London!

I've been terrible about any and all pics and info about my month in Europe last summer! So here we are, almost a year-to-date, and I've decided to actually go through all of the pics and choose my faves to post here! I know Kell posted a whole bunch of our time together on facebook, but here is a start of pics for the two weeks I spent before Mom & Kell met up with me!

Starting off...

A brief synopsis of my last-minute departure from Uganda is: British Airways went on strike, which severely limited the number of flights in and out of Entebbe Airport. My flight needed to be rescheduled so that I could meet up with Mom & Kell in London when they flew in, in order to start our trip through Europe. At the end of May last year (I believe it was May 27th) I went to the BA office in Kampala to see about rescheduling my flight, and they told me the only flight that they were 100% sure was going to be leaving Uganda in the next two weeks was on the following Monday, May 31st. AUGH - three days to get last-minute gifts, PACK!, and LEAVE?! Well, it was the only option, they said... so it happened. Then came the scramble for where on earth I was going to stay for the two weeks I would now have in London! Thank the Lord - He totally provided some intervention and took care of everything (through my wonderful friends Dean & Jess Smith from SLO and the Thiel family from Simi!) by providing me with two separate places to stay for the two weeks. I felt overwhelmed beyond belief by the responses I received from that "PLEASE HELP" email I had sent out... Can you believe it? I had something like 30 emails in my Inbox on Saturday morning (my time) after sending out the message on Friday. God works in INCREDIBLE, FAST ways sometimes!! So, I had a hurried exit from a country that I had come to know as my "home" and continued going, not knowing what lay ahead of me in this new adventure!

I found myself in London (Hampstead Heath, to be more precise) for the first week and in Amersham (a little city outside of central London) for the second week. This'll have to be broken up into several segments, because there's just too much information to include in one!

We'll start off with the Calvary folks. Like I said, my old friends from Cal Poly, Dean and Jessica Smith, emailed some good friends and former church-mates of theirs from Shoreline in Morro Bay, who had recently moved to London in order to start a church in Camden Town. They very, very graciously offered to meet me at Heathrow and let me stay with them. They met me at the airport with the best present ever for someone who had been in Uganda for a year... KRISPY KREME DOUGHNUTS!!!

It was such a relaxing time. There was Pastor Tonye and his wife and two girls (I had lots of fun with them especially!), David and Trista, Landon, Tobi, and Luke and Frida. It seemed like such a different world in London - fast moving cars, the metro, Starbucks, electricity, hot water... I have to say that I was definitely in some culture-adjustment those first couple days acclimating back to this new world! The Camden folks were so great about giving me space and time to rest, recoop, and readjust. I went for quite a few walks around the heath, through the park, and past the little, quaint shops. It felt so nice to be out and walking, with no concern for where I was going or where I ended up! One of the days I walked from Hamstead Heath all the way down to Notting Hill (only to find out it's NOT A HILL - who knew?) and it was lovely.

One problem I had in London was the strange desire I constantly had to quench to NOT speak with a British accent. I don't know why - some unrequited urge to join the Monty Python entourage? some Pride and Prejudice fantasies? I don't know - but seriously I had to catch myself, and thankfully I never made a fool out of myself :)

On some of my walks, I stumbled upon a few things that are so uniquely British/European, that I (discreetly) attempted to take some pics and giggle at the remembrances.

funny little cars...

I particularly like the X-ray car; quite clever, if you ask me!

funny colored doors all around London...

I guess when you can't paint your building, a checker-tiled front walkway with a bright blue door is the next best thing!

funny sayings and misspellings...

(in case you're wondering, "fuller" is my last name, but it is not grammatically correct when discussing the 'full' feeling after eating - it IS correct if you are a person who 'fulls' cloth :) )

Yay London!

Salinas Valley Fair!

Have you ever been to a fair? I mean, a REAL fair?

Yesterday was truly a brand-new experience for me. I have been to the Ventura County Fair several times. I've seen all the swine and steer and stuff... but I never really understood the

whole "process" till yesterday.

I have about 20 students in my class - 10 of whom have been raising animals for 4-H. Yesterday, at the Salinas Valley Fair in King City, my kids all got to "show" their animals for (oh gosh, I've already forgotten the word... but it's for the meat/fat and overall look of the animal) and today they're showing for "showmanship" - how well their animal obeys them, etc. I learned more about pigs and lambs and cows than I think I've ever wanted to know!

Did you know...

- (at this fair) there are six different categories that the pigs can be classified into? Pink, Pink with Spots, Pink and Black, Black, Brown, and Red... I never knew there were RED pigs.

- when the 4-H-ers present their lambs, they have the animals lean against them? The owner pushes against the sheep and the sheep pushes back, so that the "muscle" of the hind legs is showing for the judges to see... it looked so weird!

- there's a sort of 'pressure point' on the rear-ends of pigs and lambs (not sure about cows...) that if you press on it, the animal will automatically move their legs so you can situate them how you want them to stand.

- some people make clothes for their lambs, before they show them, so that they don't get dirty.

- if a pig is underweight, something that is commonly done is feed them soda or Kool-Aid?!?

- baby powder is used on pink pigs to make them look better and baby oil is used on black pigs to make them shinier!

- When the pigs are judged, the 4-H owners have to prod their pigs with a stick while they steer their pigs toward the one judge, who stands in the middle of the arena... The kids also have to try and keep eye-contact with the judge the whole time - a few of the kids looked like they were all crazy-eyed and never blinked while staring down the judge :)

A few of the sights of yesterday's experience!

There was so much for me to learn!

I also didn't know that there are A LOT of different categories (besides animals) that 4-H members can enter! There's also Produce, Welding, Photography, Scrapbooking, Cookie Baking, Weirdest-Looking Pie Baking, Floral Arranging, Vase Making, and the list goes on and on and on!

One of my 8th graders took Best-In-Show for a drawing she made and two of my 7th graders took Best-In-Show for a photo and a scrapbook page! (I'd like to think they took some of my tips on composition of a photo, using the macro lens, etc. for photography, and finding a "color scheme" ) One of my 8th graders also won Weight Champion (aka 1st place) for her pig!

It was a whole lot of fun, seeing the kids "in their element" and showing off all of their hard work that they've put into these animals and artistry. I KNOW that it seems silly that we took off 2 days from school for the fair... but if you think about it, if I had 10 kids out to be with their animals, I wouldn't be able to teach anything anyway. And I'm not jumping on the "let's not do schoolwork after STAR testing" bandwagon, but I will say that I think the fair is a good thing, and that as long as they don't come back completely forgetting everything we did last week, I'd have to say I'm an advocate for this whole "pig" thing :)

Trip to St. Louis!

To continue to show how desperately behind I am in relating current events - here are some pics from last July when I went to Chicago to visit Danielle and then on to St. Louis to hang out and watch some Dodgers baseball with Matt and Tim!

Casey and Ronnie came around to sign some autographs for us Dodgers fans!

Hey there, Jamie Carroll. Sure, I'll take a picture with you! :)

Such a great view from the stadium! I went walking for about 20 minutes before the first (Friday night) game and got to see the St. Louis arch up-close for the first time.

You see, my entire family went to St. Louis one summer for a travel baseball tourney, but alas, I was left home to work...

*insert heavy sigh and self-reproaching smirk*

After the Saturday early game, it was also "Christian Day" at Busch Stadium. It was really neat to see the Dodgers and Cardinals players take the field to talk a little bit about their faith, what their walk with the Lord has looked like, and what it means to be a Christian who is also a professional athlete.

Tony Dungy was also there!

He spoke for a while, gave a brief rendition of his testimony and talked about how being a Christian has significantly impacted the way that he treated his players, coaches, and opponents in the NFL.

My Apartment!

Wow - it's been a while, huh?

I really, really, really am going to start blogging more! ... or at least I'm going to try :)

I wanted to post an update on a couple of exciting changes in my life - some from a while back, some from just a few days ago!

We'll start this blog update with my new apartment. It still seems so new to me, and while I accidentally call it "home" every once in a while, it kind of only feels like a temporary housing spot. Don't get me wrong, I love the decorations and the ambiance of the place, but there’s something missing... maybe it’s just people. Without roomies and siblings, it’s just a couple rooms not a home, I guess.

Well, let’s see... these pics will take us all the way back to AUGUST 2011. Yeah, big oops on my part for taking 9 months to post these!

Well, here’s the little red truck packed and ready to go! If you were ever at Kelly and Ryan’s during their first couple years of marriage, you might recognize the tan couches that they gave to me when they were getting bigger, cushion-ier furniture! They’re perfect for me!

Then came the empty apartment. I was soooooo lucky that on the day I arrived, my two next-door neighbors were having a bar-be-que with some of their buddies who all work at the Soledad prison together. (Side note: Don’t get any ideas; they’re like 50+ years old. And let’s emphasize WORK at the prison, not ESCAPED FROM the prison – just to clarify.)

I was so lucky because they offered to carry up EVERYTHING for me. I mean, of course I helped, but I didn’t realize how heavy some of the bigger things were! The thing I’m using as the entertainment center especially... it’s made out of melamine and it’s ridiculously heavy. (This is the “entertainment center” all painted to match the room!)

So, everything got moved up and in – and then it needed to be UNPACKED. Let me say, that if you’re ever wanting to feel like you have a LOT of stuff, pack everything up, go to Africa for a year, and then come home and unpack it. It’s quite an experience! Clothes that I had forgotten about, dishes, movies, candles, picture frames, kitchen appliances - you name it! I was like a kid on Christmas morning with all my new discoveries!

Then came the putting-everything-away stage of the game... which took a while. Let me also explain, I moved up to my apartment on August 24th. In 8 days, I had to have my completely bare classroom ready for students. So, my apartment kind of got the shaft for the first two weeks while my classroom got about 12 hours of work every day (with Staff Development days thrown in there too!).

After about a month, getting settled in to teaching new subjects and new students at a new school, I finally started devoting some time to my apartment. I had a drawn a few sketches about what I wanted the living room and bedroom to look like, including my color scheme and all that! It is so much fun to play interior decorator! It almost seems as if those countless hours of “Trading Spaces” and “Extreme Makeover Home Edition” finally paid off!

Over the course of November through March, I’ve been acquiring bookcases and tables from Target.com (yay free shipping!) and some decorative lighting from IKEA (thanks Casey!) and knick-knacks here and there.

And now, about 9 months and a week later, I think my living room is pretty much done. Well, that’s not true. I’m still thinking of what to put above the TV – but other than THAT, it’s ALL DONE!

... now on to the bedroom and bathroom!!