Minnesota

Whew. It's been quite a past few days. [I'm getting pretty annoyed on my laptop because for some odd reason, my "U" key doesn't quite work normally. I have to press it down really hard for it to type a "U". Ugh...] On Sunday night, I got pretty much no sleep because I was moving to Highland all day and then sending out last minute messages and doing work work all night. I took a shower at 3:30am, proceeded to work some more, and then fell asleep by 5:30am. I was up and about by 8am and scrambling to do some last minute rummaging from my old place and drove over to my new place to pack for my week-long trip to snow-cold Minnesota. My ride up to SFO was to leave at 9am and I hadn't started packing yet...shewt.

I was ready by 9:30am and I headed out with PJ, Marc, and Tyler up to Cameron's new place in Dublin. What a beautiful place they have. I think they only moved in a few months before. We had lunch and headed out to take BART all the way to SFO. It was a fun adventure. I can't believe that I didn't pass out on the way there from lack of sleep. We were able to get to the airport, through all the security and to our gate without any problems. All the other people we were meeting at the gate seemed to get there right on time as well.

Off we flew on our 5:50pm flight out of SFO directly to Minneapolis, MN. I sat next to a wonderful girl around my age named Kayla. We had the most interesting conversation the entire four hours of the flight about backpacking, traveling, Europe, relationships, and medical topics. To my right was an older man (86?) named Dick who loved to talk about his life as a teacher, his current partial ownership of an Irish Pub called Merlin's Rest, and his own medical issues. We all laughed a lot and I'm delighted in a new friend. I feel like I'll see her again someday. :)

After getting off the plane and grabbing our bags, we checked to make sure our buddy was there (Ebrah, you there buddy???) and headed off in our rental vans (oh yea, and after the snowball fight) to Rushford...about a 2.5 hour drive south-east. Got into the church bunkers by 2:30am and proceeded to get settled in and hit the sack. Once I was out...I was ouuuuuut lol.

Woke up by 9am (I should mention this is 7am California time), ate breakfast, and headed out for an orientation and off to work. We worked in someone's basement (I hope we get to meet her!) pulling out nails and screws from bare beams (sheet rock and insulation had already been torn out). By lunchtime, we had ordered new Styrofoam insulation and were cutting and sizing them into pieces to fit between the wooden beams. We got through about halfway before wrapping up to head home for dinner. Shower and bible study on hospitality followed with some hang out time and discussion on random topics afterwards leading up to now.

They're all asleep now and the place is dark and quiet. I've got to finish planning my own devotional for tomorrow night and keep tabs on what goes on during the day so I can write a more formal article on all this later. We've already taken a lot of awesome pictures lol. I guess my last thing is that there is something wrong with my lower left leg (kind of just above my ankle). I don't know what it is, but it hurts a lot to touch, move, walk on, everything. Pretty much it is somewhat uncomfortable at all times unless I'm sitting and have it elevated. Doing things like walking or moving the skin or my foot is pretty painful. I keeps me from being more exciting during the day because I don't want to move much or dance around merrily with my power drill and hammer. It really bothers me, but I don't know what to do about it and I don't want other people to be bothered by it. I'm thinking something along the lines of a hairline fracture, but I really don't think that's what it is. All I did was accidentally walk into something two days ago. There's not even a big bruise or anything. I'm baffled, but hoping it goes away on its own.

Okay, bedtime. I'm the last one awake and also the one who needs sleep the most! G'nite world!