One more day!

Well I probably should be packing or cleaning my room, but I'm not. I'm pretty much ready to leave for Ecuador, except for those two projects. I got all the papers sent out for my visa bright and early (ok so it was before noon) on Wednesday. After checking the tracking numbers hundreds of times, the package came back with that special stamp, $50 sticker and signature in my passport and the stamps and $30 sticker on the visa form. Now I can leave to country and stay out until August 18, 2006 but don't worry I'll be back before then.

Wednesday night was the staff banquet for camp. Pizza, personalized staff DVDs and "awards" I was named "portable store manager" for all the work I did with selling camp merchandise at the day camps. Matthew said he was impressed with my organization by inventorying all the shirts ect. every week, making lists of what was sold and knowing what needed to be replaced or taken out. Later in the evening we headed back to camp for one last campfire and staff reflections, then it was time for lots of hugs and good-byes. I left camp about 9:00 the next morning and coincendently pasted my parents and sister in Wautoma who were driving to New Ulm to take my sister to college. Ruben asked me before I left when we might see each other again. I said unless she comes to Ecuador, probably not till at least after Christmas. I was wrong. It was much sooner: at the gas station in Red Granite. It made for a good ironic laugh.

Of all the horrible things that could happen to me before I leave, the one I had never thought of happened. I was ripping my CDs onto my notebook so that I would have more music to listen to and put on my mp3 player. All of a sudden, the screen went black and has remained black since then. I tried restarting it and all that jazz, none of which worked. The next step was calling City Advantage, aka my warranty people. After running a couple diaganostic test, it was confirmed that my screen didn't work. Given that it was already Friday and fixing laptop screens is actually replacing them, my laptop will not be coming to Ecuador with me. :-( No wait, that should be more of a frustration face :-0!!! I still have two possiblities for replacement laptops. Hopefully one of the two will pan out or I could have a very interesting semester without a computer. The good news was that my warranty is still good for another year. I thought in expired in a couple days.

Good things did happen on Friday in addition to recieving my visa. I had a bunch of my friends from high school over. I felt like a naughty teenager having a "drinking" party while my parents were gone. It was lots of fun seeing my friends from ages gone by again, especially since I hadn't seen some of them since New Year's Eve or before.

Oops... It's late. My plane leaves in 31 hours. Maybe I should go pretend to pack for a while.