Tip: If you get lost in Oklahoma City while doing home visits because the internet directions you got off the internet are crap and you end up driving to the dodgy area of town, call the people you are visiting :) they know where they live.

Tip: If you are jumping off a 50 foot cliff into a lake, make sure that you put your together and your arms at your side so that you don't land face first into a lake and end up having to be rescued by your youth.

Tip: Even if you think you are messing up, you probably aren't doing as badly as you think you are.

Tip: Phone calls to lonely interns are great things.

As you can see, Life in intern-land is a continual learning experience for me. Good luck all you back to school people!

The REAL DEAL:

These past two weeks have been up and down here in OKC. I've been battling loneliness and I find that if I'm not doing something (ALL THE TIME) I'm not happy. I hope that this is just a phase and that once fall programming starts I'll get outta this funk. I also hope to start making new friends my age, which would make things THAT much better. Well off to work on stuff!

Have a great first week back to school all my Seward friends and Mike Hanel--I hope that it's not too hot and humid in STL when you start back

Life in the Real World

That's just a catchy title to get you to read this. :) Life in Oklahoma is going well. I'm learned a lot in a short amount of time (I sometimes feel like my head is spinning), but I couldn't have asked for a better place to learn.

Speaking of learning, living alone is a learning experience in itself. For instance: If I don't take out the trash, it will stink up my apartment. No one will pick up after me and no one will yell at me if there's a mess. There are pro's and con's. The Con is that it is lonely, though I have been blessed to have another intern nearby that I can hang out with and friends in Dallas a mere 3 hours away. God knew what he was doing when I was placed here.

Moving from college to career has been an interesting transition. For instance, my roommate in college is still referred to as my roommate (thouroughly confusing people) and I still think of NE as my home (though thats changing somewhat the longer I live here). The biggest change is that now I'm actually doing what I have learned how to do for 4 years. It's like a big final exam.

Well off to be tested some more (in more ways than just the metaphorical)

Well I'm back from the gathering, which was very good. I loved having the chance to hang out with my youth in such a concentrated amount of time. One of our youth leaders has the talent that he can rap VANILLA ICE (which came in handy and is quite entertaining). Now I'm back and in the middle of planning fall events. Life will busy... Allready my schedule is full for September and October and November is allready filling up! Whew!

Was able to hang out with my roomie from College Bethany this past sunday which was a lot of fun. It was nice to see someone familiar and share my world with them. More than anything, I want this place to be real to my friends. I want them to know the personalities of my youth and of my parents and not just have a 2 dimensional idea of what's going on here. I want to be able to say "so and so" and have everyone know about them... like it was at school...

Well, thats all I have for now... Am rockin' out to the fusebox CD I purchased at the gathering. CIAO :)