Right after Christmas I headed out to New Haven. But not before I got a perm. Yes, yes I did. I was feeling alittle guilty because I felt bad leaving my parents with no children at home. They managed just fine though. I didn’t sleep much the night before I left because I was packing and spending time with Stu before I left for 7 months so I arrived in CT sleep deprived and unsure about my decision. Jesse showed me around the 2 YWAM houses and I met 1 of my roommates Brittany who I thought I would have nothing in common with. Jesse let me go sleep in her room for a few hours and I layed there and cried and cried. Then everyone moved into our little house on Orange Street, classes started and I realized this was one of the best decisions I ever made. New Haven was BEAUTIFUL, I was so wrong about Brittany- she was amazing as were my other 2 roommies Emily and Erika, and I loved the people on our school. The staff teased me because within the first month I had broken up with my boyfriend from back home and had dyed my hair dark red which are 2 things that normally are bad signs and they hadn't expected it from me because I had been around YWAM for so long. New Haven was super snowy that winter and we had so much fun playing in the snow and since we walked everywhere and didn't have cars, we didn't have to worry about driving in it.
One of the things that I love about living in community are the fun celebrations around holidays. Without us girls knowing, the boys decided the week before Valentines Day to each take one of the girls and do nice things for her all week (our school actually had an even number of boys and girls). We came home each day to flowers, or sweet notes, or treats on our beds. We thought it was so sweet that on Valentines night, we invited them to a big meal that we cooked, decorated for, served them, and did a presentation for them. I was of course in charge of coming up with romantic quotes and scriptures and that is when I fell in love with "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal upon thine arm: for love is strong as death."
There was one thing that had made me have 2nd thoughts about attending the school. That was the fact that Stefan was going to be on it. I had spent the last few years carefully avoiding him. The problem was his 2 best friends were on it and I was friends with Jordan and Aaron from the past so I naturally hung out with them the first few weeks of the school, but tried to avoid Stefan. He kept trying to get me to spend time with him and I kept saying no. Then one night he knew I needed to go do laundry at the laundry mat and asked if he could come along. I relented and we spent the evening doing laundry and started talking about the past and realized the reason that we weren't friends held no value. We quickly realized we still had feelings for each other and started dating.
Jill had also started dating Micah and that Easter I invited Dave and Stefan to come with me to Jill's to spend it with Jill, Micah, and Dan who was visiting from NH.
One weekend Crissy, Selena, Wesley and Dan all came to New Haven to visit me. We rented a hotel and spent the weekend having tickle wars, exploring New Haven and having long talks as more grown up versions of ourselves.
After the 5 month lecture phase was over we headed first to England for 2 weeks and then traveled to Paris, Florence, Rome, Switzerland, Croatia and then a boat to Bosnia, Serbia and then flew to Greece. England was both fun (because Cari had moved there and we got to spend time together) and hard (because the atmosphere was very heavy & dark, we didn't have any time off, and I had several experiences of men trying to attack me). I loved traveling across Europe. Rome was amazing because it was so over the top. My day in Paris could have been out of a movie. Switzerland was the most beautiful place on earth. Croatia was a dreamland. We got to Bosnia and I was shocked. It was 2001 and the war had just recently ended and the destruction was everywhere. Bombed out buildings, no jobs, serious depression, and strong warnings not to go off the path or road because of bombs. I was shocked how much I didn't know about the world when I saw that. 5 of us stayed with a sweet Muslim family. The parents didn't speak English, but the 2 kids (who were our ages) did. They had several friends in the neighborhood who everynight would gather on their porch and hang out and talk for hours so we would join them everynight and I loved getting to know them and their experiences. Sometimes we would talk about the horrors they had exerienced, some nights we would just tell jokes and laugh for hours. Some nights we would talk about what we desired in life. It was amazing. They mother of the family insisted on wasing our laundry and hanging it to dry outside the house. One morning we were eatting breakfast in their kitchen and I looked out the window and pinned on the line in full view of anyone looking out the window were my Boxer Joe panties that had a big smiley face on the butt. Only me.
After our school was over, I decided that I wanted to return to staff, but first went home for a few months to get ready to move. During that time 9/11 happened. Jill was in the city that day for jury duty and called me when she managed to cross the bridge before they closed down. I didn't realize the extent of what had happened and was still on a high after receiving a letter in the mail from Stefan who was in Africa during that time. It really wasn't til I moved back to CT a few weeks later and we went to the city and experienced it that the horror sank in. The night I moved back to CT, New Haven put off fireworks without warning the citizens. The 911 phonelines received SO many calls that you couldn't get through and they had to start putting emergency broadcasts on tv and radio to let people know it wasn't an emergency.
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