St. Louis

after a hectic couple of days last week I finally got the chance to chill out after wednesday. Although I did not do as well on my exams as I had hoped no worries... the weekend finally came and I was home free. And... although I got to bum around Thursday I spent all of friday in class and getting ready for my trip to St. Louis. The car got down to school just fine, sent my brother on his way back home, went to my last class, had pizza there, then got ready to go to st. louis. and this is the trip...

We left around 4:30 in the afternoon. My car making a stop to drop off one of the cars and then we made the rest of the trip. It was kind of an awkward one, but fun nevertheless. Thankfully we did not get lost and the directions got us there. I kept from freaking out thanks to the abilities and calming talk of Kari in the front seat. once we hit st. louis there was the task of finding the church that we were staying at which freaked me out the most because I had no idea where we were going and it was taking longer than I thought it would. Finally we made it there and tried our best to get to sleep even though we probably woke everyone up a bunch of times. :-P oops.

Saturday we began play at 9 and we played ALLLLLLLL day! 5 games with no breaks although after playing the wisconsin team we basically had a break because they killed us. We ended up winning 3 and losing 2 that day. overall it was a lot of fun. And then oh the joy of relaxing... Much pizza was eaten and much relaxing and socializing was done. Heck I got two backrubs out of the whole deal. some went to the party and others well we just sat around the church and played games or watched tv. I made it to bed early only to wake up with a sore neck. These floors were pretty hard...

Day two of playing had better weather...much more sunny and fewer clouds. We played three games and only won 1 of them. The other two games were pretty intense many words were exchanged between us and the other teams... not very nice words ... we made it through the day though and it was quite fun nevertheless... two of the cars left that evening and those that were left, well we stayed in St. Louis for the night... We watched the men's team win the tournament and what a game it was... It's funny to watch the men play and see how different of a game it can be. It was definitely an intense game with many calls and heated words exchanged. Allie, Andrea, Leah, Britta, and I sat and watched the game and had a lot of fun doing so. Funniest part was watching the woman on the side lines get plowed over by one of our own guys. hahah. it was quite hilarious and you had to be there to see it. Her and the chair went tumbling, beer went flying...but she came out alright, no real harm done and barely and beer lost. Plus her dog behind her was unharmed as well. So the group of us finished watching, hooked back up with Kari and Melissa, and had four hours to waste in St. Louis before getting back to the church. So first food at Taco Bell because it's tradition, where we spent an hour or more i'm guessing just chatting and getting refills on soda. Then the Arch. For those who do not know... St. Louis's attraction is this big metal arch on the riverfront. A shitty riverfront no doubt but a really cool arch structure! we played around in the park taking random photos for probably another hour or so which left us with at least another hour to kill... so... why not get ice cream? That wasted some more time and gave us even more time to just hang out...which was really fun the whole night. Back at the church we were all able to claim couches to sleep on! Thank god for some comfort! We spent the rest of the evening hanging out. Britta found some very silly books in the children's library which she read to us... they were a series "learning about sex" and oh my were they ridiculous! I don't think the word sex was ever mentioned in the "why boys and girls are different" book. Basically this is how you get a baby... two people love eachother, they get married in a church, and then a little bit of prayer gets you pregnant and wal-la! a baby and a family! Really this book by-passed anything important to teach children about sex and so did the other book. Kari also read us a book about the Easter Bunny and whether he was real. That book totally went around the issue of the Easter Bunny and never really answered that question. Again quite ridiculous. Oh religion...i have no idea what I think about it these days.

The next morning we split ways with Leah and Britta who are traveling for the week back packing somewhere. Kari, Melissa, Allie, Andrea and I started off back to Minneapolis. We finally got on the road with the car full of gas by 8:30 and were actually out of St. Louis by 9. It was raining and it continued to rain for the whole trip minus a couple of hours. We made our way out of Missouri, and through Illinois up to Cedar Rapids, IA to drop off Kari and Melissa. Then there were the three of us continuing to Minneapolis. Happily we never got lost on the way. Thought for sure I screwed us over almost but no worries we made it. On our way out of Cedar Rapids we travled maybe an hour and then ate something, and got back on the road... the total hours of the trip... 11 hours including our stops...:-P bleh. it wasn't too bad of a trip... once we finally hit Minnesota we were SO happy! The girls did homework or slept most of the way and we just constantly listened to music to keep us otherwise entertained. I was finally home by about 7:30/8 that evening after dropping off Allie and Andrea. Oh god how good it felt to be out of the car!

No real plans for the rest of break. Have a hair appointment tomorrow but that's about it. Dad went to Utah today for work and so I won't get to see much of him, but I did get to chat with him last night and today on the way to the airport. I spent the day sitting on the couch and feeding myself with unhealthy things...:-) I figure I can after spending two days running around all day...oh it was fun... i felt really good playing this weekend, like I was actually in shape a little and that I played some good games. Anyway that's about all... nothnig else really going on.. will spend the next few days getting senior paper stuff together, hanging out with my sister and maybe some friends who are around the cities. but for now more relaxing...:-)