A trip to Walmart...

Friday evening was some of the best fun I've had since I've been here in Iowa. Dr. Van Dine teaches OT Survey, and he and his wife invite us over in bunches on Friday nights. This week my friend Esther and I went, along with about 9 other girls and two guys. We walked to their house (just down the road) and savored the evening there. Amanda came, too, and the two guys were John and Brendan. The five of us sat at a card table together, and kept making random comments like, "Ah, a ceiling fan" or "Look! You can look outside while you're eating!" or "Ooo, cushy carpet" or "This food is amazing, real food" or "pass the bread" (you know how long it's been since I asked anyone to pass anything at the table?). It was delightful.

After supper we all sat in the living room and Dr. Van Dine asked us random questions like, "What do you like most about Emmaus?" or "What's something special about where you live?" or "What's your favorite movie?" One fun thing we discovered was that 9 of us were homeschooled! We all had similar tastes in movies...particularly musicals. John, Brendan, Esther and I decided that we'd have to start movie nights, starting with Newsies this weekend. :)

Esther made the discovery that John had a car here, and we hinted (oh, so unobviously) that a trip to Wal-mart would be nice, and the guy took the hint (as any guy with 5 sisters would :P) So Amanda, Brendan, Esther and I crammed into John's car with him and took Wal-mart by storm. We played the alphabet game on the way there, discussed some cool spiritual things we've been discovering, and talked red lights into turning green before we hit them.

Amanda went her own way at Walmart, but Esther and I stayed together, and the guys followed us around, pushing the cart. I got a grand total of candy corn, pretzel sticks and a pint of milk. Esther stocked up, and the guys bought chocolate chip cookie dough and peanut butter. The guys and I kept reminding each other of our "poor college student" status to keep ourselves from buying anything we didn't really need, and managed to restrict ourselve to those few small purchases. I spent $3.97. Wow. I'm doing good. :P

We laughed a lot. I felt like I was back with my brothers and sisters and cousins.

We couldn't find Amanda, then, so we wandered around for a while, searching, then came across Mr. and Mrs. Lange from school. Mr. Lange told us to page her, so we went to the front and paged her AND him, and then left John at the counter to go off searching again. We finally found her outside on a bench. :)

When we got back to school, Esther and I were sitting in her room when John called up and asked us if we wanted to watch a movie, so we watched Night at the Museum in the student center and ate "pretzel cookies" made with globs of cookie dough and peanut butter in between pretzels. Yum. Esther insisted that everyone who came by had to have one.

It was a fun evening. I'm thankful for fun. Life would take a lot longer if we couldn't do things like this from time to time.