mt. marcy

I joined my parents at church today. The minister, whose daughter was my arch nemesis when we lived here before, welcomed me in front of the entire congregation. During the meet and greet time when you say hello to everyone around you, he came up to me and welcome me again and said he keeps thinking about our trip to Mankato. Well, here's what happened on that lovely mission trip. . . .

There had been a tornado in Mankato, Minnesota and the church youth group was going there to serve and help rebuild. I brought along my friend, Katie J. We thought we were so much cooler than the other youth group kids. We were horrible. First of all, we were staying at a church. At one point we were supposed to stay in this room at the church, Katie and I "escaped" and went outside. To make fun of everyone else inside, I pressed my tush against the window. Of course, the window shattered and I had to explain to the other church's minister what happened. He was surprisingly okay with it and said they were going to be replacing the windows soon anyways. Next Katie and I met some of the youth from our host church. Since we didn't like the crowd we came with, we decided to hang out with them. We told no one and away we went to watch a movie with them. We justified it in our heads, saying that we were still with a youth group- it just wasn't ours. After chilling with them, we got dropped off back at the church. Surprise, surprise- the leaders of my church were furious. I thought they would call our parents to have them come pick us up, but they didn't. Our punishment was to cook dinner for the rest of the group. We thought that was great! We had a blast making spaghetti for everyone else.

This evening I came across the blog of a seventh grade friend of mine from when my family lived in Mississippi. I was shocked to see my name in the second paragraph. The story she tells is a classic. Mr. Skinner was our math teacher and Dawn was his fiancee. Click here to read her rendition.

Last week was five days of orientation. Today was the first official day of class and I survived. After talking with Lauren I started listing few differences in Baylor and UND. They include:

• at the law school "kegger" on Friday night they charged $5 for a cup. Baylor guys never charged girls for cups!
• The professors' course descriptions do not include their favorite Bible verse
• A bell rings on the hour at UND, but they don't ring to the tune of hymns
• My property professor said the F word and the S word within the first twenty minutes of class
• I have to pay for things I print off the computer at UND. Sure, tuition was more at Baylor, but at least printing was "free."
  

North Dakota Observations:

1. "Spendy" is an adjective. If you want to comment on the price of something expensive, just say "Oh nO, that's awfully spendy!"
2. People walk abnormally slow. I wonder if that will change when Winter comes?
3. If you and another person are wearing a name tag and you ask the person their name, they'll tell you. But if you follow up by politely telling them your name, the response is "yeah, I read your name tag."
4. Defensive driving is the norm. Drivers will not cross a street unless no other vehicles are in sight. Also, yellow means slam on your breaks and stop.
5. When a cashier asks you if you want a "beg" the answer is yes- because you do want a bag.
6. Law students know how to party hard and start the first week.
7. My parents love rituals. Saturdays are steak night, Fridays crock-pot, sandwich and vanilla yogurt at lunch, workouts happen twice a day ( in the morning they walk or spin and in the afternoon they meet at the gym)
8. My mother also comes into my room at least once a day to sniff and febreeze. Apparently I smell like a handsome great dane.
9. I really miss that dog!
10. I am really glad I am here and attending UND.

Fully aware of my sensitivity to caffeine, I made a poor choice to enjoy an iced coffee at 3 pm today. So here I am at 12:30 am, sitting with the Olympics on and not an ounce of sleepiness.

Here's what's been going on in Marcy's world:

My moving truck arrived on Monday afternoon and since then I have been unpacking and organizing. I thought I had thrown out a lot of stuff before I moved, but as I was unpacking I found more unneeded items that have found new homes at goodwill and a local consignment store. I have detailed my car, with the help of my anally clean mother. I am now a proud North Dakota resident with a new drivers' license and license plate. And I have a new cell phone and number.

I also went to Fargo to have dinner with Jillian and see where she grew up. I am looking forward to her visiting family at holidays.

I am running into people from high school that may look familiar, but I have no clue of their name. My yearbook is my new best friend.

Revekah and I made it to Grand Forks late Thursday night after a 1500 mile road trip. We left Wednesday morning, stopped in Wichita to have a late lunch with my great aunt and uncle and stayed over night in Iowa City. Thursday morning we ran around the University of Iowa, which is an urban campus that skirts in and out of downtown Iowa City, had breakfast at a local bagel shop, went back to the hotel to clean up and had another breakfast on the way out of town. We had a late lunch in Saint Paul, Minnesota. A friend recommended we go to a certain area of town to shop and eat, which we did and loved.

Once we arrived at my parents' house we stayed up late talking and have been recovering from our trip ever since. We went to a couple of boutiques Friday, ran to my high school and did sprints around the track and watched the Olympics last night. I now want to adopt a little Chinese boy.

Today we are going to head downtown to the Farmers' Market and then go to Foxy Nails for pedicures. Revekah heads back to Texas Sunday morning and the moving truck arrives on Monday. My first visitor comes on Wednesday when Jillian comes to visit family.

My worries aren't completely over because I want everything to arrive in one piece, but they're half way there. I have been packing steadily for two months and with each box came more anxiety. Friday night was my closest thing to a meltdown. There were only a couple of tears, butI have been fretting moving day for a while. I would wake up in the middle of the night wondering how will I puzzle piece my boxes together to make it fit? What if I don't do it right? I just wished for a boyfriend, husband or my dad to be there to help me. But Saturday morning and all of its heat arrived and by 9 am, I had four blessings here to help me. We had the entire job knocked out in an hour and half. The two younger guys carried boxes from the house to the truck while, Dennis, a co-worker's husband was the puzzle wizard. I am embarrassed to say I didn't even break a sweat. Gina, my co-worker, just wanted to talk the entire time. It was 100% stress free for me. After my team left I tied ropes across the truck to keep boxes from sliding...I guess I did get a little warm doing that.
PS, in typical Waco style, on my moving day the heat index was 108 degrees.
PPS, Mom & Dad- it's headed your way! They picked it up Monday afternoon :)

With the house full of boxes, Bradley knows something is up. He's going nowhere, but I am. I think he has joined me in mourning.