Day 340 (Halfway Point)

Crazy, totally unplanned coincidence: Anna, one of the girls that used to be in my youth group, lives in Ohio like 10 minutes from my aunt! Through the miracle of facebook, we were able to figure this out and we had lunch today before my mom and I left for Pennsylvania. She insisted that we have lunch at Bob Evans because it's a popular restaurant chain out here that we don't have in California.

It was really great to see her because I hadn't seen her in years! We reminisced on old times and caught each other up on our lives. We only had about 2 hours, but it was really good to catch up with an old friend.

Afterwards, my mom and I left for Cranberry, PA. Isn't that a cute name for a town? Since we are at approximately the halfway point of the trip and nothing other that the lunch with Anna really happened today, I've decided to reflect on the trip thus far...

Most Exciting Moment: Definitely escaping the flooding car two nights ago. If that remains the most exciting part of the entire trip, I am totally okay with that!

Most Magical Moment: Fireflies in Indiana. I'm from California and we don't have fireflies there, so seeing them for the first time was really cool.

Biggest Surprise: My dad showing up in West Virginia. Sneaky little bastard!

Funniest Moment: My dad thinking that he accidentally bought the amethyst geode that my mom got for him in South Dakota. He was going to surprise us with it when we got home, LOL!

Biggest Disappointment: Parcel delivery service in the United States (postal service, UPS, etc.) I waited in vain for two weeks for some stuff to show up at my parents house before I left and they never did. One of them was the Interagency Pass for the National Parks, so I ended up having to buy a second one. Those suckers are $80.00 a piece! My sister's cheese was supposed to be overnighted from Wisconsin and it showed up three days later! And, I still don't have my cell phone charger 'cuz it never showed up at my aunt & uncle's house! I'm gonna have to buy one now 'cuz trying to coordinate mailing it to another stop is basically going to be impossible, and I've already gone way too long without my cell phone.

Coolest Natural Wonder: Devil's Tower, WY (w/bonus prairie dogs!) Just go, trust me.

Coolest Man Made Attraction: I'm gonna have to give this one to Hillbilly Hot Dogs. That place is an absolute riot!

Coolest City: Chicago. So much to do, so little time! Plus, the public transportation rocks!!!

General Assembly: What can I say? It was and will be the largest and probably most important part of the trip. I learned so much there and made a lot of new friends. Will the Presbyterian Church ever become the open and embracing church that we want to be? Of course it will. The only question is, how long is it going to take? I've met some of the people now that are fighting for equality in this denomination, and I can confidently say that the cause is in very good hands. I will definitely need to step up my involvement, because that is the right thing to do. Of course, this will mean playing less Magic, but with Russ and Doug gone, less Magic seems to be in the cards. (No pun intended)

Day 328 (Cheese)

Today was the last day of the General Assembly, and we had a tearful worship service to say good-bye to all of our new friends. I'm not really sure who these people are in this picture, though, I just took it because Heather was posing with them as I walked into the convention hall.

Before we left Minnesota, my mom and I went back to the Mall of America to watch Eclipse and go to the aquarium. I didn't think Eclipse was very good, again the book was much better than the movie, but the aquarium was fun.

In case you doubt how important cheese is to Wisconsin, this is where my mom and I had dinner.

PICTURE OF THE DAY: The sign that drew us to the restaurant.

Day 327 (Mall of America)

My mom and I went to the Mall of America today when we had some down time. We couldn't stay as long as we wanted because we got called back to clean up the church we've been using as our home base this week. But, I did get some interesting pictures. This place is nuts!!! There is an entire amusement park in the middle of the mall, a miniature golf course and more stores than I can even think of!

There was this one place called MagicQuest, where you go in and walk around and battle things with your magic wand. I had never heard of a place like this, but I thought the concept was cool. It didn't seem interesting enough for me to want to spend money on it, but it was fun to look at the people doing it. When I asked if I could just go in a look around, I was told, "In order to let you inside, we would have to take some of your gold and we can't let you in without a wand for protection."

PICTURE OF THE DAY: Here is an assortment of magic wands to choose from before entering the "forest," kind of like Ollivander's in Harry Potter. The whole time I kept thinking about how my school looks like Hogwarts and how we should have something like this so we can choose our wands before class.

Day 326 (The Show)

We started out the morning with some non-violent resistance with the Soul Force group. There was only one guy that showed up to proclaim the sins of homosexuality. I actually kind of felt bad for him cuz he was by himself, but he was a little on the nutty side.

The flash mob was a HUGE success today! Tons of people came up to us and told us that they support us and lost of people stopped to take pictures.

We finally got to do our show today! It was great except we didn't have too much of an audience. We didn't really know when the commissioners were going to be released for dinner, and by the time they were, we had already broken everything down. It was fun though and we're gonna be doing it again tomorrow!

PICTURE OF THE DAY: