whistle while you ski

This past weekend = amazingly generous trip to Whistler, British Columbia. One of the committee members of our affiliate owns a condo in the ski resort and let us stay the weekend up there. After work on Saturday a van-full of us made our way up to the tucked away resort in the mountains. We had a good, relaxing evening once we arrived, but it wasn't until the morning that one could take in how amazing the surroundings were. I stayed in the top floor and, looking out the window, saw the ski lift gondolas going past overhead every 30 seconds. Everyone was pleasantly awoken to freshly prepared oat chocolate chip pancakes made by yours truly, which is actually the first batch I've ever made. They were quite a hit, and a good way to start a day of skiing/snowboarding! Bridget and I, feeling like moms, took photos of the ski/boarders before they went off on their adventures. Several of us weren't up to the daunting activity of skiing down a non-US east-coast sized mountain, and decided to tour the mountains on the gondola instead. It was quite foggy, which impaired our vision, but lovely still.

And in case you didn't know, Whistler will be hosting some of the Olympic 2010 events in a couple weeks. Excitement in the air! They were setting up for it still. I really like the graphic design of this year's Olympics.

The rest of the weekend was full of laughter, relaxation, dancing, food, sledding, and good times. Of course we tend to have a good time as an Americorps team in Seattle, but it was an extra special occasion being able to share the luxury of being in this resort town together.

In later news, this week of work is an abbreviated three day one sandwiched between our elongated holiday and my upcoming church retreat. Nonetheless, today provided plenty of adventure to cover all five days. Today = dump run day! Not many problems involving getting there, but it was especially foul-scented this trip. No trip do the dump is complete without some sort of strange interaction, which today included a random assistance in putting the top back on our truck by a fellow dump laborer. I was pushing the plywood panels up to my co-worker who was in the truck, and I look over and see a hispanic man standing next to me, offering/gesturing to help me lift them up. Though I knew I was quite capable of handling this task on my own, I figured it was that much less work I had to do anyway, and accepted the 60 seconds of help. It's not everyday people see two stunning young women doing the dirty deed of emptying a truck at the dump, afterall. Stunning indeed.

The afternoon proceeded with a visit to the lumber yard, where a pleasantly courteous worker helped us receive our order. Little did I know, our truck had two fuel tanks, which I ended up filling the wrong one before going to the lumber yard. It decided to splooge for whatever reason once we got to the yard. Perhaps working at a lumber yard gets a bit monotonous and uneventful, so by the time Thursday afternoons roll around, people are ready to mix it up a bit. Our gas-splooging truck seemed to provide the perfect outlet for this. Not only did the nice man helping us with the order try to diagnose the problem, but the man at the gate and a third party were brought in for further investigation. It was decided that gas spilling out of the closed nozzles wasn't a good thing, but what could we do? It stopped and we started on our delayed way back to the site.

The day proceeded once we were safe and sound back at our site with a meeting about our Habitat Women's Build in a few months. Kidney bean kievs = pure deliciousness. It's exciting to plan a build that will be at least 75% women power. Besides working with mostly all women for these days, one of the women at the meeting made a good point that from the perspective of a woman volunteer, she may be more encouraged and enthused about building when learning from and taking direction from women (us!) who know what we're doing. Surely there will be more to come about this!

And finally,

Reason #4 why Seattle is so great.

Teahouse Kuan Yin! I recently took a tea class here with a friend. Though I just learned a small amount of the mysterious tea plant, namely Taiwanese high mountain teas, I feel refined and able to briefly educate others on the joy of tea. For example, while discussing the caffeine levels of tea versus coffee with a friend and Starbucks employee at the coffee shop today, I informed them that no one knows how much caffeine is in tea, it's a big mystery. I think individuals at Starbucks should know such kernels of knowledge, I'm not sure she felt the same way though.

Unless the Lord builds the house

its builders labor in vain.

Psalm 127.1a