Hey all,
As the title suggests I am doing my morning internet cruise, and I realized that I have severely neglected my blog, depriving readers of my great writing talent. Okay, maybe that's a little much, but I thought I should update you all on my goings-on.
Lately I have been working, tutoring, exercising, and wedding planning. Work is going really well, we have seven weeks left of school (but who's counting?), and the kids are little Spanish-speaking parrots of yours truly. Scary. I have been tutoring a few days a week, which is awesome, and I joined a triathlon team with Colleen, J.P's friend from work. I have been doing workouts with them a couple times a week. The workouts are great, but ridiculously early in the morning. For example there is a swim tomorrow morning at 5:15, but it is almost a half-hour away, so I will be up dark and early at 4:30. It's fun though, and I have met a lot of people already through the team.
We are ramping up again with the wedding planning, and getting the last details worked out. It is now less than 8 weeks away! I can't wait to see everyone, and to marry J.P! We are super excited about our honeymoon as well. We are going on a tandem bike tour of Scotland, which means that J.P. is going to pedal me around Scotland. I am going to encourage him to think of me as a drag suit a la Michael Phelps. Isn't that romantic? Not to worry, I will help with the pedaling on the downhills.
Last weekend J.P. and I went to our "Catholic Engaged Encounter" weekend about 45 minutes away. We stayed in dorms (separated male/female obviously), and went to presentations during the day. I had kind of low expectations going in, and I wasn't sure how much time we were going to spend together and how much time we were going to spend making small talk with the people in our dorms, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was a really great weekend. We ended up staying in "cubicles" so it was not the bunk-bed situation I was picturing, and the presentations were around 15 minutes of listening to the presenter couple talk about their marriage, and then we had 20 minutes to write about what we thought about the topic, and then 20 minutes to discuss it together. It ended up being much more stimulating and interesting than I thought.
We got to hear a lot about the presenter couples' marriages, which was interesting because I am nosy, and helpful because they gave really specific examples of problems they had faced and how they worked through them. In preparing to get married I have found it very difficult to get any real information from married couples about the type of "hard work" and "communication" we will need to be successful, so I really appreciated the specificity of the presentations. One couple had been married for 48 years, and they seemed extremely happy together, but some of their stories were about years at a time when they thought there was no way their marriage would work. The emphasis of the weekend was that the goal of marriage is unity, and not happiness, which I had never heard put that way before. J.P. and I got a chance to talk about a lot of our plans for the future, and how much we love each other for 3 days, which, of course, we enjoyed.
The biggest drawback to the weekend was sleep deprivation. Friday night we went into the dorms at 11, and were given a very generous hour to settle in to sleep. By given an hour I mean the overhead lights were left on for an hour. I don't know about you all, but when I am living out of a suitcase and staying in a cubicle "settling in" takes me all of about 30 seconds. Luckily I brought my science fiction book to pass the time. The next day the overhead lights were turned on a 6:10, giving up an hour and twenty minutes to get ready for the day... again, excessive. We got to sleep that night around midnight again, and got up at 6:45. Worst. I need my beauty sleep, don't ya know.
Anyway, I can't wait to come home and see everyone! Miss you guys!
As the title suggests I am doing my morning internet cruise, and I realized that I have severely neglected my blog, depriving readers of my great writing talent. Okay, maybe that's a little much, but I thought I should update you all on my goings-on.
Lately I have been working, tutoring, exercising, and wedding planning. Work is going really well, we have seven weeks left of school (but who's counting?), and the kids are little Spanish-speaking parrots of yours truly. Scary. I have been tutoring a few days a week, which is awesome, and I joined a triathlon team with Colleen, J.P's friend from work. I have been doing workouts with them a couple times a week. The workouts are great, but ridiculously early in the morning. For example there is a swim tomorrow morning at 5:15, but it is almost a half-hour away, so I will be up dark and early at 4:30. It's fun though, and I have met a lot of people already through the team.
We are ramping up again with the wedding planning, and getting the last details worked out. It is now less than 8 weeks away! I can't wait to see everyone, and to marry J.P! We are super excited about our honeymoon as well. We are going on a tandem bike tour of Scotland, which means that J.P. is going to pedal me around Scotland. I am going to encourage him to think of me as a drag suit a la Michael Phelps. Isn't that romantic? Not to worry, I will help with the pedaling on the downhills.
Last weekend J.P. and I went to our "Catholic Engaged Encounter" weekend about 45 minutes away. We stayed in dorms (separated male/female obviously), and went to presentations during the day. I had kind of low expectations going in, and I wasn't sure how much time we were going to spend together and how much time we were going to spend making small talk with the people in our dorms, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was a really great weekend. We ended up staying in "cubicles" so it was not the bunk-bed situation I was picturing, and the presentations were around 15 minutes of listening to the presenter couple talk about their marriage, and then we had 20 minutes to write about what we thought about the topic, and then 20 minutes to discuss it together. It ended up being much more stimulating and interesting than I thought.
We got to hear a lot about the presenter couples' marriages, which was interesting because I am nosy, and helpful because they gave really specific examples of problems they had faced and how they worked through them. In preparing to get married I have found it very difficult to get any real information from married couples about the type of "hard work" and "communication" we will need to be successful, so I really appreciated the specificity of the presentations. One couple had been married for 48 years, and they seemed extremely happy together, but some of their stories were about years at a time when they thought there was no way their marriage would work. The emphasis of the weekend was that the goal of marriage is unity, and not happiness, which I had never heard put that way before. J.P. and I got a chance to talk about a lot of our plans for the future, and how much we love each other for 3 days, which, of course, we enjoyed.
The biggest drawback to the weekend was sleep deprivation. Friday night we went into the dorms at 11, and were given a very generous hour to settle in to sleep. By given an hour I mean the overhead lights were left on for an hour. I don't know about you all, but when I am living out of a suitcase and staying in a cubicle "settling in" takes me all of about 30 seconds. Luckily I brought my science fiction book to pass the time. The next day the overhead lights were turned on a 6:10, giving up an hour and twenty minutes to get ready for the day... again, excessive. We got to sleep that night around midnight again, and got up at 6:45. Worst. I need my beauty sleep, don't ya know.
Anyway, I can't wait to come home and see everyone! Miss you guys!
