So, I know it's been FOREVER since I've written/wrote/writed....we'll got with wrote on here. And I was writing my life events in my journal and thought that it would be quite nice of me to catch you all up...well, not really, but at least tell you some of the funness going on in my life. So here you go!

I always go to church at night with Hannah and all her friends. I really like those guys. Like seriously, Sunday nights are my favorite because walking to church is such a blast. :) Anyway, like two weeks ago Hannah, Nathan, Phil, Kyle, and I were walking back and for some reason Nathan, Kyle, and Hannah just TOOK off. Like Phil and I were walking a perfectly normal pace, I thought but those other three were like a block and a half in front of us. Anyway, I hadn’t like ever talked to Phil before but we had a good chat so all was good. Anyway, later Nathan and Phil were running around East Hall in robes…don’t ask. lol And they came and sat on our couch (we have people do that quite frequently). Anyway, I was like, “Nathan, what’s up with leaving us in the dust tonight??” And he goes off on this tangent about how there was a full moon and Phil and I seemed like we wanted to be left alone to enjoy it….yeah, he makes the strangest connections. lol Anyway…like a week later or so at supper I walked by their table which is right by ours and Phil and Nathan just starting laughing so hard, and I was like, “What the heck??” lol Anyway, turns out Phil and Nathan were talking about getting tickets for the play and then Phil’s like, “Hey, and then we have to stop by Abbie’s room.” Referring to stopping by for fundip, because I had a ton left over from Valentine’s day. Well, Nathan making his strange connections was like, “You’re going to ask Abbie out on a date??” And Phil goes completely sarcastically, “Yes Nathan, I want nothing more than to date Abbie!!” lol Which was right when I happened to be walking by. Anyway, then this past Sunday we were walking to church and Nathan’s like, “Hey Abbie, Hannah and I have figured something out.” And I was like, “Oh, really?” And he proceeds to tell Phil and I that we’re going on a date on Friday night. Like see, Nathan and Phil got tickets for Han and I to go to the play…and then Nathan decided just to set it up as a “date”. lol Phil not even making the connections was like, “Oh really, where are we going?” Anyway, that kind of progressed over the course of the night to Phil and I were dating and he was going to teach me “Canadian” on our date. THEN the next night those guys stopped by my room and asked if I wanted to go to the grille which sounded good to me. As we were walking to the grille Hannah’s like, “There’s been new developments between you and Phil. You guys are married now!” lol I don’t even know exactly how this started…Evidentially at supper they were talking about marriage and Nathan goes, “Where’s Abbie?” And then Phil came up with this story about how we went to Vegas over the weekend and got married. The reason I don’t remember any of it is because evidentially he got me drunk on communion wine or something?? lol Because obviously this happened after church that night. Oh my…yeah we discussed this for like 20 minutes at the grille. Ridiculous! But really funny. Like seriously, I hardly even know this guy, and sometimes the convos get a little on the awkward side, but really it’s hilarious. Last night we went to Wal-Mart and on the way back to East Hall from West parking lot Hannah and I stopped by Phil and Mike’s room. I was complaining because he hadn’t even got me a ring, so Mike made me one out of electrical and duct tape. It’s lovely. :P Hahaha…crazyness. Anyway, other funness that’s been happening. Last Wednesday I believe it was Ben, Melissa, Kevin, and I went mini golfing in East Hall. :) We started on third floor at Melissa’s room and then putted down to a cup in my room. It kept us entertained for a good hour! I’m not so sure it’s legal, but it was good fun! On Valentine’s Day night Ben, Melissa, Kevin, Jessica, and I “made” supper. We had frozen pizza, chips and dip, and sugar cookies. Then we went and played the Wi…it was so fun! I got some great videos. We played this Olympic version where there’s swimming and rowing and gymnastics. Basically it just makes you look ridiculous. We all got really into it. It was a fun night. Um…let’s see, yesterday was fun. First of all it was SUPER nice. I think it got up to almost 60. So after class I rounded up Hannah and Melissa and we walked to Casey’s for drinks. Last week or so The Diamond, Dordt’s newspaper, had coupons in it for buy one get one free drinks from Casey’s. So we STOCKED up. Seriously, we have like a whole stack of them. They don’t expire till the end of May. J We always get such good deals from there. Normally every Friday we go, and they have these punch cards that they check off so every 10 drinks you get free. And then up to Valentine’s day was double punches so last week Hannah and I both filled up our card so we got free drinks and then since Jessica’s birthday is next week she got a free one. We’re all about the cheapness. :) Anyway, so yesterday we walked to Casey’s in the wonderful warmness! Then after supper we went swimming! We haven’t gone in a long while so that was good fun. Jessica and I treaded water for a good 20 minutes…my exercise of choice. :) Yeah…and later Hannah and I stopped by Mike and Phil’s room which was good fun, then we went to the grille, and then I met up with Ben, Melissa, and Kevin and we got a movie from the library, Runaway Jury, and we watched that! It really felt like a Friday which was fine by me! And the best news is that I don’t have any class on Friday! That’s the day I have my two psychology classes and I guess there must be something going on because I don’t have class in either one. Woohoo!! :) Anyway, that's the excitingness of my life thus far. Hope you enjoyed it! :)

I should've posted this AGES ago, but being home has really stopped my productivity of writing and such for some very strange reason. Anywho I figured since you've stayed with me through most of my adventure in Nicaragua I might as well finish it. So here's the last few days in Nicaragua. I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas!! :)

December 15, 2008 – Monday

9:24 pm

I’ve been majorly putting off writing in here because too much stuff has been happening, but it’s getting a bit ridiculous so here goes. First of all, I’m HOME!!! And it’s FREEZING! And last week I was at the beach!! How crazy is that?? Ok, now that’s out of the way I’ll try to recap this past week. So, last Tuesday was pretty fun. Melissa and I went to Café Latino in the morning and then went to Ben’s house for lunch which was like carne de baul or something really not that great actually. But as Ben said, “When’s the next time you’ll get a Nicaraguan meal?” Which I was like, “Um…tonight.” lol Anywho then Melissa and I went shopping! We wanted to get Marlyn and Zhenia a present and also look at some skirts for us. Well we found a decorative trashcan and some plastic Tupperware type things for them which will be really helpful for their kitchen, but no skirts. We’d pretty much given up, and we’re walking towards home when we decided that this was the last time we’d ever get this chance so why not go look! And we found these adorable skirts! They’re all flowy and have flowers along the bottom. Mine’s brown with blue flowers and Melissa’s blue with black flowers. We match. :) Anyway that night we watched The Biggest Loser which has kind of become our weekly tradition. We slightly got addicted to it. lol While also working on our final projects for the next day. Then Wednesday we gave all of our presentations. Sonya and I gave one that was supposed to last 30 to 45 minutes long over family solidarity and disintegration and it ended up lasting over an hour! Sonya’s quite wordy, but our teacher said it was really good so I think it went well. My other one was over how my worldview has changed over this semester and surprisingly I wasn’t even nervous giving it! So once that day was over I was like, “Hooray!!” And that night Melissa and I had all planned out how we’d go home and have Zhenia do our nails and then fix a puzzle with the girls that Melissa had brought home. Well when we got home Zhenia had a date with her new boyfriend and Marlyns boyfriend came over and we were left all alone. But we decided to have fun without them and made some hot water to soak our feet in, gave each other foot massages, and attempted to fix the puzzle. Our original plan was to finish it no matter what, but when it got to be like 11:30 and we weren’t even like a quarter way through the 1,000 piece monstrosity we decided to give up. lol But we had grand fun, as seems we always have when we're together. But anyway, next day we met up with Ben and bought tickets so we could climb up the cathedral. We had heard before that it was a must see, but had never got around to it and since it was our last day in Leon we figured we should do it! And it ended up being really cool! You get a whole new perspective on the city when you look at it from above. We got some cool pictures and then headed down for one last stop at the Eskimo shop, then headed home. That afternoon Zhenia painted both our fingernails and toenails really cute. Hot pink with white flowers in the corner and then we got all fancied up for the despidida that night. Melissa and I wore our new skirts. :) The despidida was pretty cool. All the families got up and did a presentation for their student. Marlyn and Zhenia made a slide show of a bunch of our pictures with words on the bottom saying memories of what we did together and then sang the song Casa Abierta which means open house, saying that they’re hearts and home was always open for us. I bawled through most of it. And it was our last night as a family, but after the despidida Zhenia went with her new boyfriend again!! I was a bit disgruntled, but we had fun with Marlyn. We went and bought oreos to eat with yogurt and opened our presents from the girls. Then spent a long time just talking. Marlyn left about 11:00 and Melissa and I stayed up talking till about 12. Man, I miss her!

December 21, 2008 – Sunday

6:09 pm

So, I don’t know what I’m having such difficulties finishing this thing! Like good gravy I started writing this like a week ago! So I’m going to try my best to finish it. What day did I get up to? Friday. Ok, so Friday the microbus was supposed to pick us up about 9. So we just hung out and talked to Marlyn and Zhenia and the bus came about 8:30! As soon as it pulled up Zhenia was just like, “NOO!!! Go away! Don’t come now!!!” Which was rather humorous in a completely awful way. Saying goodbye was SO tough. We started hugging goodbye and everyone kind of just dissolved into tears. I have never said goodbye to someone I may very well never see again! And these girls were such a huge part of my life for so long and then just saying goodbye! I’ll never forget driving away looking back and seeing Zhenia with her hand over her face just crying. And Melissa and me are sitting in the van holding hands crying…Our bus driver said we made him cry! The rest of the day was just weird. It was like we were in this strange limbo between actually being in the “good” of being home and stuck in the horribleness of saying goodbye to the life we’ve lived for the past three months. We did some debriefing and such and that night went out to supper with most of our teachers. It was a fairly good last night in Nicaragua. Then we got up at 4:30 the next morning to drive to the airport and catch our 7:35 flight. The one bad thing of the day was that Melissa didn’t get on the same flight as us. She originally booked the wrong time and so her flight didn’t leave till 1:00. She tried to get on standby, but our flight was full. So saying goodbye to her was tough! We landed in Houston about 11:30 and I cried when our plane touched down…cried when we left Nicaragua too. It was like I didn’t realize how much I would miss it all, how much Nicaragua had grabbed on to my heartstrings until we were leaving. But landing in the U.S. was SO good. I had a 4 hour layover and so hung out with Ben and Matt playing Egyptian rat killer and eating at Panda Express which was exactly what us three had done at the beginning of this trip so I thought it was fitting. Anyway Matt and I headed out at 3:45 for Omaha and then I was walking down the hall towards Mom and Dad! It was so good to see them!!! Gave lots of hugs. :) Then walked out into the surprisingly not that cold weather, like 50s or something, but my face was still cold. And like 11:00 that night we made it home!!! I love our house. :) The first thing I did was take of my shoes and run around barefoot, although that’s like the only time I ever did that because it’s COLD here! Sunday it was like zero degrees with -20 windchill. That’s like a 100 degrees temperature drop! I thought I was going to die. lol But I’ve grown quickly accustomed to it. Anyway, HOME! What an amazing place. :) Thus ends my journey in Nicaragua…

November 28, 2008

8:18 pm

So today was an incredibly tasty day! :) We had our Thanksgiving dinner and it was AMAZING! Definitely the most American meal I’ve had since being down here. The meal consisted of turkey, mashed potatoes, stuffing, gravy, corn on the cob, green bean casserole, rolls, a fruit salad, and cut up apples with homemade caramel dip. Honestly that caramel dip was like the best thing ever! Really, I think I’m going to have to get the recipe because it was SO amazing. I think I ate like two apples worth of cut up apples with it. lol And then we were all completely STUFFED so we ended up finding a movie to watch and then later had our choice of either apple or pumpkin pie. I got apple of course. It was SO good! So now, I’m all full and happy…but honestly I think this was kind of bad because I really, really don’t want to go back to Nicaraguan food….But I can do it! Only like 15 days left!! 15! That totally sounds doable!! And then we got to ride back with Mike Saeli to Leon which is a ton better than paying for a microbus. All in all it was a wonderful day. :)

December 1, 2008 – Monoday

7:48 pm

Can you believe it’s December?? Only 12 more days and I’ll be home! I can hardly believe it! Anyway, this past weekend was quite fun. Melissa and I ended up going to the beach together again on Saturday. See Ben was originally going to go with us, but then he got sick so decided to stay home. But Melissa and I had such a nice relaxing day at the beach! I honestly think we only spent like a total time of maybe 25 minutes in the water all day. Most of the time we just laid out in the sun. It was SO nice. Like there was this cool breeze that made it so it wouldn’t get too hot. Melissa kind of fried her stomach, but I mainly just enhanced my tan some more. :) We left the beach at 4:00 and then met up with Ben at 5:10ish to watch Quantum of Solace, the new James Bond movie, definitely a guy movie. lol I think it would’ve helped my comprehension of that movie if I’d ever watched any of the other ones. And it’s SO cold in that movie theatre! Last time we went I about froze to death so this time I brought my long sleeve shirt and I still was cold! I think I’m going to die when I get home. Really. lol Anyway, after the movie we went and bought tacos from the street vendors. Those things are SO good! We just sat on the side of the road and munched them. Then we headed home and on the way home is the Eskimo ice cream shop so I convinced Melissa we had to get ice cream. So I got a cookies and cream ice cream cone and we were walking down the street and I’m oohing and ahhing over how good it is and like my third lick pushes the ice cream off the cone and it lands on the sidewalk! Honestly I wasn’t even 100 feet from the ice cream shop. lol And there was this group of like 4 people sitting there just watching me…it was terrible!! So I walked the rest of the way home munching on my cone…it was quite saddening really. lol I think I’m going to go get one tomorrow since I definitely deserve one! Anyway, the excellent part of the rest of the time up to the presence is the fact that I’ve had two tacos every day since Saturday. :) On Sunday we went to this church who was selling food to make some money and I got tacos from there. Then today Melissa and I were walking home where we walk right past the taco venders sooo we decided we had to get some. :) Those things are amazing! I will miss them when I get home. lol