Space Shuttles, Magic games, Dobermans and lots of free time!!

I've been home in Auburndale for about 2 and a half weeks now or so. It's weird coming home, to say the least. I love coming home to see my family, but it's crazy how after a few years away I feel like a visitor in the place I spent 19 years of my life. Either way, it's always great to see and spend time with my family. The one downside to coming home though is with all the free time, I tend to feel pretty useless. Sometimes it's good to not have a lot going on to reflect on what's going on in your life. Kind of stop and think. See where you're at and where you're headed. But at the same time, with so little happening I find it easy to sometimes not even do that much. It's almost like I just kind of check out for a couple weeks altogether.

(I didn't take this picture, although that would have been awesome to be this close!!)

I sit here and talk about how boring it's been since I've been home, but it honestly hasn't been all that bad! One awesome thing that I accidentally stumbled upon (not the Mozilla application) was a Shuttle launch at Port Canaveral. My parents and I were taking Eric and Ginny to Port Canaveral for their cruise and coincidentally a shuttle was launching the same day. So after dropping them off we went to Subway and got some sandwiches and pulled off the side of the road to wait for the shuttle to blast off!! We were across the huge lake or whatever you want to call it from the launch pad. Close enough to see all the smoke come out of the bottom of the shuttle at the end of the countdown! The last thing I heard on the radio as we were walking away from the water was that the shuttle had reached a speed of 3,300 mph. Pretty incredible. The coolest thing about the launch was that after about 30 seconds you finally hear the rumble of the actual launch. Crazy! I recommend going to see this for yourself one day. I would definitely like to go again.

Also while being home, I went to games 3, 4 and 6 of the second round playoff series between the Orlando Magic and Boston Celtics. They were a lot of fun! I've been a Magic fan for 15 years probably and it's fun to see them have some success. I was also lucky enough to house-sit for my brother while he was on the cruise and took care of their crazy Doberman named Atlas. He's pretty much an 80 pound energizer bunny. He never stops.

But anyways, I've had a good time at home and it has been a nice little break between the end of the Spring semester and the beginning of studying for the DAT (Dental Aptitude Test). I'll begin studying for that when I get back to Tallahassee this week and plan on taking the test at the end of the Summer. So between that and hopefully working at Chik Fil A, things are about to get real busy!

It's been a while!

I decided to give it another shot. Haha. I look at the date of my last post and realize that it was almost a whole year ago and that freaks me out! It doesn't seem that long ago. I never even made it back to post about my awesome trip to Costa Rica and Nicaragua, which was awesome by the way. So I'll go ahead and use this post to talk about it. I got to see and do so many things that if you would have told me I would be doing those things a year before I would have thought you were crazy. It's such a powerful experience to go see how people live who don't have the security of where their next meal will come from. To see this, and then realize that God loves them no less than he loves me puts things into a whole new perspective and I truly believe it has helped to change my outlook on other people. Slowly, but surely! I just want to love people the way He loves them. Where ever they are. I'm going to Jamaica this summer hopefully to do more of what I got to do in Costa Rica and Nicaragua. I'm looking forward to it to say the least!

Hello. It's me...Chris.

Well I decided to go ahead and give this whole blog thing a try. We'll see where it goes. It's summertime in Tallahassee and I'm wrapping up the last week of my summer classes this next week! The summer has been very relaxing which has been a nice change from the constant running around that goes on during the Fall and Spring semesters. However, I'm looking forward to the end of this summer semester since I've been in school for the past year without much of a break. So I guess the subject of this first entry will be about something I'm looking forward to with nervous excitement. Two weeks after I finish my classes I will be leaving the country to go to Costa Rica and Nicaragua. For about the past year or so I've felt like it has really been placed on my heart to go experience something in some of the less fortunate countries of the world. It's been a strong desire of mine. So on July 5 I will finally be going. The organization I'm going with is International Service Learning and we'll be setting up dental clinics in various parts of Costa Rica and Nicaragua. It is definitely going to be a great learning and growing experience for me! I'm just excited that God has blessed me with such an amazing opportunity. Your thoughts and prayers are greatly appreciated as I prepare for this trip! I will definitely post on this experience when I return.