it's official.

well life has officially picked up its pace around here. no more moseying to the library or sitting leisurely in a coffee shop across town to read. at least not on a (week)daily basis! we started going through our "objectives," aka all the assignments that we work through as part of our internship. good gravy, it seems like we need an entire semester just for each rotation! and yet they vary from a meager 8 days to 48 days in length. it's going to be a busy year. and at the moment, we are also trying to tackle an 800 page medical terminology textbook...in 4 weeks. boy am i thankful to have had good nutrition and biology professors in college!

oh, and today we got our name tags:

see, it's official.

we also watched a video during orientation, which, i'll admit, was quite dated and one of those cheesy videos you typically see as a new employee. but, it explained the vision behind seamar, which i think is really great. basically, seamar is there to help those who need help in any way that they can, from medicine to dentistry to housing to emergency financial aid. meeting the needs of people- exactly as jesus says! in a totally non-discriminatory, practical, tangible way. another cool aspect: since the majority of seamar clients are hispanic, and a big part of the hispanic culture is community and family, seamar decided to do this intergenerational thing. i forgot the exact term...but in a nutshell, they put an emphasis on allowing the young and the old to interact. as in, the day care/child development center is immediately adjacent to the nursing home, and they kids and the elders do projects together. i can't wait to observe that one- how cool, old grandparents teaching young children about their heritage!

speaking of all of that, i found out that child development is my first rotation. meaning that i get to do things like plan a menu for the day care and teach little kids classes on how to eat right. i do love those little kiddoes!

what else.

i've made some new friends since i wrote last! tuesday night i went to a potluck birthday dinner party celebration with one of the community groups at mars hill- we had some tasty little sliders and some seriously delicious crab and artichoke spread, and ended up just talking and hanging out for almost 3 hours! i got to talk with one of the moms a little bit about nutrition, as well as about the church. dorina, who invited me to come, is eager to get me plugged into the youth ministry :) we talked about that for a bit, as well as what discipleship looks like. somehow i took a tangent off to a discussion of camp with tommy, and then got to talking with dustin about traveling the world. by that point, it was getting late, so i headed home. but before i did, dorina invited me to dinner at her house tonight, which i gladly accepted.

dinner tonight was so enjoyable, it reminded me of a meal in europe. there were 6 of us there, and we just mingled for a bit until the food was done. we ate slowly and talked about all kinds of things, always interesting. we decided we should make a tshirt with probably the best quote of the night: "marry me, fly for free," which came up after discussing pricey airfare to europe with dustin, who flies planes. then we moved on to dessert, some homemade blonde brownies (shout out to cam crake for the recipe!) and some carrot cake. and after that, we just sat around and talked some more. it's been a while since i've had the time to really just sit around and hang out with friends like that, and i really enjoyed it.

but once again, the earth continues to move around the sun, and i had to get home and pack...because tomorrow i leave for san diego!! the gathering is finally here.

and i need to go to sleep. all this excitement...it's way past my grandma bedtime.