Tuesday, 6/16/98
This morning began early in Mississippi with a frantic rush to the hospital, instead of the airport, to have my finger sewn back together after a freak accident with a defective pocket knife. Then we made the lightning dash down the highway and through the airport, just in time for me to crash into my seat. On the flight to Dallas, the pounding in my head faded, and my adrenaline slowly drained away to be replaced by a vague nervousness as I boarded the plane to Albuquerque. The last thirty minutes of the ride felt like a last-ditch cram session before the big exam; I desperately tried to connect the pictures of seven new faces with seven strange names and tried hopelessly to understand parallax and micro lensing events in five minutes. As I left the plane, I was greeted by Galen our host, Don, and Megan. Nervousness was soon dissipated by friendly faces and a searing pain shooting up my arm as we shook hands. Soon the others began arriving: Dana, then Beth, Jon, and David together, then Corrie after along wait, and finally Elyne after a small millennium. But the wait allowed us all to get aquainted with each other and was a great chance to try out Jon's giant Ping-Pong paddles inside the airport. We narrowly escaped damaging the flying 'whale'-- the old biplane that reminded Jon of large aquatic mammals.
On the way to the hotel, we stopped by the Soda Dam, a stone formation that has grown up around the hot springs. We also stopped on the edge of one of the caldera's valleys and watched a herd of elk through our binoculars. After arriving at the hotel, we all met at Canyon School to discuss what we could expect of the coming days and also some basic concepts from astrophysics. At long last, the secret of microlensing events would be revealed.
Wednesday, 6/17/98
After our hotel breakfast, we spent the morning between the hot tub and pool. At 1400 hours, we went to the museum. Big, bald, and bearded Garry has to have been one of the best tour guides ever. With Garry leading the way, we explored everything from Oppenheimer’s first days at Los Alamos to current research on Tom the brain and Pat the left rear lobe.
That night Don Casperson discussed different types of telescopes and then how CCD cameras work. We took several pictures of the coffee counter and learned to screen out “hot pixels”. We also attempted to make a color picture by mixing three pictures filtered through red, green, and blue. On the photo page is a picture of how it should have looked, but despite Don’s patience, we still had trouble with balancing the color.
Thursday, 6/18/98
Ed Fenimore presented a lecture on why the scientific method really doesn't work at all out side of a school lab. He also discussed his specialty - GAMMA RAY BURSTS! Intriguing , but not nearly as exciting as the idea of telling my science teachers that their text book's way doesn't really work. Ed described research as more in the form of a "rat maze" with many branches and corridors that intertwine and combine many fields of science rather than a straight line with a few stops and starts. He explained that the maze is full of dead ends and pitfalls such as technical, mathematical, or theoretical problems. For example, often something that should work because it works on paper, doesn't work in real life. Or else something that does work should not have worked at all. Or a theory might work perfectly explaining a situation, except that for the theory to work at all something must be assumed at the basis. It is just assumed to be true for the sake of the explanation until something undermines the assumption.
After our private session with Ed, we attended a public lecture by Henry Ferguson on the Hubble deep field at the physics auditorium. We arrived a little late and missed most of the pretty pictures, but we made it just in time for the complex and confusing explanation of it all. This talk was definitely not pitched to high school students who couldn't speak the native jargon.
Friday, 6/19/98
Today, I woke up late, 13:30, and took a lighting-fast shower and sprinted to the school for a talk by Jim Wren on ROTSE I and II. Its four automated cameras sweep the sky twice during the night taking pictures to map the sky. It also has alert react capability and can be pointed anywhere in the sky in three to five seconds. Jim explained ROTSE I looks for the optical component of gamma ray burst along with other "things that go bump in the night."
Jeff Bloch discussed the interstellar medium, the matter between stars. Jeff explained that though space appears empty, it is filled with hot gas about one Hydrogen atom every cubic centimeter.u7ujujujudhrjeejkimkkmkl (Dana keeps vandalizing my journal!) Jeff also told us about ALEXIS, satellite equipped with several X ray cameras.
We had a great meal at Central Avenue Grill and had a lot of fun drawing on the table cloth. At night we went to ROTSE I,
Saturday 6/20/98
We took a tour of Tsankawi, an Anasazi settlement area. One of Galen's friends was our guide; she did a great job. If I remember right, she worked as an astronomer at the lab, but was also an expert on prehistoric calendars and had good experience with petroglyphs. The tour was great, we saw some beautiful land, but it's all so dry. To live in a place like that, you'd have to be very tough and very creative.
We saw many of the caves and hollows were the Anasazi had lived. The dwellings were dug into the gray-white volcanic rock. The rock was so soft that the treading boots and running water had carved trenches waist deep in some places. Some of the larger rooms had smoke holes and fire places along with carvings on the walls. Rock carvings were everywhere, some inside the dwellings and others outside on rock faces or boulders. Our guide explained how certain designs like concentric circles were carved in such a way that the sun would shine on certain rings on certain days, acting as a calendar. She explained other calendrical devices like rock grooves, beams of sun through a ceiling hole. That kind of stuff is really neat. With our suns that rise with the flip of a switch instead of the earth's turn, we're definitely missing out on a lot of nature!
We saw where the main settlement of stone houses had been. No walls were standing, but large stone bricks could be seen where the wall had fallen. Pottery and arrowhead fragments were scattered all over. This was the local garbage dump. The pottery would have been beautiful; the shards were of all sorts: painted, or glazed, thick like Mom's everyday dishes, or thin like Grandma's holiday china, some unpolished, and some burnished smooth.
After sandwiches at Galen's house, he took us swimming. The water felt great after our hot mountain trek. At the pool, we played a mean game of water basketball, even some of the local kids joined in. I had a really fun time despite the chilly water.
Sunday 6/21/98
Corrie and I visited First Baptist of Los Alamos. The pastor was from Louisiana. It was neat to meet someone from close to home. Friendly church, they made us feel really welcome. Since today was Father's day, they asked all the men and boys, even the visitors, to come up in the choir loft and sing, so I got to go up front and sing.
Today was Galen's birthday, and he had invited us over for lunch and fun; we decided we would surprise him with a cake and card. The cake that the girls ordered from Furr's turned out great; it had a sky of blue icing and yellow stars. Galen grilled some great New Mexican chicken and Susan - Mrs. Gisler - made an awesome fruit dessert. During dessert, we brought out the cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to a very surprised Galen. Leo, an EarthWatch student from last year, called to wish a happy birthday.
After all the food, Galen brought out his musical instruments, a huge collection of strange and antique creations along with some familiar ones. He had everything from a krummhorn, a diggereedoo, to a saxbut (a sawed-off trombone). With all the instruments he had, he could have started his own orchestra. We all grabbed one up and tried to make some kind of noise. Galen, his wife, and Cathy played some great music with Dana and Megan accompany on the piano. After awhile, those of us who were less gifted or out of breath took a break from the symphony to play badminton in the front yard. From the tree in the back yard, we picked red cherries. I had never picked cherries before; they aren't grown much in Mississippi. Later that night we watched Gattaca, a movie about a genetically engineered society.
Monday, 6/22/98
Warning: Today's journal originally written atop a loaded washing machine.
I began scribbling today's entry in the hotel's laundry room while Beth and Jon duked it out in the corner over a controversial card game. The remains of our gallon of fudge ripple quietly melted beside the spilled detergent. While the battle raged on the other side of the room, I munched on my breakfast of Dorritoes and fresh strawberries and sipped my cherry IBC.
Today began around 10:00 AM when Jon and I awoke from our comas. Quickly taking stock, I realized the laundry couldn't wait another day. Jon and I shook the pillows from their cases and crammed our new "laundry bags" full of dirty clothes. Beth was already there washing her clothes, so after Jon and I dropped ours in the machine, the three of us made a trip to the grocery store to pick up a breakfast of ice cream, IBC, grape juice, and strawberries with leftover chips and pop-tarts.
We stashed the fudge ripple and drinks in the hotel's ice maker to chill. This covert operation went smoothly. After evading several maids and other hotel workers we quickly buried the goods. (There was one witness, a construction worker on the pay phone, however, steps have been taken to ensure he never tells.)
At 1400 hrs, we departed for Fenton Hill in our government issue van to meet the makers of the Dome hoping they could fix it. We helped them sand the shutter so it would open easier and replace some wiring, but it still wouldn't work! Oh, a pox upon that wicked C-14!
Later that night, we used the Meade to observe double stars and I got to help Don set up his radio telescope. We were trying to hear Jupiter. Couldn't tonight so we'll try again later, something about the alignment of Io, but Don said it should sound like ocean waves.
Tuesday 6/22/98
More violence erupts! Well, not quite. Here's what happened. Jon was sitting on his bed getting ready for the Physics of Star Trek lecture, but he had forgotten a very important rule of the Wild West: never sit with your back to the door. Beth and I were standing in the hall when we noticed this folly and decided to exploit it. I grabbed Jon's sleeping bag from the pile of rubble on the floor and quickly unfurled it. Together, we attacked throwing the bulky green thing over his head. We wrestled him down on the bed, and I held him while Beth zipped him up head first. Of course, we had do display our trophy so we hoisted him up and dragged him stumbling to the window. Everyone was in the van except us so we hollered down. I think the sight of Jon thrashing around in the window like a giant caterpillar made up for being a little late. Despite inhumane treatment and near suffocation, Jon took it all in stride and came out smiling, muttering vague threats under his breath.
We made it to the Star Trek lecture just in time. The speaker really was fun and made it easy to learn. I think he was enjoying it more than anyone else. He explained how some things in Star Trek aren't possible and won't ever be, and how some things are possible in theory. He told how thanks to Newton's law of inertia the whole Enterprise crew would be "turned into chunky salsa on the back of the bridge" when the ship accelerates from 0 to light speed but that's solved by inventing "inertial dampers". He also explained how every ship's clock would be different because of special relativity and time dilation (need to catch up on my Einstein reading). He talked about wrinkles in space and wormholes, stuff that's really interesting, but to read any book on it you have to learn a whole new language. It was still a stretch to comprehend, but he explained things well and without relying on confusing jargon. He also gave some good advice, quoting someone saying " I like to keep an open mind, but not so open my brain falls out."
At Canyon School later, Don talked to us about radio astronomy, its history, and why it's important. He called it one more window into our universe; things that are seen in the optical range often have a radio component too, or they may only give off evidence in radio waves or other portions of the spectrum besides visible light. And a radio signal can be picked up any time of day.
Todd taught us about neutrinos and what odd li'l beasts they are. Millions zap through us every day, he said, and maybe, just maybe one will interact. That's why it was so hard discovering them; they rarely interact with anything. They were invented by Pauli to account for energy loss during certain reactions twenty years before they were discovered in the '50s. Todd told us about this huge neutrino detector in Japan made from this hollowed-out mountain (a whole mountain) filled with water and photosensors.
Later that night, Jack Hill gave a talk at the museum titled something like "Asteroids, Comets, and Tsunamis." He discussed how life as we know it could be snuffed out by large piece of rock before we ever suspected anything. He seemed in quite good spirits for discussing the destruction of mankind. He discussed some historical impacts such as one in the Yucatan that caused continental fires and blotted out the sun. He showed us hypothetical models of impacts in the Atlantic and Pacific by mile wide asteroids. In the Atlantic model, the whole east coast disappeared right up to the Appalachians. I don't know what that means for Mississippi, but I've got my floaties ready. In the Pacific, Jon's old stomping ground, Hawaii, had become a shallow spot in the ocean, and most of California was engulfed except for Pasadena so Dana might only be a little wet.
At some point to day, we became official Government Employees after passing our GET exam. We got cards but no pictures; what kind of operation is this! They make me take a test so I'm "authorized", but don't give me a photo ID with my mug shot. How can they expect me to work?
Wednesday 6/23/98
Today, we visited the VLA (Very Large Array), the huge radio telescope made of over twenty dishes. The ride down was very long, four hours. Guthrie drove our van while Galen drove his family in the other. Donna couldn't come, but instead Diane, a scientist from the lab rode along. She didn't seem to like our music too much, but we had some really interesting conversations on things like affirmative action, women's lib, horses, and even Synchrotron radiation.
The VLA is very impressive. Each dish is 94 ft tall and 82 ft across and there are 26 or 27 of them. The dishes can be arranged in four settings: A, B, C, D. And like everything else with the government, they're not just letters: Ample, Broad, ?Close?, Dense. The dishes are moved along a double set of R\R tracks by a monstrous orange machine with six sets of wheels.
Our guide let us climb up into one of the dishes that was in the "barn" for repairs. That was really awesome; we climb up stairs and then a ladder and into the maintenance/engine room where much of the electronics are housed. We even got to put our heads up through the dish. It's incredibly big. It's amazing that we have the technology to built something so massive yet so complex and precise!
Our guide told us that some of the land for the telescope is gov't land, but most of it belongs to cattle farmers. That explained the cows wandering around between the dishes. He said the government had a little trouble convincing the farmers that their cows weren't going to be fried by these huge white TV dishes. I'd have been skeptical too.
After the VLA, we stopped in a town for supper. The restaurant was great but had some really weird art in the back hall. There was a giant piece of pie, made of all sorts of discarded materials, hanging on the wall, and a giant black raven made of tire scraps, old cans, and car parts perched in the corner-scary.
Thursday 6/24/98
Today we took a great geological tour ...... I think. Anyway, we took one sometime and Thursday is as good as any to tell about it. Just bare with me, my biological clock has been ground into dust by our sleep schedule.
Well, we took a tour of the land around Los Alamos and of the caldera. Our guide was so much fun. She laughed and kidded around and still managed to teach us about how the crater of the caldera was formed by a huge collapsed volcano and what made its little ring of volcanic mounds inside. She took us to a sulfur deposit where the cliff was yellow-don't want to live near that stuff. And past a pumice mine where the rock used in stone washed jeans and in beauty products is dug. For two dollars an acre, she said, a company can come onto gov't land (that means the stuff that belongs to us) and dig as much as they want and then leave. They just tear everything up, abuse the land, and then move on when they've got what they need; no compensation or repair, just two dollars.
We also went back to Soda Dam where she explained how it worked and how the minerals from the hot springs had made the huge wall of rock. From there we went fossil collecting and found some really neat fossilized sea creatures just laying in the gravel or in a piece of rock. There were all sorts of things from coral to round tube like things to clam or oyster shaped fossils. I wish I could remember all the names she told us.
We had a lot of fun on the way back to Los Alamos. Donna turned up the Oldies station and we all sang along. Our guide was having just as much if not more fun than we were.
Friday 6/25/98
We typed on our web journals in the afternoon and I seem to be running a little behind. Around 1600 hrs, we headed out for Fenton Hill. We picnicked at Fenton Lake, had lots of fun. After eating, we fed the ducks and watched chipmunks chasing each other. Donna found a dead crawdad, and someone mischievously suggested giving it to Dana. Elyne readily accepted the mission. Climbing down the short concrete retaining wall, he stealthily crept behind her and gently set it on her shoulder. When Dana turned her head and saw those beady crustacean eyes staring at her, she leapt to her feet shrieking and waving her hands. It was awhile before she would speak to any of us. In the photo section is a great picture of the E-man and his crawdad.
At the observatory that night, we set up the scanner and try to put some of our art on the computer. We also attempted to install a CD writer, but had a lot of trouble. Cathy and Guthrie may have finally gotten it to work. Guthrie replaced several chips in the servo motor of the C-14, but it still refused to function.
Don brought his 10 in. Meade and it took some great pictures with the CCD camera. Megan became quite a pro at using that camera and its program while Corrie mastered the 7 in. Meade and the crazy program that went with its malfunctioning CCD. One picture, that Elyne, Megan, and I took, had a bright streak in it, but not at all like a pixel defect or overexposure. We had clearly discovered the Earthwatch comet!! Or maybe, we caught a meteor passing through our field of view. That's still pretty rare and exciting, but I'm still going to call it a comet if any body asks. We never did get to save the picture because there wasn't enough memory on the computer. I guess it'll be like a grandpa's fishing story or a brother's missed buck: each time the story's told it gets a little bigger.
Towards morning, we pointed the scopes at Jupiter and its moons, and Saturn with its rings. Then Venus rose above the trees. Through the telescope, its disk shimmered bright blue on one side, orange in the middle, and a dazzling gold on the other.
In the early dawn on the way back to the hotel, we saw elk everywhere! Some were up grazing while others lounged in the grass. Both buck and doe. The males' antlers were still in velvet. Really exciting to see so many of them and so close too! Some were even standing in the road (Donna has very good reflexes when it comes to dodging large animals).
Saturday 6/27/98
Arrived back at hotel near 6:00 am and everyone collapsed outside the dining room door to wait for 7:00 opening. A nice fellow saw us sprawled out in the hall and let us in 30 min early. Getting up off the floor was pretty tough, and I barely managed to stagger over to the cereal bar and at last to bed.
Woke up by 1400 and heard we weren't going to Bandoleer since everyone was so tired. I really wanted to go since I might never see it otherwise but was so tired that it would have been hard to enjoy. So I had a little more time to catch up on my postcards since I had several to write, but not as many as Megan did. She had thirty she wanted to write, a most impressive task but I think she did it.
This was also our last night of observation at Fenton Hill, the last time we would be there. So it was probably good to take it easy. We had a feast at Pizza Hut with some left over to keep for a late night snack. Beth and I wrestled with the uncooperative scanner to put some of our tablecloth art on the web page, but we both seem to be allergic to technology (or its allergic to us!).
Out on the pad, Corrie and Guthrie took a stunning picture of the crescent moon and its craters and seas and mountains with the CCD camera on the 7in. Meade (Hey Guthrie, where's my copy?). Don and Megan worked on the CCD with his 10in. Meade and also had good success. But our success was not to last. The allergy spread from the trailer to the smaller telescope, and it seemed to have fallen apart so we retreated to the Ops center for pizza and cherries. Chad Young, my fellow Mississippian, a graduate student working on Milagro, a gamma ray detector nearby, showed us how his crew tested the photo receptors. They work sort of like the CCD cameras.
We finally get the CCD working again using a 35mm lens instead of the telescope and take a good exposure of Jupiter despite some blurring. We took a longer exposure of Polaris and got some good star trails. Soon it was 2:30 and time to go. I couldn't believe this was the last night out here. I wanted to stay so bad, knowing that if I left I might never come back. So special, so beautiful up there. The Heavens declare the glory of God!
Corrie stayed behind. She worked so hard she deserved to stay and see the results. They were going to try a 30 min exposure for really long star trails. She is so excited, I hope it turns out good. I can't believe this is the last night of observations. I'm very, very sad. Soon I'll have to leave these kids that I've lived so closely with..... Hard to do.
Sunday 6/28/98
We got back to the hotel around 4:00 AM. Church today? At 8:00! I don't know, can I stay awake during a sermon on three hours of sleep? And did Corrie sleep at all? Well, with her help, I got there, up at seven, out forty-five minutes later. My parents would be amazed if I could do that at home each week. We both managed to stay awake, and I was definitely glad we went. Donna was so awesome to get us there; she hadn't had any sleep either but she got up anyway to help us.
Around 12:00, we arrived in Santa Fe. Since the restaurant couldn't seat us for awhile, we decided to walk around the shops on the square. It seemed like a normal day, nothing suspicious at all. But we had only been in one store when all that changed. A parade of women came sweeping into the square with banners and flags all of rainbow. Next came the fire truck with sirens blaring and covered with females, on the roof, hanging off the sides. Next came herds of men, on foot or piled in trucks throwing stuff to the crowd. I could tell I was about to be "culturally enriched" against my will for we had stumbled into GAY DAY!
We survived and even ventured shopping again after lunch. We visited the Georgia O'Keefe Museum. I really liked some of her works, but others I didn't appreciate at all. The colors and contrast of her art is very striking.
Shakespeare In Santa Fe at St. John's College was really fun. It was the first time I'd ever been to an outdoor theater and the first time I had seen Hamlet performed. Before the performance, we picnicked in the grass and watched the jugglers and minstrels as they wandered the grounds. Some of us tried to catch up on sleep so we wouldn't snore in Hamlet. For the play, we had great seats, just a few rows away from the stage. It began during the daylight and ran into the night. Some of the most dramatic moments were the ghosts scenes, played during the light. The trumpets and drums made me feel as if I was in the royal court. Hamlet himself was played by an excellent black actor who was perfect for the part. His energy seemed boundless, and his face said as much about his situation as his lines did. The ghost was another great character. His costuming combined with strong music made him an impressive character. Claudius, the king of Denmark, looked like a king should, with his gray hair to his shoulders and his black and white streaked beard.
It was so much fun in he outdoor theater, I think that added a lot to the play. I understood much more of what they said than I anticipated. I think seeing a play helps in interpreting since the words are heard while their meanings are conveyed through body language.
Monday 6/29/98
Girls - They're treacherous, diabolical! You think you can trust them and wham! They turn on you, let me explain: Beth and Dana decided Jon is in the mood for a little joke. Since I'm his roommate, they enlist me. As we type next to each other, Dana and I discuss how to "cook the chicken." I'm told that the "Chefs" have decided that I am to get the "chicken in the oven," in other words get Jon to go to bed. After that they'd handle the "cooking" if I let them borrow my key (Matt, how could you!).
A day later, I awake with a start to find the two girls creeping across the floor with a can of cheap shaving cream in each hand. From underneath my covers, I chuckled; this was going to be great! Jon stirred in his sleep and snuggled down into the covers as the girls began spraying shaving cream under the edge of the blanket and lathering the exposed end of his pillow. The hiss of arousal slowly awakened him, but it was too late. By the time he realized the danger he was already surrounded. Like a cornered animal, he shrunk into a tight ball beneath the covers.
Beth and Dana closed in for the kill. Suddenly, Jon sprang into action. In a desperate surge for self preservation, he flung back the foamy blankets and brandished his frothy pillow bravely as his tormentors pounced with their cans a'blazin'.
It was fool hardy to think I'd come away unscathed. Once the "chicken" had been thoroughly "cooked," the double-crossers came after the "turkey". I . . . I barely escaped with my life!
Later in the computer room at Canyon School, we planned our presentation for the Great High Council of Astrophysics Gurus - the weekly brown bag get-together of Galen and his scientific pals at LANL. The talk went well. We explained how the trip had changed our view of science and research and gave our impressions of the program as a whole. We also explained how we researched the seeing at Fenton using double stars and discussed what equipment we learned to use and the problems that we ran into the telescopes and other things. The talk went great, they didn't grill us too bad or try to trip us up, but seemed happy we were there and that students were excited about getting their hands into real science.
After the meeting, we visited Galen's office and got to see ROTSE II in the workshop. Once its finished, it will work like ROTSE I but instead of having four small cameras, it will have one big camera that will move a little slower but take in more details.
We had the rest of the afternoon for packing and doing any last minute shopping before our good-bye dinner. The meal was really good, but really hot. I don't think my little taste buds will ever recover from this trip, most of them have been burned off anyway. (Will it be Red, Green, or mild chili tonight? Which is hotter? Green. Thanks, I'll take the mild.) We had a great time talking and passing around our big green journals so everybody could write notes and get addresses. Donna had gotten us some cards so we could thank everyone who had helped us. She even had us notes for us. I tried really hard not to think about how bad I would miss them all.
After supper, we went to our rooms to pack. That meant we really were going home. I miss my family terribly, but it's going to hurt so bad to leave here.
Your Mission Should You Choose to Accept It: to infiltrate the corner gas station, secure the area, and paint The Rock.
At the appointed hour, our special task force assembled at the Government Van. Donna, Cathy, and Guthrie were there waiting. In the van, Donna had a full arsenal: one gallon of flat white paint, three cans of spray paint (red, blue, yellow), and plenty of brushes.
Galen lives in a community called White Rock a few minutes away from Los Alamos. On the way to his house is a gas station with a big rock, a boulder, on the lot that is painted with something different each day.
Our big, ol' government van pulled up in the parking lot right in front of the local punks with their black leather jackets, pocket chains, and drooping cigarettes. It might've been their turf, we were on official business. We poured out with all our paint and brushes to attack the rock. First, a white coat to cover the old "Happy Birthday, Roy!" and a few minutes to dry. Then a big "U Rock, Galen" in red with blue and gold stars and a "Thanx Todd and Don" on the other. After a round of photos to document the success of our mission, we piled back in the van to leave. Only a few minutes on the road, we decided we had better go back and check on our message.
Sure enough, our vandalism had been vandalized. It now read "U Rock, G len". We were all pretty mad, but unimpressed by their lazy attempt to spoil our tribute. Elyne and I defiantly hopped out with our cans ready for action. I stood guard while the Big E skillfully repaired the damage. Perhaps he's had experience with this sort of stuff before. Guthrie came out to stand guard with us as we waited for the new "A" to dry. Nobody was messing with the Rock tonight!
Later, back at the hotel after our successful mission, all of us Earthwatchers met in Megan's and Dana's room to write in journals and swap addresses. Dana and Jon stayed up all night with Corrie and me talking about God and religion and why we believed what we did. Corrie and I were both really glad to talk about Christ and the hope he gives us. It was really great; Jon and Dana asked some really tough questions that forced me to reexamine why I believe in God. We talked about how God had made this huge, wonderful Creation just to tell us He loves us.
Tuesday, 6/30/98
Well Monday flowed right on into Tuesday and at 6:30 we decided we all had to go finish packing. When Galen and Don came to get our bags, Jon couldn't find his tickets, panic set in as we realized Jon might not be leaving. But at the last minute, they were discovered. Jon and I tackled each other in joy and ran to the van.
Parting with everyone at the airport was tough. This was it! We were going home!