The Story of My Life: The Post-College Days

I graduated from Cedarville College (now Cedarville University) in December of 1995.  From that time until 2003, my life was filled with lots of different activities and experiences.  There wasn't really anything during that time that directly impacted the way I felt about being adopted or my adoption experience, so rather than writing a whole blog post about that period of my life, I thought I would just share a few pictures and tell you briefly about them.

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My first big life experience after college was purchasing a car.  This beauty here would be my transportation for 7 years. We went on several road trips together and overall, she treated me fairly well.  I bought her with 85,000 miles and she had over 200,000 by the time I let her go.




In the fall of 1996, I began teaching 6th grade at Woodland Baptist Christian School in Winston-Salem. I really loved working with middle schoolers.  I had a great group of kids to teach and was surrounded by some wonderful co-workers.

I worked part-time at Dress Barn from the time I graduated college until the fall of 2003.  I usually worked Saturdays and also holidays and summer breaks.  I loved selling clothes and helping people put together outfits. I had some pretty fun co-workers and we would occasionally do crazy things like dress up for Halloween or dress up and stand in the window of the store pretending to be mannequins.

For Christmas of 1996,  my parents bought me a black cockapoo.  I named him Midnight.  I treated him like my baby, letting him sleep in bed with me and taking him everywhere with me in the car.  He was my loyal pet up until he died in November of 2012.

In the summer of 1997,  I helped lead a team of six college girls from Cedarville on a month long missions trip to Romania. The purpose of our trip was to work in orphanages over there.  We worked in a church run orphanage for three weeks and then spent time in a state-run orphanage for handicapped children for the other week. While there, we also managed to find some  time to have a little fun.

                          

During the time that we were in Romania and in the months afterwards, I felt God calling me to a short-term trip overseas. So after teaching my second year at Woodland, I left on a year long missions trip to Romania.  I taught English in a what they call a kindergarten.  It is similar to preschools here in the United States.  Even though it was difficult fighting the homesickness at times (especially during the holidays),  it was still one of the best years of my life.

    

After coming home from Romania, I taught at Woodland for one more year.  It was an especially exciting year in sixth grade as we were able to take a field trip to Washington D.C. at the end of the year. 

In the fall of 2000,  I changed schools and began teaching at Salem Baptist Christian School in Winston-Salem. I taught middle school math to 6th - 8th graders.  I love math, so this was especially fun for me.  Again, I felt blessed to have such good students and be surrounded by wonderful co-workers. 

I loved to keep the books for the volleyball and basketball games, so I was always busy in the evenings helping with one sport or another. I was even talked into coaching cross country for a couple of years, which was I found hilarious because I had never done any running in my life.

I was super involved at my church, working in the youth group and playing the piano.  I taught piano lessons some on the side. I also loved hanging out with my friends, having fun and going to the Winston-Salem Warthogs games, our local minor league baseball team.

 

These were some super busy, but fun, years of my life.  It was a time filled with lot of learning experiences for me, both good and bad.  I made lots of good choices, and some bad ones.  But all in all, God was using this time as a time of growth, preparing me for the days that were to come....

More on that in the next blog. :)