Slow train a-comin'

Well...since Lexington (it's been a while), we've been to Blacksburg, VA, where we screened at Virginia Tech twice. Right when we starting driving to the screening, it began dumping snow. Highway 81 was really slow and the van got a little squirrely more than once. But we made it. The screening went over well and when we emerged from the auditorium, we discovered that it had snowed 6 inches in the last 2 hours.

After worrying about driving conditions, then getting over it, Mike, our Va Tech contact asked us if we wanted to go to the snowball fight. Snowball fight? He told us that at every major snow, everyone goes out onto the quad and throws snow at each other. April was thrilled - more excited than a 6 year old. I reluctantly went, fearing freezing. I was glad I went. It ended up being the most fun night of tour thus far. Over 300 people were on the field, forming battle lines and rushing each other with snowballs. We ran around like idiots for almost 2 hours.

The family we stayed with in Blacksburg (well...Roanoke) was very interesting. They were from Kenya...but they were Indian. It didn't make sense - everything from accent, to appearance, to food, to culture said they were Indian, but they spoke of themselves as African, because they had been in East Africa for 3 generations. Anyway...it was a great experience.

Then everything got thrown off. Our next 4 days in Southern VA got cancelled. So we went on a wild goose chase. We drove to Harrisburg, PA to meet up with the East Coast road team for a night. We had a great reunion and time sharing stories. We went to Hershey, PA the next day (again April was more excited than a 5 year old).



Then it was down to DC...stopping in Annapolis (April's favorite city...once again, excitement). We stayed with my teammate Lisa's family. We had two days in DC, did a little site-seeing and had a single small screening.

Then we were back on schedule. We were down to mid-VA. We stayed in Harrisonburg in a country house from the 1800's, built on a civil war battlefield. The kids were all homeschooled, all knitted and raised goats. Nonetheless, the family was awesome and took good care of us.

We had a screening in Charlottesville at U of VA, which was a bit underwhelming due to poor promotion. It did go well, all things considering. I got to meet Brody - a friend of many friends, who is in law school at UVA. He was a really great guy and had been to Uganda with International Justice Mission. He took us to his church, a reformed Anglican - a first for me. I enjoyed it though - liturgy and all. Denomination lines are more defined and have more meaning on the east coast.

We then ventured to Richmond. We proceeded to screen to over 4000 people in 3 days - all high schools. I guess we made up for lost time from the previous week. I saw the movie nearly 10 times in 3 days...yikes. We're all getting to know it line for line. We stayed with Lisa's friends, Shannon and Rob and their three dogs. They were great people - very hospitable, great sense of humor.

We returned to DC for the weekend to stay with Lisa's family again. April, Alex and I spent the whole day sight seeing. We checked in on W at the White House, strolled the Mall, went to the Holocaust Memorial and rode the Metro...a lot. Well worth it.



We're back at it tomorrow with 2 evening screenings. We have our last week in VA - going to Norfolk/Virginia Beach.