Thanksgiving Break

Day 134 - Tuesday (24), Today was a pretty good start to Thanksgiving Break! I woke up early this morning because I am one of the shuttle drivers responsible for taking other corps members to the airport. It's about a hour drive to Jackson and another hour back. But one of the perks of driving to Jackson is that there is a Starbucks which I will definitely made a stop on the way back.

After arriving back on campus, I hung out with TL Alex for a while before she left for Jackson to board her flight back home. An hour after that, as ATL of the Summit Unit, I went grocery shopping at Krogers to purchase food for this week. It was a little difficult and stressful at first trying to find all the stuff without taking too long but I managed to get almost everything my unit had asked for.

We arrived back on campus and started unloading our groceries. One thing we failed to realized is that we didn't know that Class 21 Team Leaders had left a bunch of food that they didn't eat so now we have a ton of food. Almost too much that we had freeze some bread and other stuff because we had an absurd amount. We rearranged the shelves and refrigerators in a more organized fashion. So we now have a dairy, vegetables, and meat/deli fridges. We also have an frozen foods/ice cream freezer. So we have more than enough food to feed an entire building plus more for the rest of the break. Extremely thankful for that.

After we reorganized the kitchen, I ate dinner with some other members. They had made a quinoa and vegetable dish, which was very delicious by the way. I hung out with a couple of them and watched Mockingjay Part 1 because we are planning on seeing Part 2 in theaters tomorrow!

I got to bed somewhat late, around 1:30 am. It felt weird to have the room to myself, something that I have not had since I left home in July. I can't believe that I have almost been gone from California and in this program for over 5 months. It's a little bit hard for me to wrap my head around it. But majority of the hard part is over. We finished CTI and Round 1, which is the longest round. Round 2 is only 2 months and is the shortest round. It will go extremely quick with Christmas in the middle of the round and then, Round 3 will be done before we know it also. And that leads us to graduation. I'm really going to miss some of the people I have met. But we will most likely keep in touch.

The night is passing by quickly and I have another van to drive tomorrow so I now need adequate sleep!


Day 135 - Wednesday (25), Had to do another shuttle run to Jackson today to drop off some TLs. On the way home, we stopped off at Starbucks again. :)

Since Thanksgiving is tomorrow, a few people that stayed behind are planning a Thanksgiving meal for all of us. We used our budget money to purchase more Thanksgiving foods. So far we have green beans, mash potatoes, yams, stuffing, chicken, ham, and lots of dessert. So no going hungry tomorrow! I'm quite excited and everyone that stayed behind on campus was welcomed to our Thanksgiving feast.

After grocery shopping and doing prep work for tomorrow's meal, a few of us went out tonight to see Mockingjay Part 2. I thought it was a good movie overall, but there would have been some scenes that I would have done differently. I also kind of forgot some of the more minor details of the movie because I didn't have a chance to read the Mockingjay book because I left that at home.


Day 136 - Thursday (26 - Thanksgiving), Today was an early start. I woke up at 6:20 am to get ready for the Salvation Army ISP. I left with a few others and drove to Jackson to help out with the Salvation Army's Thanksgiving day meal. We first started with helping cut pies and boxing them. Another corps member, Laura, and I decided we wanted to help with delivering meals to people because they were short on drivers.

We loaded 88 Thanksgiving meals plus dessert into our 15 passenger van and drove off. We went to two different apartment complexes knocking on doors and dropping off meals. The first location was a little difficult because no one was answering their doors, but luckily there was a lady that helped us with "knocking" on doors. It was more of a persistent bang than knock. At our second location, another lady let us use one of their grocery cart in which we piled a bunch of food in and delivered it through multiple floors. This is the first time I used a stolen object to do a good deed! It took is approximately 3 hours to deliver all the food. About an hour out of the 3 was driving. When we finished, we went to pick up the other two girls from the Salvation Army and drove back to Vicksburg.

I was extremely tired from having a late night in addition to waking up early so I took a nap. I woke up for our Thanksgiving meal at 5. There was a ton of food and I didn't know which end to start. There was ham, chicken, mashed potatoes, stuffing, green beans, mac n cheese, sweet potatoes, a corn and jalapeño dish, and a lot more I couldn't remember. We also had a multitude of deserts - pumpkin pie, muffins, cupcakes, brownies, pecan pie, lemon bars, and much more. Everything was delicious. My favorites was the corn and jalapeño dish and the pumpkin pie. I was very full at the end.


Day 137 - Friday (27), I got a good sleep in today before I was woken up by a piano and a speaker blasting music.

For breakfast, I had desert from yesterday's Thanksgiving meal. :) The pumpkin pie was my favorite so I dived for that first. After "breakfast", I drove the boys to do some Black Friday shopping. It wasn't really Black Friday shopping though. The deals weren't that great and the mall wasn't crowded. I think it's due to the fact that Vicksburg is too small of a town, so it doesn't have many stores, and it's isolated so they also don't get people from surrounding areas. I didn't see much of anything I really liked and online, there wasn't anything I really needed either.

I mostly kept to myself in the evening. I did laundry and worked on some college stuff. Deadlines are lurking around the corner so applications have to start cranking in.


Day 138 - Saturday (28), Slept in as late as I could today before I had an ISP to do. For this ISP, I went to the Humane Society and cleaned two fields full of manure. It took a lot of raking, shoveling, and wheelbarrowing, but we finally got it done.

After the ISP, I took a shower upon arriving back on campus and started the washer. I took a couple friends with me to the National Military Park to see the U.S.S Cairo Museum. There was a huge ironclad ship that we were able to walk onto and a museum full of artifacts recovered from the ship. After that and since it was getting dark, we drove around the rest of the military park visiting the bigger monuments. Some of the sites were quite stunning to see.

After our trip to the park, we stopped off at a Chinese buffet to have dinner. It was pretty good! Not as many vegetarian options as the Thai place we went in Houston, but still enough. We also stopped off at Redbox to rent a couple movies in which we had a movie night in our lounge tonight. Quite a few people stopped by and hung out to watch, which was cool.


Day 139 - Sunday (29), Got a late start to today. I usually sleep in accordance with the weather. Since it was cloudy and foggy outside and not sunny, I slept in.

I woke up to a corps member phone call wanting me to take them to downtown Vicksburg. So I got got dressed, brushed, and drove them downtown and to a couple other places. After that I dropped the boys off at Waffle House and I went to the Tomato Place and got myself some fried green tomatoes! It was really delicious and happy to be back. I really enjoy supporting small business such as the tomato place and the coffee shop.

Kristina got back late tonight so it was nice to see her again and I'm glad that she got a nice break because she deserves it. As much as she loves our team, we do drive her crazy sometime. But I'm glad to have her back.

I've been listening to a lot of Christmas music lately. As matter of fact, I'm listening to it as I write. It's officially after Thanksgiving so I can start without anyone yelling at me that it's not Christmas yet! Christmas music just puts me in a really good mood. I usually associate it with family, friends, warmth, laughter, and happiness so it really makes me happy and excited. And I only get to listen to it for 1 month out of the 12 so I do get excited when that time comes along. I hope my team likes Christmas music because they will be listening to a lot of it soon!


Day 140 - Monday (30), Enjoyed my last day of sleeping in before work resumes tomorrow. The afternoon was very relaxed as corps members started trickling back in. I did quite a bit of driving today. I had to take some corps member downtown and to other errands.

I spent majority of the afternoon and evening socializing with other people. I spent a while hanging out TL Alex and and a couple hours in Kaitlynn's room chatting about break and where we might end up for Round 2. It felt pretty nice to have everybody back on campus and excited that things will start to get rolling again.

Salvation Army ISP

Thanksgiving Meal

U.S.S Cairo (Ironclad Ship)

View of the Military Park

Almost got locked in!