The Girl's Blogs

I'm finally not so sick

Mon, 21 Jul 2008 01:58:18 -0500

Today is the first day I haven’t felt so sick....I mean I still have a cough, but at least no headache. Thank you to everyone who has been praying for me. I haven’t done much (so there hasn’t much to blog about) :-) but yesterday I kayaked for about an hour...it was so awesome.
This morning because I felt so amazing without a headache, I decided to go for a hike with about 8 other people (including Mom and Matt). We walked for 1 1/2 hours up a very steep “mountain”. The view was amazing! And except for coughing and sniffing I felt as good as new! Yayah!!!!!
I seriously can not wait to be home!

Fiji!

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 02:49:00 -0500

Well... we just finished dinner at some restaurant across the street. It was by far the best meal we have had in Fiji : ) although I must say, they need to work on their garlic bread but besides that, it was good. Anyway... today was pretty much spent either at the pool or walking around downtown (which is like 200 meters away). It’s kinda... interesting, getting across the streets. They have no ped. x-ing’s so everyone just runs if they think they can make it between cars. : )
The drivers just honk... it’s fun. Tomorrow morning we leave for the island! It’s called Octopus Resort and we’ll be there till Monday afternoon... interesting thought,
we leave Fiji on Monday at 10 pm and arrive in SA Monday at 8:35 pm... time change is a weird thing huh? : ) anyway, where we are staying right now is really nice. The pool is really pretty except the water is like ice cold so me and Sarah only swam in it for like 3 minutes then we just laid out (still hoping for that tan... even if it’s only 1 shade darker than the ghostly white I am now lol : ) but it’s nice and out the front of the hotel you look out over the water, and see little islands and boats and stuff, it’s pretty. Can’t wait to get home! We really miss everyone a lot.
Well... got to go! Hopefully we’ll be able to write soon! Love y’all!!! -Rachel

The day after yesterday (i.e. TODAY)

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 00:16:05 -0500

Hey y’all!!! We really miss everyone, and can’t wait to see y’all!
We are so excited about what God has done (and is doing) in us while we’ve been here.
We feel like God is instilling in us some pretty cool stuff we are praying about...we’ll see what happens. =)
So anyway.... now that conference is over we are pretty bored. Our days consist of eating, sleeping and yeah... that’s about it :-) Dad and Mom met some people at church last week that we are going to go to the blue mountains with tomorrow if it’s not to cold and rainy. There names are Sheryl and Lucas and seem to be really awesome people! So we are looking forward to that.
We are REALLY excited about going to Fiji... I hear the food is going to be much better this year, no more of those dried eggplant and tomato sandwiches... so gross :-) So yeah, that’s exciting.
We leave for fiji on Wednesday (Tuesday for you guys) and then we finally get back home on Monday! (at 8:35 :-) How exciting!! Sorry we haven’t written very many blogs at all. A wi-fi connection (that actually works) is very hard to come by. And I honestly doubt we will get any type of connection in fiji... but we will try : )
Oh, and by the way, the new Hillsong CD is an absolute must-have, it is VERY good!
I (rachel) was very excited to finally get my electric blanket to work... I had been wondering why it wasn’t very warm till after 4 nights I finally realized you have to turn it on... how strange j/k
anyway... it really hasn’t been to cold here. It feels REALLY good during the days, so that’s been nice. Dad’s out shopping right now. Sarah and I sent him away with an assignment to get some Lift, pretty much the best drink in the world, it’s like carbonated lemonade... sooo good : ) and some tim-tams... those are the greatest lol. Ugh... this is really annoying, Wendy is sitting across the table groaning. She does it every time she coughs... or just randomly (and she is random so that is all the time) so pretty much all we hear is “ahhhhhhh uhhhhhhhh ohhhhohohohagh aaaghaagg ohohohohhhaoghuoahgioghaooaoghuo”... yup... it’s annoying. Anyway, that’s my random thought for the day. We found out... oh wait! she just coughed! “ohaghuhgohohh” alright she’s done... anyway...as I was about to say, we found out last night that the son of the owners of the place we are staying has a reputation.... for, oh you know, taking things that don’t belong to him. Really comforting when the lock on your door doesn’t work, but as far as we can tell nothing has been taken, so that’s good. Well, me and Sarah have enjoyed chatting, but we have to get back to our incredibly busy life of boredom... please email us!!! We have gotten nothing and are very heart broken. lol... oh and do pray for Wendy’s coughing... that would be grand lol. Adios!!!
Love - Sare, elle, (and wendolyn)

Conference

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 00:09:50 -0500

So it’s the last day of conference, and it has been AWESOME. We have been so blessed by the speakers and bands that have been here this week. This week has been really motivating and inspiring to us. We have learned so much!! Still trying to process it all which is why it’s a great thing they have all the CDs and DVDs that we can take home : )
Just really been learning about God’s heart and His desire for justice.

Our VERY humble abode...

Sat, 5 Jul 2008 09:11:51 -0500

So we drive up to the place we’re supposed to stay last night, after a very long cramped trip in our van (please refer to previous blog). There were a number of different cabins and RV’s we passed. At this point we have pretty much no idea which one we’re staying in or what it looks like, just that we’re looking for number 22 and 23. We drove past some very shady looking metal shacks, while trying to find our cabins. As we passed those shacks we commented on how nasty they looked and how horrible it would be if we had to stay there, (don’t even think about trying to predict this ending) :-) Then mom says “I think those were ours”...and dad says “no that’s not ours” ...and then Sarah says “oh good Dad, cause that was about to make me cry” ...and then mom says “OH WAIT! Those were number 22 and 23!!!” and everyone goes “WHAT” ...and dad says “OH MY GOODNESS!!!!!”
Then we go inside and OMG, the smell... We prolly need not say more....but when has that ever stopped us....we will say more.
The smell as our mom puts it, was like a very bad nursing home, Rachel thinks it smelled like stale urine (how would she know what that smelled like?) Wendy just thinks it smelled. Phil loved the black and white 8in screen “Television” complete with antenna, tuner/dial looking thing, and snowy screen. Sarah was to busy crying to comment. :-)
Then everyone started laughing hysterically, so much that we were squeaking and squealing and shaking from the cold (cause there was no heat), and tears were pouring down our faces (okay so that one was an exaggeration but we were definitely squeaking). :-)
This story does have a wonderful ending. After looking at a number of different options, which had the same smell and lack of heat. The owners (who realized they were about to lose our business) took us to one last option... which happened to turn out to be the best one.
It had heat.
It did not smell.
Therefore, we like.
The girls (us) :-) are staying in one, and of course that means everyone else gets the other one. (duh)

Going, goin, GONE!!!

Fri, 4 Jul 2008 19:45:54 -0500

So we’re sitting here in our cabin. Rachel is jet-lagged, Wendy thinks coffee is one of God’s best creations, and Sarah thinks tissues definitely have a right to compete with the coffee. :-)
So what else is there to say....hmmm...

We’ll have to pause a minute cause Sarah is blowing her nose...again.

Okay, sorry for the delay, we’re back.

In no particular order here are some thoughts we have about our trip so far.

Airplane food is horrible!
I felt like I was eating Barbie says Rachel, cause it was so plastic.
48 hours without good food was no fun.
Sarah says food is what life is about, and without good food, why live.
Wendy is tired of the complaining that is going on about the food and will attempt to lighten the mood.
So while we were in LA we went to this awesome Burger joint called “Carl Jr’s”. It had the most amazing burgers we have ever tasted...if your ever in LA definitely make it a priority to eat there. (btw, Sarah does say she has had better, but I think she just likes to argue...hehe...jk)
We would also like to say that we were not hyper in the hotel room like my mom wrote in her blog. (Well maybe Sarah was...but she says it was Derrick that was hyper...hmmm.) Rachel and Wendy at least acted civilized. (well according to Sarah they were boring...again, hmmm)
The place we’re currently staying is about a 1 1/2 hour drive from where we want to be...but it has a heater so we’re happy, cause having a heater is not very common here in “downunder-ville”
Domino’s pizza (in australia) has really great pepperoni and Sarah had a dream that she thanked the lady who made it for making the pepperoni so amazing and crispy (...Wendy is not sure that a lady made it...most pizza makers are guys...but I guess if Sarah dreamt it then that makes it true) :-)
Rachel would now like to make a few comments about Dad’s driving.... Oncoming traffic is on the right...Dad likes to drive on the right too...he should drive on the left.

one of the funniest moments of driving was when we left the car rental place...dad inadvertently turned on the back windshield wipers, and because it wasn’t raining they were making lots of noise. So dad, needing some quiet, calls back “WHO’S DOING THAT”, “STOP IT”. Of course we all start laughing cause we knew it was the windshield wipers. It was fun to give him a hard time about it. :-)

Prolly the most entertaining thing so far was watching Matt eat pizza while he was asleep. Wish that we had a video to show y’all, but all we have is a pic. (see the “photo” page)
Our rental van was a very nice size, except when you have 9 bags, 3 of which are maximum size (not Wendys), :-) 1 or 2 carry-ons each and 8 people. The very back seat was pulled all the way up to the seat in front of it, leaving no room for legs. Matt, Derrick and Sarah sat there. The next seat was pulled up almost all the way to the front seats but left just enough room for Rachel’s long legs. :-) Of course the parental unit got all the leg room they could ever want. :-) Because of traffic the drive turned into about 2 hours. Not much fun when your cramped like that.