Giant stores, Giant salads, Giant expectations!

[This was from last night.. I just didn't have internet to post it]

5-28-10
Today was a crazy day, but very good though. I started off going strong, and got up at 6 to workout. (yay me!) I biked for about 2 miles, and ran 2 on the elliptical. It killed me, but it also was refreshing in a way. Not to mention that I jumped in the pool for a few minutes after! Best way ever to cool off after a workout!

Afterwards I got cleaned up and finished packing before we headed down to breakfast. Man.. once again. Breakfast’s at the Hyatt are fantastic! Their fruit is so fresh and tasty! After breakfast we checked out, packed the cars and headed out..

At orientation we crawled onto the couches for our first meeting and talked about being stretched on the mission field with Crystal. After that we circled up with Jeff again to talk about expectations, both good and bad. He started out his session talking about William Carey (the guy) and used his “Expect great things from God, Attempt great things for God” quote.. I’ll admit, I kinda died a little inside. I can’t seem to get away from Carey. Ha! Nyways.. it was a good session none the less. Afterwards we got to meet our supervisors for a few minutes before going outside to talk about “girl issues” with Crystal. Then some tasty Chick-fil-e with our supervisors and then it was time to say goodbye and hit the road. YIKES!

We were both excited but very nervous still as we climbed in the van and headed downtown. I had a headache that was starting to form, but I didn’t have any ibuprofen because I forgot it at home. So needless to say I was pretty quiet as I took in the sights. When John said that we were practically in the shadows of the sky scrapers he wasn’t kidding! As we drove through the middle of all of the tall, downtown Phoenix buildings I could feel my stomach begin to ball up in knots. I was SO ready to just get there already! But it wasn’t long before we arrived. I recognized it immediately after all of my google maps stalking that I had done previously, but seeing in person is a whole other story!

When we were told that we were living in an apartment, I expected something the size of the Johnson apartments. Come to find out, this place is HUGE! John and Roxann told us that it had actually been two separate apartments that were combined into one.. so we each have our own bedrooms and bathrooms. I think this is the first time I’ve ever had my own bathroom except maybe for a few days while waiting on my roommates to move in or after they moved out this year. So weird! Then we also have a nice little kitchen nook and a HUGE living/dining room area. And if Marlee didn’t mind cooking in a closet, I suppose we could each have our own kitchens! HA! Open the “closet” behind the tv and voila! There’s another kitchen! Too funny. They closed it off when they took out the wall between the two apartments.

After John and Roxann left we proceeded to unpack and get settled in. We even got a chance to rest for a little while before we went grocery shopping. Roxann took us to Costco.. Good Gosh that place is HUMONGO!!! PLUS it is inside a mall. How wild is that?! I was blown away. Not to mention my headache had exploded into almost full-on migrane by that point, and my migrane pills that I finally ended up finding/taking hadn’t kicked in. But hey, let me tell you. You can find a lot of protein by just eating the samples around Costco! By the time we left I felt much better.

So then we came back and put our groceries away before heading off to meet up with John and Eddy for dinner at Oregano’s. Let me tell you.. I ordered the jr salad and it was bigger than any full size salad I have EVER had! And their pizza’s are huge too. I’m pretty sure they ordered a medium, and it was definitely the size of Mama’s big giant pizza’s she makes for the boys! It was crazy.. but super delish!

After dinner we went back to their house and watched Facing the Giants. I had never seen it before. I still kinda have the same feeling about it as I do towards the other movies by these people, but it was a good movie nonetheless. After the movie Eddy walked us home and we were ready to crash! After we spent some time praying for each other, I curled up and read for a while.. now… time to catch some zz’s! :-)

~Kat K.