Olympics, Facebook, Seating, and All the Things I Miss(ed)

I cannot describe how happy I am to have the internet in my apartment. I’ve been able to get online a bit at work-enough to check my email and do work. Facebook and most of the world, however, is blocked by the “high school students should not have access to this during the school day” internet blockers. I got the password at the end of last week to override the blocker, but I had a guilty conscience about using it too much. Plus, every time you changed a page in facebook, you’d have to put the password in again. 

I missed most of the Olympics, crazy amounts of news, and have felt paranoid about my finances all week (because I’m used to balancing my checkbook online all the time). 

BUT in the last two weeks I’ve done lots of big girl things-opened a new checking account, gotten my own tv and internet services, changed my electric, spent 2 hours waiting to get fingerprinted, worked 2 full weeks in my first real job, organized and decorated an apartment, and planned the first 2 months of school. 

I was a disastrous mess the few days after Heather, Sara, and Rachel left. We went to the one Church of Christ on the Sunday they left. It was awful. Seriously, it was so bad (but I hadn’t heard the “five steps of salvation” so many times all at once in quite a while, so at least that’s… something). Ask Rachel Craddock if you need confirmation. I just spent hours after school on my air mattress weeping, watching sad movies so that I wouldn’t feel so pathetic, and texting. I didn’t want to talk on the phone because I’m not good at being emotional and articulate at the same time. At all.I actually had to tell mom to force dad not to offer to bring me home any more. He has this habit of insistently offering to pack my stuff and move me home at any moment. I was afraid if he offered too much I’d take him up on it. 

Somewhere in the middle of the week-in the midst of planning, getting excited about the plans, driving to Charlotte, and running out of tears, I got more comfortable. By the time mom and dad got here I was much better. They might have preferred it if I was still weepy (to show that I miss them), but I was happy to be dried up. 

I miss home every day. Home, Michigan, camp, Europe (and the posse therein)-all the places that are home. Those are the places where I feel comfortable-I know my way around, I know my place in those worlds, I know how to be myself and be comfortable in the fact that I am loved and love in return. I’m surviving here just fine, but I think it’ll be a while until I thrive. I don’t see myself in a tier 1, a bizarre posse, a turtle family-whatever you want to call it… The staff at the school is great, but they have lives of their own. And they really don’t understand my humor most of the time. I think that they don’t really understand sarcasm here. That will be a problem for me.

A lot of my hesitancy to be home here probably has to do with the fact that, as a master of guarding myself, I am on the top of my game here. I think I’m hesitant to get comfortable and love it here because in my head I’m just here for the job, not the place. And I do think I will really love the job. I do so far. But at this point Wadesboro is REALLY just a place to write on my envelopes until something else comes along. Surprisingly, the accent gets on my nerves. Last night I was creeped out by my bedroom and had to sleep in the living room. I don’t want to change my license because I don’t want to claim North Carolina. But I have, after all, only been here for two weeks. And I have successfully taken out my own trash four times. 

Next week will be a bit crazy-insano. I work Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. (Everybody else works the whole week, but I got permission to leave.) Wednesday I leave after work to drive to West Virginia. Thursday morning I’ll leave with Jeff, Julie, Jake, & Carly to go to Michigan to hear Elie Wiesel speak at Rochester on Friday. We’ll hang out until 2ish or so on Friday and then drive back to West Virginia. Mom and dad have called fierce dibs on Saturday. I may or may not be spending the night (after m&d sleep) at Heather’s on Saturday with Sarey Mayle and possibly Anna and Rachel. Sunday we’ll be waking up supa-early to drive to Parkersburg. We’ll go to church at 36th Street (hope that’s not a surprise) and then have some lunch and possible bowling with our favorite Parkersburg kids and folks. I’ll then drive back to NoCo to go straight to bed and start school the very next day. Nothing like a whirlwind to get the blood pumping.

Wadesboro, NC

I found an apartment today. I neglected to take pictures. It’s a duplex…a brick house with some elderly people in the apartment next door who are very friendly and might make me cookies or something. The landlord mows the grass, there’s great parking, and I have a very non-creepy outbuilding (which I don’t need because I don’t have to have a lawnmower). The house has 2 spacious bedrooms, a huge kitchen & dining room, and a living room. Oh, and a bathroom. The second bedroom will probably serve as a library 90% of the time. 

After apartment looking, I met Chris, the principal of the school, and looked at the school. It is a small part of the bigger high school, and the students pretty much never associate with the rest of the school. It’s VERY elitist. Like, the most careful and purposeful elitism. He seems really great, and the school seems really great-right up my alley. But I can tell already that they are going to work my skinny white butt off. You know how, as above-average students in an average or below world, we don’t really have to work much to get good grades and demonstrate our above average abilities? The very nature of this school is to force kids like that to have to actually work. 

There is a Sonic right across the street. Apparently they make pretty frequent school trips to the Sonic. I’m a-okay with that. The school has a wild hog. The principal hunts wild hogs for fun. Apparently he’s caught around 400 in the last year. Now I’m a little paranoid that I’ll just run into one…since they’re apparently so prevalent. He caught one and built a pen for it, and it lives right in the school courtyard beside the greenhouse. Before he was the principal, Chris built a planetarium for the school. So we have our own hog and planetarium. 

I have to be down here August 4th. My summer has pretty much disappeared. I’ll be home this coming week, then gone a week for Naomi’s wedding, then gone a week for camp, then I will be packing up in the last week of July and moving first of August. Holythecrap.

After a whirlwind day of waking up at 5, driving 7 hours, touring the town with 2 different realtors, touring the school with the principal, and eating some steak, it’s off to sleep to drive back home tomorrow…