Finally college

Roaches one and all,
I just thought that I would let you know that Jack Chambers and I have successfully begun a new chapter in our lives. Earlier this week both of us began classes here at Gonzaga University. Everyone kind of half jokingly (or seriously) seemed to be wondering what I would be doing after my year off, so it is with great excitement and academic focus that I post this. I was really nervous about going back to school last week, but when I arrived last Friday and aunt Mimi and judge Jerryyyy hit the road I realized just how ready I am, I've been gone and almost on my own for a year. It was a great feeling to walk into the bookstore, the registrar's office, the meetings and be able to do what was required without the assistance of anyone (so many parents waited hand and foot on their clueless kids). It was a particularly neat (as grandma would say) experience to write my first tuition check purely with my own money (next year that may not happen). So you may wonder why I am even posting this. Well first because everyone is always complaining about the lack of blog use. But second because I thought that you should be aware that yes, Wim did go to college, and it's even a Catholic one. And finally third: you younger cousins, I'd actually encourage you to take a well-planned and mapped out year off before college if you don't feel ready (or just don't want to go straight away). Some of my experiences were better education than school can offer (plus it doesn't hurt to start school with 20 some G's in the bank). Love you ALL, I'm off to Religion 120.
Keep me in your prayers; you're in mine,
wim

October Wedding!!!

Hey family! I finally got a gmail account in case anyone is interested. It is cerner15@gmail.com . I wanted to share a little bit about this last weekend. My parents flew to Maine to meet my in laws. Brian and I met them in Boston and then we drove for two hours to Kennebunkport Maine. Brian's family has two beach houses on Goose Rocks Beach. We stayed with his parents, grandmother, aunt and uncles, as well as a few cousins. It was great! We even had time to see Uncle Brud, Aunt Glenna, Kelly, Kevin and their families. So now we are more excited for the wedding. I can't wait to see you all in October. Here are a few pics from the weekend. Enjoy....................

I'm back!

Thanks for getting me here, Boo. I've missed this thing.

They didn't make it easy to convert to the new version when they upgraded a few months ago.

Dan

Hanford History

All,

Not necessarily a family oriented blog, but since most of you folks are from the Tri-City area, this program may be of interest.

Enjoy,

In May, a crew from Atlantic Productions was on the Hanford Site producing a segment of the History Channel’s "Lost Worlds" program. The crew visited the old Hanford town site, B Reactor, T Plant and other locations on the Hanford Site.
The Hanford segment is being aired this Wednesday evening as part of the series called "Secret A-Bomb Factories." Check the time of the program in the History Channel listings for your particular cable/satellite carrier.
The program is expected to include coverage of Hanford’s role in producing plutonium for the World War II Manhattan Project and the subsequent Cold War nuclear arms race. The following description for Wednesday’s program is posted on the History Channel web site.
The end of the World War II heralded The Cold War--a war of paranoia and potential nuclear catastrophe. In the wreckages of missile sites, secret cities and crumbling nuclear facilities, we'll search for clues to understand how this "war" was played out and the secret structures that were constructed to arm the nation against attack. From fifteen-meter concrete walls to airtight steel doors and massive nuclear production plants, this episode reveals the awesome engineering that took place across America.

The Three Best Pics I've Got (subtitle: OTIS)

Lucia's Baptism

What a great celebration! We had Iowa representation from the Schneiders, Irish representation at The Kell's, and Triple-A cuteness representation from Lucia. See for yourself!

SOME CHOICE FAMILY REUNION PHOTOS

Thought we'd try to get the party started again by posting some Sullivan Family Reunion photos.
Feel free to post yours too so we can see how much fun everyone had!!!!!!

Wow

For all the talkers in the family, this place sure is a ghost town. Why dont we talk about the new 8gig iphones or something. Or else I am deleting myself from the list out of principle. Big threat there.

Julie and Joe's Wedding

All,

Just wanted to give you a head's up, in case you haven't heard, that after long diliberation, Julie and I are changing our wedding date. It is no longer going to be September 8th, it will instead be sometime in the spring, still in Olympia. We tried to do too much, too quickly, and think this will be best for the both of us. We want to make sure everything is in line before we make the ultimate committment.

This is a good thing, and we are both happy about the decision. I will keep everyone updated as to when the new date will be.

Now we have more time to plan for this once in a lifetime event!

Love yall,

Joseph Roach

Family Reunion T-Shirts

Hey guys,
Sorry I haven't really gotten much info out about the shirts!!!! I have the design down but I just have to take it to the printer to get it set in stone and to make sure they can do what I want them to do. It's gonna be cool.....hopefully....but I can't explain it very well. Just know it will have the Sullivan crest on it and the last names of all the family members in the Sullivan family on it. I hope to get to the printer on Friday or Saturday so I will let you all know what they look like as soon as possible!

Oh, and about Prom pictures, I have some but my dad hasn't sent them to me yet from his computer so I will get those out soon as well!

Love you all (and SOOOO excited for the upcoming weddings!!!!!!)
--Fiona

"Blog is dead" s: J. Lennon

Joe and Colleen both posted that they were getting married on this thing and a whopping total of about 6 people chimed in with one liners. I think blogging is dead; its over. Lets put this thing to rest. Check it every day-- yet nothing new? Gotta get more into it gals and gents.!!! Or else Lennon's right. Blog is dead.

bpr

Colleen and Brian's Wedding

I thought I would start this blog strand-- Colleen, time to chime in about your little event last night!

Julie and Joe's Wedding!

All,

Please "save the date" for September 8th (that rhymes!). The wedding will be in the Catholic Church in Olympia. We made sure it wasn't in October for all the Johnsons.

Talk to you all soon, and mark your calendars!

Love,

Julie and Joe Roach :) ... soon!

Lucia Schneider!

Gonna get married and I'm...

All,

Why doesn't anyone blog anymore? Well this one is worth it! Julie DeBord is about to change to Julie Roach!!! Today at noon was the official acceptance. We haven't set a date, but found out that October is a bad time for the Johnsons. Well, if that is when it happens, you will just have to send presents instead! Today's been a wild day, and ready to go to bed. Looking forward to all the love to come. She is a great woman, and I have no doubts that this is going to be a long, and loving relationship!

I'll let you all know the date, and as things progress, but for now it is just the fact that we are going to be a very, very happy couple :)

May the next be just as happy (Colleen?????)

Love you all!

JDR (and JAR)

Happy Birthday

All,

Take a second today to remember that it's Luke's 28th birthday. I miss that guy.

John's birthday is in two days, so you may want to send him a message too.

God has blessed us with a great family, and it's good to know that we've already got some good ones "on the other side" that are ready to party when we get there!

JDR

David en Espana, Ole

Hello Family---This is an email from David updating us on his travels in Espana!

Dear Fam,
I know that this email is long overdue, and for that I am sorry. I have never been very good at updating those around me about my activities, but this email should help catch everyone up one what life has been like over here in España. Well, to begin, it has been an amazing and eye opening experience, and one that I would highly recommend to any of the other cousins who are in a position to undertake a similar journey. I would do it again in a heartbeat, and I wish that I had the time in my life to do it all over in another country and learn another language. Now for some specific info. I go to a branch campus of the University of Granada, El Centro de Lenguas Modernas (Center of Modern Languages), which is a facility dedicated, almost exclusively, to the study of languages. Although there are a lot of Americans, it is open to people from any country and so I have classes with Japanese, Swedish, Australian, French, English, Bulgarian, Belgian, and students from various other nationalities as well. The classes range from intensive language courses in eleven different languages to Spanish economics; it is quite an eclectic mix. I am currently in Spanish Grammar, History of Modern Latin America, a Spanish conversation class at the Superior B (one below Perfecto) level , and an English-Spanish translation class. As expected, I am learning a helluva lot of Spanish, which I consider to be the most important thing that I am taking out of this experience. In addition to this however, the fun times have been something that I couldnt even imagine possible. Granada is a city of 200,000, with a student population of 65,000. Needless to say, the night life here is amazing. The Spanish dont even begin to go out until at the very least 11:00, and always finish the nights with dancing at some discoteca or salsa spot, so I have spent many a late night imitating my brother Pat on the dance floor, hoping to smooch on some Spanish girl. I usually fail in this respect. One of the interesting things about being here is that you hang out with your friends all day every day, more so even than in normal college, and so I have grown incredibly close to a number of people in my relatively short time here. This is great for the day to day life, from just having a coffee in a plaza to playing soccer on one of the many brick courts to going to a discoteca, the group of friends that I have here has made an incredible difference. They are also great to travel with. Within two hours by public bus, we can be at almost any of the beaches on the Costa del Sol, and thanks to the practice among Spanish women of sunbathing topless, being at any beach around here is quite an awesome time. In addition to the beaches, I have traveled with my program to Seville, Madrid, Toledo, Cordoba, Gibraltar (to see the monkeys, absolutely amazing), Segovia, Escorial, and Almeria. I have also traveled with friends to Edinburgh, Scotland, and Amsterdam, Holland (great architecture and museums, but since I dont smoke or engage in carnal relations the city had limited appeal). In two weeks I am going to Kassel, Germany to visit Miso and his family and from there I will head into Switzerland to visit the Landtwings. I also might make a trip to Dublin to visit Sue and Aimee Johnson in the beginning of May, bank account permitting. In addition, I have traveled to Barcelona with my football team. Yes, American Football. I was playing American football with the "semi-pro" Granada Lions as their starting tight end. It was a great time, but my professional football career came to an early end when I fell on a piece of broken glass in the streets of Cadiz during Carnaval (while dressed as a gay ninja) and had to get 11 stitches from a male nurse in a Cadiz street clinic. I know what you are thinking, being nervous about Spanish medical care, but dont worry, he only broke two needles in my hand and only allowed me one beer and one hot dog while he was stitching me up. The clinic doctor was having coffee in the other room. Being a tight end, blocking one handed probably would not have been especially effective so I gave up my position. My hand is almost fully healed now, but I am going to let the guy who has been playing finish out the season for me. To wrap it up, I have two and a half more months here and my departure will be, without a doubt, a bittersweet thing. There will be so much to miss here in Granada, but I havent seen most of my friends or family for almost nine months, so the homecoming will be a great thing. I believe the Lisa Potter wedding is the day after I get home, so I expect to see all of you there and to speak in Spanish will all of my bilingual brethren. Much love and cant wait to see you all.


Dos besos,

David

Pug Love

All,

Sorry to follow up Son-dog's adventure blog with this one, but I think I am the first true pimp in the family! As we speak (or as I type) I am counting all $500 for my dog Wayne's service to one bitch (true term) named Maria.

It's a pretty funny sight to see. Any Pasco folks can come by today for a laugh. I'll have her until 8PM. I don't know if either one will be able to breathe by the end of the day!

If successful, I am going to quit the Engineering field and just pimp out male dogs!

JDR

Two months in Mexico

I think my dad might have sent this around on email, but I wanted to post it here too, man the blog is lacking these days!!!...Miss and love you all.
-------------------------------

I've been in Mexico for over two months now so it's probably about time I wrote something to share with you all. I've been adding to this letter for a couple weeks now, so hopefully you'll get two months worth of news.

To start off I feel so so lucky to be here. I'm having more fun than I've ever had and learning more at the same time. I've never felt so relaxed and carefree and happy-- and I wish I could write this whole thing in Espanol so that you can see how much I've improved! I've gotten really comfortable speaking--once you get that part it's much easier to get better..but the more I learn the more questions I have, but isn't that the case with everything in life...

Contrary to popular belief of many people in the US, English is definitely one of the easiest languages on the planet. We don't have two verbs for "to be" (ser, estar), two words for "for" (por, para), formals and informals, masculine and feminine, a different verb form for each person, and all of this subjunctive and imperfect subjunctive verb business. Despite all of that I am getting the hang of it, time and practice is all it takes. Another thing I've noticed about the language is that a lot of things, especially questions, seem much more abrupt. Example, instead of asking, "Could I have a piece of gum?" they just say, "Dame chicle"..."Gimme gum," and rarely with a please. But I guess that's just what happens with our weird-English-polite-question-word-order. Also what they say about forgetting your native tongue is true. Difficult words especially, but at times I have to think for a bit about how to say simple words too (i.e. traffic light...that was the other day...ha). They also have two (or many more!) words for one thing (one masculine, one feminine), while we sometimes use one word sound for a few different things but spell it differently. What I do love is that they only have one vowel sound for each vowel. At least I can be sure I am pronoucing it right even if I have no idea what I'm saying. I could go on about the language for hours......moving on:

My family here is incredibly nice and my mom, Licha, makes the best food--gorditas, chilaquiles, cemitas, sopas, and eggs, frijoles and tortillas for breakfast always with fresh-squeezed orange juice.

In the university we have a profesora mexicana, Martha. She is really clear with her words and the readings she chooses always provoke interesting conversations. We can talk about any topic that comes up but only in Spanish-- we've had discussions on the Zapatista movement in the state of Chiapas, the "indigenous problem" in Mexico, socialism and NAFTA. Last week we talked about gender roles of males and females in Mexico vs. the US and how changing attitudes toward women being independent and having their own careers is a more recent movement here than in the US. We also touched on how homosexuality differs here than in the US. What surprised me is that homosexuality is more naturally accepted in smaller towns and shunned in the bigger cities in Mexico, which is exactly the opposite of the US, where there exists more homophobia in the more conservative smaller towns than in the more liberal, bigger cities.

This week we've been learning about Latin American women, like SorJuana Ines de le Cruz, a 16th-century nun and poet, Isabel Allende, the Chilean novelist, Eva Peron, the Argentinian political icon (Evita), and of course, Frida Kahlo. Today I gave a presentation in class about Frida and Martha told me that Eamonn talked about the same topic when he was in the program last year...weird....well I guess we are brother and sister, and we've got the same artsy mama.

About a month ago I went to Mexico City for a week. I went with my class to Teotihuacan, an ancient city with two gigantic and majestic pyramids among countless other ruins. We went to the house of Frida Kahlo, the Palace of Fine Arts, The Zocalo and Cathedral and Templo Mayor (Ruins of an old Aztec Temple), Chapultepec Park, The National Anthropology Museum, and the Museum of History... After that I was ready to spend some time NOT doing anything important, so I spent four more days in the city alone... walking, eating and riding the metro to random destinations just because I could.

Another weekend I went to Veracruz with a bunch of other exchange students (from Germany, Brasil, Austria, the US, Mexico and Greece) for Carnaval. It was quite the spectacle...with mainly lots and lots of drunk and/or otherwise influenced people. It was cold and windy, so the next day we went to a beach called Chachalacas and hung out in the sun for hours--it was a really typical small town beach on the Gulf of Mexico (the water wasn't too pretty).

I just got back from Oaxaca on Sunday after a long weekend there and I loved it. It's smaller than Puebla, really relaxed and they produce the most beautiful textiles...and a lot of Mezcal (alcohol made from the same plant (agave) as tequila). We went to the ancient ruins at Monte Alban just outside the city too, which aren't as impressive as Teotihuacan in an architectural sense but it is built on top of a mountain which makes the view incredible. Also went to a mezcal factory where we threw back the worms from the agave plant along with the mezcal, yummmm.

The food here is my biggest downfall...you won't be able to recognize me when I come home because I've probably gained at least 30 pounds. Not (well, we'll see when June comes around), but the tacos are more numerous and delicious than any taco truck in Pasco (I hope an obvious fact? No offense to Pasco). And now I understand why Christian and Eamonn came back from Mexico liking hot sauce...I'm liking all the spicy food more and more and I can eat spicier than my Mexican sister...ha!

Speaking of my Mexican sister, she is 33 years old and still lives in the house. She is finishing her masters in textile design and doesn't work-- it's something really different from the US, but I'm not totally opposed to it, I mean why figure out how to pay your own bills until you actually have to? Haha, Dad's probably cringing at that idea. But anyway, it's really common here; lots of the young adults keep living with their parents throughout college and until they get married, and if they don't get hitched, they just keep on livin' there. The speed bumps and the dogs are another big difference...they are both everywhere...stray dogs own the streets and speed bumps occupy them...every 20 yards or so it seems. It's probably good though cause the drivers are kind of nuts, but you probably would be too if you didn't have to take a class or a test.

Everything is relaxed, nothing's on time (except my homework!), it's a constant fiesta. That's all I have for now. Next week is my spring break, then one more week after that ends, my mom and Uncle Peter arrive!!! Hope all is well with all of you and that it's not too chilly up north.

Besos, Tacos, Paz y Amor,
sonja

TCP Girls Basketball

Hi all, since I don't have any homework tonight (whoo-hoo!!:-D), I decided to tell you all how our girls basketball team is doing here at Prep. First of all, I played on JV and we had a winning season this year on JV, (I believe we only lost about 6 games, which is very good for a Prep girls team, by the way. It was also the first winning girls season at Prep!)
Recently, the varsity has been in the post season (also a first) and we placed third in league. Not exactly what we were hoping for, but we were in the tournament so it worked out fine. We are now in the District Tournament and we lost our first game on Tuesday pretty badly. Yesterday we played again, since it is a double elimination tournament and we played Liberty Christian (our rivals who aren't very Christian if you know what i mean......).
In the past at Prep, we have never beat Liberty in girls basketball before. Earlier this season and for the league tournament, we have played them three times and have come very close to beating them each time. So, last night, our fourth time playing them, we beat them for the first time (but definitely not last) in Prep history!! It was a great game, especially for the seniors on our team who have worked so hard to come this far for all the years that they have been at Prep. Michelle had two points and played very hard the whole game and I was able to suit up and go in a few times. It was a great experience and I can't wait to do it again next year!!:) BTW--We are the only Blue Mountain League team left in the tournament right now!!
We play again tomorrow night at 4:30 in Colfax and if we win we will go to state(!!!) so, if all of you would pray for our team, for a safe ride up and a good game, we would all appreciate it very much! Thanks!
I love you all!
--Fiona