midwest madness

LH needed to get rid of me for a few days, so they sent me on this recruiting trip to the midwest for 9 days.  Here's my journey so far...

Wednesday - flew into Minneapolis/St. Paul and went to pick up my rental car.  Turns out there are two terminals at MSP, and I reserved a car at the other one.  Oops.  Good thing the Alamo guys were nice and gave me a car anyways.  I got in the car, hooked up my iPod and GPS and set off for Decorah, IA.  I remembered that it was Ash Wednesday, so I decided I would try and go to a church.  I figured there had to be a good ole Lutheran church somewhere in Minnesota or Iowa.  I grabbed my handy blackberry and started searching.  Since I was going to Luther College, I tried them first.  Turns out they had a service at 7 pm.  I arrived in Decorah at 6:45 - perfect timing!  I sat down by myself at first, and just a few minutes later about 6 people walked through the door that I knew.  RTLC pretty much brings a gang wherever they go, so I'm glad to at least be associated with the gang still, even when I wear my LH green!  That service was a treat for the ears - man, those midwest kids sure can sing!  I felt like I was in the middle of a concert, not a worship service.  They are crazy good singers.  After worship, I ran into another camp friend, who last I heard was living in Colorado.  Turns out she got a job back in MN so she came down for the camp fair.  I stayed that night in the amazing Super 8.  Oh, did I mention that while I'm sitting there waiting for worship to start, this girl named Emily walks in...turns out I held her as a baby and now she's in college.  Am I old enough for that????  Yikes.

Thursday was the camp fair at Luther.  We were in a really high traffic spot, inbetween the cold outside and the warm cafeteria, but all the students were so focused on getting their stomachs full, they didn't even notice we were there.  We talked about tripping them or throwing stuff at them, but we decided to be nice.  I met this one girl that seemed pretty interested.  I gave her all the information, and she ended up calling the camp office looking for me (I'm still adjusting to this recruiting outside of Texas thing...cell phone numbers are probably better to give out than numbers hundreds of miles away...oops!)  She ended up calling me and we set up an interview!  That was the most hopeful part of my day.  Went back to the hotel and watched TV...lame, I know.

Friday was my interview with the girl I met at Luther, and I think she'll be pretty good!  Then I had the whole day to do whatever my heart desired.  I decided to drive to the cities and go to the Mall of America.  Wow, that place is huge.  I felt like it was one of those things that you should go to just for the sake of saying you did it.  I did a little shopping while I was there, but I was mostly just amazed at the size of the building.  I couldn't help thinking about the heating and cooling costs.  I'm a dork, yes I know.  That night, some friends had offered for me to stay with them, but that fell through.  At 5 pm when I still didn't have a place for the night, I drove to a nearby hotel and used their free internet from the warmth of my car.  I used hotwire to find a cheap hotel in down town Minneapolis.  I ended up staying at Crown Palace or something swanky like that for (drum role please.....!) $54!  Pretty sweet deal, especially since I found that deal at 5 pm, right before my battery died on my computer.  I ended up going for a pretty good run that night - 4.5 miles on a treadmil.  Not a fan of the treadmil - mostly because you can stop whenever you want.  When I run at home, I run a certain distance out, and then the only option is to run that same distance back.  It's good motivation!  Especially when the sun starts setting.

More later.