Belated Blog of Adventures in Greece and Bulgaria: Part I

As most of you know, I got the amazing opportunity in July to go on a mission/music trip to Bulgaria and Greece. I travelled with a group called Messiah Project and basically did mission work through the arts. There was a choir of about 9 singers, a professional ballet company out of Houston called Excelsior Ballet, a professional piano player (Larry Dalton) and a Bulgarian Orchestra. We toured these two countries for two weeks. I want to tell many stories of this trip but I'm sure it will be broken down into many blog postings, seeing that there are just too many to tell in one. I hope you enjoy reading about my adventures into a foreign land!

Segment I: Sofia, Bulgaria

Of all the places I've ever travelled, Sofia stands out as one of the strangest. It was my first time to visit a former communist country. I think I was surprised at how Second-World this country of Bulgaria was. Most of the buildings were run down and there was grafitti/vandalism EVERYWHERE!

There doesn't seem to be much order of the state considering that cars park all over the side walk! It's ridiculous! People park absolutely anywhere that is convenient for them. Despite the strangeness of this country, I truly enjoyed our stay there.

We stayed in a nice hotel right on the city square. I shared a room with Megan and Tierra, two high schoolers from Branson. I truly enjoyed getting to know their sweet hearts. One of the perks of rooming with these two girls was jumping on the beds. Even more fun were the attempts to capture these moments on camera!

Another amazing thing about rooming with these girls was teaching them some old bluegrass songs in the middle of the night that my mom taught me when I was a little girl. Because we usually didn't start singing till after midnight, we always had someone knocking at the door or banging on the wall. It just made the memories that much more precious.

For most meals we walked a few blocks to a huge building that was kind of a mall but mostly a food court. It was all Bulgarian fast food. We ate a lot of gyros and had some amazing pizza covered in feta cheese. It was wonderful. Not so wonderful was the room temperature skewer of pork that I took a big bite of! What was I thinking...there wasn't even an oven visible at the stand.

Another amazing thing about Bulgaria was the ice cream! I love European ice cream, but I think Bulgaria wins as far as presentation and taste. AMAZING!!












This timershot is in honor of Kate...you inspired me and then all the girls were so excited with timershots, they were basically the RAGE of the whole trip! Everyone was doing them everywhere. See Kate...you have great influence over the entire WORLD!

Well, this wraps up Segment I of the Way-Belated Blog of my trip to Europe! Stay tuned for Roman Ampitheater visits and Senior picture post!

Climbing Out of a Rut...

I feel like I've been in sort of a rut the past three or four months. My life has changed in huge ways and I think that under lots of different types of stress, I sort of went into a bit of depression. I don't think I recognized it as such until this weekend when I had some time to think about my life. As I sat at my kitchen table last night, and poured my cries out to God in my journal, I realized I didn't even have words to express everything I feel. I mentioned a lot of this to my closest friends over the past few months...that I felt like my life was lacking something. That I no longer felt any strong passion towards any one thing...even God. For some reason, though I heard His voice prompting me to talk to him...I wouldn't. I would ignore him. I couldn't even muster up the motivation to care about sin or what I was doing to my relationship with the Lord. I honestly didn't really care. It's as if the person I know God created me to be, a person with a huge passion for life and people, and creativity...was stifled and shoved into a little tiny box and thrusted into the back of my heart. I became numb...to everything.

As hard as that is for me to write, it was the truth. So now what? you may be asking yourself. I'll tell you what. Something amazing about this God of ours is that he doesn't let you just sit there for long by yourself in a rut. No...over the past three or four months, even in my darkest moments, the Lord has been there, pursuing me and continuing to love me despite my downfalls. Every once in a while He gives me a sweet glimpse into the life I desire and reassures my doubting heart that all will be okay.

Yesterday, I took a nap. I'm not usually one to take naps because I always think I'm too busy. But I laid down and slept solidly for over 5 hours. I honestly think sleep is one of the things I needed more than anything. I woke up and yesterday feeling better emotionally than I had in a long time.

Today I woke up and was excited about life. I realized that my life is not going to end just because I only have six dollars in the bank. I feel like there is this rejuvanated spirit in my heart. I realized today that it is a real desire for me to start exercising and be healthy. I realized that I want to blog...and SHOULD blog. I have stifled so much creativity in me these past few months that my right side of my brain has probably shut down!

I want to paint and write letters to friends and I want to drink more hot tea and I want to cook a lot and sing loudly and put my laundry away and laugh and have a special time for just the Lord and me. I want all these things, I desire these things, and now I thank the Lord for allowing these things to become a reality.

Many Apologies!

It has come to my attention that I have taken an incredibly LONG time to post on my blog. I was once told by a wise blogger that you never want to post daily because that gets annoying but that you should always post every three to four days. If you wait any longer than that...well, people just lose interest. This is a formal letter of apology to all of those readers who have hung in there and checked my blog consistently. There is no excuse for my action and therefore would understand if none of you ever spoke to me on this crazy cyber world ever again.
Much regret,
Cassandra Dawn Chambers

Road Trip 2007!!

As most of you know, I just got back from an amazing road trip with my dear friend Emily. We travelled all the way through Tennessee and across North Carolina to the ocean. It was a blast and will always be remembered as one of my favorite vacations...ever.

Before I show you some pictures, let me recap some of my favorite memories:

• When Emily realized that she forgot her sunglasses and was forced to buy an expensive pair in a gas station in the middle of nowhere, only to find the glasses covered with a thick film of dust and grime.


• I am truly like a fun grandma and bought Emily and I a fun backseat traveller book with entertaining activities like camp songs, string games, palm reading, and even a scavenger hunt to find all the liscense plates of North America. Out of 50 states, we found 42!! We even found a Canadian liscense plate! This game entertained us the ENTIRE trip!


• In the car, we ate a bunch of snack foods, but I'll never forget the huge quantity we ate of string cheese!


• It was amazing to see Emily get to know my favorite people in Tennessee, Dennis and Shanna Fuller. They are the ones in charge of Discipleship Focus in Pigeon Forge.


• REAL sweet tea in the South!!
  
• We went on an amazing hike in the mountains and enjoyed the beautiful scenery and the cool air. After being on trail for a while and griping at the occasional piece of trash on the trail (enough to take the trash with us), I accidentally lost both of my toxic-fish-killing batteries out of my camera into the river, never to be seen again. I'm such a hypocrite!


• Because we stayed on a Marine base, our car had to be searched every day by beautiful Marines carrying big guns. (I'm pretty sure I was convinced that I wanted to marry one!)


• While frolicking in the ocean, Emily noticed a school of stingrays swimming towards us. There were probably six or seven of them. While Emily walked towards the shore very calmly, I ran screaming out that water as fast as my body could carry me!


• Peeing simultaneously with Emily in the Atlantic Ocean. She was right, it definitely is more fun to do it at the same time as someone else.


• On the drive back, we discovered the amazingness of watching DVDs while driving. Not something I'd recommend for careless drivers, but it did make time fly our last 12 hours.


• Everytime Emily drove, she almost always had to drive through a major city and was always being rained upon. Everytime I drove, the rain stopped and the sun came out.
  

Here are some pictures that highlight the trip:

This is Emily and I in the car at 6:30AM on our way out of town. Don't we look like little kids?

Here's the skyline of Nashville, Tennessee. I like the Motorola building on the left...it looks like something from Batman or something.
This is me in serious distress that I can't, for the life of me, get my flipping sunglasses off my head! This is Emily rubbing in the fact that she CAN take off her sunglasses...what a brat. No wonder we were confused at this stoplight in Pigeon Forge....there are at least 15 lights!! This is Emily and I taking advantage of timer shots at the Potter's House, a darling little cafe in Pigeon Forge. They make there own flour, bread, and plates!!

This is me on the peak of a very tall mountain...or a very big rock.

Here are some views of the scenery in the Great Smoky Mountains.

We hiked up the mountain and found a barn, a springhouse, a cabin, and even a double seater outhouse!!

After our beautiful hike up in the Smoky Mountains, Emily and I travelled back down to civilization to explore the amazingness of Dollywood!!

After our fun in Tennessee, we loaded up our car once again and headed for the coast of North Carolina, where Emily's brother is in the Marines.

For the full story of the second leg of the journey, I'm going to direct you to my dear friend Emily's blog. She tells the story so well, and it might be excited to hear about the adventure from her perspective. Don't be frightened.... just click here.

However, I will show you some fun pictures...

This is us at the beach we were at. As you can see, it was beautiful and not really crowded at all.

While at the ocean, we ate at this fun little bar called Buddy's and enjoyed some fried sea food and mojitos while gazing at the beautiful view of the ocean.

Here are some pictures of Pete, Emily's brother, and her beautiful neice Evangeleene. She was darling and had the coolest baby hair ever!!

Well this about wraps up the coolest road trip of 2007. Like I mentioned before, you really need to check out Emily's blog if you want to read the fun details...try it. It'll be fun!

First week of SUMMER!!!

So, exactly a week ago today we finished school! I shed my last tears and sent my soon-to-be 6th graders out the door.

This week I jumped right into preparing for next year. I had training all week for a technology program called eMINTS4all. I'm slowly discovering that I have a little geekyness in my system and that there is SO much out there I don't know about in the techy world.

This week, I have discovered what an aggregator is, learned about the constructivist theory, why Madeline Hunter's teaching method is on its way to the garbage and what an avatar is. Never heard of any of these terms? Neither had I!

The craziest thing about my cool techy class was that we were introduced to Second Life, a highly geeky virtual world where people create a dual personality and communicate with SL's other 7,000,000 inhabitants. If you don't believe me, check out SecondLife.com.

Tonight I coached my first softball game! To those who haven't heard, I'm the new assistant softball coach at Branson...pretty exciting! I felt really nervous in the games because...well, I haven't played in 7 years and I forgot some of the rules of the game and all the lingo. It'll take me a while, but I'll get it.

Being a new techy geek is definitely going to benefit me during softball, because Coach Arnold has already put me in charge of updating the website and keeping all the stats on a PalmPilot. We'll see how that goes...

Well, this about wraps up my first week of summer. I like to think that NEXT week is my real first week of summer. I'm going on a crazy road trip with Emily to Pigeon Forge and then the beach!!! More to come later!

Stressful Happiness!!

As most of you know, the school year is FINALLY coming to a close. It has probably been one of the hardest nine months of my life but extremely rewarding at the same time. Well, as of right now, there are 4 1/2 days left!! Yes, I am rejoicing but at the same time I feel very overwelmed by everything that goes into closing down a year: inventories, grades, grading, sorting, organizing, assemblies, parties...you get the point. Before I take these next few moments to sort through all the crap on my desk, I thought I'd show you a picture of my desk area so you can see why maybe I'm overwelmed...or why I should be more organized next year!

BFF: Butt Fire Fighters!!

This is a strange random story, but it really happened. I swear.

Last week, Erica and I were going to Subway to grab a bite to eat before a school function. Well, I turned the wrong way for some reason and so I knew I needed to turn around. Well, as I was about to turn around, we notice smoke billowing on the side of one of the office buildings. We drive closer and we realize that the cigarette butt disposal container is smoking. Erica quickly jumps out of the car and begins throwing mulch on the smoky butt container. Well, the container quickly becomes engulfed in flames!! Erica runs inside and I jump out of the car and keep kicking dirt at the flames to smother them. A woman comes running out with Erica to put out the flames with the fire extinguisher.

We finally put the fire out and in the mean time, the container was completely melted at the bottom. It was gross!! Here are some "after" pictures. Notice (this is hilarious) that the brand of the butt container is called SafeSmoker. Ha!!

Door stops

Since I am the new teacher this year and because there was no room in the 5th grade hall, I've spent my whole year down in the 6th grade hall. It has had its pluses and minuses. When I came to my classroom the first time, I noticed the door stop, or the splinter that went by the title of door stop. Well, over the year, it has been a running joke about my door stop and the kids always promise to get me a new one and I always reply that I don't believe them anymore because they've promised all year.

All this to say that my kid Matthew actually MADE me a door stop!! I was so excited...especially cause he shined it up and buffed it so nicely that it barely holds up the door, it just makes it slide.

Here's a picture of my collection of door stops...the splinter and the gift.

(Belated) Symphonic Adventures

Last weekend, I decided to be the brave teacher and take some of my kids on an outing! I thought, since I enjoy the Springfield Symphony, that I would take some of my students to expose them to the wonderful music of John Williams. I could only take four due to my jeep not being a bus and I chose the students through an essay contest. Part of the adventure was dressing up and getting to go to CiCi's Pizza! Here are some fun photos of me and my kids.

Here we are before the big adventure! I absolutely loved how dressed up the kids were, especially my Aaron. He's been one of my hardest kids this year, and I was tickled pink to see that his dad the tattoo artist took him shopping to get a whole new outfit!

...fun car shots...

Part of the excitement of the evening was going to CiCi's Pizza. Here's a timer shot...the sun was pretty bright!!


The actual concert took place at Juanita K. Hammon's Hall in Springfield. Here's what it looks like on the outside.

Here's a fountain shot...

One of the highlights for the kids (and myself) was that there were about 20 different people with authentic costumes from the movie. Of course we stayed after to take fun picures. I love the one with Aaron looking up at Darth Vader and the one of me and my white boyfriend.

This one's my boyfriend...or so I like to think...