There is a youth group staying in Paradise, (one of the buildings on campus, for those of you who don't know), and they're really nice. The lady whom I assume is responsible for organizing the meals told David that we were welcome to every meal and to come when we were hungry and bring friends. Their food is pretty incredible. Tonight we had homemade chicken casserole, some sort of fried rice with shrimp sauce, corn, green beans, potatoes, and homemade pound cake. To have that instead of cafeteria dinner is absolutely amazing.
I got to talk to several of the kids in the group too. Each night I sit at a different table, tonight was a table of girls. I think I still remember most of their names. Thats a pretty big deal for someone like me. I usually forget people's names about three seconds after they tell me. Actually, when they tell me, I often don't listen to begin with - then I think, "CRAP! IDIOT!" right after they're finished telling me because I realize that I wasn't listening. I do the same thing with books. Sometimes I'll read three pages before I figure out that I haven't actually read a word but have instead been deep in thought on what my favorite omelet ingredients are.
I'm halfway finished filing my knife. Consequently, my hand hurts like a nutter butter from hand filing for over an hour and a half.
Real Nutter Butters are delicious. Just like the dinner I had tonight.
Thursday, July 31, 2008
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
In the Middle of the Ride...
Hello.
My name is Nathan Sloan, but I'm guessing if you've made it this far you probably already knew that. This is the first post on this blog, but it's hardly my first post in blogging. I have spent the past four years posting semi-regularly, (at least once a month), to a blog called WilmingSloan, which chronicled my thoughts and activities over the course of my college years at UNCW. Now it seems that I've arrived at a point in my life where I'm not quite out of the nest but not quite in it either. Let me explain what I mean.
As I write this the wind is gusting unusually strongly against the side of the RC and I'm being regularly interrupted by guests and staffers coming in to visit - hopefully I'll be able to get through this before it's time to go to devotion. I'm on third shift, which means I'll be on duty until 12:30 AM. This is my sixth summer working at the summer camp called Caswell down on Oak Island, NC. I started when I was a rising Jr. in high school and here I still sit on a humid July evening, just as I have in years past. The only difference is that this time I have a degree in a frame waiting for me back home. It feels strange to be at the point where you don't fit in with the college kids but you aren't quite "Mr." material either. Strange, but I kind of like it.
In just two weeks the summer at Caswell will be officially over and I'll be heading home to start the next chapter. "What is the next chapter?" you may be asking. Well, let me tell you. I am going to be an intern at Campus Christian Fellowship (henceforth referred to as "CCF"), at NC State University. What does this mean? Well, it means I'm going to be building up a resume, learning how to be a servant of God full-time, and piecing things together for the next step - all over the next 10 months. It also means that I'll be living in Raleigh which, coincidentally, is where the blog title comes from. I know, it's not very creative to take my blog title from a city two times in a row, but at least this one sounds pretty cool. I have to give credit to my sister, Melissa for coming up with it a couple of weeks ago. I put her on the spot and told her to give me a new blog title and she spit it out about thirty seconds later. It works.
Ok, so, I won't technically be living in Raleigh, but I may as well be. I'm going to move back in with my parents, which is a mixed bag. I love to be around them and am thankful for their kindness, but I want to be self supporting a.s.a.p. They live about 40 minutes south of Raleigh in the bustling metropolis of Four Oaks. The good news is that Melissa lives in Raleigh and it looks like I might have a couple of other places up there to crash at least a few times a week so that I can save a lot on gas. The trick will be to avoid becoming "that guy" who takes advantage of his friends beyond what they had anticipated. I will gratefully sleep on couches and spare beds, but I will stop short of treating my secondary sleeping places as a home away from home.
Oh yeah, and the reason I mention saving on gas is because it will actually be a big deal to me. It means less money has to come out of my bank account which will be totally dependent on the generous tithes of supporters to the ministry. I can buy food, gas, pay bills, and maybe go to the movies once every couple of months - not much else. In spite of this, I have a strange sense of peace about the whole financial ordeal, something just tells me that it'll work out one way or another. Time will tell.
((As a side note, if you're reading this and you'd like to send a support check for me to CCF, shoot me an email and I'll get you the information you need))
There are about a thousand things I could mention in this post and some of them will no doubt crop up again in the near future as I get back to regular updates, but seeing as how this is already a bit long and I should probably be cutting things off right about now, I think I'll just use the end here to briefly list a few of the things that have gone on or are going on in my life which I deem worthy of note.
-I am a new uncle to a beautiful baby Boyd...err...I mean, boy. William Ryan Boyd, the brand new son of my sister Elizabeth and her husband Craig.
-I started a project in which I'll be creating my own knife. Today while I was cutting the blade out of a piece of raw steel, I thinly sliced my hand and it hurts every time I type with my left index finger.
-Guest services found a baby mocking bird outside the gym last week and we kept it and tried to nurse it back to health. It worked until yesterday, when the bird took a sharp turn for the worst ending in his death late last night. It was sad, but we built him a boat out of cardboard and duct tape, covered him in paper shavings, doused it all in denatured alcohol and gave him a viking funeral. After lighting it and pushing it off the point of the island, we watched the current carry it out about 3/4 of a mile while it burned for nearly 10 minutes. = Awesome.
-I am sad to be leaving Caswell for what I believe will be the last time.
Thanks for reading and don't forget to leave comments and keep coming back.
Love,
Nathan
My name is Nathan Sloan, but I'm guessing if you've made it this far you probably already knew that. This is the first post on this blog, but it's hardly my first post in blogging. I have spent the past four years posting semi-regularly, (at least once a month), to a blog called WilmingSloan, which chronicled my thoughts and activities over the course of my college years at UNCW. Now it seems that I've arrived at a point in my life where I'm not quite out of the nest but not quite in it either. Let me explain what I mean.
As I write this the wind is gusting unusually strongly against the side of the RC and I'm being regularly interrupted by guests and staffers coming in to visit - hopefully I'll be able to get through this before it's time to go to devotion. I'm on third shift, which means I'll be on duty until 12:30 AM. This is my sixth summer working at the summer camp called Caswell down on Oak Island, NC. I started when I was a rising Jr. in high school and here I still sit on a humid July evening, just as I have in years past. The only difference is that this time I have a degree in a frame waiting for me back home. It feels strange to be at the point where you don't fit in with the college kids but you aren't quite "Mr." material either. Strange, but I kind of like it.
In just two weeks the summer at Caswell will be officially over and I'll be heading home to start the next chapter. "What is the next chapter?" you may be asking. Well, let me tell you. I am going to be an intern at Campus Christian Fellowship (henceforth referred to as "CCF"), at NC State University. What does this mean? Well, it means I'm going to be building up a resume, learning how to be a servant of God full-time, and piecing things together for the next step - all over the next 10 months. It also means that I'll be living in Raleigh which, coincidentally, is where the blog title comes from. I know, it's not very creative to take my blog title from a city two times in a row, but at least this one sounds pretty cool. I have to give credit to my sister, Melissa for coming up with it a couple of weeks ago. I put her on the spot and told her to give me a new blog title and she spit it out about thirty seconds later. It works.
Ok, so, I won't technically be living in Raleigh, but I may as well be. I'm going to move back in with my parents, which is a mixed bag. I love to be around them and am thankful for their kindness, but I want to be self supporting a.s.a.p. They live about 40 minutes south of Raleigh in the bustling metropolis of Four Oaks. The good news is that Melissa lives in Raleigh and it looks like I might have a couple of other places up there to crash at least a few times a week so that I can save a lot on gas. The trick will be to avoid becoming "that guy" who takes advantage of his friends beyond what they had anticipated. I will gratefully sleep on couches and spare beds, but I will stop short of treating my secondary sleeping places as a home away from home.
Oh yeah, and the reason I mention saving on gas is because it will actually be a big deal to me. It means less money has to come out of my bank account which will be totally dependent on the generous tithes of supporters to the ministry. I can buy food, gas, pay bills, and maybe go to the movies once every couple of months - not much else. In spite of this, I have a strange sense of peace about the whole financial ordeal, something just tells me that it'll work out one way or another. Time will tell.
((As a side note, if you're reading this and you'd like to send a support check for me to CCF, shoot me an email and I'll get you the information you need))
There are about a thousand things I could mention in this post and some of them will no doubt crop up again in the near future as I get back to regular updates, but seeing as how this is already a bit long and I should probably be cutting things off right about now, I think I'll just use the end here to briefly list a few of the things that have gone on or are going on in my life which I deem worthy of note.
-I am a new uncle to a beautiful baby Boyd...err...I mean, boy. William Ryan Boyd, the brand new son of my sister Elizabeth and her husband Craig.
-I started a project in which I'll be creating my own knife. Today while I was cutting the blade out of a piece of raw steel, I thinly sliced my hand and it hurts every time I type with my left index finger.
-Guest services found a baby mocking bird outside the gym last week and we kept it and tried to nurse it back to health. It worked until yesterday, when the bird took a sharp turn for the worst ending in his death late last night. It was sad, but we built him a boat out of cardboard and duct tape, covered him in paper shavings, doused it all in denatured alcohol and gave him a viking funeral. After lighting it and pushing it off the point of the island, we watched the current carry it out about 3/4 of a mile while it burned for nearly 10 minutes. = Awesome.
-I am sad to be leaving Caswell for what I believe will be the last time.
Thanks for reading and don't forget to leave comments and keep coming back.
Love,
Nathan
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