On my way to Asia (almost)....

For all of you that haven't heard yet, tomorrow I leave for Southeast Asia. I've been planning this trip for a long time, and I'm super excited that it's finally happening! This trip is not related to EMI, but I figured I'd still share the adventure with all of you. I bought the plane tickets months ago before I knew that I'd be moving to Colorado, so I'll have to work some overtime to make up for the 2 weeks that I'll be gone. EMI doesn't really allow for interns to take that much vacation time....I'm pretty sure it will be worth it though!

Also because the tickets were purchased before I moved, I'll be flying out from Seattle on Saturday afternoon, so tomorrow night I'm flying to Seattle, and I'm really excited about getting to see some of the folks that I've been missing over the past month. From Seattle I'll be going to Thailand, meeting up with my friend Erin (who teaches English in China) and from there we'll be heading over to Vietnam and traveling up the coast from Ho Chi Minh to Hanoi. And enjoying the 80 degree weather! Totally can't wait!

In other news, this has been a good week. Work was fun, and I got a lot of stuff done to prepare for our project trip. Tuesday night, the interns got together and had game night. We played Catch Phrase and Apples to Apples, and it was a really good time. Wednesday night, Jeni (the lady who Vicky and I are staying with) made supper for us, and the 3 of us sat and talked pretty much all night. Jeni told Vicky and me about all the cool things we have to see while we're in Colorado, and they all sound awesome. Not sure if I'll have time for everything, but I'm going to try!

That's about all I can think of for now. Please pray for safety for me and Erin during our travels. Thanks! Miss ya'll!

Hello again. I thought I'd take some time to update ya'll on the non-work stuff that has been happening lately.

Wednesday night all the interns got together for supper. We went to Chad (architectural intern) and Rachel's apartment, and they made delicious veggie pizza. Then we played a game called Quelf, which was highly amusing....think Cranium with more craziness.

Friday night the interns went out for dinner after work. We went to a sushi place.....turns out I don't really like sushi, but at least I can say I tried it. After dinner we went to The Mill, which is New Life Church's young adult service. It was a good service--good music and an insightful sermon. It also started snowing and got really cold. So much for sunny with a high of 65.

Saturday was relaxing. I spent most of the afternoon at Panera using their free wi-fi to get a bunch of stuff done....and watch a few episodes of The Office and Bones online. Vicky and I spent the night watching Napoleon Dynamite and trying to stay warm.

Today I went to church at North Springs Alliance Church with Vicky and afterward we went with Sarah (graphic design intern) to her sister's house for lunch. We hung out there for the afternoon and were entertained by her adorable nephews.

Today I finished my first official week of work. I really enjoyed it too!
A few highlights:
- Learning about the projects that I'll be working on in Kenya and Nigeria. This morning I even got to meet our Kenyan client and he shared with us about his vision for the prayer center that he wants to build in Nairobi. It was pretty inspiring to see how excited he was about it.
- Scott and Laura Powell, two of the EMI staff, set up a scavenger hunt for the interns so that we could get to know the area a bit. We split into teams and had to run around downtown taking pictures of various statues and picking up menus from various restaurants, etc. It was fun, and my team won, so that made it even better.
- Every Friday, the interns volunteer at the local soup kitchen, so today was our first day of doing that. It was nice to get out of the office for a couple hours, and we got free lunch :) There were soooo many people there for lunch. I was surprised how many kids and teenagers there were, it was sort of sad, but nice to be able to serve them.

I pretty excited for the weekend too. It'll be good to have soem time to rest, and hopefully finish my laundry finally. Hope you're all doing well wherever you are! I'd love to hear from you sometime. You can email me at melhaagsma@gmail.com or send snail mail to:
Melanie Haagsma
EMI
130 E. Kiowa St.
Colorado Springs, CO 80903

Here we go....

For those who haven't heard, I made it to Colorado Springs safely. I arrived last Saturday, January 10 in the afternoon, and I spent the past week at Orientation. It was great getting to know all of the other interns as well as some EMI staff and long term volunteers at Orientation. (See the picture at the top of this post.) We took personality tests to learn how to relate to each other, played culture games, did a bunch of teambuilding activities, and even got to go hiking a couple times. It was sad to see the overseas interns leave this morning after spending so much time with them.

Tomorrow is my first official day of work at the EMI office. Not sure what's in store for me yet, but I'm pretty excited for it! I also got to meet my project team leader, Bob Smith, who will be leading the trip to Nigeria that I'm going on in March. As it turns out, I also get to go to Kenya for a few days once we're done with the project in Nigeria. For those of you who know how much I like traveling to new places, I'm sure you can picture how excited I was to find this out!

Thanks for all your prayers and support! I can't wait to see how God will work in me and through me over the next few months!