GSA Chapter 6: The First Home Leave

I had the weekend before homeleave off so I decided to go visit my cousin Courtney in Selah, Washington which is near Yakima. Its about a five hour drive to her house from Gem State but that's nothing. I've driven farther distances for less time. I had a blast and we didn't even do anything out of the ordinary. We watched movies, went to church and just hung out. I haven't really had a whole lot of social interaction since moving to Idaho and so the long weekend was a welcome change of pace. Since my day off is Monday I got to spend a long weekend there. I drove there on Friday and back on Monday. It was amazing. When I got back to Gem State I did a little bit of deaning in the evening and then Tuesday was my day to be on call. Being on call merely means that if someone needs to be taken somewhere in the late afternoon or evening I take them or if there is an emergency I pitch in. So on an average day, being on call is fairly boring and pretty quiet.

Wednesday was an entirely different story, however because it was the start of the most epic idea of all time. HOME LEAVE. The definition is very self explanatory. A time where the kids leave and go home. In my case, I flew to Salem, OR where I got to visit my amazing family. My aunt has been wanting her two sisters (one of which is my lovely mother) and me to come visit her and do a trip that was mostly shopping and girl time while her kids were in school. We haven't been able to do that trip until now because whenever her kids are in school that usually means I'm in school. This year is different though, so the dream finally became a reality. I flew into Portland and waited for my mom and Aunt J to fly in from ND. Then we ate lunch and grabbed our rental car to drive to Salem. Wednesday was filled with...well I don't actually remember what we did Wednesday. But Thursday was packed with SHOPPING!!! We went to the Woodburn Outlets and literally shopped until we dropped. Then we went out for amazing Indian food at 9 at night. After Indian we went to a karaoke bar where we rocked it until midnight. It was so fun and completely random and I loved it. We were there until the bar closed at midnight and I ended up singing the last song of the night. I happened to choose "Like a Surgeon" by Weird Al which was pretty funny. Friday was supposed to be just as crazy but we were so exhausted from Thursday that we sort of walked around in a daze the whole day. Friday night we had pizza for supper and Uncle E and I took the kids swimming. We swam for two solid hours. I was exhausted afterward. I haven't done a whole lot of hard core swimming like that in a while. But it was fun. 

On Sabbath the four of us ladies drove to Tillamook where we had lunch with their Grandma, my Great Grandma. She's 100 and she made lunch for us. It was fantastic. After lunch the four of us squeezed onto the couch and sang hymn for Great Grandma for an hour or more. We spent a lot of the time laughing so hard that we were crying but occasionally we could hold it together long enough to actually get through a whole song and we sounded pretty great if I do say so myself. Everyone was so giggly that I felt like I was in an alternate time period and I was somehow transported to a time when my mom and two aunts were just teenagers and I was along for the ride. It was a blast. We ended the day with TV in our hotel room. This morning we went to breakfast at an omelet place that was amazing.

I'm sitting at my gate waiting to fly back to Boise now and I'm sad that the fun is over. Thankfully, I live a lot closer to Uncle E and Aunt D so hopefully I will be able to visit more often than I have in the past. I'm thinking Thanksgiving sounds grand to me. I miss everyone already but I have very fond memories of this weekend and they are memories I won't soon forget. Uncle E, if you're reading this, you never burned that CD for me. Miss everyone. Its time to board to Boise.

-Ashley

GSA Chapter 5: Weekend Duty and Other Exciting Adventures

I have absolutely no recollection of what happened this last week or what I did because the weekend itself has felt like a week. This weekend was my first official weekend on duty. The deans work in teams of two so that there is always one boy's dean and one girl's dean on duty during the weekend. This weekend my shift was the PM shift every afternoon/evening starting on Friday. Friday night we went to Lizard Butte which is an absolutely gorgeous spot to usher in the Sabbath hours. In order to get to the top we had quite the climb; not a long climb just one that was very steep.  The speaker that night was an alumni of 2011 and he spoke about how we need to choose to play for the right team. (In his illustration that was the BSU Broncos and not the Oregon Ducks.) After vespers the students enjoyed sometime to just goof around and enjoy the evening.

Sunset over the river from Lizard Butte

On Sabbath, Sabbath school was cancelled because no one wanted to teach it, which I think is a really pathetic excuse since we actually do have a chaplain. At any rate, church was, interesting to say the absolute least. After church and lunch we loaded the bus for some outreach in the park called the green belt because I think its the only green spot in the valley and is probably visible from space because the surrounding area is so brown. Anyway, it was absolutely gorgeous. We handed out water as we walked about a mile and a half to where supper was ready for us. The posters claimed it would be a barbecue but that was a lie. There was no barbecue, just sandwiches, potato salad and brownies; more appropriately known as a picnic. I honed my frisbee throwing skills and enjoyed the pleasant evening in the park. Later that night we watched Soul Surfer which was just as good the second time around, I just cried less.  

Sunday was the first time I had to dorm worship. I read them a story out of one of the Jesus Freaks books and they seemed to like it ok. I was reassured that there would indeed be a fall and that it would eventually cool off enough for me to wear sweaters. However, I also learned that it will only get as low as the teens at night. I may as well not even bring my coat back after Christmas. How lame. That night during study hall, I offered to help one of the girls with her algebra 1 homework. She brought it to me and showed me the problem that was giving her trouble. I looked at it and instantly knew that I was in trouble. It was a word problem. Give me an equation and I'll be able to figure it out eventually. Word problems...not so much. If she didn't know the answers to the odd problems were in the back of the book she knows now... 

Monday night I foolishly stayed up until 3am, knowing full well that I had to be up at 6 to open the dorm. I was running on three hours of sleep. Tuesday was rough, I thought I might have to call in sick but I made it until about 1:15 when the next dean came into the office and said he was bored and offered to go on duty and hour and half early. He was a life saver. I willingly relinquished the desk and ran to grab my purse. I drove to the mall, went shopping, got my nails done, got food, came home and crashed hard at 9pm. I woke up this morning at 10:30 after 13 and a half hours of glorious sleep. I looked at my phone to see that I had a text and realized that it was picture day. I jumped in the shower and got ready for pictures in 20 minutes. I was pretty impressed with myself. I walked into the library where they were taking pictures, signed my card thing sat down they took one picture and I was done. That was highly annoying. After that I checked my mail where I found a lovely letter from my awesome friend Jared and I got to skype with Katie during my lunch of pizza rolls and yogurt. Now I'm sitting at my desk watching my new fish, Sven the Spaz and Ingrid the Introvert. They are pretty funny. This weekend is my weekend off, it should be pretty boring. If anyone reads this call me or something. TTFN!

-Ashley

GSA Chapter 4: People and Paperwork

I have now done my first official week acting as a dean to a dorm full of kids. There are close to 50 kids in the dorm, most of them girls. So far, I'm loving it. Sunday was move in day. Let's just say it was a very overwhelming day. I met so many people, both students and parents and I was beginning to wonder if I was ever going to get anyone's name straight. My day consisted of checking people in, dealing with roommates (everyone has a roommate, which is a blessing for the school but not necessarily for some of the students), meeting parents, trying not be overwhelmed, smiling, and trying to remember all the names people were throwing at me. Students started trickling in around 10am and didn't stop until around 8pm that night. 

Now I make that day sound very traumatic, but in all actuality it wasn't really that bad. I was just really blown away by the number of people in the dorm. My graduating class was 8 people. My high school had about 43 kids in it when I attended. So the fact that there are over that many kids in just the dorm is astonishing to me. It really was a great day though.

Monday, I innocently volunteered to help the guy's assistant dean open the dorm at 6:30am. What was supposed to be a 9 hour shift turned into an 18 hour shift. The only thing I remember from that day was meeting one of the "cowboys" at 6:30am when I was trying to figure out how to use the little allen wrench thingy to open the front doors. He walked in and I immediately stopped trying to open the doors and returned to the office to heal my wounded pride and regroup to do something I knew how to do. I remember sitting there thinking to myself, "This guy is nuts! I'm not going to make conversation with him. It's way too early in the morning for things like civility!" The rest of the day was a complete blur.

Tuesday, I woke up later than Monday which was good. I ate breakfast packed my gear and jumped on the bus to head up to Camp Ida-Haven. We were up there until Thursday. While we were there we did the SA Handshake which made the name learning thing even more intimidating. Thankfully I'm getting the hang of it now. We did activities like class scramble and a brush pile-up competition. (We still don't know who won that.) I had a blast hanging out and getting to know the kids. Went swimming with some of the senior girls, attempted to play volleyball, did a two-high with one of the RA's, ate 8 marshmallows and was on a super duper sugar high, and those are just a few of the highlights.

After we got back on Thursday afternoon I don't remember what I did. But Friday I definitely remember. (I would hope I remembered at least that far back.) On Friday, I was on duty from 3pm until the usual 11 or 11:30. I was supposed to wait up for a new student coming from about 12 hours away. At 5pm they said they were about 5 hours away; they must have been driving 30mph because they didn't get to GSA until 1:30 AM!!! I was so cranky that even though I had every right to be cranky, I felt bad. And then this kid wanted to talk to their family that brought them and I about lost is. Needless to say, I slept in on Sabbath morning. I skipped Sabbath School and got up just in time for church. I figured I should attend church since I was doing song service. After church and lunch I went back to bed and slept for another two and a half hours. I was very glad to have today (Sunday) off. 

Today, despite the fact that it was my day off, I took two of the volleyball girls shopping for gear. Then came back to the dorm and wrote a letter on post-its; a proud moment for me. Then I joined a group of fabulous women and went to see "The Help." Turns out one of the ladies knew me when I was a little girl. She used to clean my family's house way back in the day. I was shocked. It was a great evening spent with amazing women and a good way to start a brand new week here at GSA. Here goes WEEK FOUR in Idaho! I can't believe its almost been a month. Oh and I have a pet fish named Otis. k bye

-Ashley