It's almost March, which means my staff and I are preparing for the crazy season. That is, the college spring break season. Soon, the three of us will be managing 70+ volunteers each week and 9-12 projects. I'm excited for the season. We have chosen a lot of very deserving families and pretty awesome projects.
I had a chance recently to have a few exciting excursions. Last weekend, I went to Chicago to visit some friends. On the way, I stopped in Lexington, KY and stayed overnight. I explored The University of Kentucky (something I've always wanted to see). Anyone that knows me pretty well knows how much I love libraries. Well, the UK library was five floors and absolutely beautiful! The rest of the campus was amazing as well and one of my latest life goals is to be an elementary education professor at UK. I have had a lot of new goals lately so we'll see but, for right now, I'm excited about that one. After I left UK, I had a mini-excursion planned for Louisville. When I got to Louisville, I found out that the trip I had planned wasn't going to work out. I did get a chance to go to the art center and see "The Kentucky Show," which is a half-hour documentary about Kentucky. When I went in to buy my ticket, the woman at the ticket counter said I would be the only one in the theater so she just gave me a ticket for free!! Turns out, there was one other woman in the theater with her sleeping baby. I asked the woman who gave me the ticket where else to go and she told me about this really neat art exhibition a few blocks away. When I went in, the two guys at the front desk asked if they could help me. I decided to respond by saying, "I hope so. I'm from the Philadelphia area and only in Louisville for a few hours and was told this was a neat place to come to. What do you recommend I take a look at?" They gave me a few pointers and I had a great time exploring. When I was about to leave they asked how I felt about everything and then I asked them for a few suggestions to take myself out to lunch at and other places to go. They suggested the Louisville Slugger Museum and I'm so happy I went there!!! I was able to make a few friends on the tour and they took my picture holding Mickey Mantle's bat!! The guy leading the tour was giving me a hard time about being a Phillies "Phan" but afterwards, he asked me to wait up and went into the back room to get one of Shane Victorino's bats!! He let me see it and I jokingly asked if there were any that were messed up that I could have. He went in the back to check and, when he came out, he told me he was looking for a Shane Victorino bat to give me but couldn't find one that wasn't gong to be shipped to him so he brought me out a pink bat that they give to the players to use on Mother's Day games for breast cancer research instead. Best tour guide I've ever had!!
I also saw a sign for "Shelbyville," so I had to stop there as well. One of the girls I work with is named Shelby so I stopped in the Cracker Barrel there, asked if there were any Shelbyville post cards and explained why I needed them. They didn't have any but the friendly worker told me where the center of town was and suggested trying there. When I went into the center of town, I saw a really cute store called "The Keepsake Shop." I went in and met Jane, the owner. Jane bought an old house and turned it into The Keepsake Shop. It was the cutest store I've ever been in. I was the only customer so I stayed in the shop for about an hour and learned about how she started the business and unique customer stories. I bought an apple container for my potential classroom, some Shelbyville post cards, and a pretty charm.
After those few excursions, I was off to Chicago! My friends made reservations at The Signature Room which is on the 96th floor of the Hancock Building. It was a snowy day so we couldn't really see the city but it looked like we were eating lunch in a cloud which was awesome! I also went to the Shed Aquarium and then we had a great time at some of their favorite hot spots in town. My personal favorite - the Unique Good Will store and the Habitat resale store.
We're having a pretty bad snow storm right now so we're staying with our hardware store owners' son in Bluefield, WV. We're going to be headed back to Brenton in the morning and then our volunteers come in tomorrow afternoon. We're hoping we'll have power in the county so we can get some good work done this coming week!!
That's the update for now. Miss you all!
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