blog

middlebury

During my weekend trip to Vermont a couple weekends ago, B made a quick stop at his college alma mater, Middlebury, to show me around. I'm excited to get my pictures together to show the true beauty of the campus, but for now: check out this waterfall. Right beside campus. I'm an Auburn girl thru-and-thru (and made only a few number of comparisons between the two while I was at Middlebury), but that waterfall is beautiful. And this picture doesn't do it justice. Not at all.


this is only the beginning.
































Yep, this is only the beginning of the fun we had at the wedding in Vermont this weekend. Brendan, John and I (almost missed it, but) hit up the Photo Booth at the reception which was sooooo.fun.

I never met the bride - only the groom as I was walking into the wedding - so hopefully this will be a warm introduction for the bride when she sees these photos in her guest book!

weddings


It seems I'm still a day late and a dollar short. I'm already on to (and, er, done with now) wedding #2 of the season, and I'm just now blogging about #1. I've been back in Alabama for the last 10 days to get ready for Rose Lynn's big day, and now I'm already headed back to the big apple this afternoon. Sigh, how times flies...

I've completely deserted this blog over the last two months, so I'm hoping to give snippets of where I've been. Sadly (and happily, at the same time) so much of the last couple of months has been spent on airplanes, which doesn't leave much time for blogging. All for happy reasons, though!





























We went to our friends' wedding, Mark & Lucy, in Mountain Brook at the end of April. It was a beautiful wedding and fun to have worlds colliding a bit with Alabama and New York connections. The church Mark and Lucy were married in was so beautiful! I had an especially fun time with so many New York friends spending the weekend in my old stomping grounds!

home.

I'm heading down south tonight to spend the weekend with my family and go to a friend's wedding in Birmingham tomorrow. I'm so excited for some R&R and warm weather. Have a great weekend!


she's (almost) here...



I'm literally clicking "refresh" on my browser every 15 seconds to see if Rose's plane has landed yet! I'm looking forward to a very fun weekend in store, I'm sure. After several flight delays today, bad weather, and a Newark to Penn Station train ride between us, it will be a sweet reunion (soon).

hola, colorado!




Wow, is it beautiful in Denver! And wow, did I have the best host and hostess ever. I arrived at the airport in Denver laaaate on Friday night and I was pretty zonked since it was even later NYC time. Saturday, my most gracious hosts took me to see the sights of Colorado. First stop: Red Rocks! It was covered in snow and soooo pretty!

Then we went to Buffalo Bill's grave! Very interesting sight, I thought. Then we all tried to remember who Buffalo Bill even was...


Ahh, and the constant view of the mountains! They were spectacular.

Sunday, at my request in lieu of skiing, we went sledding on a nearby sledding hill in Denver. I thought this was the safer option (for me, a novice skier) and I was mostly right. After about 5-7 runs, our sleds broke though, but luckily no injuries!


I had such a great time visiting my friends Caylen and David and seeing a part of their life out west. It took too long for me to visit, but I'm glad I finally made it. I'll be happy when you guys are a liiittle closer!

take me to denver!

Tonight I'm hopping on a plane to see my favorite Denver-ites for the weekend: The Kyles! This trip has been almost 4 years in the making with the original plan being to visit the Kyles when they lived in Phoenix for three years. And now, they're in Denver! Back in October 2009 (which feels like a lifetime ago), Caylen came and visited NYC for the weekend. It was a blast and I can't wait for a west coast reunion this time around. Get ready Cay, I'm bringing my camera!!


Pictures to come when I return!

honorary team member






















While we were in South Africa, we adopted Lea as our honorary team member. She is from Point Community Church and she served with us at Arise, she ate with us, she laughed hard with us, and she shared her life with us. She is fluent in 9 languages and teaches (I asked her to tell me happy birthday in all of them, but I'm still waiting...) and brought so much joy - and spunk - to our team. A couple of days ago I had a quick g-chat conversation with Lea and my heart swelled with happiness. Even with thousands of miles between, a hemisphere difference, and across several time zones our friendship can continue. And even better, Lea loves New York, as you can tell!

arrival in Cape Town

After departing from JFK at 10:40 am on Friday morning November 18, we finally arrived in Cape Town at 1:30 pm local time (which was 6:30 am New York time, exactly 24 hours since we had hopped in our Super Shuttle and left my apartment the day before) on Saturday November 19. This was my first experience traveling such a long distance + across time zones. Boy, was I in for a surprise! Shortly after we took off in New York, it was lights out and windows closed on the plane. They fed us lunch (which was more like dinner) and then immediately tried to get us on South African time...which meant I was trying to sleep for the night at 1 pm in the afternoon. I watched a few movies (The Help, Tree of Life - which I don't recommend, especially for a flight) and then slept on and off most of the way. 14 hours later we arrived in Johannesburg to catch our flight to Cape Town.

It can always be challenging to get 16 people headed in the same direction at the same time, but when you add an airport in there the difficulty seems to grow exponentially! We made it...but it was a close call and our flight was cancelled so that gave us a little extra time.

Around 11 am local time, we hopped aboard a short 2 hour flight to Cape Town. When I stepped off the plane, I knew it was worth it!

We were greeted by these wonderful faces & wonderful signs!


(barely holding my eyes open here...can you tell!?)










































[Believe me, so much more to come...I haven't even gotten to the good stuff yet. Stick around.]

what jacques thought

Jacques was the pastor at the church (Point Community Church) that we were paired with and went to help serve. I hope he's getting some good rest this week, because I think our group of 16 Americans wore him out!

Nonetheless, he posted on Point's website some wonderful thoughts regarding our time there. If you would like to see some of his photos and his perspective from the week, check out his write up

HERE !


the flight

If there was one thing that I was most nervous about before the trip, it was the flight. And, I was nervous about a lot of things as the trip approached, but the 18 hour flight took the cake. Thankfully, I was completely wrong about the flight and spent a lot of time worrying for no reason (no surprise there). In some ways it was one of the most enjoyable parts, especially on the way back to America. I had time to think and process and rest after being on the go the whole week. I can't promise that I looked fresh at the end of it, but I made it and won't be scared to embark on a long flight again. Dinner, breakfast, endless refreshments, and more movies than I knew what to do with...

South African Airways!

South African Coke. Calories measured in joules of energy.

More good movies than I had time to watch! And, Harry Potter 7 Part II. Ahh.

We stocked up on People and US Weekly.

Our team all sat together which  made the flight more bearable, too.








































































































More to come!

point community church

To give some context of my trip and the people we were working with, I should start with Point Community Church since they are the reason we went in the first place. We were paired with them to serve Cape Town (their pastor, Jacques, requested Redeemer to send a group), and if this had been the only group we worked with it would have been enough. They were the most gracious hosts, wonderfully fun people and truly a family. Since the church was only started in January 2010, it is still in the growing stages but has a terrific foundation of about 20 to 30 people.






















I found this picture on Point Community's facebook page. You can easily tell from this picture what a fun group we had to work with. They made our time in Cape Town feel like home.