Home is where my suitcase is.

We have been staying with relatives the whole trip. So much love and family support, it makes not being at home really easy. Today we got to enjoy some of the incredible perks of being in Connecticut and visited the pez factory. We literally felt like kids in a candy store the entire time. I mean if we were to get technical we were kids in a candy store. This whole trip actually feels that way, from pez factories to science museums we have been making my search to find an academic home to pursue my call to ministry. All searches and adventures need to have silly in them. 

The science museum in Boston with jaz and my cousin and her kid.

The pez factory in Connecticut! 

Born to be a free bird.

We have been on our epic crafting across America tour for three days now but it feels so much longer. Over 900 miles, multiple road trip playlists, paper cranes, and tambourine solos its nice to be in a place for more than one night. Tomorrow we head into the beautiful city of Boston to look at a grad school and hopefully help my sister feel the intense and amazing connection to the Unitarian Universalist faith movement on the historic streets of Boston. It is amazing how places can feel right and natural to be in, Massachusetts is one of those places for me. I get an overwhelming calm when I am here and although I am used to the Oregon pace, the east coast pace is refreshingly up and fast. Only time, intuition, and acceptance letters will tell where I go but man, Boston is a hard place to beat.

Reliving Childhood Summers Past

The sounds of lawn mowers, children laughing, and dogs barking remind me of summer. My last few summers have been amazing but full of hot summer days and drunk summer nights. I loved that, but this summer I am back in the town in Illinois I grew up in spending this summer driving with the top down and getting ice cream, blended drinks, making lemonade, and going to the movies. I feel like I am 14 again, I am not thinking about when my rent comes out or when my next meeting is. Dreams of owning food trucks that drive cross country and going to India are talked about on a daily basis and it's wonderful. It feels right to be back. As I grow into the Adult I strive to be I constantly find myself thinking back to my incredible upbringing, from my parents raising me to the community I was raised in. I am lucky and will never forget that. My upbringing was not perfect, there were tears shed, mistakes made, bugs that were accidentally eaten, and bubbles popped. I will say though if I could stay in the constant child like presence I feel when I am back here with my beloved community I will take a bug in the mouth once in a while.