New Beginnings, Ghosts and More

I realize that it has been some time since I last posted, but for good reason.

Music school finally kicked off in some official manner on Saturday. Orientation/registration happened for the students, etc. I have been working my tail off for the last weeks getting things ready, making phone calls, organizing things and such. Official lessons start NEXT week, not this coming Saturday. Why you ask? Because I, the youth band and Richard (boss) will all be in Orlando! We're playing at a conference for the United Methodist Church - they're having a conference for equipping youth leaders and the band is their music. Rock on. It's at a lovely hotel. So while we're off playing (and working).... school will be postponed. I'm quite excited! The unfortunate part is that it's looking like I'm not leaving Friday afternoon with the rest of the group. There are some younger band members that have to leave post Friday pm so i'll be waking UP at 2 am and going South by 3 am to pick them up so we can be on the road for Orlando by 4 am. My the fun we will have. My sleep schedule is going to be so messed up!

But I'm looking forward to it. :)

I have a new computer now, that I'm typing this on, so if there's an unusually high number of typos or such, please just accept them as adjustments to the new keyboard. My old one decided to sacrifice itself to the gods of laptop monitor failure, so here I am with Christmas in my lap.

The other big thing that happened this past week is that I spent 5 days at Ghost Ranch Retreat and Conference Center in Abiquiu, New Mexico. It's one of the big Presbyterian Church USA conference centers. It was very beautiful and fun. I went for the YAV orientation retreat. This was for all of the Nationally serving YAVs so I met all those serving around the country for this next year. It was 5 days of no communication with the outside world (so missing the debate totally sucked!) and forgetting to tell my mother so I had many messages like "hmm, well, I guess you're busy..." but also 5 days of really feeling connected and meeting tons of other people doing what I'm doing and so much more. Yay! Good times had by all.

I'm really enjoying my time here. Truly. And I'm learning everyday how tough living with 5 other people is, but it's really helping me learn to always think of others first. I like my housemates a lot still so when things go up or down in relationships, it's easy to remember the relationship is more important than whatever issue I/others may be having. So yay for this being a year of learning!

We talked about discernment during one of our days at Ghost Ranch and I found that a very helpful and enriching seminar. I'm hoping to put many of the things I learned into practice.

Well, I'm tired, and I'm starting to push my bedtime forward each day in prep for this weekend so I'm signing off.

Cheers!