Friday, June 28, 2013

All my bags are packed, I'm ready to go

I leave next Thursday. I have almost a week left. I'm packed. Except for necessities, everything is bagged. I still have right under 20 lbs of space in the back I'm checking, so I can be more generous with what I take. Might pack another pair of pants!

I loaded my carry-on bag with clothes too. I'm planning on bringing a lot back, so I want extra space.

The problem is I don't have anything to wear for the next five days. Whoops. I'm just super excited.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

1 year and 10 days

The title of this could be a tad misleading. It is not something that is in 1 year and 10 days or something that was 1 year and 10 days ago. It is two separate things.

First off, 1 year ago today I had my last recreational soda. I say recreational because I have one exception where I would still drink it.

I remember it well.

...Ever since that New Year's, I had been trying to stop soda. I could count the amount I had on one hand. The anniversary would have been last week, but this event spoilt it. I was on my way home from a church camp in Florida. It was probably around 10 at night and we were stopping for dinner. I hadn't had a soda all week long at that camp and I certainly wasn't planning on having one then.
A drink came with my food and I had every intention of filling it with water. The machine was broken. I got Sprite. I drank maybe a centimeter of it. June 23 was my last soda...

Now, I mentioned an exception. If I'm sick, I will drink Sprite. In November, I took medicine on an empty stomach. I needed Sprite. I could hardly stomach it, but it worked.

Now for 10 days.

There are only 10 days until I board a plane to London.

9 days until Justin Bieber, but I don't really care about him. I almost would prefer to stay home and do one last yoga session! Anything is better than Justin Bieber. I like the Jonas Brothers better :)

10 days!

I ought to start packing...I know what clothes I'm taking, so that's a start. I went shopping with my mom the other day and bought some skirts and blouses and shrugs, so now I can change up my outfits more. Yay for clothes! I still need to decide what shoes are coming things like that.

I'm freaking out because I haven't heard anything from my professor about what I need to wear/bring. I don't know if all of our outings will be business professional or if I can wear jeans and a top.

This is me before two separate dances. The left was three months ago, right before I started working out. The right was three nights ago. The dress on the right is coming with me to London to wear to the theatre and other fancy dress needing places. I can also wear it to funerals and graduations.


Saturday, June 15, 2013

Mission Arlington

Sup guys! I just got back from a weeklong mission trip in Arlington. It was fantastic! We had a ton of fun. To prove it, I will be enclosing some Vines.

About a month before leaving, I switched to Paleo, which proved to be a difficulty when surrounded by high schoolers who eat junk. To stay on track, I took a cooler filled with Paleo meals along with us.
To keep them frozen, the cooler had some dry ice in it. That created ample opprutinity for fun once we arrived at our host church. I dumped the ice down the sink and some kid decided to pour water on it and then grab it with his hands. Big mistake.
Never take a group of 20 to a WalMart. It was awful, though I was able to buy fruit. That was nice.
Big Mike in his onesie. That can never be unseen.
We had been discussing the "Shrek" musical during breakfast prep and all morning, he sang about Fiona.
This was the chapel at the mission. Every morning and afternoon we met for around a half hour in order to make sure everyone knew what the next part of the day held.
The boys created a game where they had to twerk. One kid ended up racking up over 300 twerks to complete.
Most mornings, Big Mike sang to the group at breakfast.

Doesn't that look fun? We did do mission trip things. In the mornings, we did service projects. One morning, we picked up trash at our apartment complexes. One we held a free garage sale. Another, we gave out loaves of bread. I don't have many pictures because I didn't really have chances to pull out my phone and take them. We were too busy. I'll post pictures at the bottom.

We started the day knocking on doors, telling the parents that we were meeting at the playground. Parents would give us their children and we took them back a few hours later. We sang songs, played some games, colored and got into small groups.

The under 6 group mostly colored.

We went to a Hillsong concert one night. We were literally three rows away from the tip top of the theatre, but it was still incredible. I felt like I was on the front row. They didn't sing Cornerstone, which is my current song obsession, but I didn't mind too awfully much.

Eric and his brother Joel. Joel didn't speak a lick of English and kept correcting me on the pronunciation of his name. It's kind of like "Zho-el." He was always smiling. He liked me because I knew what "bebe agua" meant. 

This is Stephanie. She was the sister of the boys above. 
Jenny, Gabriela, and Stephanie

Gabriela colored me a picture of Dora. She also taught me how to say "booger" in Spanish. It's "moco." They all laughed when I said it. 
I have a few videos that I really wanted to post, but my youtube app is being ridiculous. I upload them, and they aren't on youtube. I don't know what the deal is. Oh well.

My favorite part of the trip was day three. It was salvation bracelet day. I was sitting next to Joel, helping him with his bracelet and reading what each color means in Spanish. A 10 year old names Fransico was sitting near us too. He gave me an A- on my reading, btws.

We got to the white bead, which represented new life, or nuevo vida. He said "I want one of those." We talked for a few minutes about what he meant by that. He said he wanted the joy we sang about in the song.

Saturday, June 8, 2013

And away I go!

Today, I'm leaving for a mission trip in Arlington, Texas. I am going as a leader (for the first time) with my church youth group to Mission Arlington. Mission Arlington (during the summer) hosts groups that lead a "Rainbow Express" for inner-city apartment kids. Rainbow Express is like a VBS. During the winter, they have a Christmas Store. It's all free and we help organize it and deliver things. I've been over winter, but never summer, so I'm doing something new!

In the morning, we'll work at the mission doing whatever Mrs. Tillie tells us to do. Sometimes it's cleaning, sometimes it's sorting donations, sometimes it's delivering bicycles. Anything.

In the afternoon, we do Rainbow Express. I've never experienced Rainbow Express, but I've heard amazing things.

While we're there, we are going to a Hillsong United concert one evening!

Take it All in Spanish!

We'll also go to Twisted Root burgers! I linked to the menu. Just look at it. I have never had ANYTHING that tastes better than kangaroo. Thanks Twisted Root for opening my eyes to the wonders of Australian hopping animals.

We'll go to Six Flags too, but that's just Six Flags. It'll be really hot. I'll get sunburned.

On a London note: I bought my carry-on bag.


I decided to use it for this trip, just to see how much I could fit in it. It almost became a game.






I used a strategy I saw on a different blog, only in place of the towel, was a suit. Towels take up a lot of room, right? Well, I flattened part of it on the bottom and started stacking my (rolled) clothes on top. At the end, I folded the towel over the top. Saved me so much room.

Inside the regulation size carry-on, I fit


  • 15 shirts (half work shirts, half for evening outings)
  • 8 Nike shorts
  • 2 jean shorts
  • 1 Bible
  • 1 swimsuit
  • 1 toiletry bag
  • 1 waterbottle
  • 1 pair Reebok Nanos
  • 2 bottles sunscreen
  • 5 pair socks
  • 1 box bandaids
I also have a lime green fanny pack filled with a few things (chapstick, pens, chargers, Neosporin, etc.)

I was worried about not having enough space to pack for London. After fitting a weeks worth of stuff in a carry-on, I'm not as worried. 

Monday, June 3, 2013

So much to do, so little time

There are only 30 days left until I leave! That sounds like enough time to get things done, right? You'd think so.

Seven of those days, though, I'll be in Arlington on a mission trip where I get to attend a Hillsong United concert.

Five of those evenings I'll be at the Wichita Theatre helping out with Wizard of Oz.

One of those days I'll be at a Justin Bieber concert in Dallas.

Another one of those days I'll be assisting with a dance.

(I'm already down to 16 days left of actual planning time.)

Oooh, I think I'll figure this in hours.

720 hours until I leave. (This isn't 100% accurate because the plane doesn't leave at midnight and so forth and so on, but pretend it does.)

168 hours are on a mission trip.

I'll spend approximately four hours an evening at the theatre for five nights equaling 20 hours there.

I figure the concert will take around 8 hours with driving and eating dinner as well as the concert itself.

The dance itself is 4 hours and I expect to spend at least 2 hours helping with decorating.

Oh, and you can't forget Crossfit every morning. That is around 45 minutes each day, six days a week. I have 21 more left until I leave, totaling 63 hours.

I also spend 3 hours at church on Sundays and 2 on Wednesdays. I have 3 Sundays left and 2 Wednesdays left. I will spend 13 hours at church.

You can't forget sleeping! I usually get between 8 and 9 hours of sleep, but for this, we'll go with 8. I am leaving out the mission trip since those hours are counted there. I have 23 days to sleep. That's around 184 hours in sleeping.

Now, subtract all of those numbers and you end up with 256 hours of unfilled time until I go to London.

All together, that's almost 11 days of completely open time. Not too far off from my original 16 days of time!

In those 256 hours of unfilled time, I have to:

  • Pack for the mission trip
  • Unpack from the mission trip
  • Work at my dad's office
  • Take showers
  • Bake cookies for the dance
  • Paint things at the theatre
  • Potentially have a going away party
  • Reddit/Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook
  • Make fancy lists for Paris and Manchester and Cardiff
  • Pack for London
  • Drive to the airport

Can I do it?

YES I CAN.