Traveling to Tucson

Travel day was both physically and emotionally exhausting, but never fear, my whole house made it to our new home in Tucson, Arizona safe and sound. The first reason why it was exhausting was entirely within my control, but it was so rewarding to choose lack of sleep in order to stay up with, hug, and bid bon voyage to each of the YAV travel groups leaving Stony Point before my 6:15 van with nine others. After the night's official activities wound down, the unofficial ones began - packing and then spending as much silly time with these amazing young people as possible. Guitaring, singing, conversing, hugging, trying (and semi-failing) to not fall asleep... And finally wishing people well on their way at 2:30am, 3:30am, 5:15am, and then finally it was my round to shove a lot of bags and bodies and sleep on our way to the airport. 

Out of the ten, four of us were on a Southwest flight to Austin, so it was nice to travel with that pack, until we touched down in Austin and had to say goodbye to half of that crew. We realized shortly before touching down in Austin that this plane was slated to awkwardly continue on to Las Vegas, so Austin YAVs Lauren and Catherine waved bye from their row, and YAVA Luke and I stayed on as travel buddies. We were to journey together from Stony Point to the Newark airport, Newark to Austin, Austin to Las Vegas, and from there, part ways - me for Tucson and him for eastern Oregon. He served in Tucson two years before, so it was so fun to 1) have him as a travel buddy because he's an awesome person that I didn't get to know until travel day, 2) hear stories and thoughts about his Tucson experiences, and 3) bond over playing Division III college tennis!

Here's Las Vegas from under the clouds.

Because we had some time to kill, and I had never gambled before, my dear mentor YAVA Luke convinced me that we should play penny slots. Way to set a good example.

 We only allowed ourselves to put in $1 each, and we stopped when we felt good about our luck. Luke managed to double his money, but with my semi-unfortunate luck, I walked away with $1.07.

Pleased with himself.

I'm an adult!

After a wonderful day with my new travel buddy and so many stories and pieces of advice tucked into my Tucson toolkit, Luke and I parted ways, only allowable under the premise that he would come visit all of us and play tennis with me.

And a little while later... I'm down in Tucson!

After another long travel day, I was met at the airport by a voice who knew my name, accompanied by a tall, wiry, bearded man who would be my site coordinator for the upcoming year - Brandon! Since all four of us were on different flights, he got stuck with airport pickup and house drop-off duty, which unfortunately only got longer as everything that could have gone wrong for Arial's flights did. The poor girl got on the bus at 10am from Stony Point and did not arrive at our house in Tucson until just after the rest of us were no longer capable of making rooming decisions and fell asleep camped on our sink-into living room furniture. It took some of us longer than others, but thankfully we all made it to our new home city safely! We were also welcomed to the house by our other new housemate, Tyler, who is not a YAV but is also doing a service year program, and it will be good to get to know him more as well!

Tyler, me, Amy Beth, and Heather brain-tired and silly on our first night together.

Camping out in the living room (on our ridiculously comfortable furniture!) to save choosing rooms for when we had decision-making capabilities.

Day one in Tucson:
- Woke up way too early. Body is still on Eastern, not Pacific time.
- Realized I was in the living room of new house I'll be in for the next year with some amazing housemates. Awesome.
- Ate a little breakfast with the other girls, conscientious of each others' health and nutritional needs.
- Reunited with our fourth YAV who got in after the rest of us crashed last night.
- Saw our zero-scaped backyard in the daylight and met our chickens!
- Built up the soles of my feet by walking around barefoot, learning that black ants bite, stepping on a tiny cactus spine, and toasting them on our sun-baked wooden porch floor. 
- Discovered what a huge difference the swamp cooler makes (for those of you who don't know what the heck a swamp cooler is (like I didn't), instead of producing cooler air like an A/C, it adds moisture to the air when it pumps it into the house, thereby cooling and circulating the air.
- Finally chose rooms after much thinking and taking each others' thoughts into account.
- Found three Allen wrenches, a dead insect about four inches long, random silver rings, and oodles of dust left over by the previous tenants as we cleaned our house from top to bottom. 
- Treated to gluten-free pizza and wine in our own home by the lay pastor from a nearby congregation who had just spent the previous five hours helping us clean.
- Went over the week's schedule for orienting us to our new city with our coordinator.
- Said "thank you" in my head for every minute of this experience.

Check and mate.