(Courtesy of Jake Ohlemiller, Recovering Engineer.)
So on Tuesday I went to Barnes and Noble to get Inheritance - the last book in the Eragon series (finally! :] ). The store opened at 9 in the morning, and when I got there at 9.15 the rack of books was already half empty... :] I was good too - I went to the checkout with only the one book I'd planned to buy :D The man that checked me out was nice too - he said that a bunch of people had come for those books and he asked if I knew how many pages it was. I didn't but I said that it was nice and thick, which I was excited about. He laughed and said 'So you won't be done at 10, it'll be more like 11.30' and I laughed as well.
Thursday I had to pack for class the next day as well as the weekend, so that was fun.
Then it was time for the weekend. Friday between classes I had a meeting with my advisor and I'm officially a Mathmatical Statistics and Mathemetics double major with a minor in Spanish.
Jake, Liz and I were at Wesley at 12.30, the time we'd planned to meet, and we were just waiting for Julia. Who, I'd like to point out, didn't have a class ending at 12.20 like Liz and I :] Once we were all there, we decided to get on the road and stop for lunch in Crawfordsville - about an hour away. As we were driving through, we didn't see very much until the edge of town - there was a gas station that had pizza (it reminded me of Kauai :] ) and it was actually really good pizza. Our next stop was at a rest stop near U of I - Jake just wanted to move his wallet but there was a playground so Liz, Julia and I all went over there and he joined us. There was a tire swing - that was fun :D
As we got closer to St Louis, Liz's excitement grew - she was really excited that she might be able to see the Arch. So then we could actually see it in the distance and she was taking pictures left and right. As we got closer, she realised that our hotel is right next to it and hoped that she would have a view from her room. When we checked in, Julia and I were rooming and Jake was in the room right next to ours, but Liz was 15 rooms down - which is funny because Liz, Julia and I requested to have rooms near each other and Jake didn't have a housing request at first, he was going to stay with his family. However, Liz did in fact wind up with the Arch room, so I was happy for her :]
Later on that night, we were waiting to go into worship when I saw a guy with a shirt that said 'Do or do not... There is no try' and I complimented him on it :] He said thanks and stayed to talk for a bit since he was there by himself - his name's Jonathan and he's from Tennessee. We all clicked pretty well - we wound up hanging through the whole weekend. That was pretty cool - he was a great guy.
That night we got to hear Rev Adam Hamilton speak - Liz and Jake were fangirling and Julia and I understood why, he was good. After, there were small groups and then Jake left to see his family and the rest of us were all tired (we were still on Eastern time) so we crashed.
Saturday was a pretty packed day. I wanted to be the cool kid and wear my John Wesley credo shirt that I got from Manos Juntas in Mexico - it was in Spanish :] We had breakfast together and went to worship and small groups, then the workshops started up. My first workshop was Music in Ministry - basically what I really want to do. That was really cool to go to - and I got some ideas for books that I want to read.
After that first workshop I got to go out to lunch with Aunt Kelly, Uncle Mark, Melissa and McKayla :D That was fun, it was great to see them again. We went to this nice little Mexican restaraunt that Melissa knew about (since she lived in that area) and I had some delicious vegetarian fajitas :] I also got to go see Melissa's new place, and the new puppy :]
When I went back to the conference, the last workshop I did was with Liz - we did a leadership styles analysis. I scored even in two of the three categories (Spiritual Shepherd and Systems/Task Organizer) and Liz scored high in the Vision Crier (the one I got zero in) so I said that together we'd make the perfect leader :D
We had been all split up during the workshops and lunch, so it was kinda funny when we all happened to meet up again in the room to eat dinner. That night we were eating with Jonathan again and we had a really good conversation - he's really passionate about what he does and that was cool to see. He's also slightly manic, so that was fun as well :D After dinner was worship - and the Saturday night worships of weekend events like these are almost always the most emotional one, so that was fun. Small groups after that was really neat, though, my small group was pretty cool.
And then this morning we had breakfast in our small groups. I was wearing a Virginia Tech shirt (there were other people from Tech, but I never really got to meet them) and that confused some of the people in my group since I'd introduced myself as being from Purdue previously.
We had a closing worship and then it was off to get gas and then get on the highway.
That is, we drove in circles around downtown St Louis trying to find a gas station, only to find one that was cheaper and right next to the on-ramp after we'd filled the tank. Go team :D We got a nice little tour of St Louis though...
We weren't overly hungry, so we didn't stop to eat lunch for a while. We found this little Indian crafts store and ate our boxed lunches there and looked around. We killed a half hour and had no hopes of getting back in time for the COM meeting (Council On Ministries - Wesley's leadership team) so when we were in time it was nice. I'm not in COM, so I went to the kitchen to get some food and I was going to start looking up classes for registering tomorrow (the hotel didn't have free wi-fi in the rooms, I'd planned on doing it there) when Glen came down looking for someone and informed me that they were going to be talking about the weekend fairly soon so I should join them. I did, and they were still going through nominations for this semester's election. When it got to Vice President, Shilpa said that she'd be stepping down and nominated Erica and me. I said 'So I shouldn't've come up here, thanks Glen,' but Julia pointed out that Shilpa probably would've nominated me anyway, so at least this way I had a heads up.
And now it's midnight, so much for being in bed by now. Yay for 8.30 class tomorrow morning! O.o
Night.
-Carly B
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