Well there has been a bit of a lull in my blog writing but with a relaxing Saturday I've found time to write a piece to help people catch up with things that have happened these past few months.
They have been busy months indeed with work feeling more and more intense and energy draining as the weather heats up and jobs get bigger. But I guess I'll start with Christmas as that was a highlight and the turn of the new year. I was able to go home to Oregon for about 9 days and it was so nice to be back in the green Willamette Valley, I didn't mind the overcast skies and rainy days, though it did rain almost everyday I was home. It felt good to be back home and see not only water but water falling from the sky. I think we all felt blessed and lucky that it worked out to have the entire family home for a few overlapping days- Lindsay & Matt, Jenna & Eric, me and the parents all enjoyed time together, good food, presents and most of all Battlestar Galactica the board game, haha.
Coming back to Tucson it was a bit depressing getting back into the swing of work as Christmas was my first real break from work since getting here in August. It was SOOP season so CHRPA was full with snowbirds here for the winter months and most of the men volunteering at CHRPA. Usually our full time crew ranges from 7 to 9 but during SOOP season it can be anywhere from 17-21, so CHRPA is running on all cylinders and it is fun to meet older folks and get to work with them as they always have the most interesting stories and lives to tell you about. January flew by as work was a blur and I went back to Goshen, IN to visit friends and get a minor follow up surgery on my leg- I got a pin removed from my right hip, things are all back to normal and the leg feels great. It was nice to see familiar faces and get to see what all my friends are up to stuck in the monotonous grind of college education. Back in Tucson we had to survive 3 days of winter as we had 2 of the coldest days ever recorded since the 70's, water and gas pipes were out all over the city and we had to wake up to no running water one of those days.
February was busy with work, projects and weekend activities as well as spring already picking up momentum. For the past month or so I have been working on building a new back porch for the VS house- we have a concrete patio that's about 8 ft out from the house and 15 ft along the side and what we had before was a poorly built structure that just had mesh for roofing so it didn't keep rain or the sun out, so I tore it down and put all new wood beams and rafters and put corrugated metal for the roofing down and I actually just finished it today, so it's nice to have that done as it took up much of my weekend hours. It will be great in the summer as it faces south and gives shelter to the kitchen and dining room that would otherwise get baked from the hot sun. Two weekends in February we got to travel and get out of Tucson which was refreshing and fun to all be together as a house. The first trip was to southeast Arizona, near Portal to Peter & Francis Grill's awesome ranch house to just hang out, relax, take a tour of the place covering hundreds of acres and learning about immigration issues as well as just enjoying each others company. They have horses, dogs, cats, llamas, and even a camel not to mention the many other animals that live in the ranch and surrounding mountains that they don't necessarily call "pets".
The other trip we got to take was pure vacation as we drove 5 hours to the southwest this time to Puerto Penasco, or Rocky Point which is on the east side of the Sea of Cortez in Mexico. One of the families at Shalom Mennonite own a house there on the beach and we very much enjoyed the 4 days of sun and ocean. We had fresh shrimp and fish from the vendors in town, good Mexican beer, delicious salads, sun, sand and of course the calming lap of each wave as it collapses along the beach- what else could you want? Just writing about it makes me want to go back. We all had a great time and were sad to leave and travel north back to the reality of work and processed food.
We move into March where sun continues to burn longer and hotter, today it is 85 and looks like it will be in the mid 80s for the foreseeable future. I got a lovely visit from my cousin Jalisa on spring break at Goshen the first week in March and we had a great time hiking, biking, touring Tucson and many other things. Hopefully I'll get her to write a little blip in here telling what all we did in maybe more detail. But it was great to not only see her but also to have someone I know so well get to see what I'm doing, where I live, the house and get a better feel for what I'm actually experiencing here instead of just conversations over the phone. We had great weather, and I think she went back to Goshen with a good sunburn to help her remember how much fun she had here. SOOPer population has dwindled and so now CHRPA seems almost empty as only a few remain, and as it heats up all of us have this growing dread of how were going to survive summer, for me a it's my first and I will continue to revel in my sweet naive ignorance until it catches up with me, but for others it is a many year memory of hot, sweaty, eye burning, summer that sucks water from body like vacuum tube at the post office.
Things for the future will hopefully be filled with more adventures, travels and good experiences. Tomorrow I'm going snowboarding for the first time up in Flagstaff so I'm pretty stoked for that, just hoping I don't break anything ha. Looking forward to more hikes, biking trips and tours, rock climbing, swimming, mountain biking, backpacking, fishing and anything else I can get myself into before my time here runs out and I move onto the next stage of the unknown. We'll have to see if I can keep this blog more updated or if I get lazy again, but thanks for staying tuned in if you have and I apologize this post is so long. Keep the heart a beatin' and the soul a searchin'
Cheers, Daniel
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