the rollercoaster of senior year.

So. Senior year has been the easiest, hardest, most boring, most fun, and craziest year of my life thus far. I've been happy, sad, frustrated beyond belief, excited, apathetic, hopeful, creative.....basically all over the board this year. It's exhausting, but interesting at the same time.

I haven't blogged in so long, and I don't even know where to start. I miss summer. I miss being able to wake up at noon and eating lunch for breakfast. I miss Africa. Kelso had pictures last night at Fusion, and I cried for the first time looking at pictures in a month. I cried today reading back through my journal entries from the trip. I'm so ready to go back.

We WON our football game last Saturday! The game was on a Saturday because it was the traditional Clinic Bowl at Vanderbuilt. We played Hillsboro High. The Tennesseean predicted us to lose. Ha. Funny guys. We beat Hillsboro 34-28. It was a spectacular game, in which we had the ball the majority of the time and were smashing face the first 3 quarters. The fourth quarter, Hillsboro remembered they had a "star" on the team, and decided to give the ball to him. Our boys still held on though. What a great game. We play Mcallie tomorrow night. I'm loving not being in band. The student section is absolutely rockin.

I filled out my first college application last week. It was so exciting and so scary. As much as I love it here, I am ready to move on. High school was fun the first 3 years...now I know I'm so close to the next step in my life, and I cannot wait to get there!

...and i'm officially a senior.

So yesterday was pretty spectacular. Day One of ABS. Or Area Bible Groups. Either/or. The SENIORS (woo!) and assorted underclassmen met at "The Mansion on the Hill" as I have so lovingly and admiringly dubbed it. The picture above is a portion of the Senior Girls. Because yes, we get capitalized. :]

Today was Day One of senior year. Yikes. I don't know what to think about it. I like being the oldest, and being in a position of leadership. I don't like the feeling of being the oldest. (Alright, that made no sense.) It feels so strange, for this to be my last year of high school. But honestly? Praise the Lord. I've made it this far...179 more days to go!

these are a few of my favorite things.

So, I'm officially in love with:
Breaking Dawn. [except I fell in love with the series back in sophomore year.]
Pieces of Flair on Facebook.
pandora.com
freerice.com
snorkeling.
Christmas in August.
Girl's Night.
the hammock chair.
the recliner in the "window corner" downstairs.
chocolate oatmeal no bake cookies.

To Do, Or Not To Do, That Is The Question.

So, as I come upon my last week of summer/freedom, this is what I'm having to deal with. I have my list of legitamate "To-Do" things:

-Read the rest of my summer reading for English. (4 books)
-Art AP Sketchbook
-Art AP Portfolio Piece 1
Ideas: Embroidery floss portrait, finish the two pieces I've already started
-Burn Africa CDS
-Catch up on Ragamuffin
-CLEAN MY ROOM
-Buy a new organizer
-CLEAN MY BATHROOM
-CLEAN MY CAR

Here's my list of "Want To-Do's":
-Scrapbook
-Paint
-Sit on Facebook for hours
-Get a pedicure
-Shop for Back To School Clothes
-Go to the fair
-Go to the pool
- Sit in the new hammock (!) and read Breaking Dawn. Which is not on my summer reading list.
-GIRLS NIGHT. (It's happening.)
-Leadership Summit
-PREPARE FOR FOOTBALL SEASON!

It's a very hard decision, this one. I shouldn't have procrastinated on all that "Summer Enrichment" crap that the school makes us do. It's not enriching me at all. It's just giving me early practice at procrastinating, and prolonging my Senioritis. Because I can call it that now. :]

And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

So, Malawi.

I'm feeling a picture's post, because I'm a fan of pictures. :]

Lunch break for the kids in the Adziwa school.

The Malawian men show the Americans how it's done.

The children loved Magic Markers.

Leike carries his brother's school books.

One thing that I've learned about myself in these past few weeks since Africa, youth camp, and being a teen leader at kid's camp is that I'm much more laid back than I was at the beginning of the summer. I've always been laid back, but now more so than ever. I'm very "Hakuna matta," these days. And I quite enjoy it.

Last night, my mom and I were spending some quality time together at Wal Mart. Typical girls. :] We jumped on the notebooks for 5 cents, and loaded up with them to send over with the next Malawi team. While we were checking out, the lady in line behind us was getting quite huffy. I really wanted to turn around and say, "Excuse me, but these 40 notebooks are for children in Africa. What are YOU doing with your life?"

But I didn't. That wouldn't have been very Chrisitan-ly.

We (the fam) are leaving tomorrow for a cruise to Mexico! We are porting in Cozymel and Calica. I'm quite excited. Especially about snorkeling and parasailing.

Hasta luego!

An Update

---We inturrupt this Malawian Program for an update of life stateside!---

So these past few weeks have been busy busy busy. After I got home from Africa, I was home a week. Then I went to youth camp at Horn's Creek, where we got to do fun things like....

...get really gross in "New Orleans-Smelling Mud." And....

...get blobbed, and....

'8os Night it up! Camp was pretty much a blast, of course. The Junior Girls also had a running scoreboard of how many flies were killed in our cabin. We were up and over 120. It was disgusting but so entertaining at the same time. Girls. :]

My dearest friend/sister/and blogger Neens is in K. right now. I miss her SO much, not being able to talk to her/text everyday is not cool. But I know that the Lord is doing BIG BIG BIG things through her and to her, and I'm SO proud of that young lady. I cannot wait until she comes back!

A portion of the Junior Boys made breakfast for a few of the girls last week. Yes. They made breakfast. It was very entertaining to watch. And delicious to eat, don't get me wrong.

Here, the boys are cracking the eggs for french toast. They did a fantastic job!

So I leave town again on Sunday for KIDS CAMP. I am pumped beyond belief, this is always a highlight of my summer. A week with the grade schoolers, I couldn't be more excited. Expect many pictures and lots of funny stories.

Justin Nozuka = absolutelypositivelyamazing. Check him out.

VBS, Malawian Style- Day 1

So after school, we were walked back to the offices by about 500 kids. No joke. We quickly learned that the English way of holding hands (one child per hand) didn't apply here. In Malawi, we were rockstars. We were rock stars with one child per FINGER. Which made for a very interesting step-shuffle-giggle-shuffle routine. The kids loved having an "adzungu" hand to hold, of course. :]





We got back to the Adziwa offices, and chowed down on a lunch of sandwiches (or "sundwiches" as the Malawians called them). Each day the team had a choice of peanut butter or jelly, but not peanut butter AND jelly. The boys caught on quickly, and peeled their sandwiches apart then smacked them back together with a buddy, so they made two PB&J sandwiches. Way to go, boys! The peanut butter in Malawi was HEAVENLY and made from scratch. We were so spoiled.

After lunch, we then prepared for our first Vacation Bible School. Thandi prepared her lesson, which was out of Luke, and the girls worked on theirs. Emily, Heather, and I were doing our lesson first. Heather told the story of the woman touching Jesus's cloak, I told the story of Zacchaeus, and Emily told about Jesus loving the little children. The overarching theme for our lesson was that Jesus loves everyone. Thandi translated, and the kids followed us very well! We played Simon Says, and learned that there is a smiliar game in Malawi! The kids responded and interacted at a surprising level, they were almost hungry for English words. After our lesson and game, we dove into making picture frames. We were armed with popsicle sticks, foam stickers, and lots and lots of glue (in the stick form, we weren't crazy! Liquid glue = nightmare.). Emily was in charge of taking Polaroids of the kids. She taught them how to shake their picture to make it turn up. Once they realized that the picture revealed their faces, the kids lit up like a Christmas tree. They would then show if off to all their friends, and then reluctantly let me glue it into a frame. But once they saw it in a frame, their smiles got even bigger. If that's possible.

Some of the boys finished early, they were sitting next to me and got a lot of help on their projects. We went outside to play football (soccer). We had 10 balls stored away for moments like these, that we would give them at the end of our two weeks. The boys had SO much fun with the soccer balls, and quickly split off into teams without any help from the authority figures. It was incredible. I would have played, but Aefe, a young girl that had been close at our heels all day, pulled me aside and we practiced our English letters and numbers. She was absolutely precious, and pretty soon, we had a crowd in our pseudo school lesson. I was totally in my element, and could have spent all day drawing in the dirt with these precious children.

Eventually, we walked back to the offices to clean up. The Adziwa kids all hung outside while we finished cleaning. They would dig through the trash that we had piled up to find the empty Polariod boxes. I saw one girl with her frame in her box, to keep it safe. My heart broke, once again. I am so blessed.

We finished cleaning up, and decided to go out and bond with these precious children. We taught them the Macarena with English numbers, the Chicken Dance, the Conga Line, and the sprinkler. We had a ball- and I think they did too. Tionke, a 10 year old boy, could bustamove. His favorite was the Macarena, and he added his own moves. All the kids loved the "Heeeeey, Macarena!" part. I tear up just thinking about it. If the children needed to get our attention, they would start humming the Chicken Dance until we all turned around. I miss those moments.

As we were leaving, Taylor pointed out the absolutely GORGEOUS first sunset. We all stood there in wonder. We had never seen anything like it. Yay Daddy! What an artist You are!

We said our goodbyes, blew kisses, and gave out hugs. As we went back to Kumbali, we all laughed about the day. How great God is!

Once we got back to Kumbali, the Shower Extravaganza began. Since the girls were all wary of showering in the African darkness alone, we all donned our swimsuits and jumped into the showers in pairs. Our showers weren't really showers... just scoop-n-dumps. We filled our big blue buckets up with as much hot water as we wanted, then drug them over to the cold water spout. We then buddied up, and carried them to the shower stalls, which were made out of straw. They had slits in the bottom of them, which were rock. We had rock shelves that our lanterns and shampoo sat on, and no roofs. I miss having roof-less showers, the stars were breathtaking.

Showering in the dark with long hair was quite difficult. So frequently, we needed to solicit the help of our shower buddy. The joys of friendship are limitless. Sing-a-long showers haven't been born yet... that's day 7. You just wait. :]