Eventful Week

A lot has happened in a week, so I'll just do a quick recap:

On saturday we had an all day painting party that was also youth event for the parish. We spent roughly 9 hours painting the downstairs common areas of our house with our neighbor (and youth director of the church) and 7 or 8 high schoolers. The kitchen now has yellow walls in addition to the already light green cabinets, orange countertops and purple doors, our dining room is a beautiful espresso brown with a "sand dune" beige accent wall, and our living room is a deep crater lake blue with an espresso brown harem (it has  little nook we call the harem or love nest). The hallways each got a fresh coat of beige and the bathroom is yellow as well. Its starting to feel a little more like home. After the long day of painting, my old roommates mom was dropping off her youngest daughter at George Fox and stopped by to say hello. It was so nice to see a familiar face - I  think I hugged her harder than I've hugged anyone in a long time. Then our house joined Crunchy (our neighbor) and the kids for a viewing of Back to the Future outside in our shared backyard.

Sunday my parents came out to take me to an early birthday lunch! It was so nice to be able to show them where I live and explore the city a little bit. I took them to Cafe Delirium, the local cafe in Gresham where my house spends a lot of time, out to lunch on trendy 23rd, down to the sunday market, and out to Mt. Tabor fora pretty view of the city. They were able to meet most of my roommates, which was fun. Everyone thought my parents were super cute - Gretchen says her favorite thing is meeting parents. It makes the world make sense :)

Tuesday: a lot of things happened... My work day was full of meetings, which is always interesting. I learn a lot about what wallace does and get to contribute to making it better. At the end of our big team meeting, the office had a delicious chocolate cake for me and sang an early happy birthday to me. It was very sweet:) This was also the day that MCAT scores are released, and they were supposed to be released the same time that my team meeting started  - so when the singing was over, I rushed back to my office to check, but no luck. Scores weren't released until 6pm. Gretchen and I borrowed Crunchy's internet to check our scores after dinner... me first... and I'm happy! I'm not taking them again anyway. I got a score that was at the lower end of what I wanted, but I think it's good enough. So now I can just sit back and relax until I start applying to medical school in 8 months! 

One more big  thing happened on tuesday - one of my roommates told the community that she's leaving . She didn't go into too much detail, but she's dealing with some personal stuff that she can't resolve here, so next wednesday she's flying back to New York. So there are some big changes to be had. I have a meeting with our area director today to check in about the situation.

Wednesday: My Birthday! I'm now officially 22. It was a wonderful and relaxing day. I got up and made myself some breakfast pancakes, read my book, talked a lot of friends and family, treated myself to a salad at cafe delirium for lunch and headed off to work at 2. It was an awesome clinic! I was in charge of referrals and it was great! I also was able to talk about my MCAT score with our medical director, and laugh and chit chat with all the medical providers between patients. I am bonding with my coworkers and just having a great time. When I got home, my roommates had prepared a feast of hummus, bruschetta, birthday cake and beer and we had a nice little birthday party. Over all a good day.

This weekend the community is headed to Seattle to visit the other JV houses for Labor day. I'm going to be taking my roommates to my church on Sunday and then to Compline gregorian chanting at St. Marks on capitol hill for our spirituality night this week, so I'm really excited to hear their thoughts.