Day Two in AUS

Well, here we are on day two. It's 8:40 pm, and I am exhausted. Gotta love jet lag...

Today we hung out at Mueller College for most of the day. We attended some classes. The first class I helped with was an elementary aged PE class. They were pretty cute. Then I attended some high school bible classes. In those classes it was more of a Q and A session about America and our culture. We were frequently asked if we've met any clebrities. Haha. Their perceptions of American culture are a bit funny sometimes. I enjoyed their company very much. For most of the afternoon we had some down time and didn't really do much but hang out with the kids and the staff. Tomorrow we've been promised to have a bit more structure, so we'll see what happens. I guess tomorrow we're supposed to help with Staff devotions and then from there go to more classes with the kids. Friday we will be going to the school until right after Chapel, then we'll be off to the Australia Zoo!

It's been fun hanging out with our host family too. We've eaten supper outside on the decks as well as breakfast (complete with sunrise) on the other deck. Our hosts are very eager to teach us about Australia and it's history/culture (which very much go hand in hand here). Mae and I tried Vegemite after supper, and I must say, it's not that great. But I did try it! I'm going to try bring some of it home (hopefully in small quantities) to make my friends and family try. It wasn't as horrible as I thought it would be. But I still didn't finish my little slice of toast with it on there. Haha.

One of our guys was incredibly sick in the night and for most of the day. How unfortunate is that? Travel all the way to Australia just to get a stomach bug the first night you are here. I hope he recovers quickly and doesn't pass it on to any one else!

Some pictures, as promised.

This is the view from out the window of the sixth floor of the school.

Some of the children playing at recess. I love their hats!

Thought this tree was cool with the fruit thingies on it.

Hello From Australia!

Well, this is being written from Redcliffe, Queensland, AUS. It's BEAUTIFUL. We got off the plane at about 6:30 am, after not having slept well on the plane. It's going to be a long day, but it'll be worth it. The weirdest part of it all is not that we're 15 hours ahead of Longview, but that we LOST AN ENTIRE DAY. I stepped on the plane on Sunday May 9th, and got off the plane Tuesday May 11th. So far all we've done is eaten breakfast and toured the campus of the School that Mueller Community Church has. It's been a lot of fun, and I have some pictures I'll post later. I'm staying with Polly Mae Benton at Jeff and his wife's house (they're the main contacts here). They have a really cool house, and I'll definitely be posting lots of pictures as we go.

It's really funny because we're all on the internet right now typing about life here in AUS. Haha, it's a pretty funny sight!

Australia here I come!

Well, we're all sitting in the Shreveport Airport waiting to go through security. We got here at at 1pm, and it's currently 3:27pm. And our flight doesn't leave until 4:25. LAME THAT WE HAD TO BE HERE SO EARLY. But it's been fun hanging out with Kevin Dunn and Josh Oh. And Viktoria (the Roudkovski's daughter.

 Liz had her family come into to town, that was pretty exciting. The parents and grandparents were able to see the school, some of them for the first time. They also got to see some of my cool friends, aka the Christian Ministry majors. It was somewhat difficult to pack up her room, getting everything cleaned, pack ofr Australia, do the whole graduate thing. That in of itself was interesting, family crying, me crying all while trying not to trip and fall head first off the stage. Afterward, she had to fend off 3000 people and their extended families just to try and take a few pictures. Too many people, too many families, and not enough pictures with good friends. Unfortuantly, right now as I write this, Brad was heading off to his flight which just got brought back because they were having brake problems. So he might be late for his flight out of Atlanta, but hopefully everything will be okay there.  Graduation was fun, but still really has not sunk in yet, and hard to believe that I am done with school. YEA! Okay, were going through security, hopefully they won't find my bomb. -Written by Kevin Dunn

Oh, dear, Kevin is funny! Well I am going to write more later. Be sure to keep checking back for updates throughout my trip!

-Liz

*catches breath*

Hello All! (Basically just Anna and my Mom. Haha).

I'm at work, and for once I don't need to be working on homework! I only have a couple assignments left. I turned in a big psychology project today (20 pages total! It's probably one of the longest projects/papers I've ever done.) All I have left is my capstone Christian Ministry paper for Evangelism and Discipleship. I'm going to start working on it tonight and work on it a little bit at a time and hopefully have it knocked out by the weekend. Then I'm DONE with school. The last day of official classes is on Friday, and then a week of finals. I'm pretty sure I won't have to take any finals, so that means i'm pretty much done after Friday. That is such a relief! Then I can start getting excited about Australia. My plans for next week include packing and doing a thorough deep clean of the apartment. My family is coming in that week, and I've been so busy I haven't been able to clean as much as is probably necessary. It was all I could do to make sure I was keeping things tidied up. So I'm going to go all out and spend a day cleaning. Wipe down the fans, blinds, dust everything, move furniture and vacuum, and start organizing some of my school crap. Regardless of where we end up, I'm going to have to move fairly soon, so the more I can organize and clean now the less I'll have to to later (hopefully).

Today in Chapel I won the "Outstanding Student" of the Bible department, along with my good friend Katie. It was kind of a fun time to be recognized. Someone other than myself realized how hard I've been working these last couple of years! I had a lot of friends who also won Awards. Laura was recognized as Student Teacher of the Year for her certification level, Abe was recognized as outstanding student of the Engineering department, Kelley was recognized as outstanding Senior Woman award... And most of my friends were put in Who's Who Among American Colleges. So it was pretty cool that so many of us were good students. I knew we were all smarty pants! Haha.

I am getting excited for my family to come in. I am hoping my family will at least be able to meet Anna's family, even if it's just for a few minutes. I mean, our moms are facebook friends so they should meet in real life, don't you think? I'm thinking that Brad and I should go back up to the farm sometime. It was a lot of fun last time we were up there for Anna and Jeremy's wedding. It's pleasant up there.

In other news, Brad is going to be Best Man in our friend's (Jon Martin and Jessie Swingle) wedding. They haven't set a date yet, but i'm guessing sometime next spring. I'm also guessing they'll get married in Virginia Beach, so depending on where life puts us, we know we'll be going up there sometime in the spring! Haha. I'm pretty excited for them. They've been dating for a long time (their freshman year), so it's going to be so fun to watch them get married. :)

Anyway, I should get back to work.

I'm UPDATING

I thought I would post a quick update before I go to class. I probably should be working on other things but the truth is I'm tired and don't want to. I've been really busy lately trying to get projects, assignments, and tests done. I've also been putting a lot of time in for the play. The show opens on Thursday night. I'm performing the Friday and Sunday shows, and I'm extremely excited about it. It's going to be awesome, even if some people in administration are not being cooperative. Apparently some of them think the play is too "controversial" and aren't too excited about us actually doing it. Granted, the show has a lot of hefty themes in it, but it isn't a bad show. If they're willing to let YAC play "The Bourne Ultimatum" to the student body, there is no reason we can't do this show. And Security is being totally ridiculous about some stuff. Overall, though, the show is still going to be awesome and people should come see it! It's going to be outside, so i'm interested to see how that turns out. I'm sure it's going to be fine, but it's still a little more nerve wracking than if it had been on a real stage.

Graduation is in 26 days. That's so exciting in a lot of different ways, but it's also incredibly scary. Do you know how much I need to get done between now and then?! I think once the play is over I'm going to be so much more calm about things. I feel like I'm in survival mode when it comes to school work. It's kind of sad though, I mean the play is ending this week then school ends not too much longer. I've really enjoyed my time here at LeTU and it seems really surreal that it's already time to graduate. Where on earth did all the time go?!

I haven't heard anything about that Nannying job I looked into. I think I'm going to give it a couple of days and then email her to see what she's doing with that. I really need to figure out what I should be looking for and doing for after I graduate. I'm really hoping for some sort of Nannying job that's flexible so I can do grad school and work at the same time. I guess we'll see what happens!

I had better get to class. :)

Work work work...

You guessed it! I'm at work again. It's been a pretty easy couple of weeks, as far as school is concerned. I've been keeping pretty busy though. I need to get started on several projects I've been putting off for a while now. I need to read two books for my internship and write a paper, I need to finish the book for the Australia trip and present on it, and I have a couple projects to start on for other classes. I guess it's just that time of the year when stuff is coming due. If I were going to be responsible I would start on that stuff soon, but sometimes I just can't bring myself to do it. This weekend I think I'm going to start on my Doctrines paper that's coming up and maybe the paper for my internship. I figure if I can get all this stuff started I'll thank myself later when the end of the semester hits I won't freak out as much. Maybe.
     I'm going to have quite the end of the semester. The play is in April, so that's going to be super busy. I know it will be fun and will be worth it, but it's a bit intimidating to think about the amount of time I'm going to have to invest in it. But I guess that's what I signed up for! We're officially going to do four shows, which makes me happy. That means I get to do two of them. It's going to be outside, so I don't think we're going to be able to film it. You guys up North are just going to have to come down in April and see it. ;) :P I'm just kidding.
    Tonight is youth group. I have no idea what Jerod is going to talk about, but I'm sure it will be good. I've really enjoyed being able to get to know the kids better this year. I think they're finally warming up to me, haha. Anyway, I should get back to work.