Girl's Night Out

Every Monday night our team comes together for Bible study at our house. This past week (yesterday) we decided to do something different for a change since Audrey's mom is in town and can babysit the girls. We decided it would be fun to split up guys and girls and do our own thing, not necessarily a separate Bible study or anything, just a fun night doing whatever we want. So we met at our friends Richie and Sharee's house where we then split off and left the guys to cook bear meat (lol) and play video games while us girls went out for a night on the town. We had absolutely had no idea what the plan was for the night, but we started our night out at Sweet Life for dessert.

This is a picture of the building that I did not take. I found this on Google, haha, but this is what it looks like :)

It was so good! Audrey and I split a piece of Tiramisu which is like a coffee rum soaked cake with chocolate and whipped cream. Anyways, it was really good. I also had a Chai Latte. We enjoyed our dessert while we discussed what to do next. 

Once we finished our yummy desserts we decided to take a drive up to Skinner's Butte where you can look out over and see all of Eugene basically. We thought it would be really pretty at night when you were able to see all of the city lights. Well, we were correct! 

This pic was taken on a cell phone so it is dark, but you can totally see all of the city lights and just imagine being on top of there looking over. 

This is me and our friend Sharee on top of Skinner's Butte. If you look behind us, you can see the city lights! It was so beautiful, but cold, so we didn't stay too long. 

Our next stop along the way for the evening was to Sundance Natural Foods. At this stop we were totally being tourists even though Sharee has lived in Eugene her whole life, Audrey has been here a year, and I have been here like six months. Sundance is the place to go to get a really good taste of the culture in Eugene (besides Saturday Market, but it is not open during the winter season.) The store is just like it sounds and packed with hippies, no lie. 

This is what we pulled up to. It is a mural painted on the side of the Sundance building. There are these type of things all over Eugene. I love it! 

Inside Sundance towards the back we see this bar type thing where they have all this locally made organic stuff that you can bottle/jar yourself to take home. There was so much to choose from like crunchy or creamy peanut butter, two or three choices of almond butter(which Audrey is jarring in the picture above) and lots of different types of honey and vanilla extracts. Audrey decided to get some almond butter for her mom, so here she is (above) trying to jar some. It was super thick and hard to get in the jar, and it made a mess. 

I just had to take pictures because it was a funny process. You could tell that we were first timers! We got up to the counter to pay for this and the cashier asked us what the number for this was..... and we were super confused! Shopping at a natural food store was a learning experience for sure. 

Our next stop was to a local Thai restaurant for some bubble tea because Sharee and I had never tried it before. Audrey had tried it in Seattle a while back, but wasn't a fan. 

If you've never had bubble tea before it is the weirdest thing ever. We got strawberry flavored, but there were like 10 different flavors to choose from. Those black things at the bottom of the cup are tapioca balls and they were definitely not my favorite thing about the drink. They are like a flavorless gummy bear, and when I say flavorless I mean TOTALLY flavorless... and gross. I ended up drinking the tea and leaving the tapioca balls at the bottom of the cup and throwing them away! The strawberry flavor was great, though! 

Our next and final stop for the evening before returning home was the New Hope Christian College campus. Sharee graduated from the school when it was called Eugene Bible College. Since then, it has undergone a lot of changes including a new campus, new president, and mostly new staff/faculty. The campus itself sits up on a mountain where you can overlook the city. My favorite part of the campus is the huge LED cross that sits at the highest point in the middle of an amphitheater type thing. It is so quiet and peaceful up there and so beautiful at night with the city  lights glowing. 

You can't see much around the cross because of the glow of it, but trust me, it was an awesome sight! 

I am currently in the process of applying for transfer to that school for the upcoming fall semester, so I really like spending time on the campus, especially with an alumni. We thought it would be cool to take our picture under the New Hope sign on one of the buildings. Its like a look into the past and future because Sharee is an alumni and I am a future student!

I am super excited to see what the Lord has in store for me at New Hope next fall! 

So, that was our last stop of the evening, but we did take a scenic route home to see downtown Eugene and the house where Sharee grew up with her family, which was really neat to see. I love the city of Eugene so much. There is so much culture here, it really is like another world almost. It was a really fun night of being tourists in the city in which we live and serve. I have a great appreciation for this place and am so glad and honored to be a part of God's vision and plan for the area. We hope you will come visit and get a taste of the city for yourself! We know you will love it!