Coordinatiors

YAY!! for camp! I have just finished coordinationr tranining, which has been lots of fun! I have had a lot of fun making up crafts and preparing for my campers to come! I can hardly wait for them to come, we have staff coming on sunday, i am excited for that too. I have made up some doorhangers and cardstock boxes. I also got to buy 2000 googly eyes, they have eye shodow coloured pupils and black and white. I also bought kooshball paint rings, you can put them on your fingers and then dip them in pint and then roll them on a paper. And we are making Reformed rossarys for lodge and wilderness camp. Anwyaz, i am home for the weekend and i get to go to my sister's dance recitle tonight! Anywaz, that is all that i have to say!
have a good one!

Here are the pictures of the wedding:

Catherine and Me before she became Mrs. Vis (she made her dress and her mum made mine)

The best man, James (timothy's cousin) and I

The whole wedding party, including the minister (aka, my boss)

Our bouquets

THis has really nothing to do with the wedding, but on our way to Grand Junction, we saw this sign, so we stoped and really, they were the best restrooms on our whole trip. It was like each one had its own indiviual stall with indiviuals sink. But gas was expensive here, so we only stopped to pee.

Well, that is all for now, in an hour i head to Inspiration HIlls to begin planning for a summer of fun! I hope i get more excited. I love camp, but this year it seems like a bit more of a job. Oh well, God is ever present, so His name will be proclaimed. Cheers!

weddings!

This weekend was crazy wonderful! I loved it! I learned weddings are lots of work, and lots of people, and very exciting! I can't wait to post some pictures of the wedding, but i have having technical difficulties with my camera, my computer and the internet!:)
Anywaz, Catherine's family was soo welcoming, i have never ever felt so immeditally loved and welcomed into a family in my whole life! All of them, even the extended family, just adopted me! i love that!
Just a few highlights:

• stoping in Denver twice and vistiing with two differnt families who were extremely hopsitable and fed us lots of good food
• the trip not costing more then $150 for everything!
• seeing my good friend (catherine) looking beautiful in her homemade wedding dress
• seeing how happy Timothy and Catheirne were
• meeting the families of the bride and groom
• decorating a hideous basement and making it look like you steped into a garden (for little cost) --i think i need to have my own decorating show:)
• enjoying time with friends and learning lots of things
• seeing God's majesty and artistic beauty in the mountians

On that last one i think it is intresting that God uses complemetry colours in most of creation. have a look sometime, it amazed me in the blue mountians, it amazed me in the Rockies, pretty much it amazes me everywhere i look. What an awsome creator!

Well, this ends this post, but pictures will be coming soon!

tommorow creaps in petty pace...

Tommorow i leave for colorado! I am soo excited!! I cannot wait. I did not get to Sioux falls, got as far as camp, stayed for a while, turned around and came home, i just had to many errands to run. So that is over, but i really have nothing post worthy, but i found some old pics on my Dordt account and wanted to post them!:)

Building a fort in the Eckardt.
This picture is small, i think it is lauren, josh, mike, and maybe shannon? Ahh, one of my favorites, my boys dance class, i forget who is even in this picture, ok i remeber, but in an effort to not embares them to much i won't say.


making a fort in the Eckardt Lounge, acutally think we slept in this fort, if my memory is correct.





Ann and Jon, dressed up for something!:)







well, just a little flash back to a time gone by.

Teaching...

So I have had quite an amazing morning. I went to go meet with my supervising teacher this morning to talk about next fall and it was amazing! She seems so nice, i think we will get a long great! Apparentlay, there is no curriculum, i just have to make up my own.. this is a little scary. Anywaz, after chatting to her and seeing what end of the year grade oners are doing i headed into a kindgargarten classroom (my mum was subbing there) and i visited with some of my potneially future students. There is a student who i will have who is hearing impaired. She has a cochealer implant and she she can hear and speak, but in her goals she is supposed to have a full time aid. unfoutnrulaly her aid is leaving at the end of the year. SO that means that i maynot have a full time aid in my classroom, which means i better brush up on some of my sign language. crazy! Anwyaz, it was so fun to see these kids, it got me really excited to teach! which is good, i was nervous i might not be a good teacher or wanting to teach, so it was very encourageing.
The first graders were so funny, they all had to give me a back massage!:) I thought that was hillarious. I get hugs from kids, but not usally backrubs. Anwayz, they were adoarble! THey all wanted to know if i was going to be there teacher, so i took that as a good sign. I could see some potentail problems with dissipline, it is just not my strong suit. maybe it will come. And, get this, i have to teach handwritting this year in grade one!:) Good thing i have been practicing, but they use the kind with the tails, guess i better get a new work book!:) Oh well that is about all, i head out to Catherine's wedding in a couple of days! I am soo excited! tommorow it is back to sioux falls, i am planning on going to that tea/coffee shop again.

ahh.. "the city"

Today i got up and went to Sioux Falls for a dr.s appointment, all looks good. But what followed that was even better.
I dropped my mum off with her fiance and then headed down town on the way i stopped at the health food store, picked up cous-cous and dried friut (no perservatives, so i can eat it with out problems). Then to the bread store next door to pick up my favourite breakfest, a cinnamon scone.
THen the down town called my name, "Rachel, Rachel, Rachel...." So i followed that call, how could i not. I wandered down the road the wrong way, then the right way and found myself giving up on driving and parking, hopeing i was in the right place. So i got out of the car and started walking, the sun was beating down on my hair covered sholders and i could see dark clouds looming in the distance. The sky got dark, the wind blew, i got cold and found my self in a bead shop. Where thousands of beads met my gaze, blue ones, pink ones, black, red, white, long, fat, skinny, short, decorated, indian, african, all sorts each on with a different price. I love beads and decided to make my sister a necklace and that was an adventure in and of itself. Then i looked out side the drops poured like magic on the sidewalk, i knew i could not dodge them. So i stayed in the spring warmth of the bead store. As the rain passed i ran across to a coffee shop across the street. I had not been there before and in hopes of having coffee again later i ordered a small cup of tea. Now, small apperantly is relative to this lady becuase she gave me a large cup and a french press with loose leaf tea in it and insructed me to press it down in about five minutes. This french press yeiled me three cups of delicious tea. BUt i was to full from lunch to drink it all so i brought it up to her, she gave me a take home cup.
After this tea experiance i decided to fill up the meter and wander in and out of as many shops as i could in an hour. there are some delightful little shops, shoe shops, coffee shops, cafes, books stores, and a whole store devoted to the irish. THis was an intresting store. One of my favoriet things about small stores in small downtowns is that people are lonely and bored in there and they want to have a chat, which i am always open for. So i began to have a chat with the man (55) in the irish shop and he told me a fairy tale about witches dodging rain drops, told me i was beautiful and i fled. Well, just goes to show it is wiser to talk with the shop owners of the female variety. Needless to say my meter was up so i left the down town. now the sun was shinning again and having bought two new childrens books i headed to starbucks to get a mocha and read my books out side. Now i am going to make pasta and wrinkly mushrooms in a butter for dinner. Hmm, i just love being in little shops and talking to shop owners, it takes me back to the days of the Bitch and Stich knitting store and that delightful couple....

Breathe in...Breathe out

So a couple of days ago, i graduated from college, but not really. I have to student teach, but the summer awaits me. Yesterday after i bid goodbye to my roomates and my close friends until a time when i might see them again, i felt as though i had been run over by a truck. No one was in my house and i was very very lonley, it was a sad day.
I was truly surprised at how sad i became last night after bidding farewell to my roomates. They had told me when i left OZ that i would be sad and maybe not even feel like doing anything and that i would have a hard time adjusting back into America and that i would have a hard time learning to adjust back to my life. ANd i was prepared, and found none of that to be horribly true, i cried little on that time. But no one warned me how much harder it would be for me to leave college, and come home. I was under the impression that home was a stable place that didn't change, and so i would be good to be there. But then i remerered that although my family has changed over the last couple of years, no one told me that the changes would all of the sudden hit me like a ton of bricks. My family has changed so much. I feel at home here, but everything is so differnet, i am really getting ready to leave again. I guess i have a harder time with change then i thought. But one thing that i was thinking about in conjunction with leaving Oz and leaving college, was that although i hated leaving australia the relationships there were not as deep as my relationships with my college friends, making it easier to leave. and from the time i left, i have had ideas of how to get back, but i have no ideas how to encounter the college friends again. hmmm. what an intresting couple of days. Now if only my stomach would stop hating me, we would be in great shape!
But today was another day and i can rejoice in the sunny weather and go for walks and practice my hand writting, pack, pack and pack some more, and watch cheap movies. I will have to get in contact with friends, or i may bore myself into a hole.

Sun, Sun, Mr. Golden Sun..

HORRAY!!! today is sunny and supposed to be very very warm! i can hardly wait to go outside! unfourtunaly, i have alot of things to do today and i am supposed to clean with my roomates. blah! but i am very excited that the sun is shinning and that i only have one exam left tommorow!! and my granparents came last night! I get to have coffee with them today! I am very very excited!! Anywaz, it will be a wonderful day!