Appleton True North: Heather

Monday, June 17, 2013

flexi-cookies!

How do you handle it when things don’t go as planned? Do you carry a pack of flex-cookies with you and pull one out as things get crazy? It works for us! The super flexi-powers just flow and suddenly you can deal with pretty much anything the situation throws at you.
This flexi-cookies were needed much sooner than we anticipated. We were thinking we’d stock up, pull ‘em out toward the end of week as we got more tired, things got more crazy, and we were trying to process everything here and at home. Little did we know…
On Saturday, both Alyssa and Lori (separately) started feeling nauseous, and Alyssa was up multiple times during the night with stomach yuck. Sad smile

By Sunday night Alyssa was feeling somewhat better, but Lori fought to hang in there and eventually went to bed early. Three more girls (Heather, Tirzah and Rachel) were out for the count by this morning (Monday) – they also had been up through the night making good use of the toilets Sad smile

. By 8:30 AM, Christy and Sara were out as well.
It’s a big deal – for morning tutoring they match each high schooler with one or two students. With that many folks out, they went from man-on-man to zone defense; each tutor helped multiple kids – a pretty big deal given the, um, attention needed by some of the students Smile

(flexi-cookie power!).
We then broke into our work project groups for the afternoon and had fun meeting folks, helping with all sorts of projects, and generally doing what we had hoped to do. By 4 or so we were all drifting back to the main building and a fire alarm went off. Everybody (sick people included) evacuated and waited maybe half an hour before the all clear was given and we headed back in. We still don’t know what caused it to go off. (more flexi-cookies!).
Our next adventure was a Kids Club that didn’t happen – it had been storming and rain had been positively pouring down for hours and it was likely to continue through the evening. So – flexi-cookies! – we hung out, watched Night Servants (a movie by our very own Appleton True North group), ate popcorn, and debriefed experiences from the day. Aside from an emergency run to the 24-hour pharmacy for albuterol (have I mentioned it’s a very good thing we have a nurse and a family practice doctor here this week?), things wrapped up fairly calmly.

monday pics

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Sunday, June 16, 2013

Saturday: Exploring St. Louis

After a lovely morning sleeping in, we all eventually piled into the cars and headed off to Grant's Farm. Grant’s Farm is a combination Budweister Clydesdales, zoo with giant elephants (one of whom is named Bud and can do cool tricks), petting zoo, amusement park, and amazement. We had fun playing with and petting pygmy goats, watching the elephant show, and seeing the huge horses.
Next we headed off to the Arch. It really is a magnificent sight, even if you’ve seen it before. Some of us didn’t realize that you can actually go into the Arch – from far away it looks so small. We had fun going through the museum below, and compared the height of the Mississippi with previous years (it’s high!).
For supper we trundled off to Union Station where all got to try different restaurants. Then we wondered by the Fudgery – a magical place where they not only make fudge, but they also sing and entertain you. We watched an entire “show” and got free samples – YUM!
Then it was time to head back for orientation and to be reunited with the rest of our group – Lori, Tom, Colleen and Jim. Hooray!
Words we would use to describe the day:

hot. sweaty. amusing. fun. adventuresome. spontaneous. memorable. unforgettable. sick to my stomach (that was Alyssa Sad smile

). lovely. pickle.