A Tour

When I went to my blogger dashboard tonight to write this post, my stats said I was at 1000 pageviews. I would just like to mark this moment. Huzzah! Now onwards...

Tonight you get a tour of my new room because finally I am all settled in my new house. Be warned: My room is definitely decorated Bethany-style. There is no rhyme or reason to why things are the way they are other than the fact that they are the way I like them to be.

Mostly I love my room because it reminds me of so many people who have been or are a part of my life. As I sit and type, I feel surrounded by the love and care of wonderful friends - some new and some as old as I am.

When you enter my room, here's what you see:

For starters, the quilt was made by my paternal grandmother for my high school graduation. Lovely, isn't it? The puffin photo above the window was a gift from my youngest sister as a memento of a family vacation to Acadia National Park and a whale and puffin boat tour. The fabric over the headboard of my bed was a present from my town homestay family in Tanzania. And on the wall is the Tanzanian flag.

Then if you turn to the left, you'll have this view:

There's so much here, I don't even know where to start. I'll give bullet highlights.

• Starting on the top left of the bookshelf you'll Swiss Miss, my chocolate lab puppy from Celebration, FL, when I visited Disney for the first time (and only time before moving down) in 2004; Loony is back!; the candle was a graduation present from my aunt; I'm plant-sitting Miss Cactus for my maternal grandmother while she's up north for the summer; and the kanga (a piece of cloth which, sadly, you can't see) was brought to me from Kenya by a good friend.
• On the second shelf, those binoculars traveled all through Tanzania and western New York on birding expeditions.
• The TARDIS makes an appearance on a mug on the third shelf - a present from my youngest sister.
• The little woodstove on the fourth shelf joined the collection during a family road trip out to Montana, during which we stopped at the Laura Ingalls Wilder homes. This memento, actually a pencil sharpener, hails from her birthplace of Pepin, Wisconsin.
• On the very bottom shelf you'll see a tile on the left. That was a gift from a good friend who spent a summer in Mexico.
• Above my bed on the wall you'll see a poster of a painting by Monet that's at the National Gallery in London. It's actually of the Thames River and Elizabeth Tower. You may know the tower as Big Ben, but that's actually the bell in the tower. Formerly known as the Clock Tower, it was renamed in 2012 in honor of the Queen. I don't tend to buy stuff for myself, but I got this in London as a reminder of my semester there. (True Confessions: The flag I actually bought in Epcot at the United Kingdom Pavilion in World Showcase.)

And moving on, you have the less exciting area of...my closet:

It does have going for it the plus that it is the largest closet I have ever had. By about 3x. So much space! The cloth you see there is a kitenge, brought to me from Tanzania by yet another good friend. On the door is a drawing of me with a frying pan in a tree as Rapunzel made by a good college friend. And on the wall to the left you'll some photos from the wedding of an awesome girl I've known since I was born, accompanied by a cool tiny quilt made for me by one of my college roommates. It's based off a photo of a boathouse on my family's island on a lake in Maine. Makes me want to be there.

And last, but not least, I have a dresser!!!

With way more drawers than I have stuff. That's a good thing, I guess. The t-shirt quilt on the chair was made for me by my middle sister. Soooooooooo many good memories associated with the t-shirts in that quilt. My mommy gave me the bird-ness hanging on the wall, and the kanga on the dresser was a present from my village homestay family in Tanzania.

And there you have it! I'm here for a whole year. That will be a first. I've NEVER lived in one place for an entire year. Ever. Even though my family has lived in the same house for almost my entire life, we would pack up every summer and move to our cottage in Maine for several months. So here goes a new experience: living in one place.

P.S. All the furniture was either donated or loaned to the good cause of getting me settled. Many thanks to a church friend, a roommate, and my manager at work for their thoughtfulness. The only way I can repay you is by passing on the favor to someone else in the future.

Day by Day

This weekend my new roommates and I moved into our house! Hip hip hooray! Well, really they moved into the new house, and I brought some of my stuff and put it in my closet. I slept on our couch Saturday night because my room currently has no furniture. That's coming...later.

In my life, I haven't ever truly moved, that I remember. When I was about 2, my parents moved out of our condo in Boston into my great-grandmother's house, so they could help take care of her. I don't remember that, though. Since then, I grew up packing to go to Maine every summer, but that's not really moving. I've done a lot of traveling and lived in a lot of different places (especially over the last four years), but I haven't ever totally moved out of one place into another. I still won't really be able to say that I have done that even after this move, since my bed is coming from one place, my dresser is coming from another, and I am coming from a third (with my clothes). Eventually we'll all be together. Happily ever after.

I did learn, however, that moving mostly involves a lot of cleaning. Cleaning the old place. Cleaning the new place. So much dirt and mold. Yuck. And lots of phone calls to take care of so many details. Being an American adult means keeping track of lots of random pieces of life, most of which involve a bill of some kind.

Once I'm all moved, I'll share some pictures of my place. For now, you can enjoy this view. It's the one I see behind my office building. I don't usually get this fish-eye perspective, though. That's thanks to the panorama photo-taking abilities of my iPhone 5.

My coworkers and I have many wonderful ideas of ways to make good use of this body of water. We would love a combination of the following:

• Slip-n-slide
• Sunfish
• Paddle boat

We'll just avoid upsetting the alligator who calls Lake Tyndale home.

Loony, I've a feeling we're not in New England anymore

You might think moving from Massachusetts to Florida wouldn't involve much culture shock because they are both part of the United States. Mostly this line of thinking is correct, but there have definitely been moments when I've thought to myself, "Oh Bethany, you are not in the Northeast anymore."

Here are some of the sights and experiences that have brought on these moments:

• Spanish Moss and Palm Trees are everywhere.
• Bird of Paradise grows right outside my front door.
• Roadkill I've seen several times is...an armadillo.
• When driving, watch out for the Sandhill Cranes, not moose.
• The ocean water is warm! Quite pleasant, but the natives think it is quite cold.
• U-turns are common - on major roads. People make u-turns all the time. We just don't drive that way in Massachusetts.
• Stores and malls are everywhere. The number of stores and restaurants I drive past every day is positively overwhelming. Especially after spending several years at Houghton College.
• There's a Christian music radio station. Oh wait, there are two! (Shhhh, don't overwhelm the girl by telling her that there are even more...)

So, I'm adjusting.

I spent the weekend with a Houghton friend and her family. They just moved down here last month from Pennsylvania, so we were able to compare notes. Among other fun-ness, we created this gem:

Chickens, beware!

America, Spread Your Golden Wings

I don't know about you, but my 4th of July ended with a bang. St. Cloud, a city south of Orlando, had quite an impressive fireworks display over East Lake Tohopekaliga (try saying that 10 times fast). I had a great view of it all from a camping chair on the beach.

It's interesting, though, because fireworks now seem a pretty normal part of life. Down here in Florida we love our fireworks - or maybe it would be more honest to say that our tourists love our fireworks. In the past month, I already saw fireworks three times over at Disney World. Both Magic Kingdom's Wishes and Epcot's IllumiNations shows have fireworks every night. That is a lot of fireworks!

Epcot IllumiNations June 2013

When I think of July 4th, I think of time with family, burgers and hot dogs on the grill, and lake boat rides. Despite having moved about thirteen states south of the 4th of July location of my youth, I was able to have all of these in Florida. Although I am usually quite quiet and reserved, I do know how to speak up. This year I used that ability to get invited to spend the 4th with a family I met when I moved down. The husband and wife work at Wycliffe, and I got in touch with them because the husband's sister and her family are long-time friends from MA. My new friends were so welcoming and encouraging as I transitioned to living in Florida. I had a great time getting to know them better last Thursday. It certainly helped that they had a pontoon boat to take out on the Florida lakes. Never mind that we got caught out in one of this season's daily afternoon rain storms. :-)

Saturday I learned an important lesson: the Florida summer sun is powerful. I went to the beach with the young adults group at my church and despite reapplying sunscreen multiple times and sitting under a towel whenever I wasn't in the water, I still managed to get a sunburn on my shoulders. Lesson learned.

Work is going well. Today I learned that I successfully completed a crucial step in the first big project given to me when I started. Wycliffe has several representatives attending a large conference in Texas this coming week, and several weeks ago I was given the task of pulling together materials for them to use at their booth, setting up the booth in the office and taking photographs, and then mailing all the supplies and emailing instructions to Texas. I heard today that the boxes of supplies arrived in Texas. Success.

P.S. The title of this post, for those of you who don't know, is from a song played during the show in the United States at Epcot's World Showcase. The music is quite majestic...and definitely emotionally manipulative.

Florida or bust!

It's about time for a post! I am in the middle of week three of working at Wycliffe Bible Translators and week four of living in Florida. So here's an update (and a goal of posting each Tuesday).

I could start way back at the beginning but that would take quite a long time. Instead I'll start now-ish and give you flashbacks later.

This past weekend I took advantage of my Disney World Florida resident annual pass to go visit Magic Kingdom, Epcot, and Animal Kingdom with some friends visiting from Massachusetts. We visited with Nemo and Dori, escaped trolls in Norway, and learned how to be pirates from Captain Jack Sparrow!

In line behind us at the Peter Pan ride was the cutest family - their oldest daughter (about 8) was dressed as Wendy, their son was Peter Pan, and their toddler daughter was Tinkerbell. That' s the way to do it: Leave behind the poorly-designed, hideously-colored, strangely-punny Disney family vacation t-shirts. Pick a story and dress up as the characters!

As for work, I'm quite happy to have joined the Wycliffe team. I'm learning the ropes of being marketing coordinator for the integrated marketing communications department. There's so much newness - at this point I'm in sponge-mode.