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we are leaving in one month and 6 days! that is crazy to think about. the closer our departure comes, the more frightened i become! please don't get me wrong...i am so excited about next year, we both are. but at the same time, leaving the world, all the comforts we know, the people we love...its kind of scary! although, at the same time, i am growing more and more excited! i saw that some teachers last year were able to paint their classrooms, and am really hoping i might be able to as well.

we are really close with support. we have been blown away by the generosity of people...if you are a supporter and our reading this blog, then please know how grateful we are to you!

right now, we have started to do the little things...like this upcoming week, we will sign up for our international health insurance. also, we will switch my car insurance to liability only. we still have to get yellow fever shots, and we will have to begin taking larium two weeks before we go. we are nomads for the time being, spending some time in jackson and some time in brookhaven.

please keep in your prayers zimbabwe...from what i understand, the goverment has said that no more aid can come in from other countries. so the starving people in zimbabwe will just continue to starve...and no one can bring anything in to help them! the situation in that country is just really bleak.

Laramie!

courtney's desk! how professional is she?!?

some monument thing at the college...i thought it was pretty cool...

downtown laramie...it is really really cute! it reminds me of brookhaven just much much higher!

pics taken while driving...isn't wyoming gorgeous!

a cute little church all alone on the road...

okay so i can't figure out blogspot at all! the post at the bottom is supposed to be here, and the pictures beneath it, but it won't let me copy and paste!

courtney's apartment!

the chemistry building!

the door to courtney's old office...before she had a research project.

her old desk...i like her new one better...
okay, um just random weird gloves you stick your hands into so that you don't get hurt by the scary chemicals you are about to use...

okay, so this post is looong overdue! this past spring break, i took a couple of days off and went to visit my WONDERFUL friend courtney! she is working on her masters in chemistry in laramie, wyoming. courtney and i first met at governers school the summer before 12th grade. we were friends there, but what really made us closer was living on the same floor of bacot freshman year at millsaps. we share a love for jane austen, harry potter, and, most importantly, anne of green gables!!! we have shared some funny and silly times, and some tough times. courtney is a super loving and loyal friend. when i transfered to ole miss, i was really lonely. she is the only person who made the trek up to oxford to see me, plus she braved the grove with me! anyway, now that i have probably embarrassed her, here are some pictures from the trip. although, you will soon see my big flaw...there aren't any pics of us! thats right, i suck at taking pictures of people. when i came back from africa, there were close to no pictures of the people i lived and worked with...

back from the beach...

bech and i just got back from a week in gulf shores, alabama. we had the best time. my whole extended family was there, minus katy (my sister who is working at the heritage foundation in dc this summer), my 23 year old cousin bryan (he works and lives in chicago), and my 18 year old cousin brett (he's teaching at a baseball camp, i think...something like that).

anyway, everyone else was there...we mostly just were lazy and hung out on the sand. my little cousins, joseph and logan were there, and they added energy to everything. my uncles built two amazing castles (this is a tradition for them)...mom took lots of pictures, so i'll try to get them from her and put some on here. while they were building the castles, we had about 15 to 20 kids just come up and join bob and mike while they were building. it was hilarious...the kids all started calling my uncle bob "uncle bob." we then referred to the group as uncle bobs daycare.

we played several board games, went shopping, etc. oh and we went to fairhope for an afternoon/night. the last time i went to fairhope was the day after i got back from malawi the fist time. it is the cutest little town. we called my friend bahen up, and he met us for dinner. then my family hung out at a friends familys pier...gorgeous!

so now we are in jackson for the week. we have been getting things organized in bechs room (the stuff that we need this summer we are keeping there). we are also planning a great dinner for bech's mom, miss karey. her birthday is thursday. last year, they were in italy for young life, for her birthday. so this year, we are creating an italian dinner. bech and hunter (bech's brother) are making homemade spaghetti...everything from the noodles to the sauce. i admit, i was skeptical, but they made a batch of homemade noodles last night and they were amazing! my course is dessert, so i have to start looking through recipes.

next post...wyoming!!!

okay, i have a confession to make...i have become, in the past two months, a blog addict. not that i post alot. i just read other peoples blogs. my favorite types to read are pregnant/babies blogs and missionary blogs. i am eager to have kids (don't worry, mom! i don't mean i am about to have kids!) and i am about to be a missionary. so sometimes when i read the blog of someone i might actually know, i click on the links to the side and read their friends blogs too. is this weird? bech thinks it might be a little bit, and sometimes i do too. but i mean, i'm not a creepy 50 year old man in a wife beater. i am a normal (well mostly), nice 22 year old girl. so maybe that makes my obsessive blog reading less creepy. plus i would like to believe that people put their blogs online so that others can and will read them!

anyway, now that my few readers know my secret, i'm going to add some pictures of oxford. bech and i are going to go on a photo safari sometime this week and take pictures of oxford, but i stole these off of google for the time being.

this is bottletree baker, probably my favorite place in oxford! bech and i used to eat here once a week. now that we live (or lived) out in the country, we didn't go as often. anyway, i get the honeycream danish usually and its AMAZING!


here is Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's house. spend a week in oxford, and you will soon realize that Faulkner is the pride of Oxford...well along with the Mannings. in fact, on a little side note, i'm pretty sure many people in Mississippi might think you are either the anti christ or at least not a christian if you don't like the Mannings. you might get away with saying something about Peyton (after all, he did chose not to go to Ole Miss for college), but don't you dare mention anything negative about Archie or Eli. in fact, the speed limit throughout the Ole Miss campus is 18...and why is that? because it's Archie's number...and i am not kidding!

a picture from the inside of square books. square books is this amazing independent bookstore. it is located on a prime corner of the oxford square. bech spends a lot of time (and some money too) here. i like to go here, but i actually don't buy books very often. i know thats strange, because, if you know me at all, you know that i read voraciously. but i love libraries and i love to borrow books from other people. i usually don't buy a book until i have read it two or three times and know that i want to always have it with me so i can reread it again.

one really great thing about square books is the balcony overlooking the square (in the picture below, you can see it on the left). you can sit up there, do homework, talk to people, etc. you can also enjoy a big scoop of ice cream for $1, sold inside. supposedly the coffee is great too, but i am not much of a coffee drinker. my dad is also a huge square books fan. well he just loves bookstores in general. but he really loves square books. my parents come up a bunch; they have season tickets to football and baseball games. its always fun to walk past square books with my dad and listen to whatever reason he will have for wanting to go in. he might say, "oh while ya'll look in that store, i'll just wait in square books." i love it...he isn't just finding a place to "wait" for us...he is really just dying inside to be in square books!

and of course, no post of oxford would be complete without a picture of the grove. i actually have some fun ones of family and friends in the grove, but not on my computer at work. this is a great picture of a typical table set up in the grove. no tailgating off of trucks for us!