The More Things Change...

the more they stay the same. At least that's what the songs tell us. And funnily enough, I've found it to be true. In the past 12 months, I have seen more changes in my life and my friends' lives than I ever have before. After graduating last June, my class all went their own ways. Some of us were off to four year colleges in the fall, some to two years. Some of us went right to work, and others started looking for jobs. Still others joined some branch of the military, and a whole nother group went out and found places to live, far away from Princeton. I have made a huge new group of friends, and grown up a little bit. I have big plans for my future, ones that include France for a few months and an internship in another state (hopefully) after my junior year of college. Who knows if they will work out or not, but at least I'm planning. This week I've gotten lunch with a number of my high school friends, and it's been great catching up with them. However.... everyone's DIFFERENT now. They have their own plans for life, their own new friends, their own frustrations and joys. They're still my friends, and I'm excited for them as they each start "the rest of their lives" as they have them planned now, but it makes me a bit nostalgic for the good ole days of grade school, middle school, and high school. Yes, I know that as I continue to get older, those "good ole days" will consist of what is my current present, but for now, they're school before college.

Even as I've been noticing all of these changes, I've become more attentive to the things that haven't changed. One of my favorite memories of childhood is Thursday garage saleing in the summertime. We never had that many garage sales ourselves, but I can remember walking around the block with my mom and checking out the other ones that were going on. As I drove into town today to meet two of my friends for lunch, I saw a bunch of signs for various garage sales. Sure enough, a little ways down the road, there were yards full of people and things for sale. I haven't been out garage saleing in many years, but it's kind of fun to realize that it's not a thing of the past. I guess I'll just have to keep on keepin' on and see what kind of changes I find in the next couple of years while continuing to come back to the familiar. Love y'all!

Catching Up

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know it's been a while since I've been on here. And contrary to the usual, it's not because I don't have anything to say, it's because I've gotten really busy lately. Let's see. Well, last Sunday I went down to Rick and Drea's to celebrate Vanessa's Peace Corps posting to Swaziland, and to say goodbye. (For those of you non-family members reading, Vanessa is my cousin, Becca's older sister) It was a bittersweet party. I'm really really excited for Vanessa, because I know this is something that she's been wanting to do for a long time. However, I'm also a little sad that I won't get to see her for the next two years. Although I didn't see her much while she was still living here, I really enjoyed talking to her on those rare occasions where I was babysitting Becca and Ness was around for a while. It was nice to be able to talk to an older cousin, one who's already been through a lot of what I'm going through now. Plus, I just like her :o)

After the party, I drove out to CSB for the next four days. I was lucky enough to be able to be a counselor at Girls, God, and Good Times (aka 3G) this summer, and I really want to do it again next year. There's two sessions, one for 6th-8th graders, and one for 4th and 5th graders. I worked with the younger girls this year and had a total blast. It was my first time ever being a counselor, and now I can't wait to do it again. I was really nervous about it, but my girls were fantastic, my fellow counselors were great, and it was just a lot of fun.... I could go on and on about it, but I will keep it short and sweet. However, any of you reading this that have daughters that will be in grades 4-8 next year should really consider sending them to 3G.

My biggest news right now is that I finally got a job, and I'll be starting it in just over a week. I'm going to move up to our cabin, which I am super pumped about, and I'll be working at Sugar Point Resort. I'll be a "jill of all trades", doing everything from cleaning cabins, to mowing lawns, to working the docks, to being in the main building. It's about 30 hours week, broken down into five four hour days and one (Saturday) day with a four and a half hour shift in the morning and a three hour shift in the afternoon. As most of you know, at the cabin we do not have internet, and cell phones don't really work, so I'll be a little out of touch for a couple of months, but I'll try and find access somewhere to catch up with y'all.

Well, that's a pretty condensed version of everything that's gone on in the past two weeks. Love to all.

Summertime, Sweet Summertime

It's hard for me to believe that I've already had five weeks of summer vacation. It's flown by! I really haven't been doing too much, but it's been nice to relax and unwind a bit after the stress of the end of the year. I've done a lot of reading and I've scrapbooked a couple hundred pictures of my year, I try to work out, and I've watched a lot of movies. I'm working (kind of) on the job situation; at first I was going to try and get a job working up north either waitressing for some old family friends or cleaning cabins at a resort near the cabin, but so far neither of them has worked out. Now, I'm hoping to get some hours in at ABC and cleaning for certain family members of ours :o) That would be ideal, because then I would be fairly free to do things with my friends and I'd probably get the chance to go up to Cragun's resort again for a week to babysit Becca. 

My big excitement of the summer so far was driving down to Iowa last weekend. Merideth had just come back from Argentina and Brittany drove down too. It was absolutely fantastic to see those two, and hear about Merideth's trip. The only downer is that now I miss them even more. Anyway, it took me about five and a half hours to get down there, and the drive wasn't bad. I like driving, and it was kind of fun to undertake such a long trip by myself. We hung out with one of Brittany and Merideth's high school friends on Friday night, and on Saturday we went out to pick up Merideth's horse from where she had spent the school year. That was fun, partially because it was way out in the country which is always beautiful, and partially because I came home with a new kitten. Since Penny is getting pretty old, we decided it was time to get a new cat. He is all black except for a little white patch on his chest, and he has blue eyes. He's about nine weeks old, and he's a little shyster. I stopped in Bloomington for the night on my way back home, and he was tricky to keep safe in Grandma's garage. Monday morning when I left her house is when I started to run into problems. He managed to crawl out of the box I had him in and created quite a problem. I was fairly flustered, but we managed to make it home all in one piece. 

Next week, I'm off to CSB for a few days to be a counselor at a girls camp. I'll have five or six fourth and fifth grade girls, and it should be a lot of fun. Otherwise, not much else is new. So, love to all and I hope that you are enjoying the (somewhat) nice weather.

And it's June now...

Ok, so I've honestly been home for over three weeks now. I can't believe it. I didn't believe my friends when they told me summer would go fast, but so far it has. I still have 73 days left until I move back to school though :o( 

Anyway, so the end of the school year went well. That last Sunday, there was some MAJOR work done on research papers for a couple of us... I was up until close to 2 am helping a friend of mine who clearly is the master of procrastination (his paper was due on Monday and he had three pages done when I got to SJU after Mass). Otherwise, it was hanging out as usual. We had classes on Monday, but I didn't have to go to mine, since we had already handed in our final paper, so I had essentially two study days. I pretty much did nothing on both of them. I only had two finals, one in French and one in Comm, both of which were on Wednesday. For Peace Studies, I had a five page research paper that was due on Tuesday, and for FYS, I had the big research paper every first year has to do, and that was also due on Tuesday. Finals went fine in both classes, and it was very nice to be completely done on the first day of finals.

Brittany and Heather left on Thursday, so Wednesday night we all hung out in our typical spots: Heather in Christian's room, and me and Brittany with Jon. It was tough to leave that night, because we'll never have a chance to hang out there again. It was a fun night though. Thursday morning, we got up, ate breakfast together, and then started packing up Brittany and Heather. They both left soon after lunch, and it was tough to watch them go. Merideth and I finished up a few things (or in my case started.... I got about half of my room packed up in an hour and a half), loaded my packed stuff into my car, and headed over to the SJU beach. We were at SJU for the rest of the evening, but it was kind of quiet because people were either studying, packing, or out celebrating being done with finals.

Thursday night into Friday morning, I was up packing and doing laundry, and finishing a few corrections on a couple of French papers. I stayed up until 4:00 am, before finally falling into bed to sleep for a couple of hours. Friday morning, I got up and finished loading up my car, showered, checked out my room, collected Merideth, and ran over to SJU. My boys were leaving, and we helped them finish packing up cars, and then waved as they left. That was the worst. I hated watching them leave, since they were off to Italy and California, and I won't get to see them all summer. The rest of the night, we just kind of hung out. Jordan took me out to dinner and a movie, which was a lot of fun, and then I hung around on Mary 2, talking to the guys that were still there.

Saturday morning, I got up early, showered, and headed to church for commencement masses. We had two, and I sang and played piano at both. The first one was the hardest, because it was my last time singing with some really great people. We definitely had tears in our eyes a few times. After the masses were both done, we put the chairs away, and went back to the dorms, where I helped Merideth and her mom pack up their car before going to my room to wait for my mom. She got there around 3:00 and we headed home for the summer. 

xo, Rachel