Final countdown.

It's been another week (8 days, to be exact), and I'm back again for another update... T-minus 5 days 'til home.

At work, things were realllyyyy quiet toward the beginning of the week, which was slightly surprising, for some reason. It was really, nice though, because we were able to get a lot of things ready for the MSTI Holiday Party on Saturday (12/06/08). I spent a lot of time making posters for all the games, and we also worked on decorating the pedatric floor of the hospital nearly every day since Thanksgiving. You'd think the decorations were multiplying ten fold each day. Needless to say, I'm not at all interested in assisting with any more holiday preparations, at this point.

As for the holiday party, it was a pretty good sucess, and I had more fun than I imagined. This last week or two has been pretty "blah" for me, work-wise, but the holiday party served to lift my spirits quite considerably. Gina (the other intern) and I worked to design a "Frosty Free Throw" carnival game, and despite some skepticism on the part of our superviors, it was a real hit. *Woot* I also enjoyed seeing so many of the patients that I've grown to love over the last few months. It was sad to say goodbye, knowing it's probably the last time that I will see them ever again, but I was also glad for an opportunity to see them for one last time.

When I got home from the party, Ashley and Jason picked me up and we went to meet Kim, Joey, and Tessa at the botanical gardens to see the Christmas lights . For those of you from the Acadiana area, I'll say that the set-up was similar to that of Acadian Village. It wasn't nearly as display-oriented though, and didn't feature many organized depictions of holiday scenes, like at Acadian Village. However, it was cool that the land sloped and included a hill, so we were able to walk up some paths and then look down over all the lights. Oh, and we were able to see the Table Rock cross lit up from a totally different perspective than I've seen thus far. I really enjoyed that, obviously. ...The free cider/hot chocolate and cookies were pretty sweet, too. :-p

I spent the rest of Saturday evening hanging out at the boys' house. Jason made some tasty pesto/tomato/avocado pizza. Yumm. We drank some of the cider that Tessa and Stew made last month, and then hung out until the wee hours of the night.

Today was the Child Life staff holiday ornament exchange. Since we have a fairly (though not really) diverse group from different parts of the country now, we decided to have a cultural food tasting. I brought gumbo, and there were some cool dishes from Minnesota/Wisconsin, Montana, Illinios, and California, too. (Not that I'm discounting any of the Idaho dishes, hehe.) We had a great time talking, hanging out, eatting yummy food, and stealing each other's ornaments in the Dirty Santa game. I accidently ended up with Gina's ornament, that I happened to have seen already because I was with her when she bought it, but hey, it's okay. I'll always remember Boise because of it, lol.

The plan was for all the guys and friends to come over for gumbo dinner tonight, but only Joey and Jeff (in addition to Kim and Tessa) came. I was kinda bummed, but glad that I didn't go through the trouble of making a whole new batch for no one. Whatever, I guess. Their loss, right?

Looking toward what's left of my time here, in the coming five days, I hope to finish my disease paper about Spina Bifida as soon as tomorrow, so that I can sort of relax for the remaining days. I also need to tie up some lose ends and somehow tackle the packing process, as well. Wednesday night, I plan to go to my last Wifebeaters (indoor co-ed soccer) game, and then we're going out for my farewell, and Ashley's 22nd birthday on Thursday night. I'm sad and sentimental but hoping to make the best of what I've got.

I haven't heard back from either of the job opportunities, but I'll be sure to let you know if I do. The way things have been going, I wouldn't expect to hear back from me until I'm safely landed (and probably graduated) in Louisiana. And with that, I say...

"I'm leavin', on a jet plane...don't know when I'll be back again..."
-Lauren, :*(