Vermont Meet & Work & Missing Church

What a ridiculously long weekend! Since Thursday, it's been nothing but non-stop activity.

Thursday afternoon, our track team started on a long bus ride up north to Vermont University for a track meet.

Everyone was really thrilled about having to sit on a bus for six hours.

After quickly checking into the hotel, we went to a restaurant next door for dinner. By then it was already dark outside.

The place was decorated in a way that made me feel rather warm and toasty inside. It also made me think of Cape Cod.

By then, most of us were quite famished and couldn't wait to eat our food.

This basket of tiny bread rolls smelled insanely buttery.

In an effort to not eat like a pig before the track meet, I had Rocket Salad for dinner.

I am now definitely a fan of Vermont!

After dinner, Shona, Stefanny and I weren't feeling too great from sitting in a bus all day so we went out onto the snowy sidewalks for a stroll.

When we got back, we slipped into the hotel's hot tub and swimming pool for a relaxing session.

Fun and shenanigans later in Janice's room.

Shona's crazy jumps.

Friday dawned bright and early. We zoomed downstairs to catch the complementary breakfast before it ran out.

More snowfall from the night before.

Temperatures weren't that bad outside, hovering around minus five Celsius.

We arrived at Vermont University in a whirl of snow flurries.

Can't believe they have an actual ice skating rink in the recreational centre! I wish our school had one too...

The meet wasn't good or bad for me. It just was what it was...

My 3k time didn't improve much. I ran it in 11:55:38, slightly over a second faster than last week.

Obviously, that time landed me in last place as usual. The Vermont Catamounts are quite accomplished distance runners and the top place finisher in the 3k smoked me by over a minute. Haha...

I didn't mind though. The girls were soooo nice and friendly about it and even gave me tips about training for long distance. I made two new friends and learnt a lot from the meet. Not to mention, it also really boosted my morale to know that I'm not running these sucky times due to my physical inability, but rather due to a lack in expertise.

Hopefully following their advice will land me in some cosy times come outdoor season in May!

Speaking of cosy times...

The bus ride back from Vermont to New Jersey was horrible. We got home around 03:00 in the morning.

Saturday, I barely got up in time for a quick run before I had to dash off to New York City for work. It was a Bar Mitzvah event held a block away from Wall Street.

The parents definitely spared no expense in trying to impress the other millionaires that were invited. I'm sure renting the venue itself must have costed a bomb. Check out the artsy fartsy ceiling! Word is they dropped closed to six million for their thirteen year old's birthday party.

If I had six million dollars, man, throwing it on my kid's thirteenth birthday party would not be it! There are WAY too many other good uses for all that money than to buy tonnes of food and party stuff that ends up being thrown out into the garbage at the end of the night!

By the time work ended around 02:30 on Sunday, I had already been working for twelve hours straight. My mind was close to delirious and the frigid temperatures (minus 11 Celsius) didn't help either. I didn't anticipate the cold snap and wore just two flimsy layers under a warm sweater. I didn't even have my coat with me.

The night ended on a horrible note. It took me almost an hour to get back to school when it usually should have taken fifteen minutes. A bloody fight broke out between two drunk men in my train car on the way back and scared the daylights out of all the other drunk people in the car.

When I got out of the train, I had called the school shuttle to come pick me up from the train station. Standing by the street corner, unable to even feel my toes, I silently prayed that the shuttle would come in the next few minutes. This was one night I really didn't want to wait a whole fifteen minutes for it to arrive.

And JUST LIKE THAT, the shuttle arrived when I stopped praying!

If you could water a garden with the symbolic tears of relief that sprang to my eyes at that moment, it would bloom full of crocuses and lilies.

I crawled into bed around 03:00 but didn't sleep till I've had my fill of God's Word.

Set my alarm for 06:30 so that I could get to church in Pennsylvania at 09:30 but that didn't happen. I got up to see "09:48" blinking on my phone and realised that at some point during my deep sleep, I had also somehow moved my clothes around.

I cleared the snow off my car anyway and made it back to Pennsylvania, but alas, not in time for church. I was really disappointed because it just felt like such a long week that I was just looking forward to Sunday.

I hope things will calm down soon, especially since there won't be a track meet this Saturday. There is Bible study tomorrow at school so I'm looking forward to THAT now. Somehow, with all this hullabaloo in my life, I really don't feel as close to God because I haven't been able to just sit quietly and spend time with Him. It stinks and I miss that.

I must remember not to let the world crowd out what's really important!