick Texan accent – not everyone. Some people down here don’t sound Texan at all, they don’t really have an accent just a voice.

I don’t know how I come up with these things sometimes.

Love,

a.m

Hot & Cold

I never knew that it actually gets cold here, like honestly, I know that I have been talking about the weather a lot but it’s a daily thing I have to deal with. I didn’t think I’d need more than one pair of wool socks or that I would need an actually fall jacket. Like honestly this is Texas not Alaska, why is it getting cold? I should have been checking the weather for the fall instead of checking what the weather was like each day before I felt. But it’s too late now for that, I’ve just got to make do with what I brought which is much harder than I would have once thought.

 

It starts off chilly in the morning but by the time we get out of class at 12:30 it has sure warmed and then the afternoon is just hot. However, come after supper things cool off and it gets so cold out. I bundle up with my wool socks, slippers, sweat pants and about four layers of shirts/sweaters. I didn’t bring mittens or a toque but I probably would wear it if I had. Next semester is going to be even colder since January and February are the coldest months here so I will come back from winter break prepared for the coldness that waits me.

I feel like the worst Canadian ever. This isn’t like a Saskatchewan winter at all but even those winters I have a hard time handling. I just wasn’t meant to live anywhere like here or there. I need a place where it’s like fall a lot, I love fall. It is for sure my favorite time of year, the changing of the colors and the cute clothing. Having warm days and chilly days but not bitterly cold to the bone days and not having boiling hot days either and not having them right after one another. It is for sure the prefect time of year, I just need to learn how to prepare for things better.

Love,

a.m

A Year Ago

It still amazes me that ago this month I was an insane person doing an insane thing for a grade in my senior bible class. It is possible I have graduated from high school and passed that bible class with my insane project – it is possible and it did happen just like that. I couldn’t tell you what I was thinking when I decided to start that project and push myself to a new kind of limit for me. I probably wasn’t thinking since I tend to not do that at some pretty important times in my life. You’d think I would have learned by now that thinking is a 24/7 kind of a thing but I still don’t think it has fully soaked in.

A few of you might be wondering what was going on way back then. Well I decided to eat rice for a month to understand what it was like to go to bed hungry, only have rice to eat and watch other people with so much just waste it. It wasn’t until October 1^st came that I realized I was truly insane, one of the most insane people around at the time. A month is a long time, I didn’t actually know how long it was until I went to bed hungry, feeling so very sick because my body was telling me to eat more but I couldn’t. I wasn’t allowed. It was rough to say the least but it was amazing to come to the end of the month and say I did it.

Note to self – think through insane projects and do more research before just diving in.

That was the month that I learned I cannot go without coffee. I love my morning coffee and the smell of coffee brewing in the morning – what a wonderful thing. There were many things I learned but that might have been hardest to get through due to the fact I was still going to high school full time and living life as I normally would but with way less energy to do so. I am naturally a happy and bubbly person but once you take my coffee away I just don’t wake up the same and then my whole day is just not right. I hate having a not right kind of day, those the worst and I had a whole month of them.

As bad as it was, I did enjoy it and I came out still loving rice. So it wasn’t all bad all the time. But it is something I wouldn’t think about doing again anytime soon. There once was a thought in my mind that I would do it every October but I destroyed that idea pretty quick after it came up. If you want to know more about my month of rice you can still check out my rice blog – http://makingwhiterice.blogspot.com/ 

Love,

a.m

Tuesdays

Most people can’t stand Mondays; they think they are the worst day of the week. I understand where they are coming from with that but I am just not sure about that theory anymore. As I have grown up and had different activities on different days I would often change which day of the week I liked more than others. I have now done that again based on my schedule here at the Hill.

 

Mondays aren’t as a bad a Tuesdays but Thursdays are a hundred times worse than Tuesdays. Saturdays are better than Mondays and Sundays are the best day of the whole week with Friday right behind them. The only day that I don’t really have an opinion on is Wednesdays – they aren’t awesome but they aren’t bad. So just like how they are in the middle of the week, they are now also in the middle of my scale of liking.

On Tuesdays we have an extra duty to do because it is room check day. If my morning wasn’t busy enough it now has gotten a little bit busier which means I’m probably a little bit more grumpy in the morning too. I don’t enjoy mornings it’s just that simple. However, Thursday we have to work all afternoon and that is not fun at all. Now Mondays just suck because they are the first day back after the weekend, no super great reason for not enjoying it. Sundays are the best because we go to church and Wal-Mart and do other fun things that day. Fridays we still have five hours of class so that’s not awesome cause your just waiting for the weekend to start. Wednesdays don’t really have anything exciting happening, its just kind of the day you know will always be there and nothing great or not great will happen.

Anyways, that’s kind of how I feel about my weeks.

Love,

a.m

Lightning Fast

So this past week went by so incredibly fast, it’s not even funny how quick it went by. I honestly thought yesterday was last Thursday earlier. It’s a little mind blowing how quick things are going now, there is hardly any time to just stop and think about what you did that day. All my days have become like one big long day with some naps between them all. It’s insane.

 

Over the weekend I didn’t really do anything at all. We had plans but nothing really worked out so some of just hang out at the Hill and thought of all the wonderful things we could be doing but aren’t. I didn’t mind it at all, every once in a while you need one of those chill weekends where you can just relax and let your body completely rest. It was wonderful, it’d be more wonderful if I could really really remember it but I can’t. There is a chance that I went into Comfort Sunday night or maybe it was Saturday and we got some snacks and just had a bit of a girl’s night the room. There was really the only exciting thing from my weekend.

Now onto Monday, we got all new speakers this week since Kelly and Charlie were both away for the week – they went to teacher at other Torchbearer schools. We still had two staff teachers – Jon, teaching on Joshua and Bob, teaching on 1^st Samuel. It is a little weird to be doing those two books at the same time but due to teachers schedule that’s just the way it is. They both have very different teaching styles as well. Jon was a high school bible teacher for two years and is a young guy with the cutest daughter in Texas. His classes are very structured. Then there is Bob, where it is much more just wild and fun. He knows his bible, it seems like he had every verse memorized. However, he doesn’t, either he’ll know the reference or he knows what the verse is about. Sometimes we’ll have to go and actually find the verse for him or we just move on from that point. I would have to say he is probably one of my favorite teachers we’ve had because it is fun. Though I’d have to say I learn the most from the guest speakers than anyone else here.

Our guest speaker this week was from Africa. As of this past year his family and he have been living in one of the Hills guest houses while he is going to school again. So he was a guest speaker but he’s not a guest in our lives since he is around the Hill and also church. He talked on Galatians, a book that I had read and loved before and now have just fallen more in love with it. For most our guest speakers I have been taking around 6 – 10 pages of notes, however, this week was very different at the end of every session with him my hand would be killing me. Today at end of his last class I counted my pages of notes and it came to a hefty total of 20 pages of notes all on Galatians. I hardly doodled or zoned out at all, sometimes I just have an off class where I can’t sit still and just need a break but every time he started talking I couldn’t help it but listen. Which is totally a good thing but just not normal for me. Either I am changing and growing up to where I can sit still for a fair while or else he was just an awesome teacher or even maybe both!

On both Monday and Tuesday afternoons we have off so Josie, Noelle and I laid on floor in our room for like the whole time. We didn’t want to move so we didn’t. It was so nice to just hang out and not have to respect other people while they are working on something since the three of us weren’t really doing anything at all. We may be read one chapter in the text book, but that seems like it was almost too much work for us.

Wednesday was the same old as it always is – breakfast, classes, lunch, outreach, supper, classes. It is the same every week, right now it is still kind of fun but I know at some point I am going to get real bored of that. Every week the same thing happens over and over again with no change or anything new really. Thursday’s are kind of like that too – breakfast, classes, lunch, workday, supper, classes. The only thing different from Wednesday is the afternoon activity – outreach to workday. I would much rather have two days of outreach than one day of work day. Not that I don’t like cleaning but the things we are cleaning I just don’t feel like cleaning normally. By Thursday I was so exhausted that having to do real hard work just doesn’t fit on the list of things I want to do. That list only has room for one thing and that is sleep. However, there is no way out of workday and this week my job got changed from cleaning the dining hall to cleaning all the public washrooms – there are 6 of them. I thought that there were only 4 of them but man oh man was I wrong. It really wasn’t that bad but I just really wasn’t into it however I was thankful for my practice from being a housekeeper at Arlington.

Then comes Friday, my favorite day of the week by far. It went by so fast, feels like only this morning I was hitting snooze three times on my alarm clock but honestly that was many hours ago and so much has happened since then. Since classes end early we have more of an afternoon evening to do things on. Which means Josie, Noelle, Courtney, Alyssa and I walked into Comfort for some antique shopping and pizza. We weren’t sure how long it’d take us to walk so we left around 4 and ended up in town by 4:30. We made pretty good time we thought since most people said it takes like 45 minutes and we for sure aren’t fast walkers at all. There are so many cute shops there but there was only one shop we wanted to go to and spend all our time in. The Antique Mall – where it sells hundreds of Antique. It’s crazy in there, feels like it goes on forever and there is stuff everywhere. It was very much fun and wow that pizza place was so very cute.

Love,
a.m

Harley

On Tuesday and Thursday of our week in Louisiana we went out to ‘The Projects’ area and did some tutoring and a VBS like thing with the kids in that community. It wasn’t actually called The Projects but that is how the Youth Pastor referred to it so that is the name I know for it. It’s the rough area of town, like the hood or the Bronx. There are a whole bunch of two story brick apartment buildings; they all look the same down every street. I’m sure that if I would have went walking around the area move I would have gotten lost cause every street looks the same and has a grass area is the same place. When that area was first built I’m sure it was very nice looking and was a fun place to live. But now it wouldn’t be, there are couches in front of some homes and on the streets, and it’s just not as nice looking, with beat up cars and broken things all over.

However, with all that said, the kids were so precious. They all wanted to play with you and hear you talk; each one of them could pull the Canadian out of the crowd. Apparently we have a very different accent! Kids were coming from everywhere, they just keep showing up for the VBS. I was pretty sure on Tuesday that every kid had shown up but then on Thursday there was even more kids there than before. It was amazing! The parents were all laying out blankets on the edge of the grass area to watch what we were doing and they also had a blast out there watching us all play with kids and run around and around and around. It was overall a very good time spent in The Projects.
There was a little girl standing off to the side with two boys that seemed in their early twenties when we started the singing together. I walked over to them and asked if she could come and sing with us in the middle of the field. She looked up at me and then over to them, not saying a word to either of us. One of the boys, that looked more like her than the other, knotted his head in approval. She grabbed my hand and started walking still not saying anything to me. As we walked away, the boys stood up and one said “hey, don’t forget I’m over here and watching you.” I just smiled and replied with ‘Okay, your just doing your duty. And don’t forget I can see you too.” Then we kept on walking into the group. Looking back on it now, I might have wanted to just say ‘okay’ but no of course not I let my mouth get the best of me and had to reply with something more. The boys just let out a bit of a chuckle and sat back down. Once we were with the group I asked the girl what her name was. It was Harley, and she was seven years old and so cute. Once we joined the group she became like most little girls – full of life. On both days, she and I played together - running around, giggles and playing hand clapping games. It was so much fun and always sad to say bye at the end of the time. The kids would chase the bus as we left The Projects.

Also, looking back on this I realized that I didn’t feel threatened by them, I should have I think. I felt strangely comfort in The Projects. You could tell some of the students were way outside their comfort zone being there, I felt bad for them because they had a harder time playing with the kids and getting involved in everything we were doing. Being there was way more fun for me than being at the church actually working, don’t get me wrong I know the stuff at the church was just as important but it just wasn’t fun all the time. Being with kids and seeing their huge smiles as we played and even just sat with them was way way better than anything we did the rest of the week.

love,

a.m

Louisiana Loneliness

I have never before been to Louisiana (as far as I know) but now I have and well it’s a different kind of place, that’s for sure. I wouldn’t say I enjoyed it there however on the flip side I didn’t hate it either. It was what I would call an adventure. I think it is fair to say that I am becoming one of those people that loves going on adventures, but I don’t like adventures that bring around 60 people and don’t really have a plan. If you haven’t already guessed, that it was my week was like. An adventure with no plan for what 60 students were meant to be doing for a week away from their new home.

Maybe I am being a bit too harsh. There was a plan but we finished most of it in the first day of work so then there was a group of girls who didn’t have anything to do but sit around and wait for something to be thrown their way. I was in that group of girls. One the first day everyone had something to do until about 2:30 – 3 o’clock and that’s when we realized we shouldn’t have worked so hard on the first day. However, they never told us that we were going to fast or that we wouldn’t have anything to do the other days. The leaders of our group and the church didn’t realize that 34 girls could work so fast and get the job well done. It was kind of mind blowing for them all and us.

There were a few jobs like repainting a wall – took three days, designing and pouring the cement for a sidewalk – took five days, redoing the foundation of the youth building – took five days, and making cement parking stoppers – also took five days that kept people busy for a while. But only so many people could be doing those jobs at once, we only had so many tools and there was only so much room at each work area. Which meant that there was a large job of girls who on the first day were clearing bush around the church yard (which is huge and I was one of them) that had nothing to do once done that. It was meant to take us a little longer than five hours. Never underestimate the Hill Girls!

The leaders then got together and began to brainstorm things for us to do. While they were doing that most of us found things to do since sitting and waiting wasn’t really what we wanted to do. Some girls ran water out to the workers while others cleaned the bathrooms, windows, floors, toys and class room walls and then there was the photography group taking pictures of everything happening. I personality went and joined the painting crew and then was on that for the rest of the week.

Thanks Mum for always repainting everything in our house and cabin and making me become a pro painter.

The boys had to sleep in the youth building on the floor for the week and eat all their meals at the church and be at the church all day long. The girls on the other hand did not have to be at the church the whole time. We were placed in people’s homes from the church. Jordyn, Sarah and I were placed in a very interesting home. It was a split house – as in the mother, Monique, was a Christian and the father, Brandon, was not. From the moment I stepped into the house, I just knew that’s how it was. Monique didn’t actually tell us that until maybe Thursday night when we were driving home from the church and it wasn’t like Brandon wore a signing saying that but it was just how each of them acted that made it so obvious. They were a lovely family, just different than we would have first expected. The first night was pretty awkward because we didn’t know what to do and didn’t feel very comfortable there yet. As the week went on things got better at the house, and we started to hang out with the family more and really become part of their family for the week. When everyone was hanging out at the church we would all refer to our host families as our family and talk as if we had lived with them forever.  Saying things like “Mom made pancakes with blueberries for breakfast” or “Dad took us out for ice cream after supper”. It was easier than saying the person’s name and then having no one know who you were talking about since we only really met our host family and not other peoples.

It was weird not being the same building as all the girls. Back at the Hill all but seven girls live in the same dorm, Emmanuel, so we normally see everybody a lot and now we don’t. I only saw Jordyn and Sarah until 9 o’clock when the meeting started at the church every morning. I didn’t enjoy that, I missed seeing my left side down stairs girls (that the side I live on). Jordyn is one of those seven girls so it was nice to still have her. But it was lonely not having my four roommates, it might have just been a month yesterday that we got here however, when these are the only people you see most of the time you become very close to them very fast. Since you can’t really do anything else unless you want to be alone, even that would be hard to do though.

Love,

a.m

7 Hoodies & A Parka

It has mainly been HOT HOT HOT down here in Comfort. I don’t mind wearing shorts and tank tops. It means that you’ll get a super cute tan in no time at all and well would be against that. But then there are those days where we go from one building with AC to the next building and normally going under as many trees as possible to stay out of sight from the sunshine. We also try our best to stay off of the grass because it is not very nice to walk in. Walking around without any foot wear on is not a very good idea but it is one of my favorite things in the world to do. When I don’t wear shoes I have to stay on the road/sidewalk but it gets so hot in the sunlight. Then my feet are burning so I end up looking crazy as I walked trying to keep my feet off the ground but still stay with my friends. 

Then in Louisiana it was also HOT HOT HOT. It was fun since we were working outside most of the time but then it was like oh man, we might get skin cancer here. It didn’t always feel as hot as it actually was and then there were days when it felt way hotter than it actually was. There was also more humidity there than in Comfort so it just made it always feel hotter. There was one day in Louisiana where it was so hot out and everyone was just sweating like pigs. I was outside for about five minutes when Alexis turns to me and says I look like I might be burning. We had hardly started to paint again so I got sunscreen and pasted it on. I hate the feeling of sunscreen but I did not want to burn so I did what I had to do. Then about 45 minutes later, Tyler comes with more sunscreen and sprays me down with his sunscreen. I was covered in sunscreen. I felt nasty. However, it was totally worth it. Now I have a very nice tan!

However, we came home to cold weather. It’s not really that cold but it is a shock to all of our systems. When we go from 3 weeks of super HOT HOT HOT weather to chilly fall weather over night, your body just starts to freak out. I have been chilly since we got home Saturday night, wearing as many layers as I possibly can without looking completely insane. Saturday night some of us had a campfire down by the river and I was so cold that I put on wool socks, slippers, long sleeve shirt, blue hoodie, and my fall jacket with a pair of jeans and my new Mexican blanket. I was pretty sure I could have put on more clothing to keep warm but I didn’t really have anything left. All my clothing is for HOT HOT HOT weather not this chilly weather. It was actually only +10 (I thought it was +15 but I was wrongL), while back home in Regina it was-5. Man oh man, three weeks can really change a person.

Title : One of the girls was said it looked like Courtney had on 7 hoodies & a parka because of all the layers she had on.