The Ship and the town :)

So I thought I should write a little more about the ship and our living conditions!
Well first off, its not as big on the inside as it looks, but it is still pretty big.




My cabin has 10 girls in it. I know your thinking Oh my thats horrible. But its really not because we have the biggest cabin. It is really big and it has a kitchen, a half like kitchen, two bathrooms a living room and two windows. Most cabins have no windows at all and some have no bathrooms I think. They use a community bathroom, from what I understand. When I say huge keep in mind I mean that the room is huge compared to the others lol. Our personal space is very small. The closet is like 6 ft high and 2 ft wide (something like that) so putting all your stuff in there is like putting together a puzzle. My camera and laptop dont fit anywhere so during the day its on my bed and at night I set it on the floor. The worse part is probably the shower. You can barely turn around in there. Its TINY!

living room for 10 people


My bed with alot of crap on it


My "closet"

The food is ok, better than I thought it would be. There are usually two choices of main course food, then there is salad stuff and sandwich stuff so even if you don't like the main course you can have a sandwich.

There is also a community area where there is a ship store, here you can buy shirts and sweaters, some snack food and just random stuff. There is also a post office, bank and starbucks. I don't know what all the starbucks offers because I have yet to catch it open (I sleep too late I guess). They call this area the town square. This section is two stories. Upstairs its a lounge like area and computer center. All the town square has wireless internet, which I havent gotten to work yet either. Hummm... IDK I bet I can figure it out somehow.

We have a laundry area to use as well, its free so thats good. One amazing thing the sip has is a school. They have 45 students in it and 7 teachers. It goes all the way from k-12th grade.

I know alot of people are wanting to know what it is like to live on the ship. So far it is hard to explain, mostly because I spent my first full day in town. It is like a very small town tho. So if you are from a small town imagine what high school was like. Everyone knows everyone. I keep getting stopped and asked "you must be new" it feels like my first week at Arp HS lol. And everyone asks the same questions, whats your name, where are you from, how long are you staying and what are you doing on the boat. As most of you already know I am a writer! A lot of people think that is really cool. Especially my roommates because most of them are really young, just out of high school so they are doing dining room staff and hospitality, we do have one dental assistant tho.

I guess I'll tell you a little bit more about the town. It is so pretty. The Canary Islands are part of Spain so the Spanish architecture is very prominent and palm treens line the sidewalks. Most everyone walks here so they are very skinny lol and very stylish. You very rarely see anyone in jeans and a t-shirt. They wear skinny jeans and oversized shirts with awesome looking boots, heels or some granny like shoes.
Everyone here smokes, everywhere. Even in alot of the stores. Every other person you pass has a cigarette in hand or is sitting on a bench smoking. The birds are funny, there is like a ton of pigeons and they are pretty tame so they don't move out of your way when your walking until you almost step on them. Right now there is a pigeon sitting on a lady's table (outside McDonalds)and she is feeding it. Now there are like 6 of them on her table lol.

Oh funny part, they siesta here. For like four hours. So everything shuts down from 1-5 (i think those are the times) except the restaurants and cafes of course. Oh and there is some really neat clothing stores here. We went into a few yesterday and they sell some really awesome emo looking clothes. There is also a Foot Locker, everything was so expensive in there tho. I wanted to get another pair of Chucks so we checked at the foot locker and they were 89 euros (so over 100 US dollars) so we left and went down the street. We found a small shoe store that had some off brands that look exactly like Chucks for 8 euros! thats only 12 dollars! So I bought some grey ones! Me and Catilin felt like we really accomplished something with that good of a deal! With all the walking we are doing I needed some walking shoes! I have two HUGE blisters on both feet from yesterday because I only wore my old lady shoes walking everywhere! It is terrible :(

*A pigeon just landed on my table. Ummm lol

Well I guess that is it for now. I have wrote two whole blogs now! I probably need to go back to the ship soon.

Oh and I will post pictures tomorrow probably! I am having an issue with getting it charged. If you dont plug stuff in right it blows so I'm waiting on charging it until I am sure it wont blow up! Lol.

Be sure to read "The Trip" I posted it right before this one!
Below are pictures of the town:

The Trip

Hey everyone! Sorry for my absence. I am now in Tenerife, Spain, its an island in the Canary Islands. It is really nice here, but man it was a long trip.
I flew from Dallas to New York where I had a layover of like 9 hours! Ahhh it was crazy. I found a wifi spot so I entertained myself there lol. Then I met another family there that was joining Mercy Ships too. From New York we went to Madrid, Spain. Here the layer over was only 2 and a half hours. It was the longest 2 and a half hours of my life! First our baggage was suppose to come out and go through customs, well only one of my bags came out! and customs didn't even look at it! So I had to walk like 3 miles to get to the right gates to check the bag back in. Then when I got to the gate they didn't speak English so they sent me downstairs to security who then sent me back upstairs to the gate. Ugh long story short I finally found a gate person who spoke some English and I was able to check the bag and go through security! Then off to find the correct gate which changed three times on my journey because people kept telling me the wrong thing. lol

Finally we all got onto the plane heading toward Tenerife. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep before the plane even took off and woke up during the landing thinking "oh crap we're crashing" lol.

The first day here was pretty slow. I just checked into Mercy Ships and went to my room and unpacked. Then we had a HR meeting and security meeting, which I also ended up sleeping through most of, obviously most people do since we all just arrived! The time change is still bothering. I was going to call home this morning and realized its the middle of the night lol.

Yesterday me and some of my roommates went to town. Town is downtown Santa Cruz, Tenerife. It takes forever to get here because you have to walk all the way out of port which is like a mile in itself. Wow. But walking around town was so awesome. The people here are really friendly even though they dont understand anything we are saying! The landscape looks like Mexico but the infrastructure is way more modern and industrialized. Anyways, so we went on a hunt for a guitar because one of my roomies, Caitlin, plays and couldn't bring hers. After like walking from one end to the other we finally made it to the music store! It was seriously like a scavenger hunt except the clues were in Spanish! haha. But we had a good lunch at a local pizzeria everything we ordered had eggs on it tho. That was weird. Then we just headed back to the ship, by this time we were exhausted and still had a ship tour to do! Afterwards we all hung out and went to sleep.

Right now I am sitting in downtown at McDonalds (they have free wifi here) by myself because everyone else had to work. I won't have much work to do until we get to Togo. I feel kind of bad because everyone is getting up at like 6 am and working all day but I slept till 11 had lunch and took off!

I have to tell you how great the guy at the music store was tho. Because the guitar Caitlin wanted to buy was more than she budgeted for so I asked for a missionary rate lol. And he knocked some of the price off ( like 60 euros) and gave her the picks and extra strings for free! I thought that was awesome!

Funny story, the roads here are really narrow and on either side of the road there are these huge balls of concrete, like literally balls lol. They are probably 2 feet high and 3 feet in diameter, well this SUV comes zooming down the road and ran up on one! haha he is still there for like the last hour! The car is literally sitting on top of one, and all the liquid in his car came out everywhere, it wasn't gas but something else brown. Now the policia are here and everyone is just standing there looking because he can't get it off the top of the ball! It is funny lol.

I am having a hard time navigating right now because when I am hooked up to this internet everything is in Spanish. :( and facebook isn't working right now. It wouldn't really work last night either. Everyone says it has to do with the internet here because it usually works. IDK tho.

Well really that's all that has happened since I've been here. The last 3 days have gone by so fast! It feels like just hours. Me and Caitlin (my roomie that arrived the same day as me) kept saying yesterday "wow can you believe we are really here!" Its pretty crazy to think we are actually here! Everyone is enjoying Tenerife because it is like a vacation but everyone is also anxious about getting to Africa. Especially me. I have waited for Africa for a long time and 2 weeks seems so far away! Plus it is kinda cold here so I am ready to be warmer! :)

Thats it for now!

Buenos Dias

This is It

Today is the 5th. 19 days. That doesn't sound like a long time huh. My life has officially begun. The life that I was meant to live. But, I have a confession, I've been paralyzed for like a week now. By fear? Maybe. Doubt? Maybe that too.
Don't get me wrong, I am not afraid to go to Africa or being away from what I know. Change doesn't bother me, more accurately I crave it. I am afraid to come back. What then?

Some may say it is only 7 months. True. But this marks the beginning of forever for me. I cannot come back to the life I am living now. When I walk away from the life I built in Dallas. It is gone. I can come back to my job and I could get another fancy apartment, and my friends will still be around. Forgive me I am having a hard time putting this into words. Let me try again....

A couple years ago I got to a point where I was doing exactly everything I wanted to do, exactly how I wanted to do it. I was a photographer, going to school at UTA, had an apartment and a man. Then it hit me. I don't like this. So long story short I had one of my well-known epiphany moments and I knew that I wouldn't be happy until I started living the life I always knew I was meant for.

Still I fought it and I have found myself in the same position again, with everything but nothing at all. I fought it because I knew that it meant giving up everything that I knew. Everything that life was suppose to be. The cars, clothes, the money and houses (or at least the dream of these things). That was the hardest part. Making the conscience decision that I am letting these things go for good. Try to fathom that.

Try to understand this is not a journey guys. Or an adventure. Not to me. This is the rest of my life. This is It. I am not giving up 7 months. I am giving up forever. Not for nothing. For everything.

So... what happens when I come back in August? In the recent past I have struggled with a feeling of emptyness, feeling like I was living a life I built for someone else. On many nights I found myself sitting in my amazing $1000 a mo apartment in designer jeans and basically everything that would satisfy so many people, feeling like a poser, an imposter on my own self. The worst part was knowing exactly why I felt this way. God gave me a path and more importantly I saw it and ignored it, intentionally, for a long time. I am scared I will be coming back to the same thing after Mercy Ships, and it will be a 100000 times worse this time, for obvious reasons.

So today I pray for peace. Not strength, I was born with strength, it is innate. Not a path, for I am no longer lost. Not purpose or wealth or even happiness. But for peace of tomorrow. Peace knowing that my faith in what God is to bring me is enough. Peace in the fact that I can walk away and God will provide the rest. I ask for your prayers as well.

“Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” Matthew 18:19-20.

*On another note. I realize that I havent provided much information on my preparation for leaving. Which was the point of this whole blog. It seems to be going in another direction.
Also, I notice that people are reading this! So hello! Press the follow button you do not want to miss what comes next!

Randomness while fighting Bloggers Block

So I am having a serious case of what is probably called bloggers block. Ugh. Its not because I dont have anything to say. I think it is more that I have too much to say and don't know where to start. That, and I have been reading so many other blogs it confuses me lol.

*Random* So, I just now heard of PostSecret, how this escaped me IDK but if you havent checked it out do so now.

Mexico- was awesome, warm and beautiful. No I dont have any pictures yet. I havent even loaded pics since I've been back. Maybe in a couple days.

I love scuba diving but I was very disappointed in the location the dive shop drug us to. The visibility at the location was very bad and there was way too many people around. Like a hundred snorklers and tons of divers. We found better locations after our dive trip :( oh well... We also went riding around the mountains on 4 wheelers. That was pretty awesome. :)

The best part of the whole trip was enjoying the culture and food of Puerto Vallarta. I would live there just for the food. The seafood was so fresh! We literally ate raw fish on the dive boat. Like when we were on the boat the guys were catching fish and cleaning them. Then they soaked it in lime and made some really hot pico and mixed it all up. OMG! It was amazing I could live off it. They called it ceviche, but it you order it at a restaurant it is cooked fish.
I'll add pictures later.

The Mexico trip really put a hold on the planning for my Africa trip. I still have so much to do it is crazy. I made this huge to do list before we left and I have only got to check off one item on the list the last week.. I've also been sick all week. Which sucks. I should post the to-do list. umm maybe.

I also met my soulmate in Mexico, hahahaha. He didn't speak English so when his friend (our personal translator) got tired and wanted to go home I had to break it off :(

This is what our typical convo sounded like for like the whole hour and a half
me: "Do you understand what I am saying?"
soulmate: "Si."
me: "You dont understand a word I am saying do you?"
soulmate: "Si"
and so forth with me talking alot and soulmate repeating "Si" every few minutes. umph.. oh well.

Ok so I am going to get really serious about this blogging business. I have come to realize there is a whole blogger community out there... crazzy. I actually have alot of half written blogs. Lol. So I am going to get those done. I am also working on a 101 list about me (by working on I mean thinking about working on lol) and one of those 101 things to do in 1001 days. Yay!

I just had an epiphany like moment.. this is my last weekend in Dallas! OMG. Sad. Overwhelming.{hyperventilation here}. I kept thinking to myself "we are going to do it big my last weekend here...", "I'm having so much fun the last weekend I'm here" or "I am going to have a huge goodbye party my last weekend here" and such and such... And I just realized OMG this IS my last weekend here. I have no plans. I work tomorrow (sat). Oh. Uh. I'm sick :( I guess next week will have to be a long stretched out weekend. hahaha.

I had to rename this post since it kinda just turned to crap on me. It had a purpose like the first two sentences... Oh well.