I'm just going to summarize the last 2 weeks for you. It is amazing to me how helpful it is to take a daily picture in my ability to remember what happens in a week! I just bought a new camera, so hopefully next week I will be back on target with my picture-a-day goal!
I started volunteering at a place called "The Open Door". It's a type of afterschool-like program for mostly refugee families. I've been asked to be in the "arts and crafts" group. I've been feeling a little wary of adding another kid-focused volunteer job to my life. Since I work all day with kids, I've found it's sometimes nice to do something totally different for volunteering. However, this opportunity seemed to fall in my lap, and I think it will be good.
My good friend, Kristin, and I have been trying to get a vacation together for months, but we've had the hardest time figuring out where to go! We finally booked tickets to go to Whistler, British Columbia this past week. Has anybody been there before? It looks like a nice place, and it will be wonderful to spend time together.
Last weekend I went to the Greek festival here in town. I thought this would be a somewhat obsure off-the-beaten path thing to do, but it seems like half the city attends. It kind of reminded me of the Tulip festival (for those of you familiar with northwest Iowa), but from an outsider's perspective. Nice night - fun atmosphere, great food, and entertaining dancing. Made me want to take some Greek dance lessons!
I also helped a friend move last weekend. You may think I'm odd, but there's something kind of peaceful to me about moving. Well, at least helping other people move. There's something nice about turning total chaos into a brand-new order. figuring out where things should go, throwing out the stuff you don't really need, cleaning everything super-well, unpacking boxes and finding cool things you own that you forgot about, thinking about what color you might paint the walls (even if it's not your house and not yours to choose!). It also feels good to put in some good manual labor - work those muscles and be really truly hungry by the time pizza is ordered. Celebrated the end of a good day's work by fireworks put on by the Lutheran church's Oktoberfest.
This past week has been full of work committments for me. I'm generally very fortunate in my job to work only weekdays, exept for a couple of events. I've been leading a Sickle Cell Support group that meets Thursday evenings once a month, and I also lead SIBS day - a support event for siblings of kids with chronic illnesses and disabilities two times a year. This fall they happened to fall on the same week, which made me really busy! It's always a lot of work to put the events together, but the families are always so appreciative! SIBS day, in particular was a bit crazy this time - it was one of those days in which, if it can go wrong, it will (a huge traffic jam caused my whole staff and volunteer group to be 45 minutes late, technical difficulties forced us to cancel one of our biggest teen activities, one of our special guests called in sick which meant we needed to make up on the spot yet another activity, etc). However, the day smoothed out with time, and overall I think it was a success. Because I worked 12 hours on Thursday and came in Saturday, I was able to take the day off Friday. Yay! It was wonderful having a weekday for myself!
I've been feeling just a bit under the weather this week, so I've been trying to take as much down time as I can. Hopefully I will feel better next week!