When my friend Hannah heard that I was coming home for the
summer, she provided for me the most amazing of transition experiences. Hannah works full-time, year-round at a
Christian camp, and she invited me to come live with her and work in various
capacities around camp for the summer. I took advantage of the beauty of the
foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and went for long walks or short runs
around the lake and up to the orchard and through the woods around camp. I read twelve books in my first month at
Camp. It was lovely not to be overly
burdened as I eased back into life in the States
I spent most of my mornings (as early as 6:00) preparing
breakfast for as many as 450 people, serving it to them, cleaning it up, making
lunch for the same people, serving it and cleaning it up before running off to
the zip line or swing to work free time all afternoon. It was pretty exhausting work, but it kept me
busy without overworking my brain. I worked with some really fun folks in the
kitchen and acquired a whole new vocabulary that is local to the “Dark Corner.” “We-ins” filled thousands of 2 oz. cups with
shredded cheese only to serve them to 400 children at a time and then in turn
“I-ins” “done” did lots of vacuuming of said cheese. I mixed “sire cream” into dozens of pounds of
potatoes to make the best hash brown casserole ever. I heard complaints of “inner-gestion” and
“dia-beetus” and requests for “my-sarge.”
It was good preparation for the next stage of my journey where I will
have to learn an entire new vocabulary devoid of the letter “R” in
Massachusetts (more on that in a minute).
On June 7, I picked up my dear friend from the airport as he
ventured home after two years in South America, and on August 25 I dropped off
my boyfriend at the airport as he ventured off to Southeast Asia for another
teaching gig. I spent a significant
portion of my non-working time venturing about the Carolinas with him, doing
all kinds of fun things and meeting all kinds of fun people. We hiked and ran and swam and walked and
danced and cooked and ate and savored our two short months together. Once, he sent me on a wild goose
chase/scavenger hunt all over two towns eventually leading to him with a picnic
brunch in the park. Yeah, you can be jealous; he’s pretty
awesome…
After I dropped him off at the airport, I packed up my life
and headed north. I stopped a few times
on my little road trip: once to see my grandparents, once to stay with an old
friend from an old camp, and once to visit one of my favorite students from
Rwanda as she settled in to life in the States for the first time ever. It was a lovely little road trip until I
reached Massachusetts. Long story short,
I ran out of gas on the Massachusetts Turnpike, and instead of some friendly
Southern gent stopping to rescue this damsel in distress as would likely have
happened in the South, I rather paid $20 for 2 gallons of gas from a rescue
vehicle that a toll booth worker called after yelling at me for going to the
bathroom in the wrong building.
The delay, however, allowed me to stay in the home of some
dear friends from Rwanda for 6 nights instead of one making me feel very much
at home away from wherever home is these days.
I’ve since moved into a sweet 400-year-old house about 15 minutes away
from my school. My room is all decked out
in my favorite orange and purple, and I’m ready to begin my new life as a
seminarian on Monday...
