Amigas y Playas

This weekend I went on a long-awaited road trip with my best friends from high school. So. Much. Fun. There's really nothing like getting together with three of your best friends and catching up. The best part was I feel like we just picked up where we left off like it was nothing, even though the four of us hadn't been together since last May when Melanie got married. Now we all live in different places, but I'm so thankful that we're able to make time for each other and make little trips like this happen. This was a lightning-fast Texas road trip:

Thursday afternoon: Kaycie and I drive from McKinney to Austin to meet Melanie, stopping for coffee in Waco along the way.

Thursday night: Funtimes in our great state's capitol!

Friday morning: We find out that Katie's flight out of DC is delayed and she'll miss her connection in Houston and won't be able to fly into Austin until later tonight. That will clearly infringe on our beach time so we decide to drive to Houston to pick her up.

Friday afternoon: We pick Katie up at the airport, eat lunch in Houston and drive down south to South Padre Island. Woohoo!!

Friday night: Funtimes hanging out on the beach, catching up and eating fried shrimp :)

Saturday morning: Sunrise on the beach!!! Beautiful! Then laying out, playing in the waves and soaking up the sun!

Saturday afternoon: More laying out, playing in the waves, and soaking up the sun!

Saturday night: Funtimes meandering around the island. Lots of little souvenir shops!

Sunday morning: More laying out, playing in the waves, and soaking up the sun (although with a bit more sun screen than the day before)!

Sunday afternoon: Try to rid ourselves of all the sand (impossible), last lunch on the island and start the drive back to Austin.

Sunday evening: SAN ANTONIO!!!! Since we had to drive through it anyway, we stopped for dinner in one of my favorite places in the world. Mexican food on the river walk and a trip to the Alamo. Funtimes.

Sunday night: Austin. More funtimes hanging out and not going to sleep :)

Monday morning: Take Katie to the airport ridiculously early, sleep a bit, then head back to Dallas (making sure to stop in Italy, of course!).

Monday afternoon: Back home in McKinney! What a wonderful trip with wonderful friends. And Kaycie's such a trooper for driving that whole way!

We spent a million hours in the car, but really when you're with your best friends you have a great time no matter what, and our time together and on the beach made it totally worth it!

Esperando....

Lately it seems like all I am doing is waiting. Esperando. Hasta que pase...algo. No sé qué. Waiting for something to happen.

It turns out this whole out-of-state teacher certification is not quite as easy as it seemed. This has to be the longest process ever. I "got" my job in March. Spring Break. Before any of the other interns. I was so happy, it seemed perfect. A gift from God. A sign that this was exactly where He wanted me. Teaching in a 4th grade bilingual class, Language Arts and Social Studies. Perfect. Then of course through April I was still waiting, anxious for something to be more official since they had offered me the job in the interview. And I finally got the call with the offer. So exciting! But of course it was pending TX certification. NBD, this happens all the time. Nothing to worry about. So graduation comes and goes and I'm excited to start my first year of teaching. But I have to wait for my degree to post to get my transcript. Then I have to wait for everyone else's degrees to post so that the U of A certification person can take them to Little Rock. Then I have to wait for the Arkansas Department of Education to approve my certificate. And I wait. And I wait. And I realize I need to pay $100 more. And I wait. And this whole time I'm in communication with the certification specialist for McKinney ISD, but the Texas Education Agency won't look at my credentials until I actually have some. So I wait. And then Arkansas approves my license! Hooray!!! There was much rejoicing!!!

But I still have to wait for the certificate to come in the mail. But time is limited so I have them send a letter to TEA verifying my license. And I send all the necessary documents and get my fingerprints done and pay hundreds of dollars that I don't have to get everything submitted.

And after months of worrying and waiting I felt like things were finally happening for real. But then I called TEA to see if they'd received everything and they told me that it could take 2 to 3 more weeks to even scan anything in to process. And now, you see, time is sensitive. New teachers start back August 13. Three weeks puts me at the end of july. I can't take any of the tests I need to take until I get my review of credentials back. And no one can hire me officially unless all of this happens before August. I talked to the McKinney certification specialist again and there's literally nothing we can do except hope and pray. And wait. And meanwhile the other interns have found jobs, are attending professional development, meeting with their teams and setting up their classrooms.

Here's the thing. I have never been good at waiting. I am an impatient person. So maybe God is trying to teach me to learn to wait on Him. But waiting and not worrying is hard. In my heart I believe that He wants me here for a reason. That all of this fell together so perfectly because it's His will. But now I'm starting to worry because I really don't know what happens if this falls through. Teaching is the only thing I've ever wanted to do. I feel like I've waited so long for this first year. For someone who's known  what they've wanted to do since kindergarten, 13 years of public education, 4 years of undergrad and a year of grad school is a really long time to wait. And here I am all ready to start and it's not happening. I think maybe my greatest fear right now is that this is going to fall through. And I don't know what I'll do. Logically I know that my identity is not only in teaching but in Christ. That there is more to life than a job. That, in the scheme of 18 years of waiting, one more isn't so bad. But in my heart, I'm terrified. I don't know what happens if this job falls through. If I can't do the only thing I've ever wanted to do. Even though I am still fully aware of how blessed I am and how full my life is, right now this seems like the worst thing in the world and the waiting is torture!

But apparently at this point it's out of my hands and try as I might I can't really do anything about it. My tears fall in vain. All I can do is hope. And pray. And wait. And know that God is good. Because He is, you know. Even if this doesn't work out, God is good.

Un Mundo Diferente

So I guess I never really finished writing about Japan, but suffice it to say it was the trip of a lifetime and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Now it seems summer is in full bloom. Since moving back home I have been flitting about on little weekend adventures such as watching the Arkansas super-regional baseball game in Waco, visiting Erin's awesome lake house in Hot Springs, weddings in Fayetteville and Six Flagstimes funtimes. But despite all these fun times on the weekends, I found myself really lacking with things to do during the week. There's always coffee and pool time with my wonderful Kaycie, but I spent a lot of time just hanging around the house watching How I Met Your Mother and playing Words with Friends. Then one night I was at The Porch, which is this ministry for people in their 20s and 30s and the pastor was talking about time being our most valuable asset. You can have all the money in the world and all the skills in the world but once you run out of time, that's it. And we are only on this earth for a little while. So he emphasized the importance of using our time intentionally and making the most of every opportunity we have to serve others and share our faith. And as much as I love words with friends, it doesn't exactly provide with much outside interaction. SO I started looking for places to volunteer, that way I would be able to interact with new people and serve my community and I came across the Samaritan Inn. The Samaritan Inn is the only homeless program in all of Collin County, which is a very, very large county in the Dallas metroplex. I had volunteered with them in high school and after attending an informational meeting this year, I knew that was where I wanted to spend my time. They not only provide homeless people with a place to stay and food to eat, but they provide budgeting and parenting classes along with GED courses and job training. They're really committed to helping people change their life style and become self-sufficient.

So although I would love to spend much more time at this wonderful organization, they've only needed me a couple of times a week. But each time I am happy to help and hope that in some small way I can make a difference. It has been a really eye-opening experience. Even in my own town, there's a whole other world out there. I have been very blessed to never know poverty, even through hard times. But interacting with people who are my age or younger, have multiple children already and are homeless, that's a whole other life. Then there are people who used to be lawyers or nurses and for whatever reason lost their jobs and can't make ends meet. Or people who are trying as hard as they can to escape generational poverty and have nowhere else to go. All in my city. So this experience continually reminds me of how much God has blessed my life and how much I can and should be doing to bless the lives of others. Sometimes I forget and only think about places like Africa or third-world countries or giant, impoverished cities in the U.S., but there is so much to do even in a suburban city like McKinney, TX. Our world is so hurt. The least I can do is volunteer my time to help fix it, bit by bit.