Monday, September 29, 2008

Day Two.




Today's journey was filled with a fair amount of interesting and awkward events.

So, I guess we'll just start at the very beginning!

We woke up this morning feeling extremely well rested and ready for another day on the road. Courtney, Hannah, and I went to a sophisticated little coffee shop for breakfast. After devouring muffins and lattes, we reluctantly said our goodbyes to Hannah and hit the road.

Courtney was up first to drive this morning, and had a bit of a rough time navigating through Oklahoma City. But it was not her fault. The roads were very confusing, and traffic was wild. As you know, we're are putting complete faith in our GPS navigator, Maureen, to get us from Indiana to Arizona. Honestly, complete faith! We don't even have a map with us. Anyways, Maureen decided to neglect her duties of giving us detailed directions, and pretty much left us to fend for ourselves and find a way through Oklahoma City alone. Oh, and we also changed Maureen's accent to Bristish instead of Australian. It's still amusing, but a bit easier to understand.

Today we also spent a good deal of time working on memorization of rap songs. At one point, Courtney was rapping so naturally, I thought I was sitting next to P Diddy for a second. It's true. She's really gifted in the rhyme department. But, we eventually got sick of all that hip-hop and moved on to a new genre of music. As for the scenery today, Texas and New Mexico are complete opposite. Texas was filled with dude ranches, scary spiked windmills, and flat dry land.We saw a billboard for the western hemisphere's largest cross, and immediately became excited to see it. We finally came to this cross, and were severly disappointed to see that it was not so impressively big..at all. While in TX, we stopped in a tiny town called Groom. It's population was 550 and looked like the most uneventful place in the world. But, it was cute at the same time. We went to the gas station, filled up, and then drove over to Dairy Queen. This was by far the weirdest DQ we've ever been to. Inside, it was decorated like a ranch and had posters of old cars all over. Even the menu was different, and offered a "Dude" sandwich. Our cashier was named Kelvin, who was a true southern gentleman. There was a man repairing an icecream machine standing behind the counter. He looked at us, and gave us a smile followed by a high pitched hiccup. We both looked away, fighting the uncontrollable need to laugh. Luckily, he went to the back of the store, so we were able to release our laughter. We sat down and ate our food, and Kelvin the cashier came over to our table numerous times to ask if we needed anything, which is very unique for a restaurant such as Dairy Queen. But, like I said.. southern gentleman. We both really wanted to ask Kelvin what it was like to live in this quiet/boring/sorta cute town..but we chickened out. But, then we remembered where we live, and figured it can't be much different!

Now, on to New Mexico! We both really enjoyed the landscape here..it was beautiful. Mountains, red dirt, and the sunset (nearly blinded us) were amazing!
At some point, we both had serious issues with temperature control inside the car. We would be burning hot one moment and the next icy cold. So, finally, we realized we should roll down the windows! It was a beautiful day, and the air was the perfect temperature. It was at that moment that we both felt like we were in a movie on a roadtrip...with the windows down, music playing, and sun shining. There's simply nothing like it!

We reached our hotel in Albuquerque, got settled in, and ordered Papa John's. An hour later, we were startled by an abrupt pounding on our door. I answered the door, and was greeted by a normal looking delivery guy. But then he spoke. For some reason, I couln't understand him..he said something to me..I still have no idea what. But, I just stared at him, trying to think of how to fix this already awkard situation. He repeated himself, only much slower, and the one word i recognized was "pizza." I realized he had an insanely heavy Irish accent. INSANELY HEAVY. From there, I tried to adjust my ears, but it didn't help. Several puzzling sentences later, I had my pizza in my hand. And he said, "Irish garble, Irish garble, 13.50"..so i just guessed, handed him 15$ and shut the door. It might not sound crazy now, but it was the most confusing minute of my life.

ok that's all. sorry for all of the silly details. but, we have to tell someone about our adventures!

on a more serious note, we're watching the news..what in the heck is going on with our country!?


Lauren

The Road trip so far..


























has been so fun I can't even contain myself.
Let's go state by state.

Indiana: not a whole lot happened here. We left at 6 am and put all our trust in the gps navigator we have since named "Maureen". We did, however, see four deer cross them road in front of us, one of the tripped and almost fell down...and that was laugh out loud funny. I'm sure the fact that we only got 5 hours of sleep the night before didn't have anything to do with us thinking that non-funny incidence was in fact funny.

Illinois: corn.

Missouri: We stopped for gas in a town called Sullivan. We tried to eat at a cracker barrel but the parking lot was full, and we were feeling awkward driving around in circles with our giant bike rack- so we just went across the street and ate at a Sonic. We concluded that our burgers tasted like plastic and watched an 11 year old boy crash his bike and scream "THAT WAS SWEET" to his little posse. Lauren walked around the building twice looking for the bathroom, found it, used it, and we attempted to leave Sullivan. However the whole town was under construction so us getting back to the interstate was way harder than it should have been and Maureen just kept shouting "RECALCULATING" in the Australian accent we had set her on. It was a very annoying 5 minutes but we survived and made it back on our merry way. For about the next 4 hours we listened to a cd that Lauren made entitiled " Hip-hop-appotamous" and tried to memorize rap songs. Let me tell you, that is quite a feat for two white girls from Kouts- but hey at least we weren't bored.

Oklahoma: Lots of rapping, lots of dancing. Then we almost hit a turtle and instead of screaming "Oh jeez!" or something normal like that, Lauren screamed "Blueberry python!" and I laughed so hard I almost peed my pants. I pretty much laughed about that for the rest of the way to Tulsa... and may or may not have still been laughing about it when we got to the hotel. THEN! we called our wonderful friend Hannah Accacia Chinworth who goes to school at Oral Roberts University (which was right across the street from our hotel) It was soooo wonderful to see her! She gave us a tour of the campus ( which was the most amazing/beautiful college campus i have ever seen in my whole life) and then- (AWKWARD MOMENT ALERT) when we were on our way to visit the library a security guard stopped us and asked us to sign in as guests. 30 seconds of small talk later we mentioned that we were on our way to do some mission work in Arizona. He got very excited and broke out in a very abrupt,very loud (IN A LIBRARY), prayer for us. We all had to pinch our mouths with our hands to keep from smiling/laughing during this prayer ( which we totally appreciate and could use more of... it was just the circumstances that made it funny... don't think we will laugh at you if you pray for us...). Then we went into the library where they, for some odd reason, have a giant stuffed lion on display. Then we went out to dinner and had the most helpful waiter any of us had ever seen. This man went through every item on the menu and described it in detail. Any way- dinner was wonderful and we got to know Hannah's roommate who was super sweet. Then we went back to the hotel... and slept. I know. Party animals.

Well.. i literally left nothing out.. so hopefully you feel filled in. Love and miss you all already.

Court

Friday, September 26, 2008

A tiny little update.

OK. So we still haven't left yet. But since I have officially been 20 for 1 hour and 34 minutes I thought it was only proper to write something on here... and profound or not- here it is.

Packing status: not even remotely close to even being started.

Stressing status: low. until I remember that I drive a dodge neon and will be pretending that it is possible to stuff everything lauren and I own into it tomorrow.

Happiness status: about a 30 on a scale of one to ten. I rang in my birthday by swinging on a tarzan rope in cari's front yard with my three best friends in the whole world. Plus... I bought a pair of brand new shoes for seven dollars today... and that, I am proud of.

Loving people status: all time high. All of our friends, family, and friends that are family have been super supportive and knowing that we have so many people who care about us... well that's just stinking sweet.


I better stop here... breakfast at 9 am sharp with grandma tomorrow... and we all know how whiny I get if i don't get my full 8 hours of sleep.



Love love love.

Courtney

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

a little something to spice this momma up!




courtney and i on our way to orientation at our school (this was on our trip in august)

p.s. you can see the school in the background :]

our very first entry!..but we're not in arizona just yet..

welcome to our blog :]

courtney and i will be using this baby like crazy to give you guys updates and just to keep in touch with all of you.

well, we haven't even left yet, but it is still time a good time for the first entry. anyways, courtney and i are very, very excited to finally start our arizona adventure! we can't wait to hit the road this sunday morning bright and early! 6 a.m. to be exact. tomorrow we're going shopping for some of our necessities..such as towels, rugs, sharp knives, and maybe a placemat or two, who knows. ummm..and then the next few days will be spent packing up whatever we can and stuffing it in court's little car. yes, you're correct..its going to be a challenge to fit all the stuff we want to take. but i've heard that mr. tom gant is a master packer. so, maybe he'll be willing to lend a helping hand or foot. oh! and courtney got a sicckkk navigator for her birthday! so no getting lost for us! hopefully.

on our first day we're planning to drive alll the way to tulsa, where we will meet hannah chinworth, finally get to see the infamous ORU, and stay in a hotel (courtesy of the gant family). then, on the second day, we plan to drive 5 hours to amarillo, tx. we don't know a soul there, so we will be pretty much on our own, minus the navigator, which can basically get us anywhere in the entire world. after staying the night in amarillo, on day three we'll drive 8 hours to flagstaff..where we will meet up with my mom. im guessing we'll stay there for a bit and do some shopping of all sorts...groceries and things of that nature. and then onto our final destination! HOPILAND!

as you've probably already heard throught the grapevine, our house is beyond nice. we're both very excited to make it our own by hanging up pictures and just adding our creative touches. o my goodness...i just remembered the best part about this entire trip! courtney and i have a precious pup waiting for us on the reservation! he is honestly the most beautiful dog i've ever laid eyes on. no joke whatsoever. anndd...we named him Decatur..after the sufjan stevens song :]

umm yeah. thats really all the information i can lay out there for now. the rest will come in the very near future.

sorry if this was a total bore. but, trust me..there will be a day when you won't believe the things you read on here. i promise. that's how exciting it will be.

love,

lauren & courtney