So I'm up again, eh? Well 2 weeks left and Germany and things are winding down. We're in the big crunch of end-of-the-semester stuff and finals. I had a theater performance stuff (just from a workshop class for exchange stuff, not marvelous formal tony winning stuff like Kelsey does ; ) but it was fun and went rather well - that was last night. Also had a final yesterday, and today a project and studying for a final tomorrow that I take bright and early before going to Berlin tomorrow afternoon for the weekend to see the U2 concert there on Saturday night. I'm fully prepared to arrive at whatever ungodly hour before the gates open and sit out in the rain in order to get prime placement for my small figure. At times like this it would be handy to have a gentleman-friend tall and strong enough to hold me on his shoulders through it all, but you have to make do with what you got. so very unusually busy crazy week here for me. next week should be a bit calmer with one more final the day before I leave (the 28th) and then a quick detour to sweden (maybe denmark - well see) to check out that U2 concert (I know it's crazy, and I'm crazy, but they are my all time favorite band and they only go on concert every 4 years and how often do you get to see your favorite band while you happen to be in europe?) So I will catch them again on my way out, back home as i go up and around toward direct from Sweden to London Heathrow, where I will catch my flight through Dallas and to St. Louis for a couple days just long enough to get all my doctors appointments in maybe see a bit of family. Then my family and I pack up the car and head east to the Outer Banks, where we will stay a week. From there, my parents will head back, dropping me off at UNC where I will get to see all of you and we can get ready and excited for another awesome year!. I must admit it's bitter sweet to be leaving. I realized as I sat in a bar/restaurant with my roommates who came to my show last night telling stories and bringing up old jokes and reflecting on the year, I will miss the good stuff, the people, and some of the fun we had. But i look forward to seeing everyone back home and having just as much if not more fun with you all starting in August!
Love and peace from Germany. Can't wait to see you all!
Stephanie
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
hello july!!!
Ahh! So how can I describe what I've been up to this summer? Well, my summer started about two weeks before I left Sweden for the States. I was able to go to Krakow, Poland for a few days and then ended up missing a flight and having to spend the night on a 4 hour train and the day in the Warsaw airport. Let's just say that was an adventure. I also had a chance to visit Visby on the island of Gotland (it's Swedish and Jan has ancestors from there), which was my FAVORITE relaxation spot.
For those of you who went to New York in January - my luggage made the round trip adventure. It is definitely time to throw it out (the large piece has a smashed wheel, no more extendable handle, and a hole in the bottom, the smaller large piece has multiple small burn? holes and a smashed wheel, but the rolling duffle only has a small tear that I will be able to fix).
I arrived in NC on the 11th of June and went home for a wonderful meal of pot roast with carrots and potatoes. I definitely missed having access to a crock pot while I was gone. Then I went out for ice cream in celebration of a friend's birthday. That weekend was crazy with my sister's baccalaureate and graduation and lunch with some friends (including Daniela!!).
The next weekend was even crazier, as it was my sister's graduation party. She didn't want anything to do with the party and the ladies on my dad's side of the family are kind of crazy, so my mom and I had our hands full. Overall, it was a great time and I really enjoyed seeing my grandparents, my grandmother was my best pen pal while I was overseas.
The weekend after that was also very busy (I'm finding most of my free time is during the week) with another fundraiser for our ASP mission trip to Johnson County, Tennessee. We had a yard sale and pancake breakfast and managed to raise over $3,000. I made brownies and cookies (the cookies were from scratch and I'll make them next year, so everyone can experience my mom's delicious recipe) and worked at the yard sale.
Preparing for ASP has kept me busy in other ways, too. I designed our t-shirts and have been trying to use my experience to help the first year volunteers (I've been participating since 2003 and 5/8 of our 4 teams are new this year).
This week has been great, since I've been to Chapel Hill twice! I went yesterday with Emilyn (she's a rising first year and you'll see her around a lot next year) and Daniela. We had lunch at [B]Skis and managed to score free coffee at the Health Sciences Library café. Today Daniela and I went back to Chapel Hill (so I could pay my deposit and just to chill) and it was nice. Thankfully it hasn't been super humid, so I have enjoyed being outdoors.
That's basically my recent life in a nutshell. I'll be working on the 15th in Chapel Hill and then go on ASP the next week. My dad finally has a week vacation at the very beginning of August, so we'll hopefully be going to Pittsburgh to visit my grandparents. After that I'll be working at Caribou more frequently and moving in ASAP!!
I absolutely cannot wait for the semester to start (once it does, I know I'll be bummed about papers and studying), but mostly I just want to get back to Chapel Hill and dive right into the Wesley events. People, it's going to be a great year!
-Krysta
Peace.
For those of you who went to New York in January - my luggage made the round trip adventure. It is definitely time to throw it out (the large piece has a smashed wheel, no more extendable handle, and a hole in the bottom, the smaller large piece has multiple small burn? holes and a smashed wheel, but the rolling duffle only has a small tear that I will be able to fix).
I arrived in NC on the 11th of June and went home for a wonderful meal of pot roast with carrots and potatoes. I definitely missed having access to a crock pot while I was gone. Then I went out for ice cream in celebration of a friend's birthday. That weekend was crazy with my sister's baccalaureate and graduation and lunch with some friends (including Daniela!!).
The next weekend was even crazier, as it was my sister's graduation party. She didn't want anything to do with the party and the ladies on my dad's side of the family are kind of crazy, so my mom and I had our hands full. Overall, it was a great time and I really enjoyed seeing my grandparents, my grandmother was my best pen pal while I was overseas.
The weekend after that was also very busy (I'm finding most of my free time is during the week) with another fundraiser for our ASP mission trip to Johnson County, Tennessee. We had a yard sale and pancake breakfast and managed to raise over $3,000. I made brownies and cookies (the cookies were from scratch and I'll make them next year, so everyone can experience my mom's delicious recipe) and worked at the yard sale.
Preparing for ASP has kept me busy in other ways, too. I designed our t-shirts and have been trying to use my experience to help the first year volunteers (I've been participating since 2003 and 5/8 of our 4 teams are new this year).
This week has been great, since I've been to Chapel Hill twice! I went yesterday with Emilyn (she's a rising first year and you'll see her around a lot next year) and Daniela. We had lunch at [B]Skis and managed to score free coffee at the Health Sciences Library café. Today Daniela and I went back to Chapel Hill (so I could pay my deposit and just to chill) and it was nice. Thankfully it hasn't been super humid, so I have enjoyed being outdoors.
That's basically my recent life in a nutshell. I'll be working on the 15th in Chapel Hill and then go on ASP the next week. My dad finally has a week vacation at the very beginning of August, so we'll hopefully be going to Pittsburgh to visit my grandparents. After that I'll be working at Caribou more frequently and moving in ASAP!!
I absolutely cannot wait for the semester to start (once it does, I know I'll be bummed about papers and studying), but mostly I just want to get back to Chapel Hill and dive right into the Wesley events. People, it's going to be a great year!
-Krysta
Peace.
Monday, June 22, 2009
Updates from Apex
Hey everyone!
Hope your summers are going well. My summer's been going well, though I haven't been up too much, mainly relaxing at home, going for walks, driving, and watching lots of NCIS. I'm helping with the morning VBS at my church, which started this week. I was going to have 3 year olds again (which is really stressful), but luckily I got switched to rising first and second graders today. I really love helping out with VBS; plus, the kids are adorable. I'm also helping with VBS at Apex United Methodist Church. My dad knows their pastor of Hispanic ministries and I want to help with their Hispanic Ministries when I can. I'm helping with Apex's nighttime VBS, which started yesterday. Should be a fun and busy week, but I'm already exhausted. I'm also helping to chaperone my church's middle school mission trip in July. The trip is through Youthworks! and we're going to be working in Durham. Then, the last week of July, I'm going to visit my cousin Lili in Miami. We'll, we're technically going to be in Ft. Meyers (I believe) at the beach where her family has a timeshare. But my friend Ben is also going to be in Miami that week, and we're hoping to meet up at some point. That's really all for now. Can't wait to hear more about your summers and looking forward to being back in Chapel Hill.
Hope your summers are going well. My summer's been going well, though I haven't been up too much, mainly relaxing at home, going for walks, driving, and watching lots of NCIS. I'm helping with the morning VBS at my church, which started this week. I was going to have 3 year olds again (which is really stressful), but luckily I got switched to rising first and second graders today. I really love helping out with VBS; plus, the kids are adorable. I'm also helping with VBS at Apex United Methodist Church. My dad knows their pastor of Hispanic ministries and I want to help with their Hispanic Ministries when I can. I'm helping with Apex's nighttime VBS, which started yesterday. Should be a fun and busy week, but I'm already exhausted. I'm also helping to chaperone my church's middle school mission trip in July. The trip is through Youthworks! and we're going to be working in Durham. Then, the last week of July, I'm going to visit my cousin Lili in Miami. We'll, we're technically going to be in Ft. Meyers (I believe) at the beach where her family has a timeshare. But my friend Ben is also going to be in Miami that week, and we're hoping to meet up at some point. That's really all for now. Can't wait to hear more about your summers and looking forward to being back in Chapel Hill.
Monday, June 1, 2009
WesHo weekly update 2, 2009 Germany Edition
hi guys, it's stephanie, coming to you from Germany. What's up? Sorry if this is a bit long - I will be posting it on the blog and email just,.... because.
Second semester marches on, we had just started it at the end of April, and it won't be ending until end of July, in case you're wondering. But it's very relaxed; a. b/c i'm an exchange student, that can German-as-a-second-language classes, with much hand-holding and help from the teachers, and only have to take a limited amount of harder classes (for real students) b. because this time of year there's a new holiday every week almost. This week we have the whole week off for pentacost, even though like everyone here is seemingly agnostic. But it's great and i'm learning a lot. I only have met one onther Chapel hill student here, but thats alright, plenty of others.
I hosted a small get together yesterday of american exchange students and a couple Germans and we taught them how to make s'mores and play apples to apples (found an english version here). Like so many of our various culinary delights, they reacted with surprise at the immense sweetness, too sweet in fact, they say, which we're a bit infamous over here for. There are no graham crackers, so we subsituted a similar looking thin butter cookies that worked well.
Saturday i took a trip to Basel, Switzerland (like 3 hrs SW of where I am) and that was cool. it was with the international exchange student group at the university and I met someone from my home state Missouri who goes to Mizzou and served as a kind of a mirror picture of my experience - "how it would be" if I had gone there instead of UNC or any other out-of-state school. This program seems to be the big one for them, so in that respect it wouldn't have been different. But I am still happy and glad I chose UNC.
I actually ended up having to go grocery shopping there because it would've been too late by the time we got back, and (yesterday and today) are Sunday/holiday, which essentially means EVERYTHING is closed except for restaurants. So i picked up a few groceries in switzerland and underway, a little old crazy lady carrying a stick, told me off in swiss-nonsenese and poked me with it. Very funny and startling at the same time. but it was fun. Tried to walk to the French border but was farer away than we thought, and turned around (Basel sits in a corner of switzerland bordering Germany and France. But we took a tour and ferried across the Rhein, it was a lovely, beautiful day.
other than that, not a whole lot else going on at the moment. Gonna try to get some work done with homework, maybe watch some "House" episodes in German, (I volunteer at an an American library here which gives me acess to many books, magazines, and DVDs both in English and German.) Back when The UNC-Duke games were on even, one of the American magazines in the library had a big article on it, which I proudly displayed and explained to the Germans working around me. They find the sports culture so weird here because there's nothing like that her, what we have in America with college sports.
But hope you guys are all doing great, and enjoying summer. I'm super psyched to be living with you next year, and I miss you guys!----Stephanie
Second semester marches on, we had just started it at the end of April, and it won't be ending until end of July, in case you're wondering. But it's very relaxed; a. b/c i'm an exchange student, that can German-as-a-second-language classes, with much hand-holding and help from the teachers, and only have to take a limited amount of harder classes (for real students) b. because this time of year there's a new holiday every week almost. This week we have the whole week off for pentacost, even though like everyone here is seemingly agnostic. But it's great and i'm learning a lot. I only have met one onther Chapel hill student here, but thats alright, plenty of others.
I hosted a small get together yesterday of american exchange students and a couple Germans and we taught them how to make s'mores and play apples to apples (found an english version here). Like so many of our various culinary delights, they reacted with surprise at the immense sweetness, too sweet in fact, they say, which we're a bit infamous over here for. There are no graham crackers, so we subsituted a similar looking thin butter cookies that worked well.
Saturday i took a trip to Basel, Switzerland (like 3 hrs SW of where I am) and that was cool. it was with the international exchange student group at the university and I met someone from my home state Missouri who goes to Mizzou and served as a kind of a mirror picture of my experience - "how it would be" if I had gone there instead of UNC or any other out-of-state school. This program seems to be the big one for them, so in that respect it wouldn't have been different. But I am still happy and glad I chose UNC.
I actually ended up having to go grocery shopping there because it would've been too late by the time we got back, and (yesterday and today) are Sunday/holiday, which essentially means EVERYTHING is closed except for restaurants. So i picked up a few groceries in switzerland and underway, a little old crazy lady carrying a stick, told me off in swiss-nonsenese and poked me with it. Very funny and startling at the same time. but it was fun. Tried to walk to the French border but was farer away than we thought, and turned around (Basel sits in a corner of switzerland bordering Germany and France. But we took a tour and ferried across the Rhein, it was a lovely, beautiful day.
other than that, not a whole lot else going on at the moment. Gonna try to get some work done with homework, maybe watch some "House" episodes in German, (I volunteer at an an American library here which gives me acess to many books, magazines, and DVDs both in English and German.) Back when The UNC-Duke games were on even, one of the American magazines in the library had a big article on it, which I proudly displayed and explained to the Germans working around me. They find the sports culture so weird here because there's nothing like that her, what we have in America with college sports.
But hope you guys are all doing great, and enjoying summer. I'm super psyched to be living with you next year, and I miss you guys!----Stephanie
Sunday, May 17, 2009
summer is upon us again
So, last year, instead of using email the WesHos kept in touch over the summer using this wonderful blog created by Kristin. Kara is going to send out a schedule for updates (I think). If it's easier for you, you can just email everyone during your week, but if you'd like you can update the blog as well as/instead of sending an email. Whatever works for you. I guess you can send out an email during your week, but you can update the blog anytime you want. That way, if you haven't really done anything yet when it's your turn to email everyone, you can later write in the blog if you want to share something. Can't wait to hear from everyone and I hope you all are having great summers, whatever you're doing!
BWL,
Daniela
BWL,
Daniela
Monday, August 11, 2008
Sunday, August 3, 2008
Bonding on buses, monkeys, and more
Hello, my Wonderful Wesleyans, from sunny El Salvador. I´m here on a mission trip with my home church where we´re going to be working on some Habitat houses. We got here yesterday around 1:00pm (11 am Salvadorian time). My grandpa, tío Javier, and two of my cousins were at the airport to meet us. It´s really great being here, since I haven´t been back in about five years. Since the week with Habitat doesn´t technically start until this afternoon or evening, we came to a small resort on the beach. It´s pretty cool. There´s a team from Apex UMC (the team my dad and brother came with last year) here too, and we´ll be working with them at our sites. They have some critters around the resort, like toucans, and monkeys that remind me of the one my grandpa had. I´m excited for Saturday, though, because our team is going to see some of the old ruins near San Salvador, and my grandpa is going to come with us. Then, my brother and I are going to spend the night at his house. I hope you´ve been enjoying your summers! I know I have been, but I´ll be ready to move into Wesley when I get back.
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