CAO - Day One

Today started extremely early.  My flight left ATX at 5:50 AM so Rene and I left the house at 4:00 AM which put my wake up time in the 3:20 AM area.  There was also a surprising number of people in the airport that early and my flight was packed.  I managed to get about 30 minutes of sleep on the flight to Atlanta by using my tray as a pillow.  I had an hour and half layover in Atlanta which I spent running up and down the terminal as my gate changed 5 different times.  The flight to Charlotte was short and sweet and soon I was finally meeting Jennifer, my mobilizer, face-to-face!


There was another girl from Texas whose flight got in right after mine so we met up with her and then went to lunch at Panera (which was much needed seeing as all I'd had to eat since 3:20 was a teeny bag of mini pretzels!) and then we had a few hours at the hotel in order to get unpacked and relax.  It took a while to turn my mind off but I eventually got to hunker down for a refreshing nap.


Dinner was next!  The cool thing about doing this in Charlotte is that all of the UWM staff lives here so each night for dinner we're having it at someone's house.  We got to meet up with the other three candidates (one other girl and a family) and then we headed to dinner.  There, we met up with ten of the staffers for dinner - fried chicken from a place called Bo'Jangles.  That's right - Bo'Jangles, which I would have loved for the name no matter how the food tasted.  Lucky for me, the food was delicious too!


We had a nice time chatting and getting to know one another better.  After dinner, we gathered together and the staff introduced themselves and their roles and a brief history of how they came to UWM.  Then we candidates had the chance to share our testimonies, how we were called to missions, how we came to UWM, where we're planning on going, etc.  After each one of us shared, one of the staffers would pray for us.  It was a really cool time of just getting to see how God has worked so differently in each of our lives to bring us together to this place.


I really like all of the people I've met.  They're all very kind and genuine and real and fun.


We came back to the hotel and one of the other girls had a 3-something wake up time today so she went to bed.  I went to the exercise room for a bit and then my roomie-for-the-week and I sat out by the pool for a bit and talked.  We talked about our families and shared interests and then we had a good time of being really transparent about some struggles we've both experienced in our lives.  It was really a blessing to be able to open up to someone I've known only a day about something I'm very candid about and to get to experience and give the grace that we've both experienced through Christ's forgiveness.


It's going to be a crazy busy week with a lot of information, but I'm thoroughly looking forward to it.  Tomorrow in the morning we'll be going over the Vision and Values of UWM and then in the afternoon will be more psych evaluations and my UWM interview (which, admittedly, I am a little nervous about...mostly, I think just because I don't know what to expect from it).  Then we'll have dinner at a different staffer's house.


On another note, Charlotte is beautiful.  It's very clean and spacious.  And green.  That's what I was most struck by. There are so many trees - tall, skinny, covered in flowers, wide.  I took some pictures of the house we had dinner at.  I apologize now for the quality.  I had to take them on my phone and they do not do the place justice.  The house was built in 1904 and had huge dogwood trees in the backyard (which also had a huge black snake in it) with a hammock and a rope swing and a bench swing and a wrap-around porch.  It was lovely!  Also, it was a nice 78 degrees at dinner so we got to sit outside.

This wasn't the actual house, but it was off next to it and I thought it was cute

These trees were out front and to the side and there were tons of them - really, really tall!!

This was the house we had dinner at - massive trees out front, white picket fence, wrap-around porch and all