Rocky

Fall is in the air, you know what that means... pumpkin spice scones, carrot soup with fresh baked bread, hot drinks, warm colors to balance out the crisp air and costume parties. But wait, why are the temperatures in the 90's? Last week here in Los Angeles it was chilly, I actually had to bundle up a bit. This week it is pretty hot. What in the world is going on here? I am still in limbo here in LA. Moved from KC about a week and a half ago but not really moved in though. Just kind of floating around. Learning the streets gradually. I know how to walk to the bank, walk to about a million coffeehouses, walk to the grocery, drive to the post office (well I think I do, I will test this out later on today), and to drive to campus. Oh and I parallel parked the other day, very seamless and fluid I might add which was a surprise because of my previous attempt to parallel park ended in a complete failure. Tonight we have a cookout and tomorrow our first service. I have my first Bible stud...

So the roomies and I decided to break in the new grill this weekend. We decided to make pork, mozzarella and bell pepper burgers with crispy fries and apple dumplings . In order to get started we needed to figure out the logistics of it all. Sara prepared the pork, mozzarella, onions and peppers. We tried out the coal starter thingy. Kind of dangerous, especially with fire coming out of the little holes on the side. We still need grill utensils but made do with what we had. The final product looked better than this, I still need to buy a camera tripod. This was the best angle I could get with the least amount of camera shake. It was pretty much amazing. You all should have a cookout with your roommates. Even if you don't have a roommate. Get one for the weekend so you can have grilling fun too. Since I am on the subject of "roomies" I thought I would end with part of one of my favorite poems by Rumi. I am so small I can barely be seen. How can this great love be inside of...

Where to begin? I let too much time go between my last post and now, so now I feel like I should do an update post. So sorry if this is boring. I will jazz it up with some pictures. Basically Saturday, September 11th we took off from Kansas City at 4am towards Los Angeles. We drove through Saturday stopping briefly in Miami, Oklahoma to pick up furniture for Winston and Kimi. We took advantage of the detour and visited Jori in OKC. (This is the lunch we had with Jori, next to my glorious hanukkah presents!) We finished the night in Tucamcari, New Mexico. Sunday we drove to Arizona and unsuccessfully saw the Grand Canyon (maybe more on that shameful story later). Monday we finished our journey in Los Angeles. Thanks to the help of Mitch, Sara, Jessica, Hannah and my mom, we were able to unpack the Uhaul. Dropped off the Uhaul the next morning (thank goodness, it was so stressful driving such a large vehicle on busy semi narrow streets that we were unfamiliar with). I swear Ikea is a toy...

In less than three hours we take off for sunny Los Angeles. I have spent the week packing and meeting with my lovelies and packing some more. I am almost finished, just a couple loose ends that need to be tied and we will be off! I am excited, nervous, happy, sad, tired and wired. Well I will talk to you soon... well maybe. I may want to get a bit settled before I get back to full swing again. Alright it is rest time. Ciao!

Everyone comments at least once in their life about their favorite smells like baking bread, freshly cut grass, rain, new books, etc. Not long ago I had a discussion with a friend who had asked me what my favorite sound was. It kind of caught me off guard because I have never really thought of favorite sounds, I have thought of sounds I dislike such as alarm clocks and the sound of our pet parakeets chipping away with their beaks on their kettle bone, but not really favorite sounds. I thought about it for a second and couldn't really come up with anything, because evidently music in general doesn't count. So I asked her to clarify what she was looking for and she said that her favorite sound was the sound of a basketball swishing through the hoop. All I could really think of was Examp's laugh (see Examp below, he is one of our Haitian friends in Fond Doux) and the sound of a deep soulful cello. Though today I heard and recognized what my favorite sound is. I had the privi...

Yesterday I spent the evening with Nae and Ami, cooking dinner and watching Amelie. Ami has an amazing garden full of delicious things like basil, eggplant, okra, kale, tomatoes and squash in the backyard. Nae and Ami are also vegetarian so we thought we would use the vegetables from the garden to make succotash. It was a modern spin on the classic dish. We mixed coriander, cilantro, salt, lime juice, peppers, sweet corn, tomatoes, onion, okra among other things. A little of this and a little of that and there you go, delicious. We served them with corn tortillas. The whole time we were making it I kept thinking of the cute Succotash building with the coral chandelier down by the plaza and how I would love to go in there sometime. Then my mind would jump to the Sylvester the Cat and how he would always say "sufferin succotash" which is evidently a "minced oath" to "suffering savior." Then my mind would hop over to the Food Network show, Dinner Impossibl...

This week has been a week of goodbyes. Next week will be a week of hellos. Transitioning from one to the other is definitely a bittersweet ordeal. Thursday I said goodbye to my lovely ladies in our twentysomethings ministry. We went to my favorite Thai place, Lulu's Thai Noodles (referred to in the previous post). Friday was my last day working at Overland Park First Assembly of God. I have gone there every day for ministry school and work for the past 4 years. That will definitely be a change of pace. Friday night I went to Santa Cali-Gon Days in Independence, MO with my brother and my sister-in-law in lieu of First Fridays. The night was rife with mullets, stone washed jeans and feasting. We started off with "gator on a stick," which was a bad idea and we needed something immediately to mask the gamey/fishy aftertaste. So naturally we gravitated to the turkey legs, followed that with peach cobbler, potato skins, cream soda and root beer (in cool sealable glass bottles),...