Hi! It seems like such a long time since I updated the good ol' website, but I needed to scan a picture from my Spring Break trip to put up...and now that I have, you get to read all about it, aren't you lucky?! The above pic is of my Mission:Possible group. For those of you who don't know, M:P is an alternative Spring Break offered through Gonzaga where groups of students go to different cities throughout the country and do volunteer work for a week. There were six different sites this year; San Diego, CA, St. Louis, MO, Camden, NJ, Washington D.C., Jonestown, MS, and, saving the best group for last of course...SAN ANTONIO, TX! The week was filled with fun times, laughter shared, memories to last a lifetime, and of course service!
The trip for me started on Friday night when I discovered while attempting to pack that I had no clean clothes...so I was up until 4:00am doing not one, not two, not even three, but FOUR FREAKING LOADS OF LAUNDRY! (Ok I really don't have that many clothes, I mean come on, you know you have to separate whites and colors, and then I washed my sheets too, so I was productive in a way) Well needless to say, I was none to happy to wake up at 8:00am the same morning to finish packing and catch the shuttle to the airport. But the group played card games and stuff while waiting for the flight, so that was fun. Then we boared our plane at about 11:30am and didn't end up getting into Houston until 9:00pm, so that equated out to one long ass plane ride. Once at the airport, we had to wait for another hour for the stupid rent-a-car people to realize that, yes in fact, we were allowed to take the cars that we had paid for...boneheads! When we finally reached Veronica's uncle and aunt's house, her mom had cooked us a wonderful, authentic Mexican meal...let's just say I've never seen 17 people devour so much food in such a short period of time! After dinner, we crashed there for the night(which was so nice of her relatives to just let 16 strangers stay in their house) and then woke up bright and early the next morning and drove to San Antonio. The drive was awesome...Ada, Lisa, Heidi, Melanie, and I were all in one car, and we had on some old school music and we were dancing like nobody's business. And may I say that only in Texas have I ever seen multiple people REVERSE on the freeway in order to avoid a traffic jam. And one of the other cars took much pride in announcing over the walkie talkies that they thought we should watch not one, but two men peeing on the side of the rode. We got an even bigger thrill when one of them looked over at us and said ~Hey, when you gotta go, you gotta go.~ I guess he'd know best.
We reached San Antonio to find that we were staying in a beautiful Church complex in an air conditioned classroom. Now, here's a math quiz for y'all...how many Gonzaga students can you fit into one classroom to sleep? Well apparently it's around 17, because it was a tight squeeze, but fun as well.
Monday started the five most incredible days of my life! We were working at four different places during the week. In the mornings, from 8:00-12:00, we got to work at a place called The Children's Shelter (which had three different locations) with kids who ranged anywhere from infants to 5 year olds. On Monday we were with the toddlers, playing with them on the playground and helping them eat their lunch. One of the funniest moments of the week came at lunch on the first day when one of the little boys looked Alex's knee and preceded to tell him that a bump he had looked like a nipple! Aaaahhhh, aren't kids cute?! On Tuesday we got to go play with the babies for the morning...omg I just love babies! One little girl fell asleep in my arms and I just wanted to take her home, she was so adorable! On Wednesday and Thursday, we got to visit and play with the toddlers again (and can I just say that on Thursday, a little girl named Brianna taught me very quickly that you can get a workout just by running around after a little kid who keeps yelling ~Chase me!~) and then on Friday we got to go back and play with the babies. So needless to say, the mornings were amazing.
However, my favorite part of the day was in the afternoons. From 1:00-5:00, we all went to a place called The Good Samaritan Youth Center, which is basically an after-school center for junior high and high school kids and a day care for younger kids. We actually gardened from 1:00-3:00 while we waited for the kids to show up after school (I ended up getting a very weird sunburn streak across my back from having my shirt come up a little bit while gardening...silly me, I should have known to put sunscreen on underneath my shirt, what was I thinking?!) Once the kids showed up though, that was when the real fun began. We met some of the most amazing kids at the Good Sam, and I can't wait to go back and visit them in August! There was one boy, Fernando, that I ended up playing basketball with all Friday afternoon and then he preceded to show me that he could do tumbling passes and techno as well...omg these kids were amazing. I think everyone ended up enjoying the Good Sam a lot because we would stay progressively later every day...on Monday, we were there until 5:00, Tuesday we stayed until about 5:30, Wednesday we were there until 6:00, on Thursday we were there until around 6:30, and on Friday we didn't leave until after 7:00pm. (In fact, I think most of us had to be dragged away on Friday because we just didn't want to leave at all) So as you can see the service part of the trip was absolutely incredible!
On Wednesday night, we went out for Nicole's birthday, and we went to this really cool authentic Mexican restaurant called Mi Tierra. The food was awesome (apart from the point when Brenda found a huge chunk of chicken fat in her soup) and there was a live Meriachi band. Friday night was our main night out. We went down to the Riverwalk, which is this really cool lower level shopping plaza/walking path that runs along the river...it's really cool, and the warm evening air made it that much better! Also, Cows on Parade was in San Antonio while we were there, so Friday night, as well as other opportunities that I'd had during the week, I got to take pictures of the cows. It was way fun. Saturday morning, we went down to the Market for a little bit and then started to make our way back to Houston because our flight was leaving early on Sunday morning. But it took us a little longer than expected to get to Houston because we were half way to Mexico before we realized that we had been driving the wrong way for almost an hour! After a good laugh and a surprise return back to San Antonio (I swear it was a sign that we were supposed to stay there longer!) we made it to Houston and had another wonderful meal waiting for us at Veronica's aunt and uncle's house. The evening was pretty laid back, after dinner we rented The Cutting Edge and had a good time listening to Alex and Melanie recite THE ENTIRE MOVIE while we were trying to watch it. Sunday morning it was back on a plane at 9:00 to not get back to Spokane until 5:00 Texas time. The most memorable moment from the plane ride was when the stewardess from our Albuquerque to Seattle flight sang our M:P group a song as we were landing in Seattle...good times, she was the coolest!
Well I've been back in Spokane for a little over a week now, and a part of me still wants to be back in San Antonio, but I'm having a lot of fun back here at school with all of my friends. On Thursday night my M:P group got together at Heidi and Alex's apartment for dinner, which was a lot of fun. Friday night, I went and saw A View From the Top with Veronika and Ali (a word to the wise, avoid this movie!) and then went to a couple of house parties. After dropping Ali off, Veronika and I decided that we weren't tired, so we cruised Division for a while and had two guys try to get us to pull into a parking lot with them...AAAAHHHHH, scary Spokies! Saturday afternoon was the Gonzaga/Arizona basketball game. Quite intense, we played so well and only lost by one point in double overtime, but the best part of the game was watching Stacie eat 6 hotdogs because she thought it would help them win...what a trooper, way to take one for the team Stacie, or should I say 6?! That night my M:P group got togther at Heidi's place to have dinner and watch The Sandlot and Tommy Boy...hmmm, surprised you didn't know that! Good times had all around, we were wild and crazy and just had tons of fun.
Now it's back to the grind of the school week and the weekend can't come quick enough, I can tell you that much. I know this has been a really long update, but there was just so much to say, so I hope you've enjoyed it! Talk to you soon...take it easy!
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