worst day of my life, man.

- all times are in Michigan time just to keep straight the hours -

Tuesday 25 December:
4am - woke up.
5am - left the house in Grand Rapids.
6.45am - boarded my first plane (after paying $25 for overweight luggage).
8.45am - arrived in Minneapolis
9am - found out my parents would be on my flight from Atlanta to Amsterdam because their first flight got delayed!
11.15am - boarded my next flight to Milwaukee (still no nap)
11.20am - I saw a suitcase like mine get left behind as we taxied out and I was certain they missed my luggage.
12.30pm - arrived in Milwaukee (15 min late) and picked up my luggage. :)
12.45pm - crossed the street and attempted to check into Delta airlines for the rest of my trip.

Here I found out my plane to Atlanta had been rescheduled for 4 hours sooner and I'd completely missed it. There were no planes that could get me to Atlanta in time to make my connection. My flight plan got completely rearranged. No more Atlanta. My parents made my flight and I didn't. Plus, it would cost another $50 for my overweight luggage. But the lady at the counter suggested since I only had one bag, I could run upstairs and buy another bag for $10. I did, and rearranged my luggage. :)

2.30pm - boarded my one-hour flight to Cincinnati.
7.30pm - boarded my 8+hr flight to Paris and realized I only had 40min from arriving there til my next plane departed!

Wednesday 26 December:
3.50am - arrived in Paris (where the time said 9.50am).
4.10am -finally got off the plane (they couldn't get the tunnel to work so they made us wait on the plane for stairs).
4.10am - realized I probably wouldn't make my plane.
4.11am - smiled.
4.30am - my plane took off... without me.
4.35am - got through the line to talk to someone to get me a new flight. Then I called Luuks sister to let them know what time I'd arrive.
6.30am - boarded my plane to Amsterdam (now officially been travelling for 24hrs).
8am - arrived in Amsterdam. At least my luggage made it.
What a long day! Didn't nap except a couple of hours on the plane to Paris.

One hour later... (but now in Netherlands time)
3pm - saw my parents and two youngest sisters for the first time in 1.5 years.

We hung out, played games, and when the rest of the relatives arrived, we ate supper. I saw Grandma and Grandpa Vanderploeg also for the first time in 1.5yrs and saw Uncle Leo and Aunt Sue and cousins for the first time in 5 years. :) Crazy!
Good to see everyone again!

I love fog. It's beautiful! Standing in a cloud where you can't see more than 20 feet in front of you. It's like you're the only person in the world. Nothing else exists. Only you and the snow under your feet and the trees in your little circle of existence. I wanna go there again.

It's exam week. I have one left, plus a take home and two papers. All due between now and the end of Wednesday, for Thursday I take off. And what do I do last night? Study? write papers? Nope. I go to docs, then to some friends' house and hang out until 6am, attempt to sleep on the couch and finally leave at 10am.

In 8 days I get to see my parents and two sisters for the first time in 1.5 years. And in 10 days I get to see Amanda get married and I get to have an official, not just "half", brother-in-law!
I have so much to do between now and then.

I'm a definite stuffer of emotions. I stuff until I'm full and then overflowing and when I overflow I can't always figure out what I'm so full of... Which is awful, cuz how can you fix whats wrong if you don't even know what it is?
But I think this week I realized that I do actually know, I just don't admit it, so I tell myself and others I don't know whats wrong because I'm still just trying to stuff it all back in!

Today I read some of David's psalms, the ones he wrote when he was being chased and was in despair, and for probably the first time in my life I actually could relate.

Finally God decided to bless us with snow to cover the ice. Somehow winter seems so much more tolerable, if not outright enjoyable, once there is snow on the ground. I am definitely not one for cold weather, especially not when wind is thrown in the equation. However, snow makes it all worthwhile! Now I can bundle up and smile on my way to class, even if my smiles are accompanied by tears from the wind blowing in my eyes. Next I wait for wet, packable snow so I can make a snowman, or snow fort, or snowballs... :)

ice ice baby

Just when I'm starting to feel more comfortable with ceramics, the class is about over. Oh well. That's how it is with so many things.

I have had a great time lately with some girls from my floor/room. Two rooms on my floor got together for "girls night" last Friday. We went to Sioux Falls and ate out, went to the mall, then Barnes and Noble, and then to some hick bar. :) Great times. One girl actually asked if she could bring her fiance. Silly goose. (Thats nice for "dumbass".)

I was supposed to get a winter bike tag by last Friday but forgot. We were threatened with having our bikes impounded at the cost of $10.00 to redeem if we didn't get tags. I didn't get a tag. But luckily Friday night (I think) there was this ice storm that saved my bike. :)

It woulda taken too much work for maintenance to steal these bikes so they just left them all be. Plus, they had other matters to attend to I'm sure. Like getting the ice off the sidewalks so people wouldn't die on their way to church on Sunday or something.

I've come to admire my little sister. Though I don't always agree with her ideas, I admire her ability to back up her ideas/thoughts with action! I don't know anyone else so near my age who has done so much. She sees problems and needs and doesn't just sit around talking about it, like me. She comes up with ways to help solve the problems or meet the needs and then does them. I guess I've always had this tendency to get stumped the problem, intimidated by it, and unable to see past it to find a solution. I let myself get defeated by issues and give up way too quickly! Not Yoli, though. I think she'll do great things.

The past two gen 300 classes have had potential for being good and have at least gotten me discussing things with friends... but when it really comes down to it, I walk away from class thinking, what were they trying to tell us? What was the point of that whole talk? And my conclusion is nothing. We spent a whole class period being informed about domestic abuse, talking about different kinds of it and discussing different scenarios and whether or not they are examples of abuse... But in the end what I got from that class was a sense of hopelessness - if you let it go too far, there's no way to get out of it. Today we discussed homosexuality and all I get from that is this feeling that we're making too big a deal out of something not that huge...
Maybe it's just senioritis.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I'm in Grand Rapids this holiday. Came to see my sister, brother, and grandparents. The rest of the relatives aren't coming to eat. They had other places to go I guess. So its just the five of us. Grams is the best! Not only is she cooking this whole Thanskgiving meal just for us, she's doing it with a broken foot!! She stepped in a pothole two days ago and fell, scratching her forehead, her glasses, cutting her hand, and breaking her foot. Poor Grams.
I gotta go baste the corn chickens. Have a blessed holiday, everyone!