i miss you lists...

1. Met Autumn at her flat to go to this volunteer thing Eikon did with another church in Edinburgh. We were supposed to meet at the other church to catch a ride with the leader of the entire shindig, Roger, but got lost and ended up at the wrong church. Problem was resolved, he picked us up at the wrong church and we went on our merry way to the town of Dalkeith to fix up a lady's flat who was suffering from depression after her second child was born.

2. Upon arriving, the house was rubbish (that's the Scot coming out in me). It was the former home of drug addicts, and not much was done before the new owner, Sarah, and her two small children moved in. Apparently Roger's last visit to the flat proved to be quite different than the one today. The living room was previously piled to the ceiling with trash and we were to help Sarah sort through the junk and tidy up the room so we could begin painting, etc. in the weeks to come. Oddly enough, Sarah stayed up all night last night doing some tidying of her own -- she moved all the trash from the living room into her bedroom and would not allow any of us into the new "rubbish room." It was sad because she was clearly embarrassed, but frustrating because our leader was slightly frazzled with this new arrangement.

3. So Autumn and I, as well as a girl from the other church, Natalie, did Sarah's dishes and cleaned her kitchen all morning. Her kitchen was an absolute mess as well. She had bottles from the children left with spoiled milk all over the counter, pans with rotting food left on the stove, and other dishes piled high on every inch of the tiny counter. We held back out gagging and washed, dried, and put away every last dish in that room.

4. It's strange doing volunteer work in another country. You expect people to struggle with different things on the other side of the world, but they really don't. We're not all that different from each other. I've been in homes in Springfield that looked identical to Sarah's flat today. It was cool to be able to forget about my obstacles of fitting in in a foreign land to help a local do her dishes. Not easy, but definitely worth it.

5. Then I ate some Chinese, watched Project Runway, and took a nap.