Home again...sort of

The day we left Colorado, it started raining.
Like serious "the gods are angry" type rain.
Then we get home to Washington...and the weather's been insanely nice.
Not to mention HOT.
90 degrees?
How very Twilight Zone.
It's good to be home again.
I thought things would be different when I got home.
I'm not sure how I thought they would be different, but when I got back, everything was back to normal.
I sort of just..."fit" right back in.
I'd kind of wanted to be different somehow, like things just "weren't the same".
But then I'd be Christy Miller.
And I praise God every day that I'm not.
And that was a little...stupid, self-righteous, who knows...of me to think in the first place.
Oh well. Life goes on. And I have changed. At least a little bit.
It was a great trip.
We have a *cough* beautifully written team blog and a couple of videos.
My dad was worried watching the videos that I wasn't having a good time, because I look miserable in the videos.
But no. I was actually completely enjoying myself. I just take bad pictures.
The VBS part was great. The highest number of kids was 42 and on the last day we had 39, and at least 15 were saved!
2 out of 4 brothers in one family were saved, and 3 other kids (all in the same family) got saved and were so excited that they brought their jr. high brother.
He completely hated the VBS, but at least he got to hear the message.
And the jr. high group hadn't had kids for the first three days, so it was nice for them to finally have at least one.
The first graders were squirrelly, but so cute. One of the Australians was the youngest of 4 brothers and knew how to get his way oh so effectively. He had the most evil smile.
Another would tag-team with his younger brother and cause chaos.
But he got saved and ended up being a total sweetie. On the last day, during the carnival, it was the happiest anyone had ever seen him.
Probably because he won an ungodly amount of candy.
But still.
Ew, when Tootsie Pops lay in the sun for a long time, they cease to be delicious.
The team bonded, it was all good.
But really, I honestly feel closer to these people and I made a lot of new friends.
Woo, I sound like a kindergartener.
The encouragement board was my favorite part. I loved getting notes. One of the leaders wrote me the nicest note.
Ugh, there were a couple low points. One of the leaders was kind of a jerk.
Scratch "kind of". He was a jerk.
He was like an overgrown frat boy. He'd act like an immature loser half the time, and then suddenly expect you to give him respect. And he'd do stuff we weren't supposed to do, yet when we pulled crap like that, he'd INSULT us to no end.
Or maybe that was just me. Ugh. He was such a loser.
And then one of my teammates and I didn't get along. It was a matter of misunderstandings and differences in personality, but when I finally started trying to make amends, he LITERALLY turned his back on me. Funnily enough, we kept getting thrown together in EVERYTHING; family groups, VBS, etc. So I think we should work it out. But I don't know how he feels about it.
And, frankly, I no longer care.
Wooooooooooooooo, anyway.
There was delicious food every morning from the dream-crushing cooks, and hot showers in the CCU locker room.
CCU sounds like a cool school.
They gave us goodie bags full of college-y stuff.
I got a mug, a frisbee, a CD, and college information! Yes! For sure!
And the guy who gave us the spiel about the school was so darn convincing.
Hmm...Christian school...never really thought about that before.
Denver itself is great. Outdoor malls? What are those? Now I know! We found an epic indie bookstore, too. It was GREAT!
And there was a fantastically awkward bus ride.
Well, there were a couple of those. And not all of them were fun. :P
But the one I'm referring to was funny because it...wasn't...funny.
I ended up buying 7 ninjas and 3 books.
Don't ask.
And all for $25.75!!
Woohoo. And now I'm going to crash. To bed!

Just a few things

I'm leaving for Colorado in 8 hours!!
I'll be gone until the 25th!!
I couldn't sleep, so I started thinking about the Sorting Hat/Personality type thing and agree that Gryffindor's are SJ's and Slytherin's are SP's.
And it's just a trend in the house. Harry Potter was an SP and should've been a Slytherin. Dumbledore was an NF and should've been a Hufflepuff.
But it's still pretty cool.
Most of the SJ characters were in Gryffindor anyway, but a lot of NT's were either in Gryffindor or Slytherin, and all of the NF's were in Gryffindor.
But I'll try not to freak out too much.

It's obviously Anti-Semitic!

"Jesus Christ Superstar" is better than Godspell.
Sort of.
I mean, it's far superior musically, storywise, and ended becoming more famous.
But it's not wonder other Christians hate it.
And I wasn't crazy about it.
I cried a lot during it, though.
Pilate's dream, Mary Magdalene's solo, The Last Supper, nearly every time Judas sang, you name it.
And yet, not a lot during the crucifixion.
After, yeah. But not during.
The whole thing was...weird, and definitely verging on blasphemous.
But I was reading about some of the stuff religious groups didn't like about the movie, and some of the stuff was inconsequential compared to other BIG things.
Jews didn't like it because it blamed Jesus' death on the Jews.
Um, well, yeah, it was mainly Jewish people that called for his death.
And it was the Jewish high priests that wanted him dead in the first place.
It's not as if Andrew Lloyd Weber and Tim Rice are raging Anti-Semites who want you all dead.
Blame Hitler if you need to. He was one.
Or other Christians freaking out because Pilate didn't have the dream about Jesus in the Bible! His wife did!
Wow...you would think those people would object to the fact that the movie states that Jesus WASN'T THE SON OF GOD and that Judas WAS JUSTIFIED.
Anyone who's read this blog for a long time knows I think Judas was a sympathetic character.
But I don't think Judas betrayed Jesus for the good of the people, or that he was right about Jesus being a liar.
And Jesus, for the larger part of the film, was portrayed as a petulant, spoiled, ambitious, hypocritical loser.
Then, later, it showed him doubting.
Both he and Jesus ended up yelling at God and showing him to be a cold God who either doesn't care about us or doesn't exist.
Then the disciples, right before he was crucified, started wondering if all he wanted was attention or perhaps an effective way to prove his point and didn't realize the consequences.
Most of the disciples were shown as misguided punks who deserved better.
Then Jesus is dead.
His disciples do NOT carry him around the city singing, "Long Live God".
Instead, he's dead. They mourn. They scatter. And that's all there is.
Wow. How depressing.
My dad won't admit it, but he loved it. He knows all the songs.
My mom hates it. Probably because it's "Anti-Semitic".
I'm undecided.
I watched "Les Miserables" yesterday, though, and LOVED it.
Mmm, Hans Matheson.
I can't tell if Claire Danes is really pretty or really odd looking.
Maybe both?
Geoffrey Rush was scary. I managed to stop screaming, "Barbossa! Barbossa!" midway through the movie.
The suicide was a little overdramatic.
And Liam Neeson somehow walked away from that encounter unscathed, not emotionally traumatized at all.
But, overall, great movie.
I haven't gotten any farther in the book. There's a large section on Waterloo that keeps mocking me.
Ugggggggh I would love to skip that part, but I'm scared I'll miss something important.
I leave for Colorado tomorrow night. We'll be gone for a week and a half.
WOOOO!!! I'm excited.