Well this is my first entry in live journal ever… I suppose it’s appropriate that I write about what’s presently on my mind… and there are only two thoughts I can think of…

                        First being… sickness. I just came down with something horrible yesterday around 5 p.m. but that is already showing signs of improvement… slowly. Very slowly. I assume it’s a case of the 56 hour flu. Painful.

                        Second being… CHWC.  [catholic heart work camp]

            I know I returned home after my mission trip three, practically four days ago now… but I’m still having trouble adjusting to my old life. It’s incredible just how much I’m missing, not only the environment… but particularly the people. I guess it helped that I had the most perfect “group” “team” “thing” possible. Immediately following our arrival to the school we were staying at in Baltimore MD, we were divided up into predecided/random groups of about six plus one adult. This was what would become our “work group” with an assignment to fix up an old woman’s home.

            I’ll lay down a little info about my group to give a feel.

Members:

Taylor – (Senior)(North Carolina) – she was pretty cool, she was kind of quiet… it took a little to get her out of her “comfort zone”, but she became a great comfort in times of tension. She always had a nice comment, and she was just too sweet not to like.

Amanda – (Freshman)(Marion, Ohio) – wow she was insane! not the good kind either! But hey… to each his own I suppose… she wasn’t mean or anything, she was actually, to be quite exact… overly nice. She didn’t help with much of the work we had to do…I think she just has some maturing to do… A LOT of it. She came second so I could describe my next person accurately…

Dustin – (Junior)(Iowa) – Amanda’s slave. She “kept him in line” all week long. I am in belief that the sole reason he was so calm/quiet was because half of the time she wouldn’t even allow him to speak! Well… I, unlike Dustin, did not mistake her cruelty towards him for true malice… she simply had a crush on him, and that was her immature way of flirting. She did end up asking him out… he didn’t want that, haha.

Cat – (Junior)(Minnesota) – haha this girl was awesome! She also had the coolest accent existent. Almost immediately she was awarded the nickname “Julie the Cat”- [the Mighty Ducks character…] for many reasons. One being she was an ice skater, and Julie was an ice hockey goalie. There were many similarities. Cat almost always had something pretty funny to say too… whether it was actually supposed to be funny, or because her accent just made it that way.

And last… my favorite…

Will – (Senior)(Pittsburg) – I’m not sure where to begin with will… on a cool meter, scale of one to ten he’s an eleven. Almost instantly we began to realize that we share a mind, we are just that similar! The entire week was amazing, just getting to know him more, and getting to know myself more through him. Great music taste, he’s absolutely hilarious, he spent a couple car rides… in the “untouchable van of tyranny” singing Queen with me; he’s got awesome friends, and great standards/morals… strong faith, good work ethic, he’s a respectful person… he’s very intelligent, I enjoyed everything about him. I love this guy, I think I miss him most of all.

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Back to the week’s events…

-          We worked on an old/incapable woman’s home. Her name was Miss Margaret; she was 85 years old, and she’s had 32 strokes in the past 3 years… pretty insane. She was probably the coolest person over 80 that I know. She tried as best she could to help us out the entire week… which was amazing. I hope by the time I am her age I’m as capable of living, and am healthy as she is. (despite the strokes)

-          We cleaned out her basement and painted it and reorganized the whole thing. We also replaced all of the screens in her porch windows.

Will and I had to cut pieces of ply wood to repair her basement doorway/walkway thing… that was hell. I guess he really did most of the work…

- Our after lunch talks were amazing. A couple of times we didn’t get through all three or four of the questions simply be cause they would spark such discussion that we’d talk about them forever. Everyone had amazing views, and we were all able to share something personal; we learned so much about each other in such a short time…

As for regular program activities I met a bunch of kids just playing a random game in the evening… “ball sack”! this game was a blast. it was basically just a group of probably 8 people in a circle with a soccer ball. We’d juggle it 3  to 5 times and catch it before it hit the ground and then you could throw it at someone. So much fun. This is where I met Lily… my twin. Haha. She’s into the coolest music, like myself. We have the same short flipped out hair, and she’s got my exact sense of humor. I’ll miss her. She’s from Pittsburg as well so hopefully I’ll run into her again sometime… not too impossible really.

I met probably 20 other random people throughout the week that I like a lot… some of them I can’t even remember their names… a few were:

Jason… my Queensryche fan! This guy was pretty awesome… sucks… but I didn’t really start talking to him until the last day… which sucks because when we did start to talk it was good conversation. (Pitt)

Matt Pator… same kind of thing as with Jason… met him on the last day but we hit it off also. (Pitt)

Chris… I love this kid. I hung out with him on the night before the last day… we found out we also had a ton in common. Especially our music tastes, the fact we both play guitar etc. we just walked around, played guitar and talked about meaningless yet cool things.

I have so much more to write… but this is too long already. I might write more later… but probably not –it makes missing it, so much worse.