Midwest travels

It's been a big weekend for my main man Gilbert and me. We've zipped from Cedar Campus to Mount Pleasant to Chicago to Pleasant Vineyard to Cincinnati to Sturgis and back home to Cedar once more. Not counting all the times I had to turn around to find the exit or an alternate route, we added about 2,000 miles in 5 days to Gil's odometer.



He ate that road up, giving me as much as 37 mpg! I guess prayer works :)

And as for me, I gained some amazing conversations and memories out of the deal. I had the chance to reconnect up close and personally with a whopping 13 friends! They've known me in various stages of life, from all my life, high school, college, and camp to camp. Lisa, Liz, Susan, Meredith, Ya Li, Gao, Dong, Rob, Lance, Bob, Kathy, Maribeth, Kat, my grandparents, and my mother got the most time.. but there were a bunch more I was able to sit and chat with.. It's really interesting for me to see how they view me and how they see me taking them in, and to hear how life has been since the times we lived alongside each other. They definitely were conversations worth driving for, each of them. And the hugs!

It was crazy, fitting it all into 5 days.

I also had the chance to interview with the peace corps while in Chicago, eat authentic home-cooked Chinese dinner, walk and talk camp and life with Rob while walking the watery grounds at PVM, attend Chinese church for a Good Friday service with great music, gab with awesome people at Applebees, bowl and haul a player piano with Eric and Lance, and spend lots of time thinking as Gilbert took me from place to place. Sometimes I wish I didn't think so much.

Work today was difficult, sitting to the task once more of getting ready for the summer camp season, knowing that I am so far from those friends who have known me for so long. I realized last week that it's been 5 years since I first started working in the camping world. Remembering that little girl puts a smile on my face. She would have totally done what I just did this weekend, too, trying to squeeze in as much face-time as possible with pals. I'm glad I haven't changed that much!

She would have been less tired and sore at the end of it, though.

Bummer.

At least I know I can still do it! It's not forever, I think, that I will be able to just pick up and go like that. So here I treasure it.

Zai Jian!