It's all over

A couple good friends have dubbed me a waffle, meaning that I compartmentalize my experiences and don't have everything flowing together. While this tends to make going through life a little more straightforward it also has a tendency to cause me to put things off for a while that I really should be processing. 

Two days ago I deleted my Uncle Harry's phone number from my cellphone.

Three days ago I graduated from college.

Today I leave for the other side of the world, on the way there we will pass through China where 12,000 people have been killed by an earthquake and when we arrive in Cambodia we will be within spitting distance of Burma, where 32,000 people have been killed.

In four months I move to another part of the country, and leave behind my best friends.

In three years I will have to go into the real world and stop being a student.

While for some people a new season is something to be celebrated without reservation, for me a new season is something to be entered into, but entered into fully knowing that I am leaving behind some very good times in my life. This morning I got watery eyed for only the second time since graduating. I suppose I can keep setting things off to the side, but I feel like eventually I'm going to have to come face to face with them. 

Whoa

So, in 33 minutes I have to be over at the MEC for graduation. 

My graduation. 

Somehow I wasn't sure this day would ever actually arrive. It seems like one of those days that is perpetually in the future and will never be in the present, and yet here I am. In 2 hours 32 minutes we will walk from the foyer into the main area and take our seats in front of our loved ones, friends, faculty, staff and administration. Sometime after that I'm going to speak, at my own college commencement, again something that I never imagined I would be doing. (well, that's not entirely true, I may have imagined it on occasion. It makes for better blogging to say that I never imagined it though)

Sometime after that we will walk across the stage and get our empty diploma holder and that will be that. 

I will be a college graduate.

Done

Well, that's it. I'm done. Completely done with college, except for commencement. It has begun to sink in, and yet is not sinking in at all. I'm surrounded by friends who are going "pure nostalgia" and I am barely beginning to feel sentimental. I think that it will sink in as we get farther into finals weeks, and I have nothing to do and other people are studying even harder that it may sink in.

I think that the stress that I've been under (this post) is finally beginning to manifest itself. I'm finding that my memory (mostly short-mid term) is beginning to get kind of unreliable. While I'm glad that it has waited this long to start, it does worry me a little. I haven't really forgotten anything important, but my chronology is getting all messed up. I was asked a little bit ago what I thought about our missions meeting last night, it took me a while to figure out what in the world last night was and then what meeting she was talking about. I don't really have any trouble remembering the meeting itself, but it is still a weird feeling to have no solid feel for the flow of time.

I think that maybe I've put up temporary walls again, so that I could make it through the last couple weeks? I think they are temporary because they are fairly specific to the moving after college, but it's just one more thing for me to keep in mind (if it will stay here ;-) ) as I move forward. 

The weather was unbelievable today though. Sometimes I forget just how much the sunlight truly brings me joy, and how down the forever overcast-edness of Eugene can get me down. It has been a good day.

An adventure

I've only 15 minutes, so this may be quick.

Yesterday was the Missions Team Parking Lot Sale for our trip to Cambodia, and also that other group that is going to Israel. The sale went from 8 in the morning until 1:30 in the afternoon. I received a text the night before asking me if I would mind showing up at 7 to help set up. My mind went through a few different reasons why getting there at 7 would not be a good idea, not the least of which was that a few friends and I had just sat down to eat tots and have a drink or two. After a little bit of internal struggle I came to the conclusion that my reasons were just excuses and that helping the team, and a friend, to get the parking lot sale going was more important. 

So I did, I woke up at 6:43 (two minutes before my alarm) yesterday and walked over to the sale. 

Later in the day, after the sale, is when the real adventure took place. I was out and about with a different friend looking for a place to get lunch when I got a text asking if I would be able to come back to the school to help clean up. This time (interestingly enough) I didn't have the same running through of potential excuses I just said yes. Unfortunately the Sixth Street Grill was overwhelmed with patrons and took FOREVER to get our food ready, which made me a little late getting back to help clean up. We moved boxes into vehicles, managed to wedge a heavy hide-a-bed into a staff person's Saturn. At this point I lead the way St. Vincent's to drop off the stuff that didn't sell at the sale, which was actually remarkably little. They won't take the hide-a-bed or a computer monitor. So we spend 20 minutes trying to hunt down a Salvation Army to donate the stuff. When we finally find the donation center they won't take either of them. Our team leader finds an electronics recycling place and pays $15 for the privilege of donating the monitor. 

After all of this, we decide that the only avenue left for this couch is the dump. As we are driving towards it (I know generally where it is, though I'd never been there) my thoughts wonder if they too will deny us. After navigating a maze of driveways and staring at different lines of cars, we finally decide on one that looks like it might be right. We pull up and find out that they don't take credit cards. Not only that, but that neither of us have checkbooks or any real amount of cash. We manage to scrounge up $7, which is the amount they charge senior citizens so that we can get a receipt and dump the couch. (Also, she called us seniors as we drove away) 

This is the real meat and potatoes of the story though, she tells us to just go throw it in the pit. What in the world does that even mean? I back the Saturn into the parking spaces next to other cars and walk over to take a peek at the "pit." It really is just a giant, football field sized hole, probably 20 feet deep to the surface of the garbage. There's a huge bulldozer thing smooshing all the filth down to make room for more. We kind of look at each other with "oh my goodness" looks on our faces before wrestling the couch (that took 5 or 6 people to load) out towards the pit. A nice man from the truck next to us hops out to help us through the couch down into the pit, where it joins the other refuse. 

I had hoped that there would be something vindicating about finally getting rid of the nasty, frustrating couch. There is something sad about the dump though, knowing that large amounts of what could be recycled or reused are cast aside. Knowing that we contributed to that monstrous pile of filth took away all (most anyways) of the pleasure of throwing that blasted couch into the hole. 

Afterwards my friend pointed out that this is another adventure to add to my list of questionable places gone for NCC, right up there with a sketchy bar. Oh the things that I've done and the places I've gone for Northwest Christian College.