Just a couple of rugged individuals...

My friend, Annie, has been bugging me for quite some time now to blog about our latest adventure. And so now that I have actually managed to find some free time in my life, I will do my best to give a brief overview of a week that I could never quite encapsulate in a small blog post.

For the second year in a row, I took part in an alternative Spring Break Trip with my school's Habitat for Humanity Club. We travel in two mini vans to Chatham County, North Carolina and spend a week doing whatever is asked of us to help families in need of affordable housing. This year, we painted. And painted. And painted. And then painted some more. In the course of a week, I along with eleven other college students and two Habitat volunteers managed to paint the exterior of two entire houses, do touch up work on one other house, and set up scaffolding on a fourth. I have discovered, along with the rest of my group, a newfound love for scaffolding. We love it - every part of it - from setting it up as high as we are allowed to climbing all over it to breaking it down. Scaffolding is the equivalent of an adult jungle gym on steroids. Due to our complete love and obsession with scaffolding, one of the girls on the trip named our group Team Spidermonkey and the following picture for me is the best way I can describe our trip.


GO TEAM SPIDERMONKEY!

One step at a time

Already I feel I am failing a little at completing my 101 list. I was supposed to blog every other week about how I am working through the list and life in general and already I've fallen behind. I feel as if some of the goals I have set for myself are a little unrealistic for how busy I am, but I'm going to try and stick with the plan.

On the brighter side, I have been able to cross another thing off my list. #11: Passing the HESI. On Friday, I took the HESI test which is basically a practice test for the NCLEX which I have to take in the spring in order to become a nurse. The only thing is its mandatory that we pass the practice test with an 850 which is equal to scoring better than 80% of nursing students that take the test. Its a pretty hard test, and I am happy to say that I have officially passed it and can now focus on lots of other important things I have going on in my life.

Even more exciting than passing the HESI is that I am moving even closer to going back to Camp Shawnee for camp again this summer (#33). I emailed back Kathy last week letting her know that I plan on going back to camp for the entire summer. June 15th cannot come soon enough.

I'm Just a Work in Progress

Yesterday, out of the blue, I decided that it was the perfect time to give up soda and coffee for 3 months (#1). I didn't do anything special the day before to make sure that I'd be able to survive the time. No 10 cans of Diet Coke to hold me over till June. No last Starbuck's run. I just stopped. My theory is that when the thought strikes me that the time is right, I should just go with it. I have a bad habit of procrastinating over things and overanalyzing everything, so starting randomly seems the best solution. As I am typing this I have realized that starting this now means it will be over by the time I head back to Kentucky which means I'll be allowed to drink Ale8. Another great reason why yesterday was the perfect day.

Jumping the gun...

As I stated in my first post, I started some of the tasks on my list before I officially started the list therefore I have some blogging to catch up on.

#94 - Take a yoga class

I along with several of my friends from school decided to try out a yoga class at a nearby studio. Bikram Yoga is not only a ninety minute long class of twenty-six different postures; it is also held in a 105 degree room. I was planning on posting pictures of the things on my list as I completed them, but I would not want a picture of me after one of these classes floating around on the web. I didn't know it was possible to sweat as much as I have during yoga. The first ten days was only ten dollars and I went four seperate times during that time period. Unfortunately, after the first ten days the price goes up to $15/class so as a poor college student I do not see it becoming part of my daily routine. Maybe I'll just do my own Bikram Yoga class in my dorm room...it gets hot enough on the third floor.

#87 - Send Brian the Sticky & the Brain picture

Words cannot express how much I love this picture. If you don't know Staci or Brian this picture may not make much sense, but to me it sums up their relationship quite nicely. And although Brian may try and claim that he felt insulted by this picture, I know that he secretly loves it.

#8 - Give up fried food for 3 months

Started on February 3rd and I honestly may decide to renew it for another 3 months afterwards. Tentative end date is May 3rd.

#81 - Send the Floyd House a care package

The Floyd House is a house that is owned by the Christian Appalachian Project in Martin, KY where a group of long-term volunteers live as a community. I spent a week there over winter break doing housing work with several of my good friends from camp this summer. Everyone at the house was extremely welcoming and made me feel completely at home for the entire time I spent with them. I also helped one of my very good friends, Staci aka Sticky, into the house to start her year of service with CAP and included her very own copy of the Sticky & the Brain masterpiece in it. And Sticky in her typical amazing style sent me back an amazing care package with not only several notes from awesome people, but also my own special pieces of Kentucky - rocks and a stick from Location X. It made my heart so happy.

#15 - Join a gym and go an average of 3x/wk for the duration of the list

This is one of the things on the list that can never be checked off until the last day. Or I guess you could say every day is a little portion of the check mark. I joined the local YMCA about a month ago and I absolutely love it. Only another 33 months to go. (If my math is right, which is not always guaranteed.)