Travel updates - North Carolina

As my time in Costa Rica came to an end this summer, I became excited to come home and anxious for what was next. I had a wonderful time serving on the mission base, and traveled a lot (including a trip to the west coast of Nicaragua), but by the end of August, I was back to driving my car and talking on my cell phone in the good ol' U S of A.

After a week at home, just getting settled in and unpacking my suitcase, my mom and I packed up the car and headed to North Carolina to visit my sister and her boyfriend, Lance. We had a great time doing "southern things"... first we went to the county fair, where I milked a fake cow, we watched a swimming pig race, and ate funnel cakes and fried oreos. The next day, we went to a tractor pull... talk about culture shock in my own country! While locals watched from couches in the back of their pickup trucks, I worried about not getting splinters in my butt from the sketchy wooden bleachers. I had my first experience with southern sweet tea, which was great considering it was over 100 degrees. milking a fake cow at the county fair
me in a tractor at the tractor pull

After the weekend festivities, my sister had to go back to work, so my mom and I were left to fend for ourselves in a place where they still think"the South will rise again!" We did some shopping, visited my sister at work, swam in her pool, and did a little bit of exploring on our own. This included a trip to Waxhaw, North Carolina (which interestingly enough you have to drive through South Carolina to get to. There we visited two amazing musuems founded by the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)- the Museum of the Alphabet and the Mexico-Cardenas Museum. First, the Alphabet museum takes you through the history of different alphabets from all over the world - greek, japanese, mayan, brahmi, etc. The second part of the museum has real life accounts of missionaries that have developed alphabets for indigenous groups in isolated parts of the world that previously didn't have one. This was especially interesting to me because this is the type of work that I would like to do one day. The Mexico museum diplayed many artifacts from Mexico and explained how former president Lazaro Cardenas worked with the SIL to improve literacy in his country. This also was great for me, obviously, because I love anything about Mexico. :)me with some Mexican figures in the Mexico museum

After a week in North Carolina, my mom and I made the 14 hour road trip back home... at Christmas, they can make the drive to us!