Wednesday, 17 October 2007

Fall Break... an adventure

I've never split one of Hope's short breaks between two places. It was interesting to do that, and although it sort of made it feel shorter because the long travel home was put into the middle of the break, I think it was well-spent.

Now we're even for birthdays! When I saw that Jeremy Camp was coming to Lansing in September, I really wanted to go and thought it was the perfect 22nd celebration. But as I wrote, part of the concert experience is going with friends. It's just an unwritten rule. I was sad Brandon couldn't come with us too, but I was glad Ross could come, share the fun, and that we could worship together with everyone else in the church.

Admittedly, my feelings were slightly divided over not going home right away. Student teaching is coming fast and my time up home is going to be very limited during that semester, and here I am cutting it shorter. But Ross insisted I join him for his own birthday celebration back in Coopersville. And so I did.

I extinguished some of my own guilt in doing so. Poor Ross had the rug pulled from under his feet (or would the expression be the wheel pulled from his hands?) when it comes to wheels and needed a lift home, so I felt a little better not going straight home. I brought birthday boy home along with myself and his mighty roommate, Travis. After hanging around for awhile, Matt arrived too, rounding out the Hope entourage. All we waited for was Josh and Maren.

After the final two guests arrived, I saw the full extent of the hospitality Ross' parents offer at the table. It literally never ended. We were sitting across from each other, but I think Travis and I also figuratively saw eye-to-eye on this one as they just kept sending the food down with the warning that dessert was also coming. The expression Travis had (a mixture of desire to enjoy the home cooking while it lasted and exasperation from being offered more when he was full) was priceless. But I understood completely. And then came the birthday "cake." I don't know if he asked for it, but Ross earned a cheesecake for his final teenage birthday, which I must admit is pretty sweet. Speaking of which, so was the cheesecake. It was delicious.

Family tradition then broke through: it was time to give Ross the birthday gifts, but instead of just handing them to him, the parents gave Ross a clue and sent us off looking for the gifts. A hunt! A scavenger hunt! We were sent literally all over his house looking for the clues and thinking out loud became our best way of figuring the clues out. Even though the stakes weren't exactly the same as a city being blown up or a global terrorist getting his hands on a weapon of mass destruction, I sort of felt like I was thinking with the mindset of Bruce Willis & Samuel L. Jackson solving Simon Gruber's riddles in Die Hard: With a Vengeance or Tom Cruise and his crew running around the world after Owen Davian in Mission: Impossible III. We actually found the presents too early (three clues remaining before we were supposed to find them), so oops on our part, I guess.

Maren, Travis, and Josh had to bid us farewell after Ross opened the gifts (a new acoustic guitar and a powerful amp to match). Whilst Matt brought Travis back to Holland, Ross and I tuned up the guitar and turned the living room into a room of music and began a night of singing. I also quieted Ross' longings at the Jeremy Camp concert with Jeremy Camp's latest CD. I must admit, I love those "I never forgot you wanted" presents. Matt returned later and by that point, we cut the noise and decided chit-chat was more appropriate. I wonder if we were wrong-though we made it past the tiredness "hump," it broke down into an almost-wrestling match after I gave Matt a very thorough Wet Willie. Ross managed to get a birthday wedgie after he and I tried a dogpile on Matt. We're so nice to each other.

Thankfully, we weren't awoken at an early hour, seeing as it was almost 2 when we went to sleep, but that unfortunately did mean we had to run out the door to get to lunch with Maren, Stacey, and Karna in Grand Rapids. I wish it could have lasted, but regrettably that was where we all had to part ways. But Fall Break continued on...

I hurried to Ludington and went to church. Yes, church, and not home. I was told the young adults were doing something I hadn't done in four years and jumped at the chance to try again: A CIDER PRESS!!!! The methods were a bit cruder-we used an honest-to-goodness garbage disposal (the kind that go under sinks) to shred the chopped apples to pulp and had presses that were a lot smaller. Jordan, who takes joy in history & all things old, was giddy at the chance to push the oversized bag into the press with his hands, releasing cider in the process. Yes, my brother actually pressed cider the oldest way possible-by hand. I stuck to the press, but I was amused by the irony of the Viking pressing cider by hand. We did some pumpkin carving with great hilarity as well, but I passed on that. I'd had enough after pressing cider and plenty in Coopersville/Grand Rapids that day. I did manage to get home for a short time, but Jordan yanked me out the door just as fast for dinner and then movie out at Sean's house. The hanging out was even better-with enough people, multiple threads of conversations were always running. Jordan, Sean, and Steve always ensure that madness is an integral part of these exchanges, and although most of the females are just weirded out or even sometimes repulsed by it, I found Rosanna's response amusing:

"I like hanging out with these guys. You have to pay attention."

Rosanna, if only you knew.

Sunday follows the usual prescription of church-lunch-sleep and whatnot and I already wrote about the teaching joys on Monday. Tuesday, I was sad to leave, but luckily I had some nice company for coming back to Hope. I gave Liz a ride back from Manistee to Holland with me, which was sweet. I like having company and I haven't been able to talk to Liz in a while, so that was good too.

Yay Fall Break.