Return to Detroit!

Hello from Michigan!

My two fun-filled weeks with The Jacket are over, and it has found its way to Evy! The Jacket came to me during a busy time, and it was nice to have a reminder of all of you during the craziness.

When it arrived from Molly, I found some delicious chocolates in the pockets--thank you Molly! The day it arrived, I was in the middle of a week teaching science camp. I got to teach kids (6-11 years old) about bouncy balls and atoms. It was so much fun! Since it's summer camp, we do a lot of fun, silly things during the week. Each day was a different dress-up theme, so it was a perfect week to bring The Jacket to work! I wore it on Friday, which was Crazy Hair Day and our last day of camp. I taught a few lessons wearing it, until it was too hot to wear! At the end of the day, we had parents in to show them all our cool science projects from the week. I didn't realize it, but I wore The Jacket during my presentation to everyone!

As a surprise for the kids, we had Darth Vader and two Stormtroopers come in at the end of the day, so it was a perfect opportunity to take a picture!

The next day, my nephew threw a party and I promised I'd go. So OF COURSE I wore our favorite jacket! My cute beer pong partner didn't seem impressed by my attire. How can this be?? He's obviously not the man for me. This is me with my family...my niece and nephew's sister Melissa, my niece Katie, me, Amy, and my nephew Joey.

A good friend was celebrating her birthday on August 9th. The Jacket and I baked her some delicious Guinness chocolate cupcakes!

Once they were frosted, we headed to her house. Wendy's house is amazing because not only is she awesome, but she has a zip line in her backyard. As soon as she heard about The Jacket, she said, "Oh, you have to come zip line with it!" She's a genius.

So here I am, up in their amazing pirate ship treehouse, while her husband Josh gets me all hooked up.

It was awesome.

One of my best friends is getting married this weekend, and her bachelorette party was the 13th. Naturally, I took The Jacket with me! We went to dinner near her house, and then the limo picked us up. Here I am before we met up with the others.

We went to the MGM Grand, one of the casinos in Detroit. We spent some time there drinking and dancing in one of the clubs. After a while, we learned that the bachelor party, happening at the same time, was super lame. It was only the groom and ONE of his friends--nobody planned his party! We like them, so we sent our limo to bring them to us. They bought us more drinks and that alone was a good reason to have them around. :)

And now, the part where I do something I've never done: after most of the people in our party agreed, we ended the night at a strip club. Due to the nature of the establishment, I was not allowed to take any pictures. For the safety and cleanliness of The Jacket and all future wearers, I kept it tucked safely in my purse. Jacket and I decided that naked women really aren't our thing--but we had a good laugh!

I got home at 4am, so I'd say the bachelorette party was a success!

On my final night with The Jacket, I took it to meet my friends at our favorite dive bar. My act of service in the jacket was to pay for the parking of some people. (And I bought fries for the table, but I'm not sure that counts. I definitely enjoyed them as well.) When I got home, I realized that I still had a bit of my staff gift from Stephanie, so it seemed like an appropriate goodbye. :)

Before washing and packing it up to send to Evy, I embroidered something on the inside. This is a rune symbol that means "safe journey"--it seemed fitting. :) Can't wait to see what everyone gets up to!

All my love!

xo amanda

Pictures

The Adventure Continues...PART II

Welcome back, my friends! Sincere apologies for not having it posted last night, but I celebrated a friends birthday. I didn't feel like the blog entry would have been exceptional if I wrote it at 1 in the morning. So let's jump right in and pick up where I left off.

On Tuesday I finally headed home to Troy, Ohio. My lovely hometown where I spent those glorious elementary, middle, and high school days. Check out our cute little town square(it also looks great at Christmas when they turn the fountain into a big Christmas tree. http://www.troyohio.gov/

Tuesday night the jacket and I went to a nice dinner with my parents and brother, Ben. Yeah, I pretty much brought the jacket everywhere, but I did have to take it off frequently because of the crazy heat wave that was going on in the US. The humidity was terrible! Wednesday was a rather relaxing day. It was still like pushing 100 degrees F and like 35 in Celcius i think? Sorry my conversion isn't the best, but it was hot!

The Jacket and I got up in the morning, and drove straight to my friend, Susan's, house. Now Susan is wonderful! We met each other in Kindergarten and have been friends ever since. We spent the elementary school years playing American Girl Dolls http://www.americangirl.com/index.php for hours. Of course we have had our ups and downs over the years, but the older we get the more it seems like we have in common. As far as my friends go, I think we have actually grown closer since we have been in college, well at least in our way of thinking about the world. I really can't say that for all of my high school friends. She is someone really special to me, so I'm happy the jacket got to meet her. My high school friend, Andrea also came. She is always a blast, and we have been friends for a long time as well. All three of us played soccer together for years. We spent the whole afternoon relaxing in Susan's neighbor's pool it was the only thing that we could do outside with the heat.

I'm not going to bore you with the details of the next few days because it basically consisted of working a lot and shopping to get things for my apartment. Susan, Andrea, and I did have a fun sleepover at Susan's house for old times sake, which brought back a lot of fun memories.

Fast forward to Monday and it was probably the most important day of the whole two weeks. Right before we left for camp I won two free tickets to Kings Island (a big amusement park in Cincinnati, Ohio) I gave them to my dad for Father's Day and told him we would go when I got back from camp. Now my father and I love to ride roller coasters, but everyone else in my family is pretty lame and won't ride anything. We used to go to Kings Island all the time when all my siblings were at home. I used to get to take Susan every year : ) My dad and I had one great day together. We rode almost all the roller coasters, we got super wet on a few water rides. We spent the afternoon in the wave pool. We also did something we had talked about doing ever since I was a little kid. At Kings Island you can take these Old Time photos where you dress up as like a cowboy or a flapper. There are a ton of choices! We dressed up as if we were criminals who just robbed a bank. The pictures are hilarious and I hope to upload those tonight when I go home. It was a great day for my dad and me! I think I'm going to make it an annual thing now. It is something we should do every summer.

Wednesday was another exciting day. I consider this my day of service even though it wasn't really hard, and I would have done it for my brother anyway. I will do something my exciting next time! Promise! My brother's friend turned 18 on July 24th, and he really wanted to go to the Death Cab for Cutie concert in Columbus, Ohio. His mother said it was fine as long as an adult went with them, so my brother asked me before camp if I would take him and his friends. I like Death Cab as well, so I agreed to do it. It turned out to be a nice bonding time for Ben and me. The jacket and I drove my brother and his friends the hour to Columbus. We all went out to dinner and a cool pizza place before and then say Frightened Rabbit open for Death Cab. http://frightenedrabbit.com/ Death Cab was an awesome performance. It was hilarious because the lead singer for Death Cab is seriously 0bsessive compulsive. The equipment had gotten messed up where they were at in Canada before, and he was going crazy. During the one song he ripped out the cord to his guitar threw it toward the drummer then threw his guitar behind stage. It was entertaining to watch. It was one fun night with my bro.

Thursday the jacket and I spent the day catching up with old friends and saying good bye to my first boss. I had worked at Skyline Chili http://www.skylinechili.com/ since I was 16 and my birthday was my final day of work there ever. It was weird because I'd worked there for so long. My boss is a wonderful guy. He seriously awesome and I'm not sure any boss will ever live up to him, but it was one great job for five years. I also met up with my CISV summer camp leader : ) He is also amazing! He has always been there when I needed something and always a great person to talk to. To be honest, he's kind of like my brother. He teaches at my high school and is in charge of a million clubs there. I worked with him on Student Government and a million other things in high school. We always catch up any time I'm home. He's been a great reference so far when it comes to teaching as well. I've already called him up a few times to ask questions.

So Friday should have been exciting because it was my bday, but that turned out not to be the case. I feel like any birthday have 21 just becomes less and less exciting. I also felt like I turned 22 and the world told me, "Hey Molly, you're a real person. Don't celebrate your birthday, pack your bags and hit the road for the REAL WORLD!" Friday was a crazy day. I ended up mailing the jacket on that day as well because I don't know where the post office is where I'm living. I figured by the time I figured it out I would have kept the jacket over my amount of time. I didn't want to start it off behind schedule, especially since Evy has some awesome things she can do with it in South Africa. I wish I would have had more time with the jacket. I'm not sure exactly how we saw the blogs going, but I tried to keep it personal and entertaining at the same time. Hope you guys enjoy, and I can't wait to hear what everyone else gets to do in the jacket!

Lots of love,
Molly

And so the adventure begins...PART I

As I said my final good byes to the staff, I walked outside the side doors of Shrine Catholic High School with The Jacket in hand. My body was mixed with emotions of sadness and excitement. When I decided to the be the US leader for this camp in March, I knew it would make my summer complicated. I sat my purse down in the car and realized exactly what I had forgotten the last six years...WHAT IT MEANS TO BE IN CISV! I put the stylish(stephanie : )), purple-animal printed jacket on before I started the engine and vowed to myself that I will not allow the feeling of CISV to leave my sun burnt body again!

I pulled out of the parking lot with tears slowly rolling down my check...scratch that, I was loudly sobbing by the time I made it to the stoplight. That's not something I usually like to admit, but CISV is the only thing that makes me cry that much. Enough of my sappy CISV love stuff, let's start the true adventures. I headed to Noah's house to say a final good bye to him and his family and set sail on a boat (with the big part and the sail) for one epic weekend.

The Jacket and I had a nice four hour drive ahead of us. We somehow managed to get lost in Ann Arbor (i wasn't even supposed to go through Ann Arbor), but it allowed me a good thirty minutes to chant cceeeerrrrrvvvvvveeeezzzzzaaaaaaa real slowly to myself in the car. In that thirty minutes, I let my imagination run wild and thought about how Raquel, Stefany, Andrea, and Sara took Ann Arbor by storm. Chanting cerveza through the streets and rejecting any attractive male from the University of Michigan(unless it was James) that tried to join in their festivities kind of like Romania would have done.

We finally made it to South Bend. I was smelling rather ripe from not showering in three days. I had bags under my eyes, a Finnish tatoo on my arm, eleven bracelets on the other, and a blue monster-looking shirt from Indonesia on that made me feel like I was naked(at least that is how Tasha described it). Together, the Jacket and I stormed forward into the other half of the world(that one outside of a CISV camp). I walk out of the library on Notre Dame's campus and immediately hear screams of CRACKHEAD WILLOW!!!!!!! I'm going to explain this for a second so somebody like Emilio doesn't come to the conclusion that I really am crazy. Apparently when I've only had like two hours of sleep in like 40 hours or something like that I turn into a crackhead. This happened a lot this year at school because I had so much going on. I guess I say really outrageous things without realizing it. I'm still skeptical of the whole idea, but they claim it's true. Willow comes from my Halloween costume, and the multiple times I wore my hair in all braids this year(it's too bad I can't really do it when I teach). My friend, Kelsey proceeds to jump on me and hug me for about two minutes. She then gets down and looks me up in down a few times.
"Oh Crackhead, what the hell you been doing and what f*** is up with your shirt?"
I reply excitedly, "It's from Indonesia! I also have these awesome Indonesian instruments in my car!!!"
"What? Crackhead you get more and more crazy every time I see you!"

This whole weekend in South Bend was known as Stay Out and Lei Out. It was started by our Ultimate Frisbee team last summer and basically it's just a long weekend event of drinking where we get together in the summer. It had started on Friday, so my friends already had loads of stories to tell. They had just finished Frolfing (frisbee golfing) when I arrived. It was still humid as ever, so we headed to the gas station to get some 99 cent slushies. We went in my car, which allowed my friends to quickly find all the awesome apparel I had acquired at our camp. I pulled in the parking lot and my trunk transformed into a costume box. We put on different shirts, a Columbian hat, and head pieces to spice up our outfits. We grabbed the Indonesian instruments and headed inside the Speedway. We danced and played the instruments inside while we got our slushies. The cashier thoroughly enjoyed it! I walked outside the speedway, and I'm pretty sure I saw one of my students from the previous year. There was a moment of awkwardness, and then I was flying too high to be concerned.

At that point my body had been through a roller coaster of emotions, but I was thinking that I would be fine to party that night. I started out strong. I put on the jacket and was determined to have one epic night. There was cerveza everywhere but I turned to the watermelon full of vodka. I blame it on the sandwiches and lack of watermelon at the camp. I sat at the counter with my friend as we scooped spoonful after spoonful of watermelon into our mouths. After about every ten bites I'd sing Kitos. My friend would just sway her head around in agreement. She was like yeah ok whatever Molly, I have no idea what you are saying. My friends outside began to wonder where we were and found our current state hilarious. We did this for about an hour. We ate the whole watermelon! Then as people came inside I thought it would be a great idea to teach them the Conga. That was hilarious!!! My friend video taped it, but she is in Australia now. I'm trying to track it down to post. After the Conga I hit that depression stage again, but fortunately lovable staff, Evy, cheered me up. We chatted on the phone for a while. We were singing some song together. Unfortunately, now I forget which one it was, but it definitely made me feel better. I crashed around 1 or so I think(probably because Heidi and I talked so long the night before : ), which proved to be superb timing because it was right before someone started getting sick.

The next morning turned out to be pretty relaxing. I still felt kind of blah, but it was nice to have company. I wore The jacket for the Woman's World Cup Finals. Unfortunately, didn't bring any luck to the US team, and we lost in penalties. If we would have had Pablo or Gard shooting for us we probably would have won.

On Monday I went apartment hunting...yeah back to that real world thing again. Though The Jacket was a big factor in helping me find my current apartment. I moved in on Saturday July 30th. I found the apartment that I am living in now on that Monday. It's called Autumn Lakes, and it is really nice! Check it out! http://www.edwardrose.com/PMS/prop.asp?p=f&propid=25&dl=autumnlakes

I have realized that I have a lot to share, so I leaving this now as Part I. I will post Part II by tomorrow, but I'd let you soak this in and comment on this first. I'm glad to hear The Jacket arrived safely to Amanda. Also I should be getting my new computer tomorrow, so I will then try to upload photos as well. I really apologize for the delay with my moving and my computer breaking things went crazy. I've tried to make up for this error with my detailed posts. Enjoy : ) Miss you all