things are back to normal again here in goose bay. i think i lived last week in a haze just trying to recover from the trip --- couple nights of going to bed at 8:30 even which is fairly ridiculous for me. just got back from a really good church service --- i was playing piano / singing harmonies and it was thoroughly fun... am playing for a women's retreat this weekend (i think i'm on all day saturday) so hopefully that is just as fun.... anyways, church was followed up by a game of settlers with mike and jeff --- we haven't played in FOREVER (over a month at least) -- so it was a good time getting back into the catan relationship we have going there -- the game does not bring out the best in us all the time... but i think that's what makes it so fun. it was also the first time in 2+ weeks that the 3 of us hung out... so that was kind of nice... maybe next time other mike wont be working and the 4 of us can get back into the game.
mike asked me tonight on the ride home what i thought of goose bay... and i realized that most of the time it really feels like home now. i have a place in the town and people are good at making you feel appreciated for the things that you do - whether that be playing piano / singing in church to teaching choir (particularly concert/performance related outcomes people notice). so although i miss the london crowd and the fam sometimes --- the goose bay family is a really good substitute.
that being said - i can't wait for the european adventure this summer.... super pumped!!! all ash clouds better be disappaited by then!

Day 2 of the easter adventure and i'm on hour 8.5 of sitting on the bond and we have another 5-7 hours left...

we left goose bay yesterday at 7:20am meeting up with matt and megan (aka silver fox) at tim's and then the road... we spent the next 8 hours on an extremely muddy dirt road with the occasional patch of hard dirt that was relatively pleasant to drive on. We saw some crazy drifting snow and whatever else and passed the time napping (me and megan / not jeff and matt who were driving), coming up with crazy millionaire ideas over walkie-talkies (again - me and megan ---- the boys lost their privileges quickly) and talking and singing along to some music. at 4ish we hit red bay and PAVEMENT - hurrah!!!! then we ate some bologna sandwiches before continuing down to forteau and l'anse au claire where we were staying last night.

we hung out with jeff's dad's sisterinlaws sister (or something like that) and were up again this morning at 5am to be in line for the bond at 5:30am

now we've been sitting on here for ever --- we've napped, read, played some cards, wandered around and done a whole lot of nothing...

the current excitement is the cafeteria opening at 5...

the plan is to get into gander tonight really late...

update again eventually