We are now in Michigan and it has been one crazy week. Allow me to review:
Saturday June 19
Ben and I set off on our adventure to Sawyer, MI. We wanted to leave by 9 and finally hit the road by 11 in true DePew fashion. After a few stops for errands and to say "goodbye" to great friends (The Polos), we were finally on our way to our new home for the next two months. Around Indianapolis, we received a call from our boss telling us that the power was out at Bethany Beach. This was terrible news considering my absolute disdain for the heat, so we decided to get a hotel room for the night to give the electric company ample time to fix the problem before we arrived. Five hours later we arrived in Michigan City to stay for the night. The hotel was pretty lame; we had to switch rooms because the air conditioning wasn't working and our second room took three hours to cool down, but it had a king size bed which is one of our most favorite things. We ate at Texas Corral which is the equivalent to Texas Roadhouse back home; $3.50 long island ice teas=MAGIC.
Sunday June 20
We were sure the power would be turned back on by now, but we called and found out that they weren't expecting to get it back until Tuesday. After a quick discussion, Ben and I knew we couldn't afford to stay in hotels for that many nights so we decided to be like the pioneers and "rough it" for a few days. After a thirty minute drive we arrived at our destination: Bethany Beach. The apartment is small but very cute with a "beachy" feel. We met our groundskeeper Norm and his wife, who seem nice enough; Norm is a gruff old man who seems to have a kind heart but every time he speaks to me directly I feel like he is either yelling at me or criticizing our life choices (will expound on this later). The weekend storms had cooled down the temperature so we hung out at the apartment with the windows open and enjoyed the restfulness of the day. Despite the full-sized bed we slept pretty soundly due to the constant cool breeze from outside.
Monday June 21
I woke up sweating because of the sun beating on me through the window. Apparently our window sits facing directly East. Norm hooked us up with a generator so that we could run our refrigerator but we held off on stocking up the fridge until we officially had power again. We used the generator to make coffee in the morning and sat at the table peering out the window which was awesome and felt very "grown up." We decided to live on sandwiches until the electricity returned but Ben showed me the wonder of ramen noodles in the microwave so that's what our dinners consisted of. It was a hot day so we didn't do much except get some work finished at Panera, read, sweat, and take walks. But we did survive our first full day without electricity.
Tuesday June 22
We spent the day anticipating the arrival of Arie! My parents offered to bring him up a few days after we settled in and we had been missing his spunky demeanor so the timing was perfect. Before they arrived, we posted up at Panera again for a few hours to take advantage of the free wi-fi and air conditioning. We worked a lot on the youth calendar for the summer which was pretty stressful because we still don't really know what is expected of us. We feel like we are fumbling through the dark when it comes to our summer work. Mom, Dad, Matlock, and Arie arrived around 3:00. It was a happy reunion with our puppy! We all went to St. Joseph and ate lunch at a park overlooking the water. We took Arie to the beach for his first experience with water and sand. It was pretty entertaining watching him inhale loads of sand and figure out the waves from the lake. I waded out in the water a little bit to see if he would swim to me, and he did such a great job. We were very proud parents.
It was a nice day, but still no power and terribly hot!
Wednesday June 23
Arie had trouble adjusting to the new apartment and woke up every 20 minutes or so to bark at whatever he was hearing/smelling outside. We spent the day finalizing the youth calendar and writing a parent letter to the parents of the youth we will have this summer. We keep struggling with the fact that we feel an overwhelming need to entertain these kids rather than help foster their spiritual growth. We were hoping to get answers from our meeting with our boss Joy later in the evening. We finally had power restored at 2:30 in the afternoon, it was a very happy occasion which consisted of some dancing, jumping around, and turning the AC down to 65 degrees. We had our meeting with Joy, our two "assistants," and Linda a member of the youth board. It was a pretty helpful 3.5 hour meeting. We were confirmed in our apprehensions that our number one priority should be to entertain and plan awesome activities. It was inferred that if spiritual growth happens somewhere in-between all the fun we plan, that's fine. We are hoping that we can still find time to talk about God amongst all the activities and that kids will experience growth in spite of all the craziness of the summer.
Thursday June 24
We woke up to Norm knocking on our door telling us that something was wrong with the AC because it was leaking down through the 1st floor ceiling...oops. So we had AC for about 15 hours before we had to turn it back off and open the windows. We found a Family Video and rented season 4 of Lost to finish where we had left off watching. As always, we were left on the edge of our seats and have to know what happens in season 5. No matter how much we try, we just can't quit Lost! Since I'm not into the whole Matt Damon shooting things and trying to be tough, Ben watched Green Zone after I went to bed. He later reviewed the film as more political than he would have liked with no main character. This is merely conjecture but I believe he was upset that he wasn't able to admire his man-crush Damon put on a display of shooting and killing while remaining so poised and studly.
Friday June 25
Today we woke up to Norm knocking yet again. He needed to inspect our AC again and informed us that he would get us a window unit until they fix the problem. But before he left, he managed to advise us that we need to get out of the apartment and live a little and imply that our sleeping until 10 am was unacceptable. This is the stuff that I mentioned earlier that just rubs me the wrong way. I always feel like he is judging us and that he thinks we are just lazy "kids." Ben says he probably doesn't mean it that way but it is so hard to hold my tongue when Norm gives us suggestions for how to live. I want to tell him all the things we have done since we've been here, but I refrain because it would not make a difference. After Norm left, we "went out into the world" with our assistant directors to purchase supplies for Sunday School. Oh yes, we just found out Wednesday that Ben and I are in charge of leading Sunday School grades 3-5 every week. Lauren and Seth (assistants) are college students who have grown up coming to Bethany and they are great and helpful, but they aren't really our assistants. They are in charge of K-5 activities every week which doesn't really seem to leave room for assisting us too much.
Apologies for the crazy-long post but this is the first chance I've had to write anything. I'm hoping that this blog will be a great place for me to sort through the events of this summer and keep people informed of our adventures. I promise not all posts will be this boring, but I had to catch everyone up :)
