Spring Break!!

Hi everyone,

This is Jalisa (Daniel's cousin- for anyone who was wondering) and I am going to share a little about my time in Tucson about 3 weeks ago.

I spent about half a week in Tucson, seeing Daniel's daily life and also taking some day trips to see surrounding desert beauty. I go to school in Goshen IN and was in snow for the past 4 months, so being in warm weather made the trip worth while -as did finally seeing Daniel! Wednesday, during the day, I lounged around at the MVS house, while the members were working hard. That night Daniel and I went out to eat at an Indian restaurant (very hard to find in Tucson) and viewed the sunset over the desert at a look out place (that I can't remember the name of and also can't successfully find on the web). It was beautiful to walk a little in the desert and watch the sun go down. Daniel and I tried to be knowledgeable about what plants we were looking at, but in the end Tour Guide Daniel, just dubbed everything "prickly bush."

I got to experience CHRPA on Thursday morning by accompanying Daniel on a few house calls. Our morning consisted of; a hands on lesson about drywall, us (mostly Daniel) unclogging a woman's garbage disposal, and climbing on a woman's roof to assess a leak. It was a very entertaining morning and I even learned a little about home improvement techniques. I'm a little foggy on what we did in the evening, but I'm sure it consisted of watching Freaks and Geeks (a new favorite) and eating an amazing supper at the MVS house. Everyone in that house is a great cook, seriously I've never eaten so good.

The next two days consisted of hiking. Friday we hiked 7 falls trail, it was fairly long, but didn't rise terribly so we walked at a pleasant pace. The end was incredibly worth it though because we actually saw natural water in Tucson! We also got a little red from being out in that desert heat for about 4-5 hours without any sunscreen, but like Daniel said, that's just my take away from Tucson.

On Saturday the MVS house and another volunteer house hiked up a semi-mountain about 40 mins outside of Tucson toward Phoenix, this one was more challenging but well worth it. At some points we were climbing rocks almost on all fours, it was amazing. The view at the top seemed to go on forever, there is nothing to block your line of vision. We were all pretty exhausted after the hike so when we got back to the house everyone crashed- and watched more Freaks and Geeks. That evening people perked up again and we had strawberry shortcake with homemade ice-cream and a small gathering for people in the other volunteer houses. That was my last night in Tucson and I made my way back to school early the next morning. I had an awful time leaving that beautiful 70-80 degree weather!

I had such a great time seeing what Daniel has been up to, its always better to actually see and experience it than just read about it. I also came to appreciate the desert a little more, with all its shades of brown and prickly bushes. I would encourage all of you to visit and see Tucson yourself, as that's all I have to share right now!

Jalisa