Part Two: Ice

In my last post I left off in the early morning on Sunday. We had just had breakfast, the power had been off for about 12 hours, and the 3 of us girls who live downstairs were hanging out in the common room. I was writing, Amanda and Elyse were reading, and all three of us were trying not to move a muscle, for without a fan even the turn of a head of the flare of a nostril will cause your pores to open up and start spewing sweat.

We stayed in these positions for a couple hours, not knowing what else to do when just before noon our 3 housemates from upstairs came down, freshly showered, and announced they were going to the air conditioned mall to watch a movie. As they walked out the door the 3 of us reassured ourselves that we needed to save money. After another minute of sitting in the stagnant heat with no hope for our day to get any LESS miserable, and our minds still dwelling on the mall, we looked at each other, stood up, spoke some indecipherable words, and headed to our rooms to shower to head to the mall. We walked out the door shortly after, smelling good, with smiles on our faces, and not a thought directed at our swiftly rotting milk and freshly purchased, quickly defrosting meat.

At the mall, the generators were on. Stores' lights flickered on and off as we almost skipped past on our way up to the theater. We bought our tickets to Gran Torino and settled in with our scarves because the air conditioning was THAT cold. Woohoo!

45 minutes later, the movie shut down, the lights did not come up, and the three of us burst out laughing and could not stop. We began to talk with strangers in the dark before a man with a flashlight led us to the lobby where we picked up our vouchers for a free movie. We met up with the rest of our group and headed down to the food court, which was a gamble because of the power situation. During lunch we decided to head over to a friend's house that had power and consequently a copy of Diehard. We watched the last 30 minutes together and hung out until dark.

Somewhere between the mall and dusk, an amazing, perfect, wonderful thing happened. I have previously told you all about that wonderful family that has 12 of us teachers over for dinner EVERY Monday, right? Well, they just happen to be on the same line as us and therefore know when our power goes off. They, however, have a generator. We received a call from them, asking if the 6 of us wanted to come for a sleepover in the air conditioning! Because we had been dreading the second, sleepless, sweaty night (especially one where we would have to wake up early and go to school) we GRATEFULLY screamed "YES, PLEASE!!!"

I cannot properly explain the next 12 hours, but to sum it up...

-Our substitute dad picked us up at our friend's house, drove us home where we scrambled to pack up our things while he went to pack up our things while he went to pick up some bread at the store and then brought us over to our "hotel" for the night.
-Mattresses were laid out while we were treated to family, beverages, and cookies HOT from the oven.
-The 6 of us girls bunked up all in the same room which hasn't happened in the 1 1/2 years that we've been together.
-We fell asleep after pictures, boy talk, and tons of laughs.
-We woke up under...FLEECE BLANKETS!!!!!
-We had been cold all night!!
-At 6am the scents of french toast and freshly brewed coffee greeted our chilly noses.
-Did I mention FRENCH TOAST!!??!?
-Did I also mention the bananas, peanut butter, real SYRUP, and powdered sugar we put on top!?!?!?!?!

YUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!

-Unforunately, the dream had to end and we had to get ready for school.
-As we were getting out of the van to head into our dumb generator-less house I said, "Thank you Michael, you're amazing!"

-Michael's only reply was "God is amazing." I shut the door with a smile and decided that is exactly how I will end my blogpost.