Cement Girl

60 hours of driving.. all you need is a discman, 12 batteries and a cd wallet of cds. And a book. So this was my rotation for the last 9 days:

Denison Marrs- World Reknown for Romance
The Party People- My, My ep
Ester Drang- Infinite Keys
Chris Staples
Cool Hand Luke- I Fought Against Myself...
Pep Squad- No Doy
Ginny Owens- Something More
Brandtson- Death and Taxes
Brandtson- Fallen Star Collection
Twothirtyeight- Matter Has a Breaking Point
All Together Separate- Unusual
Twothirtyeight- You Should Be Living
Switchfoot- The Beautiful Letdown
Switchfoot- Learning to Breathe
Aaron Sprinkle- Moontraveler
Red Animal War- Black Phantom Crusades
Copeland- Beneath the Medicine Tree
My Hotel Year- The Composition of Ending and Phrasing
Denison Marrs- Then is the New Now
Lauryn Hill- The Miseducation of...
Pedro the Lion- It's Hard to Find a Friend
Trueb- So Close to Me
Cool Hand Luke- Wake Up, O Sleeper

It was a really great trip. For those of you who don't know... it was basically the youth group from my church going. I wanted to go because I couldn't go in March (Hannah was born), and I hadn't been to Mexico in a year, so I wanted to go pretty badly. I said "sure" to being a leader on the trip, but I told my mom yesterday on the phone that I hadn't really thought about what that meant.

I got assigned 3 kids and had to make sure they were where they were supposed to be when they were supposed to be there (most importantly- back into their vehicles after pit stops).

We stayed at a migrant camp daycare in Vicente (that was an orphanage last time I was there) and went a mile south of town to build a house. We did random jobs around the daycare, visited some migrant camps (passed out food). Visited the rehab center (an awesome, awesome place) a few times and went to a chapel service there and our youth pastor preached. We also went to the big orphanage across town to Sunday night service, and then a very small, small church (about 15 people) in the same tiny community where we built a lady a house. Very cool experiences, and I'm so glad the kids in my youth group got to see them. It was all kinda old news to me (i'd seen it all before), but I got to see it sort of for the first time again, because of all the kids' reactions to things.

Ester Drang's "Infinite Keys" kept me company in the van last night at 11pm. It's somehow fitting (and almost.. ironic or something) to listen to it while there's an overriding sound of 16-year-olds giggling, shrieking and blabbing in the background. It took me back to last July and that great performance at Cornerstone that got me hooked on them (and Goldenwest).

Ever have one of those moments where you just feel infinite or complete or something? When I'm sitting in a van, with music I love playing over great headphones, watching the Northern Californian mountains pass by... it's almost too much. I feel like I could take on the world and do everything I ever wanted to.

We got to the church a little after five am this morning. Now i'm sitting here at home, on the computer because I don't want to go to sleep, and I don't think I could if I tried. Gonna go to service at church.

I'm off to read everybody's blogs since I've been away for a while.