Update on the Whirlwind Masquarading as My Life

wow, has it really been a month since I last posted on here?! good grief. I hang my head in shame. Well.... not really, I have absolutely heaps of legitimate excuses, but I won't bore you with them.

We have now traveled across the states... and I'm serious, we have traveled ACROSS the states. We landed in Seattle, WA, and drove to Orlando, FL via Los Angeles, CA and Bonita Park, NM. In Orlando, we attened the General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene (which we are missionaries with). What an amazing Assembly! There is just something about tens of thousands of on-fire christians from around the world worshipping together. I also got to see a bunch of the other missionary kids who are normally evenly spread across the face of earth, so that was cool. MKs are pretty awesome people, I'll have you know.

After General Assembly and spending time with the Grandparents and their church, we drove up to Michigan for their NMI Convention... which is the missions meetings of our church, for you non-Nazarenes reading this. Then down to South West Ohio for that NMI convention. Some pretty amazing folks in all of those places, let me tell you. Hard to be cynical about the church after spending time with those kinds of people.

The things I am very muchly looking forward to now are Missionary Kid retreat at the end of this month (dances little happy dance of excitement); Family Camp after that back at my "home"... haha, yeah, I did live in one place in america, at least for seven years, believe it or not; and the start of school. I'm enrolled in pre-med classes for the first semester and can't wait to get started!

plus, at school, I will finally get a computer! Oh the joy! happiness! but until then, my loyal blog readers who are still checking this blog after a few forevers of inactivity... there will very likely be even more of that same level of activity.

And on that uplifting note... it's time to hit the road again.

Rubbish bin, pram, trolley, boot,

rubbish bin, pram, trolley, boot.... excuse me, I must use up these words before I have to start communicating with Americans so that they don't sneak out accidentally... rubbish bin, pram, trolley.....

Yes, I am still alive, surprise surprise. And life has not been devoid of happenings for the last few weeks... on the contrary, it has been a bit overloaded with happenings and that is part of the reason that I have been somewhat absent from cyberspace. The other part of the reason is that I am now stranded in the US of A with no computer... that's right, no computer. Danielle without a computer. See, I knew this was going to happen. I could see it coming. I am GOING to get a computer. It just has a date attached to it... the day I start university in a few weeks. See, at the uni I am attending, a laptop is included with tuition. So that's taken care of. But there is this GAP between the time of LEAVING the computer in Papua New Guinea and the time of GETTING the computer at school. Hence, Danielle Without Computer. Ah well. Probably good for me, actually.

So. What has happened in the last few weeks? Well, I can't upload pictures (since I'm using someone else's computer) but I can tell you in a short sort of manner:

1. I graduated from highschool.
2. Graduation party at Kudjip, which was awesome.
3. Left Kudjip on our way to the States
4. Stopped over in Fiji to get some essential work done. 48 hours in the country I grew up in... pretty good, I'd say.
5. Flew to Washington to some friends' house (hi Uncle Tim and Aunt Karla!)
6. Graduation party here, too... haha, such fun. and I did get pics, they just will probably have about a 2-month delay before they make it online.
7. Got in the car and headed out on the beautiful freeways of America headed for Orlando, FL... we will get there in time for the General Assembly of our church.

So. my life over the last little bit in a nutshell. *deep breath*
You can't accuse me of having a boring life.

Graduating...

Well, evidently I graduated... although for a homeschooler it's a bit hard to pinpoint the graduation because we kind of... ease out of school. There's always something else to learn, another book to read, etc, etc. But I have enough credits, and I start college this fall... so I'm graduating. Here is the email that my family sent out:
--------------------------------------
Dear Family and Friends,
We did it! We're graduating!
Well...Danielle is graduating!
Our homeschooling journey together from kindergarten to
12th grade has worked!Danielle will be starting at Southern Nazarene
University in Oklahoma City this fall.

Though we are not looking forward to the goodbyes, we are overwhelmed with God's faithfulness and
blessings over our last 18 years with Danielle. She is certainly one
of God's good gifts to us!

We've attached her graduation announcement
and invitation to her celebration. If you don't happen to be in the
highlands of Papua New Guinea on May 31, we'll miss you, but you're
off the hook! For those of you who would like to keep up with the next
chapter of her life, she has a blog and would invite youto follow it:
http://lifebydanielle.blogspot.com.Also, here is the link to her
Senior Photo Album:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mk.danielle/SeniorPictures
Thanks for rejoicing with us,Harmon, Cindy and Quinton Schmelzenbach
-----------------------------------------------------------

Now, you guys obviously already know about the blog =]... and here is a link to the
"attached" graduation announcement and invitation.

Coffee Plantation

On Thursday, we visited a nearby coffee plantation. We found out how coffee gets from cherries to roasted awesomness. Even Starbucks buys from this coffee plantation!







What I was really wishing I could get a picture of was the smell of the roasting room!!!

Sunday

We went to church with the Dooleys and Katie.
The church was about a 40 minute hike away from the station.



After church, we taught Red Rover to a bunch of the kids and women.



And on the way back from church, we stopped by a waterfall for lunch.