Arizona keeps you guessing!

So it's been an interesting week or so since my last update. Nothing majorly new and exciting has happened, but noticing the little differences between Arizona and Illinois has kept me pretty impressed this past week.

First of all, it has gotten quite cold lately. Now I know a bunch of you are scoffing at this, as my definition of "cold" has changed in the past few months. This past week, the highs have only been in the mid 50s, meaning that it is extremely cold (just above freezing) early in the morning as I walk to class. Strange thing is that the grass is still green, the flowers are still blooming, and the sun is still shining. However, it hasn't been sunny all week, and we've actually gotten quite a bit of rain. It rained all day yesterday. The clouds were so low, you couldn't see the top of my mountain.

It even stormed like the dickens last night. If I didn't know that we were in a landlocked state, I would have sworn this was a hurricane. I took a quick video off my balcony last night. Check it out. (Notice how far the trees are bending over and how much the lamp is shaking! Also, the carport was rattling and the tin roofing was moving around a lot, but it is hard to tell in the video.)

Anyway, things were back to normal when I got up to take my test this morning, except for a few downed trees and the fact it was still dark as I walked to my test! Better get used to it I suppose, winter is here!

This past weekend I also volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, which was a really interesting experience. The site where we were building was about half an hour away, out near the airport. I was completely surprised by the whole thing. I thought they would be building a single house, but instead an ENTIRE COMMUNITY was being built! There were about 15-20 different houses under construction all at once, each with a team of volunteers working on it. There were hundreds of people that donated their Saturday morning to building houses! I was impressed by the scale of it all.

I went with a group of students from the Christian Fellowship of Health Care Professionals from school. We had about 20 people in all. At the site, we met our team that had been working on the house, which consisted of about 8 adult volunteers that work on the same house every week until it is completed....15 weeks from start to finish! Our house was 2 stories, and will be going to a family from Ethiopia. Unfortunately, we did not get a chance to meet them because they were attending classes sponsored by Habitat for Humanity that prepared them to become homeowners. It is a pretty intense process for them to get a house. In addition to going to classes, they need to spend 100 hours working on another family's house as well as spending at least 200 hours constructing their own! That day, we put the roof on and framed a lot of the interior rooms of the house. It was a huge change from what it looked like at the beginning of the day! I spent a lot of time caulking and doing odd jobs that kept me off the roof. As much as I would have liked to have been up there, I figured it was probably better that I stay far away from any task that had the potential for me to hurt myself. Instead, I used the table saw and automatic air hammer! :) I forgot my camera, so unfortunately, no pictures from that day.

One last interesting Arizona tidbit to mention before I get to work on my presentation on methamphetamine use this week. (Google image search "meth mouth"...I dare ya!) Tonight after dollar fish tacos and a quick grocery run, my roommate and I drove through some of the neighborhoods to look at Christmas lights. It was so weird to see lights strung around palm tress and green lawns. Also, apparently it is pretty common to lay lights on the ground here. Several houses had them just laying on the front lawn. A few houses used blue lights to look like a mini river was running through the yard, and had fake light up deer "drinking" from the lighted river. It was so strange. Other houses has their entire "rock beds" covered in lights just laying on the ground. Who ever heard of such a thing?