Thanksgiving Weekend

I had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend. I was blessed with the opportunity to see many wonderful people. I drove down to Pasadena on Wednesday night and visited Greg. I hadn't seen him since the last day of LAUP (August 7th). I got to see his living situation, as well as meet some of the kids that frequent his apartment. While I was there I helped Greg make a batch of lumpy mashed potatoes. I'm sure Greg could have made mashed potatoes on his own, but they probably wouldn't have been lumpy without my help (Sorry about that Greg).

On Thursday afternoon I headed over to Jason's house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was a pretty large gathering of people, as well as a large gathering of food. I really couldn't have hoped for a better feast.

Thursday evening I headed down to Irvine to meet my aunt Mari and cousin Karin. They were down there for Karin's team to play in a soccer tournament. We were meeting at the Marriott in Irvine, where we would stay for Thursday and Friday nights. We discovered that Irvine has at least three Marriott locations within a six block radius. I ended up at one of them, while Mari and Karin ended up at a different one. We discovered this when Mari and I were both in the lobby, but couldn't find each other. Even with cell phones it took us a while to get it all figured out. I can't imagine what sort of nightmare it would have been without each of us having a cell phone.

We spent Friday at the soccer game. The first game ended in a 0-0 tie. It was a lot of fun to see Karin out there playing. She really enjoys playing soccer, and seems to be pretty good at it. Unfortunately, she rolled her ankle toward the end of that game and had to come out. She kept ice on it and taped it up before warming up for the second game. She returned from warm-ups early, and was fighting to hold back tears. She wasn't going to be playing in the second game. I felt really bad for her, and wished that I could somehow fix her ankle. The upside was that I got to sit and talk with her during the game. She shared a lot of stuff about her team with me that I probably never would have known otherwise. This game ended in a high scoring 1-1 tie.

The three of us spent the evening together just relaxing. I really enjoyed getting to spend time with them, something I don't get to do enough of. Karin will be thirteen in January, and it is wonderful to see her growing into a woman. Obviously she isn't all the way there yet, but she isn't the kid she used to be either.

Saturday morning I parted ways with Mari and Karin. I had coffee with Diana (One of the four most amazing women on my LAUP team) before heading out of Irvine. It was so great to see her again. We talked about all sorts of things, and probably could have talked all day. Instead, due to the limitations of reality, we cut it short after two hours.

I traveled to Claremont to visit Lydia and hear about her experience in Calcutta this summer. She wasn't there when I arrived (probably my fault for never giving her an exact time to expect me), so I got to catch up with John (Batman) for a bit. She did return home eventually, so I got to listen about all sorts of stuff from her trip. I won't go into detail about all of the stuff she told me, but it did reinforce for me how difficult my four months in Calcutta will be, as well as how much God will be working in me during my time there.

After that I headed out to Pasadena again. I visited Sergio at Harambee for an hour or two, then visited Nate Leung in Eagle Rock for another three or four hours. Eventually I drove back up to Santa Barbara.

Well, that's the condensed version of my Thanksgiving weekend. It certainly left me with a lot of people to be thankful for. To everyone that I got to see, I really enjoyed that time. You are all such a blessing to me.