We set out from the church in Kittery, ME and called my Aunt Lynn to see when we could arrive at her house. She told us that we could take our time and whenever we got there would be great. I was grateful that we didn’t need to rush there, but I also didn’t want to dawdle too much because I wanted to have a decent amount of time to spend with her, since I had never met her before and she was really only available that one day. So we stopped at a neat “junk” store and a cute antique store, but I was against turning off the main road to try to find a view of the ocean and a restaurant, which I think angered Hannah a bit. When we got to Augusta we were supposed to call Lynn, but I didn’t have any reception on the phone. Luckily she had left a voicemail earlier, which I was able to listen to, and she gave more directions there.
When we arrived in New Sharon, we tried to call Lynn again, as instructed, but we still didn’t have reception. So instead of using the cell we stopped at the Sandy River General Store and used a payphone. When Lynn answered, she knew exactly where I was and said she would drive over and meet us so we could follow her back to her house. I wasn’t nervous really about meeting her...until Hannah started saying, “Is that her?” every time a new car came into view, which was quite a bit. I decided I wasn’t going to watch for Lynn, but Hannah kept her search going. I can’t even describe it well enough to accurately show how humorous the situation was. But trust me, it was pretty funny. Finally a car pulled in and we knew it was Lynn because she was staring at our car with a big grin on her face. Now, I was sitting in the passenger’s seat, and she pulled up on my side. All three of us got out of the cars, and Lynn gave me a quick hug and then hurried off to the driver’s side to see Hannah. I was kind of perplexed that she was so eager to hug Hannah, but I thought it was nice of her to make us both feel so welcome. When Lynn got to the back of our car, I think she finally looked at Hannah and realized that she had just hugged her niece, and wasn’t heading towards her. She paused a little bit and you could see the light going on in her mind. She still went to Hannah for a hug, but then came back to me for another hug. She said I looked just like my mom the last time she saw her (she was 17...so yeah, I still look like I’m 17...I know I’ll appreciate that when I’m older).
We caravanned back to Lynn’s home after our quick hellos, and there we met her dog, Chelsea, and had a delicious dinner. The three of us talked a lot that night, mostly about family and life [and how important it is to not hold onto anger, because it will destroy your relationships, especially with your kids, if I should have them]. I think talking with Lynn was really helpful for both Hannah and I, and I know it has encouraged Hannah to try to get in contact with her dad and try to mend that relationship. (Thanks, Lynn!!) We also found out that Lynn has a moose friend named Charlie who sometimes comes right up to her windows and drives Chelsea nuts. Hannah and I liked the sound of that, since we were determined to see a moose while in Maine, but unfortunately he didn’t come around while we were there.
That night we said our goodbyes to Lynn since she had school the next morning and we weren’t sure that we’d see her. But the next morning I woke up to hear footsteps in the house. I figured it had to have been noon, well past when Lynn was leaving, so I thought someone else was in the house. I got up, checked my watch, and discovered it was 10 minutes before Lynn had to leave. I went out to see her again and she left us directions to my Aunt Pat’s house and her son’s phone number, since he now lives in Washington too. I had a hard time parting with her, I think because we really only got to spend that one night hanging out. I’m pretty determined to make it back to Maine sometime soon, though, so I’ll get to see them all again.
Hannah got up right after Lynn left and we made breakfast. While I was doing dishes and Hannah was putting food away, she noticed that the light in the fridge was off just before the water in the sink stopped running. The electricity had gone out, and just before we were going to take showers. So what did we do? We went back to bed. Yup. For a few hours. When I finally woke up again I rolled towards Hannah and opened my eyes to find her staring at me. It was rather creepy. And funny.
The electricity was back on when we arose from our nap, so we got cleaned up, made some sandwiches, and packed ourselves back into the car.
God bless, over and out.
~M
Oh yeah, and if you want to look through more pics, go here and here.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Monday, November 2, 2009
½ Tank #26
We took the long(er) route to Massachusetts since we had to go through Rhode Island. On the way we stopped at a mailbox and stickered, of course.
When we finally made it to Greena’s, we took awhile to decide if the house we were circling was actually her house or not because it looked pretty dark and we couldn’t see a house number on it. But it was, and Greena welcomed us in warmly. We all sat in the living room chatting and looking at some pictures of her daughter’s wedding. Greena brought up, seemingly out of nowhere, the subject of speaking in tongues. She said that she felt very led to talk to us about it, which I didn’t really understand because I don’t know that Hannah and I have ever talked about it before. It has since proven to be kinda applicable, though, especially for Hannah. The topic of the Spirit and gifts has been coming up frequently for Hannah the past week and is getting her to think about the Spirit’s leadings in her life. She has become very focused using all of her skills and passions to glorify God and help others, and right now the vision she has is for a coffeehouse that will work with victims of sex trafficking, both as an employment opportunity and as a financial support of other related organizations. There is of course more to it than that, and you can ask her for more details if you’re interested, but I’m really excited for her to have the goal and can’t wait to see the idea become reality.
Anyways, back to Greena’s. Her husband, Ian, got home late from work, so we didn’t meet him until the next morning. He was super helpful, though, and kept finding maps of various places for us to take. Included in that was a map of Boston, which is where we were headed that day. So after a good breakfast and lot’s of advice from our hosts, we set off to meet on of Hannah’s “friends” who lives in Boston. I put that in quotes because I think she only met him once, maybe twice, this summer while she was living at home and he was working at the camp her brother went to. Yet Francois was kind enough to take the day off from studying and walk all over the city with us. On the way into the city we ran across a toll booth that we didn’t know about. And we weren’t really prepared with cash. And it was pouring to the point that we couldn’t see. So we accidentally pulled into a lane that was for EZ Pass holders only, and of course a car pulled up right behind us so we couldn’t back up, and we had to count out a bunch of change in order to pay for the toll. They probably weren’t too happy with us dumb Washingtonians that morning.
We saw all kinds of stuff that day in Boston -- some historical, some random, some beautiful, and some Cheers. Okay, that might qualify as the random, but I was excited. Except it didn’t really look much like the show did. I also learned that my roommate (hi Abby) was very right when she said that Boston was not laid out very well. I felt lost the whole time we were walking around. Some random highlights from the day: Francois looking right at Hannah and not recognizing her and walking away, seeing a tour guide dressed up in colonial attire and trying to convince his group to buy nuts from a vendor, seeing a car all the way from Idaho (which is also Francois’s home state) and watching them go the wrong way down a one-way street [sidenote: remember this car, it comes back later], saying goodbye to Francois, only to run into him again inside a Whole Foods that we said we weren’t going to go to, and getting back to the car and finding a parking ticket because apparently meters are only free on Sunday (it was Saturday).
After getting dinner really quick we set out to Salem in hopes of finding something really scary since it was so close to Halloween. Those hopes were crushed. Everything either cost money, or just wasn’t scary. We were highly disappointed. So once we were thoroughly soaked from the rain, we drove around a bit, stopped at a Dunkin Donuts, then took the very roundabout way back to Greena’s house. When we arrived there was lots of candy put out before us, so even though we had just had doughnuts, we snacked on that for a bit. Greena and Ian went to bed around midnight, and Hannah and I stayed up checking email and watching SNL. Which, since we were on the east coast, should have been live for real, instead of a delayed live. Or I might be wrong about that. Either way, it was really nice to just sit and watch tv, and luckily that episode was actually pretty funny. It’s nice of SNL to try something new. :)
The next morning we woke up early and followed Greena up into Maine where she goes to church. While there we met her daughter and one of her sons, both of whom were very nice. The church service itself was very interesting. They were pretty charismatic, and towards the end some members of the worship team started speaking in tongues. Hannah was really turned off by this, and I just wasn’t able to connect to God as well then. I know that everyone has different styles of worship, but that isn’t mine. I’m not a fan of people speaking in tongues when they’re in front of a group of people because I think that that should be a private thing between just one person and God, or that there needs to be an interpretation for what is being said. But that’s just my opinion and obviously not everyone is going to think the same way. And that’s good because I’m probably wrong. It was cool to see how much emotion some of the people there put into their worship, though.
God bless, over and out.
~M
When we finally made it to Greena’s, we took awhile to decide if the house we were circling was actually her house or not because it looked pretty dark and we couldn’t see a house number on it. But it was, and Greena welcomed us in warmly. We all sat in the living room chatting and looking at some pictures of her daughter’s wedding. Greena brought up, seemingly out of nowhere, the subject of speaking in tongues. She said that she felt very led to talk to us about it, which I didn’t really understand because I don’t know that Hannah and I have ever talked about it before. It has since proven to be kinda applicable, though, especially for Hannah. The topic of the Spirit and gifts has been coming up frequently for Hannah the past week and is getting her to think about the Spirit’s leadings in her life. She has become very focused using all of her skills and passions to glorify God and help others, and right now the vision she has is for a coffeehouse that will work with victims of sex trafficking, both as an employment opportunity and as a financial support of other related organizations. There is of course more to it than that, and you can ask her for more details if you’re interested, but I’m really excited for her to have the goal and can’t wait to see the idea become reality.
Anyways, back to Greena’s. Her husband, Ian, got home late from work, so we didn’t meet him until the next morning. He was super helpful, though, and kept finding maps of various places for us to take. Included in that was a map of Boston, which is where we were headed that day. So after a good breakfast and lot’s of advice from our hosts, we set off to meet on of Hannah’s “friends” who lives in Boston. I put that in quotes because I think she only met him once, maybe twice, this summer while she was living at home and he was working at the camp her brother went to. Yet Francois was kind enough to take the day off from studying and walk all over the city with us. On the way into the city we ran across a toll booth that we didn’t know about. And we weren’t really prepared with cash. And it was pouring to the point that we couldn’t see. So we accidentally pulled into a lane that was for EZ Pass holders only, and of course a car pulled up right behind us so we couldn’t back up, and we had to count out a bunch of change in order to pay for the toll. They probably weren’t too happy with us dumb Washingtonians that morning.
We saw all kinds of stuff that day in Boston -- some historical, some random, some beautiful, and some Cheers. Okay, that might qualify as the random, but I was excited. Except it didn’t really look much like the show did. I also learned that my roommate (hi Abby) was very right when she said that Boston was not laid out very well. I felt lost the whole time we were walking around. Some random highlights from the day: Francois looking right at Hannah and not recognizing her and walking away, seeing a tour guide dressed up in colonial attire and trying to convince his group to buy nuts from a vendor, seeing a car all the way from Idaho (which is also Francois’s home state) and watching them go the wrong way down a one-way street [sidenote: remember this car, it comes back later], saying goodbye to Francois, only to run into him again inside a Whole Foods that we said we weren’t going to go to, and getting back to the car and finding a parking ticket because apparently meters are only free on Sunday (it was Saturday).
After getting dinner really quick we set out to Salem in hopes of finding something really scary since it was so close to Halloween. Those hopes were crushed. Everything either cost money, or just wasn’t scary. We were highly disappointed. So once we were thoroughly soaked from the rain, we drove around a bit, stopped at a Dunkin Donuts, then took the very roundabout way back to Greena’s house. When we arrived there was lots of candy put out before us, so even though we had just had doughnuts, we snacked on that for a bit. Greena and Ian went to bed around midnight, and Hannah and I stayed up checking email and watching SNL. Which, since we were on the east coast, should have been live for real, instead of a delayed live. Or I might be wrong about that. Either way, it was really nice to just sit and watch tv, and luckily that episode was actually pretty funny. It’s nice of SNL to try something new. :)
The next morning we woke up early and followed Greena up into Maine where she goes to church. While there we met her daughter and one of her sons, both of whom were very nice. The church service itself was very interesting. They were pretty charismatic, and towards the end some members of the worship team started speaking in tongues. Hannah was really turned off by this, and I just wasn’t able to connect to God as well then. I know that everyone has different styles of worship, but that isn’t mine. I’m not a fan of people speaking in tongues when they’re in front of a group of people because I think that that should be a private thing between just one person and God, or that there needs to be an interpretation for what is being said. But that’s just my opinion and obviously not everyone is going to think the same way. And that’s good because I’m probably wrong. It was cool to see how much emotion some of the people there put into their worship, though.
God bless, over and out.
~M
½ Tank #25
Hannah and I said our goodbyes to Christina and Remy, and, before heading out of town, stopped at a cute little general store for breakfast.
Just before crossing into Connecticut, we came across a little town called “Sleepy Hollow.” You may have heard of it before. We drove around trying to find scary places from the movie, but found none. Eventually we stopped at the entrance to a cemetery where a kind couple gave us a map of where various characters from the story were buried. We located Washington Irving’s grave and called it good. Hannah also found an area marked out for “Knapps” on our way out.
We hit the road again and booked it to New Haven, CT. Scratch that. We tried to book it, but rush hour was against us. The reason New Haven was so important is that the non-profit Love146 is located there. What is Love146 you ask? It’s an organization that is focused on end child sex slavery and freeing as many victims as possible and helping them get their lives back together. And it’s Hannah’s dream. She’s very passionate about that issue, and would love nothing more than to work for/with Love146. She had also raised money for them this summer via a car wash, and we thought it’d be cool to hand deliver it while also giving Hannah the opportunity to chat with people who work there (i.e., schmooze for a job...haha). Well, unfortunately it was Friday and they closed at 4 p.m. so we didn’t make it in time and had to plan another time to stop by.
So instead we just headed straight through to Mystic, CT and Mystic Pizza, the setting of the movie with Julia Roberts that I’ve never seen. The pizza was delicious, though. While there we asked out waitress about places that might have free internet in the area since we wanted to look up hostels in Rhode Island. Adam & Christina had a family friend (Greena) in Boston who was going to let us stay with her, but we weren’t going to make it there early enough. A coffeeshop right near where we parked ended up being recommended, so we stopped in after pizza. We ended up not being able to connect to the internet for some reason, but while we tried we struck up a conversation with the two girls (Chelsea and Sherry) who were working. I believe Chelsea was from Cali originally, and Sherry had been in Mystic her whole life. They were super nice and very fun to talk to, and even looked up hostels for us when we couldn’t. I turned out that it was okay for us to show up at Greena’s late, though, since her husband, Ian, wouldn’t be home until around 11 p.m. or midnight anyways. So we said our goodbyes and hopped back in the car.
God bless, over and out.
~M
Just before crossing into Connecticut, we came across a little town called “Sleepy Hollow.” You may have heard of it before. We drove around trying to find scary places from the movie, but found none. Eventually we stopped at the entrance to a cemetery where a kind couple gave us a map of where various characters from the story were buried. We located Washington Irving’s grave and called it good. Hannah also found an area marked out for “Knapps” on our way out.
We hit the road again and booked it to New Haven, CT. Scratch that. We tried to book it, but rush hour was against us. The reason New Haven was so important is that the non-profit Love146 is located there. What is Love146 you ask? It’s an organization that is focused on end child sex slavery and freeing as many victims as possible and helping them get their lives back together. And it’s Hannah’s dream. She’s very passionate about that issue, and would love nothing more than to work for/with Love146. She had also raised money for them this summer via a car wash, and we thought it’d be cool to hand deliver it while also giving Hannah the opportunity to chat with people who work there (i.e., schmooze for a job...haha). Well, unfortunately it was Friday and they closed at 4 p.m. so we didn’t make it in time and had to plan another time to stop by.
So instead we just headed straight through to Mystic, CT and Mystic Pizza, the setting of the movie with Julia Roberts that I’ve never seen. The pizza was delicious, though. While there we asked out waitress about places that might have free internet in the area since we wanted to look up hostels in Rhode Island. Adam & Christina had a family friend (Greena) in Boston who was going to let us stay with her, but we weren’t going to make it there early enough. A coffeeshop right near where we parked ended up being recommended, so we stopped in after pizza. We ended up not being able to connect to the internet for some reason, but while we tried we struck up a conversation with the two girls (Chelsea and Sherry) who were working. I believe Chelsea was from Cali originally, and Sherry had been in Mystic her whole life. They were super nice and very fun to talk to, and even looked up hostels for us when we couldn’t. I turned out that it was okay for us to show up at Greena’s late, though, since her husband, Ian, wouldn’t be home until around 11 p.m. or midnight anyways. So we said our goodbyes and hopped back in the car.
God bless, over and out.
~M
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