ANOTHER DAY

Thinking back from today, it was very bland.  Nothing exciting, saddening, or maddening really happened.  It was just another day filled with back-talking, sleeping and curse words being used profusely in the classroom.  Practice was cancelled, due to our win and lack of a field to practice on so I was able to come home and relax for a change.  It was awesome to just be able to have the entire evening to relax.

Being Thursday night, we were required to be a "community" and do something as a house.  DOOR sets one day, or evening, apart from everything else to hang out together, getting to know our housemates better and better as the year continues.  While sometimes I feel like doing other things, or feelings that somewhere else would be more exciting, tonight I was excited to be a part of it.  We went to JJ's church, which was having an open art show of local artists.  With JJ being in Pennsylvania for meetings, the girls and I drove down south to the church.  There was around 6-10 artists with their work represented, with age an age range of about 12-75.  The different styles were very fun to look at and try to figure out what the artist was thinking or trying to convey to their audience.  With my art show just around the corner, this was very exciting to see other artists and their ideas.  Seeing other works really helps inspire other artists.  Not really copying other artists, but if a possible idea is seen, take it, change it, and make it your own.  

After this event, we chose to go to Shorty's Barbecue joint, which is supposedly the best barbecue in Southern Florida.  With this amazing accomplishment at hand, and a Kansas boy and Texas girl present, the biggest argument of the year has came about.  Just WHERE is the best barbecue located.  Of course, I know that it is in Kansas City, but she, for some reason, thinks that it is from Texas.  This is like a 1A school playing a 6A school, and yet, we all know the 1A Kansas City Barbecue takes home the trophy.  This argument has gone through texting of friends and research done online to find out just where exactly the world's best barbecue is at.  

Living with people we don't know at first can often be a hard thing to cope with at first, but it is through many experiences that tend to draw them closer.  How are we gelling as a group here in Miami?  So far it seems to be going just fine.  We all have a very relaxed attitude about most things in the house and how we do things.  While there are the hard moments and tense situations that are bound to happen, I feel that we all come through them very well, with a little more appreciation for the person we were upset and how they believe about something.  This experience with living with others is really something outside of my comfort zone, but that I am forced to be a part of.  I am one that really likes things to be my way, and get in routine then stay that way.  Living in a community, this is never going to happen, and I need to learn this.  It would just make life a bit easier.  And always being right in arguments is something that was bred into me.  I think both my brothers and myself inherited that gene from somewhere, because we all go to the ends of the Earth to prove that we are right.  Just like I try to do over something as stupid as BBQ.  While I can do this with certain people and know that inside, even though we are taking it to extremes and getting under each others skin, at the end of the day we can both agree that it is a dumb argument and the only reason it is being made is to just be obnoxious.  This sounds like the story of my life.  Doing things to get under people's skin.  Irritated.  I don not know why I like doing this so much, because some day it is going to catch up with me, when I do it to the wrong person, or group of people.  Such as those that you live with!  This aside, we all know that KC has the best BBQ in the land.

In about 60 hours, I am going to be loading a plane to go to Haiti.  While I think about this, it has not kicked in yet how different things are going to be there.  I have not mentally prepared myself for the things that I am going to see.  I have been looking at pictures of Haiti and the people, and it is amazing the differences that the US and Haiti share.  Will it be somewhat like Guatemala or Bolivia, more like Kingston, Jamaica, or somewhere else that I have been before?  I do not think so.  No matter how hard I try to prepare for this experience, I feel God is telling me not to worry about it, because it is going to be so much more different than anything I have seen or experienced.  It seems as if there is no real preparation that I can do to prepare properly for it except pray and sit back to watch God work!