Easter Holiday + Life Update

Well, I haven't been too good at keeping this blog updated as was my New Year's Resolution, but I am still trying! I will NOT be a part of that 90% of people who fail on their New Years Resolution. So here is the update on all things Julianne:

1. Volleyball--obviously I list this as #1 because being 20 years old and a Division II college athlete, volleyball is pretty much the most important thing I have going on in my life. We've had some big changes on the Belmont Abbey Volleyball team. First, our school is adding a men's volleyball program next year! That is very exciting news! Men's volleyball is becoming more and more popular and it is a blessing to be able to add that program to our athletic department. Second, we officially hired a full time assistant coach, Trey. He is AWESOME! He has a great attitude, works us extremely hard, but also jokes around with us, which is perfect for our team. We currently have 4 days (and counting!) left of our spring conditioning and I know I will be jumping for joy when that day comes! I didn't think it was possible to be in a constant state of being sore for three months straight, but Trey proved me wrong. I will thank him in the end, but currently my legs are throbbing while just laying in bed.
2. I have solidified my plans for the summer. I will be spending my last summer before college graduation (ahhhhhhh!!) with my family and friends in Erie, PA. I got a job at the LP Golf Course, thanks to my friend Brittany, and I will be gaining some experience by interning with the Erie Seawolves. I am excited to spend my last summer without the stress of the real world with the people the mean the most to me! It will be very hard for me to be away from my Mom and Dad, but I know they'll be visiting there a lot and hopefully I will get some time to visit North Carolina too.
3. Today I picked all of my classes for my SENIOR year of college....And I am still in shock! When everyone told me that the four years of college would be the fastest years of my life I smiled and nodded as any normal person would, but I never thought it would be true. I can honestly say that these three years have flashed by and have shaped my life in more ways than I could explain. I have made the best of friends, spent so much time with the best teammates, and have actually enjoyed learning about my future career! I cannot wait for my last year to get underway, but I suppose I should focus on finishing out these last two and a half weeks first! :)

That probably doesn't catch you up on my life completely, but it's close enough! Now to move on to more important things.

I was able to go to my parents house in Greenville, NC for the Easter holiday and we had a LOT of company. What is hardest about living ten hours away from the place you grew up is not having friends and family to spend the holidays with. Luckily, we have been very blessed and have had many visitors at our door for the holidays. It's great to live somewhere warm! Everyone wants to come visit you and get out of Dreary Erie for a few days. 

This year my cousins Abby and Sofia spent the week before Easter with my family. It was fun because they came to my college and spent a few days with me too! I love getting some quality girl-cousin time. My cousins are like my siblings to me. I am so thankful for coming from a close-knit family. Here's some pics we took while enjoying our time in good ol' Belmont, North Carolina.

I cannot wait to be living in Erie this summer and be able to spend so much time with my cousins!!

We were also happy to welcome my mom's best friend from grade school and her family, the Greggs. Betsy, Scott and their four kids came to our house the Saturday before Easter and spent that week with my parents. We finally made use of our big back yard and set up corn hole, had games of football, and games of volleyball. It was a beautiful weekend (a littleeee chilly with the wind, but the big, beautiful sun made up for it!). 

Going home for the weekend always gets me back into the right state of mind when I come back to school. It gets me out of the Belmont Bubble and puts some perspective back into my life about what really matters and what is just petty drama that will diminish by next week. While I am learning that some friendships stay strong for life and some friendships are meant to dwindle with time, I am so thankful for the friends and family I have been given and I would not trade any of them for the world!

New Years Resolution: Blog Update

Fifty-two days after the new year I am (finally) accomplishing one of my goals that will be a work in progress resolution. As it always happens, life got in the way of my love for blogging. A quick update on life since my last Nicaragua post:

• We arrived home safely from Nicaragua and I had SUCH a good experience. I would love to be able to go back one day...and be able to speak Spanish so I could communicate with all of the beautiful people.
• Volleyball season started immediately (hence why I had no time to blog...). We had a very up and down season, but ended on the up which gives me great home for my final senior (ahhhhhhhh!!) season next fall.
• My parents bought a house in Greenville, NC and have been working on making it beautiful ever since. It is the perfect size for them AND it has a hot tub!!
• I got a Wii for Christmas from my parents and my roommates and I now have a new obsession with JUST DANCE! It is such an entertaining game and quite the workout if i do say so myself. We have woken up many mornings with sore calf muscles and shoulders, but wouldn't change that for anything! 
• In January I started my internship with Clear Channel Communications and I love it. I will dedicate a whole blog to all of my awesome experiences with that in the very near future.

Back to the blog: My inspiration for my blog's face lift came from one of my favorite blogs to follow Sweet Verbena. I stumbled across her blog one time last year and I check in on her every so often. The author, Katy, is a college student like myself who enjoys creating things and designing tutorials on awesome crafts. One of her recent posts was about how she created her blog design. Since I am not one of the better computer nerds, I definitely needed her help! Blogspot is not the easiest thing to use, that's for sure!

With a few tips and inspiration I got to recreating my old and dull soooooo 2010 blog. And now I have my totally fab soooo 2012 blog! Well, almost...I am still not totally sold on my background and will probably change it ten times in the next week, but eventually it will be perfect!

Please stay tuned for my very exciting changes and my very exciting life stories to come. It feels so good to be back!! :) xoxoxo

Nicaragua: Monday and Tuesday

Monday:
Today was our first experience with doing official mission work and we could not wait to get started! Our team broke up into three different groups. One group went to work at a day care type place for developmentally challenged people of all ages. Another group went with something called "The Mobile Library". This group went around to local schools and dropped off books for them to read and played with the students. My group went to a local restaurant across the street from our hotel and worked one on one with the waiters by teaching them basic English terms so they can better communicate with the tourist customers. It was fun to work with the waiters because they were close with us in age, but it was also very difficult because some of our partners (including mine) did not know how to communicate very well in English. I can't speak Spanish; he can't speak English. To put it lightly, our communication barrier put a slight damper on our lesson, but we soon got the hang of using hand motions, smiles, and stick figure pictures to be able to ultimately teach each other our native languages. I don't know that I am qualified to teach a Spanish speaking teenager the english language, but I tried my best and had a blast doing it!

After our morning mission was finished we had two hours to rest and get lunch before we all came back together and went to "Carizal". This is a school that teaches English to local children. It runs from 2pm-4pm and only focuses on teaching English. I am not positive of the schooling system here, but to me it seems like the school aged children go to regular school until noon, and they have the opportunity to go to English school in the afternoon. It seemed voluntary because it was so laid back, but it seems like they highly recommend people to attend. The English school had age ranges from about 3-22. I hope to be able to learn more about their school system in the next few days so I can have a better understanding of what the children do on a regular basis.

Working with the children is such an awesome experience. They are so loving and fun to be around. It doesn't bother them that you had just met a few minutes ago, they will still be grabbing your hand to play with them, giving you the biggest hugs, and kissing your cheek when you have to leave them. They are so thankful for all of the time that you spend with them, and I am equally as thankful for the time they spend with me. The memories I am making here will never leave my head and I am so thankful for it all.

Tuesday: today was day two of missions. Our team stayed in our groups, but switched what mission we were involved in. Today my group went with the "Mobile Biblioteca". We were picked up from the hotel at 7:45am and were on to the first school by 8am. The mobile library goes around to each school, about 33 in total. The schools get a stop from the library about once a month. Today we visited three schools. While at a school we read "The hungry caterpillar". It happens to be one of my favorite childhood books, but this book was in Spanish. The leader of the mobile library had us read to the children. Hahah this was a FUNNY experience, that's for sure! None of us speak good Spanish and we especially can't read it well. The children laughed at us and kept correcting our speech, but we tried our best! After reading the book we helped the kids do a craft and played a few games while everyone was getting their chance to trade in their library books. I spent a lot of time at one school playing baseball with two 5 year olds who could hit the wiffle ball all over the field. I tried hitting against them and failed miserably...the little boys laughed at my attempt and called me a "gringo". All those years of softball didn't pay off, I must have been nervous! :) I had a really great time with the kids and am always so happy to spend time with their bright smiling faces!

We returned to the hotel at 12:30pm and had an hour to eat before we left for our afternoon activity: zip lining. We took a canopy tour over the beautiful trees on the mountain side of San Juan Del Sur. It was definitely a scary experience to have your life in the hands of a simple pulley system and a wire hundreds of feet above many, many trees. We all had to get strapped into some pretty uncomfortable harnesses and came down the mountain in 17 stops zipping from line to line. We could hear the call of wild monkey's, but unfortunately none came into sight in the attempts of hitching a ride with us...bummer! I felt like a real George(ette) of the Jungle. Such an incredible experience!

Our night concluded with some pool time and dinner, along with our favorite ice cream shop right up the street. We are enjoying our last night in San Juan Del Sur before we head to Granada tomorrow morning. We will miss staying across the street from the beach, but I am very excited to see what the rest of the trip has to offer.

Keep the prayers coming! Many x's and o's to my family and friends and I will blog again soon!

Location:San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

Annoying technology

I had a really great blog written for the past two days. And it was super funny and witty (just like myself). But unfortunately the power went out a few times at our hotel today, apparently that's pretty normal, and when I went to post my blog it all messed up and now I can't find it anywhere...super bummer. So I don't have the energy to write the whole thing again but I will give you the website of journal entries that our team has been writing each day. It won't be a totally personal blog, but it'll give you an idea of what happened Saturday and Sunday. And I promise I will blog tomorrow.

To read about Saturday and Sunday please see our athletic website. www.abbeyathletics.com

Location:San Juan Del Sur

First blog from Nicaragua!!

Well, day one is in the books! Traveling went great. Our first flight from charlotte to Atlanta was quick. Only about 30 minutes. Unfortunately there were five of us (myself included, of course!) that had to check our carry on bag because they ran out of room in the plane...this of course caused a scene because we didn't want to agree to check our bags without the permission of our coach and head honcho of our trip who happened to already be on the plane. While the stewardess was giving us false information about where we would get our bags back, we were being reminded of the fact that we were holding up the whole plane ride...thanks mrs stewardess, you're making our flight so friendly and comfortable! After the baggage situation was figured out, all other flights went perfectly! It was an extremely long day of traveling and I could not wait to land in Managua. I left my house in Greenville,NC at 9:00am and arrived in Nicaragua at 1:00am their time...which is 3:00am our time in the states. LONG DAY! When we arrived at our hotel I was too excited to sleep. We had a 7:45am wake up call and probably didn't even go to bed until 4:00am....and I was awake at 6:00am tossing and turning. A solid two hours of sleep. Great!

Day one: 7:45am wake up call. We ate breakfast, and packed all 23ish people into a van/bus and got on the road to our first match. We passed very humbling "houses" and "jobs" on the ride. This was our first look at the huge amount of poverty in this country. Our awesome tour guide and leader of "bring it sports" gave us a lot of background on the country's government and the big revolution they had in the 70s and the devastating earthquake that occurred in '79 that still has proof of it's effects. We stopped at a cathedral on our way to our match, it was very beautiful, but was partially ruined in the earthquake and has never been restored. While outside observing the building we had many natives trying to sell us things to make a few extra bucks. We found out quickly that our most used phrase for this trip will be "No gracious".

We finally arrived at our game and played 4 games verses the Nicaraguan national team. For our first time touching a volleyball in a very long time for some of us, we didn't play as bad as I was expecting! It was a good first game and it was a blast to finally be out on the court with all the girls again! we had a pretty good crowd of natives come watch our game and we eventually had a big following of boys calling us "Bonita"!! They were quite the charmers. I even had an admirer just for myself! Soprano, a teenage boy came up to my assistant coach brian after our match and asked if he could take a picture with me. Just me. I was honored! And he was quite cute to make it even better :) After I took the picture (sweaty and all) I introduced myself and he shook my hand and kissed me on the cheek. THE LOVE OF MY LIFE! Sorry mom and dad, I think I'll be moving to Nicaragua to be with my future husband. :) First I'll have to learn a little bit of Spanish!

After our match we drove a long way...or at least it seemed like a long way since there are no interstates and the top speed limit is about 45mph. At about 4pm we arrived in San Juan Del Sur. We will be staying here for the next five days. We spent the afternoon at the beach and had dinner as a group. We are all very exhausted and still getting used to the time difference, both timezone-wise and Nicaraguan culture-wise. We are all safe and having the times of our lives. I can't wait to see what the next 6 days has to offer! Please keep us all in your prayers!

Ps....pictures will come later. I can't figure out how to upload them onto my blog from my iPod. Sorry for the disappointment!

Location:San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua

Practice blog from my iPod

Well, the big trip to nicaraguara is almost here! I will be leaving from the Charlotte airport Thursday afternoon! Since we are required to pack veryyyyyy light for this out of the country trip, I'm not able to bring my laptop...not that I would want to carry that heavy thing everywhere I go! So in order to keep all my friends and family updated on this trip of a lifetime I am about to take, I downloaded an app to my iPod that will allow me to update me blog! Now, this will depend on if I can connect to a wireless Internet, but we are staying in a few big cities, so my hopes are high! If I am unable to update my blog while in route, it will be fully updated with pictures and many memories for you all to enjoy within a few days of my return.

Well, I still have a LOT of packing to get done, so I hope this test iPod post works as I need it to and I don't have to worry about finding a computer at the hotel.

Please pray for the safety of my team while we give up a week of our summer to serve others!

Location:Sumrell St,Greenville,United States

funny thing i found online.