Chaos Ensues :-)

Oh man, what a day! Who would have thought that today, Tuesday, 8 September, would have been such a crazy day!

Today marks the one-week mark for my dissertation deadline. During my editing this morning, I realized just how much work I still have left to do this week. I'm just finishing editing Ch. 1 - so I have 2, 3, 4, 5, and the Conclusion to go - before figuring out how to format the more difficult parts, print it off, and get it bound before turning it. So, there's a certain level of stress involved there - and then the day got crazy! :-)

The JBU students arrived today - which was great and no big deal. The rest of the staff took care of welcoming them and getting them moved in while I worked on my dissertation. Then....

...about 2pm I get a phone call from John Lenschow my roommate. You see, for the last 3 weeks we've been trying to find out from Belfast Bible College whether or not they had students who were going to live here this semester. We had heard NOTHING from them, so Billy and I make the common sense gamble that they probably weren't going to send anyone - they'd been having major problems with visa's for their students. Well, John calls me at 2pm to let me know that one of the couple's arrived today and was on their way over - and, ON TOP OF THAT, there are 6-7 other students that will be hear by Friday/Saturday! Yikes!

Well, it took us a couple hours to get the breakdown of guys/girls in the Belfast Bible group - but once we did, it meant shuffling around nearly everyone. All the guys had to move rooms and all but two of the girls had to move. There's not as much room to spread out and everyon's living a lot closer together. The JBU students were great and understanding once we explained it to them - but to have moved into a room, be tired from jet lag, and then be told you had to move into another room with more roomates - they had a lot of reasons to not be too thrilled.

With the Belfast Bible students and JBU students, we only have 1 bedroom free in the entire house right now - until I leave in two weeks. Well, there's a JBU family coming in on Saturday to spend the night here until Tues - and it's a family of 3! Yikes! So, the parents are going to go in the one bedroom adn we're going to set up a bed in a spacious office room for their daughter.

Needless to say it's been a crazy day! I don't feel like I've made much progress on my dissertation and now that I'm sitting down to it I'm having a hard time focusing (obviously, since I'm blogging) since I've been busy all day having to trouble shoot rooming logistics.

So, there's a part of me that's loving having the students here and I kind of wish I was sticking around for the next three months to experience life with them (and Hadden Wilson could really use another driver). They've got a lot of energy and seem like an amazing group!

But, it's days like today that make me so ready for a vacation. The deadline for Fulbright and other scholarships are less than a month away and I haven't gotten to put enough time into those. So, I'll finish my dissertation next Mon/Tues and then start working on scholarship/grant applications. Oh, and the Oxford app's re-opened, so I need to try to get that app in ASAP to hopefully get some money from Oxford. I need to apply for jobs in the US - both substitute jobs and others, close down a bank account here, and tie up loose ends...

Man, it's a crazy time.