Thanksgiving is over, so is Fall (part 1)

Which does not mean that it is winter yet. Nope, now its Christmas Season!!!!

So, as many of you know, I stayed here at the UO in my dorm for Thanksgiving, which is not nearly as lame as staying here for Christmas or something, but is still pretty bad. I wasn't alone though, fortunately I had Ryan around to prevent me from doing too much damage, and keep me civilized. It was a near thing though, because seriously, it is way too much fun to sneak around the empty halls or in the creepy basement. By myself. At 2am.

The only thing more fun than starring in my own imagined thriller/action/comedy/romance blockbuster all weekend was watching tv. I watched seasons 1 and 2 of the Office, which I do consider an important investment in my relative social capital, since so many of my new friends here are fans and quote the show constantly. Similarly, I watched many hours (though no complete seasons) of Gilmore Girls with Ryan this weekend, because he has all the seasons, and I had never seen it before (jeez, don't look so shocked). So basically, I got educated, and I now have yet another option to spend days of time, just in case I ever find myself totally without anything to do. Like this weekend, except without all the homework that I put off.

On the actual day of Thanksgiving I went to Ryan Moore of Northwest Collegiate Ministries' house and had a beautiful and delicious meal with lovely company, and we played a fun game, which incorporated, as always, having to know something about The Office, as well as many other pop culture tidbits.

Then Thursday night, Ryan and I were bored, and Ryan was hungry with his woeful addiction to icky greasy nasty fast food, so we went out to see if any was to be found. (I just wanted coffee, I was absolutely not going to eat any of those unnatural, disgusting, hot, juicy, delectable fries, no siree). To make a long, ridiculous story short, nobody was open! Not in all of Eugene or Springfield! This was a shock. I am sure that the two of us were not the only people whose business was lost by these establishments! I mean seriously, Turkey Dinner was hours ago, and d'you think just maybe people might be hungry again??? And tired of Thanksgiving foods?? And maybe just want hot coffee!!!!!????

As you can tell, it was a little difficult to find food or coffee this weekend, because not only was the dining in our building closed, but everywhere else was too, which doesn't seem like as much of a problem for people who go home and have leftovers etc to eat, but for us in the dorms... It was a bit of a trial, but I endured.

If I was being introspective, which I guess is my purpose for blogging, I would make some remarks about how much I am totally reliant on convenience. I expect the doors downstairs to be unlocked and to always have food or at least water from the soda machines whenever I want it, which I realize is kind of ridiculous. I also realized that I really drink too much coffee because I had almost shamefully intense withdrawals this weekend. I had only two cups of coffee, one Friday night and one Saturday night, and that was very much not enough. I think I usually have two or three a day. I don't know where this narrative is going, except that I should probably set some goal for myself, like drinking less, or more decaf, or spending less money on coffee, but I have no intentions of doing so right now, because it is Monday morning of Dead Week, oooooh!
Meh, maybe next term when I'm marathon training or something equally ridiculous.

More to come! Stick around! As it is dead week, I will be doing much more Procrastinating By Any Means Necessary, which means more blogging!!!!! Right now I have 2.5 hours of sleep and need to go shower and get ready before meeting Brittany before getting more coffee before Misericordia Nat'l Conference this afternoon, in which we have to lead our sector! Yikes! Nap later! Then more coffee followed by more procrastinating and later: homework due by midnight tonight and early tomorrow morning! Still to come this week: fretting about Christmas parties, my writing portfolio, my leadership final project, my business SuperQuiz, and my INTL Final!!!!!!

Catharsis is a good thing to experience now and then

So, I really don't know what form this blog entry is going to take, but it will be long. I could rant Galvan-style about everything that's messed up in the world, I could list categorically everything that I've seen or heard about that has hurt my heart in some way today, I could wax poetic about justice and what God's been doing to my heart recently. I could just write the news. I don't know what would be most cathartic at the moment so I'll just keep writing.

Well, this term I've grown a lot spiritually, and I think the growing pains are making me extraordinarily angsty, but my life has also been mixed with peace and joy lately too. I think God has really given me a heart for helping the hurting, especially children, but the more I pray for them, the more I can feel their pain, and it hurts. Like tonight when we were talking about what we can do to help end sex trafficking, which is a horrible practice that affects more than a million people, especially women and children, and especially the poor and uneducated.

I think (and hope) that my safe white American life has been forever changed by the things I have been learning about. Somebody at fall conference this year said something like "We can't all just drop out of school and fly to Thailand to combat the sex trade going on there." And I think Houston said it best: "Why not?" Don't get me wrong, I really do feel that God put me on this campus for a reason, but I don't think He plans to let me stay inside myself, at all.

I also feel like God is pulling me to go to Africa to serve this mission at the end of next summer. I haven't applied yet, and I don't know how to pay for it, and I know that I could just go with NCM when they go to Africa in 2009, but as time goes on, I really think that God is preparing me to go out into the missions field on a full-time basis, not just as a normal American church-goer who takes vacation short term missions every couple of years.

The more I think about it, the more crazy it seems. Just months ago, until this summer really, I never acknowledged that I could be called to do that. I always though I was 'safe' from missions, and that God couldn't have gifted me the way he did and wanted me to leave everything I've grown up in. But now I really can't wait to see how God's going to use me, and where, and its amazing 'cause I'm part of something so much bigger than I could ever be if I was running my own life.

So, all that is a really long, personal, emotional way of saying that my priorities have changed, but I wanted to say it publicly.

Y'know what else is great? I started this blog thinking about every little thing thats gone wrong today and I've ended up talking about how cool God is. That's neato. And cool.

Something else that's neato is the weekend coming up. Tomorrow night is the "Parent's Night Out" event at Harvest Community Church at which we, the amazing college students, will be taking care of the dear little kidlets as a fundraiser for NCM's missions trips. Also, tomorrow I get to register for Winter Term classes, and after I do all that, I will go to InterVarsity girl's night over in Walton.

Saturday is running, and then later is the cool dance performance that I'm going to as part of an assignment for Ballet class and also because it looks like it will be really cool. After that is McClain Hall Chick Flick Night!

Sunday is church at HCC, then feeding homeless people at WOW hall, and then eating yummy thanksgiving dinner at HCC again!

So basically, I can't express how thankful I am for the people in InterVarsity who are so passionate and openly care about the world, and for the people at NCM, for how amazingly welcoming they've been to me, and for finding Harvest, which is a great church family. Gah! it just blows my mind. seriously.

Speaking of amazing people in general, my hall rocks as a family. A bunch of us are always in the lounge talking, or getting cultured, or killing brain cells watching youtube, or sleeping, or eating, or doing homework, or just generally giving hugs and sympathy. I love them all. I never want to leave to go to class or whatever, and I can't wait to get back home every night. In fact, I think that I will go down there tonight to work on my writing essay that's due at 8am and my RP2 that's due at 5pm.

Speaking also of amazing people whom I love, I do miss my friends and family from home a lot alot alot. I wish I could have been there for Heather's first PHS drama performance, and just her first year of high school in general. I also miss staying up late talking to my parents about everything, who I found out are actually very well educated and intelligent people (I really shouldn't have been surprised). I miss the teachers at PHS and everybody in the music department too, but UO has some pretty good substitutes for those parts of my life too. What UO doesn't have though, is my best friends.

What makes me really happy every time I think about it is Fred deciding to come here next fall, which will make both of us happy I think. She would really like it here, and its such a good school too! Plus there's me! I kind of wish we could live in the dorms, because I'm having such a good dorm life experience, but I know that whatever happens it'll be different next year anyway, and its cheaper to live off campus, and it will be cool to be independent. Major details to work out though, such as when to move in when I get back from Africa and what to do with all my stuff, which apartments we should live in, do we need a car, and so much more. But that's life pretty much, and I'm not worried.

Also talked to Marcy today, which was... interesting, and I'm very glad we got to talk. She's having a rough week, which makes my life look like sunshine and daisies. I miss her a lot, because me and Marcy can pretty much talk about any topic openly, and for a long time, especially really weird things. We will need to meet up somehow during this school year, and she will need to come visit me and Fred at our apartment next year for sure.

Well, I'm almost done with my post, because I really do need to do my homework, and I feel a lot better now. But one last piece of news that I think I've told everyone except my parents. I'm going to run the Eugene Marathon on May 4. I am really psyched but also very nervous for this event. I've never run before, and I'm really hoping and praying that nothing bad will happen to my joints that's going to last the rest of my life or something, because I don't want this that bad. However, as a result of starting this training program, I will probably not be doing dance next term, but I might pick up a stretching or pilates class.

More life updates to come, as I get more into this whole blogging experience. Hopefully some people will read this, because I can testify that it is a great way to keep up with what's going on in somebody's life. Let me know if you've been lurking on my blog (tell me on facebook or whatever) and I'll give you a personal shout-out.

Weekend Update!

So, I've given up on meaning to update and then telling somebody something and getting it out of my system before I can type it in a witty, readable fashion. Basically, this is an email that I wrote to my parents, just expanded upon:

My week went very well; the deadline for my big research paper was pushed back to this Friday, which makes me very happy, even though Nigeria is a very sad topic. Funny story: I went to the review session and ended up complaining to Prof. Galvan about how I had an ethical issue with suggesting the methods we've learned in class for Nigeria and he kind of gave me a look and basically called me a communitarian, whatever that means.

Also this week, I went to a seminar thingy about speed reading and learned some excellent tips, which I put into a lot of practice this week and pretty much doubled by reading speed, which is encouraging, and makes me want to read even more. As a partial consequence, I have discovered many new places to read. There are a lot. I want to see how many more days I can go by without studying in the same place once.

Socially, my life has blossomed. I have been getting to know a lot of people for reals this week. Since the InterVarsity Fall Conference, I am no longer "one of the new people", I am now a real member and everybody knows me a little bit now. Also, NCM folks know me now too! Plus, I have been hanging out with lots of people from my hall! Namely: Ryan, Justin, Allison, Ashley, Julia, Susie, Alexsondria, Sam, Nora, Sharayah, Jonathan, Arion, and Amanda, though not usually at the same time.

So, the school week was pretty tame, even boring, but the weekend has been crazy. Friday night a bunch of hall people watched some funny movies and we randomly went to Target, where I spent a lot of money, but I bought a coat, pj pants, excellent sweat pants (which now are covered in hot chocolate- I should do laundry), and a white shirt which I needed for Saturday. Anyway, we stayed up really late Friday night, I think I dozed off at about 4:15 am. Then Saturday afternoon when we all woke up we went to the Pancake house on Franklin Blvd and had a delicious brunch.

And then, at 3pm I got picked up by Shantell and Jacob, from NCM, and we went to Corvallis. Why did we do this? Well, NCM folks over at OSU needed help running their concession stand, and were willing to pay each of us $40, so naturally, we flocked to Reser Stadium like the ducks we are. Basically, I never want to fill another cup of hot chocolate again in my life. But me and Shantell had an amazing dance party THE ENTIRE TIME!!!! So, we got back to Eugene around 1am and I so went to bed.

Then this morning I went to church at my favorite Harvest Community Church (HCC) and then afterwards eight of us went to Taco Bell for some awesome cheap food. Conversation included such topics as: The Awesomeness of the Naked Brothers Band, whose face Gabie should get a tattoo of (and where), the Chronicles of Narnia as an allegory, the girl that was hitting on Jacob at the football game, Alaska, the definition of the word "pillaging", and much talk about being generally young and awesome.

When we got back, Fred called me. I guess she is quite set on being here next fall, so that's amazingly cool. I'll start looking for apartments sometime after break. I want one near campus, preferable on the west side (closer to most of the departments, but more dangerous for pedestrians, also in closeness to all the sorority/fraternity houses, blech) or on the south side (quieter and more available, but have to walk through graveyard, which is not good at night). The only requirement as to the apartment is that Fred can bring her cat, and at this point I am not planning on having a car next year, so parking's not a big concern.

So after that phone conversation, I hung out for a while and then I went to dinner over at Ryan's house and it was excellent. Next Sunday, instead of eating at Ryan's house, we will be having an amazing Thanksgiving Dinner at HCC for all of the college kids, made by all of our church moms from HCC! I get very excited thinking about it. I did not play Settler's this week though, mostly because I was very tired and have a writing assigment due tomorrow, which I have yet to start on and it is now 11:04 pm. I'm not sure what I'm going to do about that, but it should be stated that all homework needs to happen during the week, because I just don't do weekend homework.

Plan: I will skip that class tomorrow at 8am, write it while doing my laundry in the morning, and then turn it in during his office hours on Tuesday am. Or by email. I heart the internet.

So... this is college.

Well, life has become routine about now. I get up, make my peanut-butter and jelly sandwich, leave before Jessica wakes up, go to class, somebody starts up a conversation with me, asking for college life advice, assuming that I'm a sophomore or something... Then I come back to the dorm and fart around for a while, maybe shower, maybe go to the gym and then shower, usually not do homework. Then I go grab lunch before lecture, go to the library after class, eventually go home and get dinner in Hamilton commons, and then go to my meeting or Bible study or whatever, then stay up too late on the computer or talking to people in my hall and go to bed.

Sports?

So, I'm not personally a big sports fan, but I think I have a lot of passion and energy that, when thrown at sports, makes it seem like I care about football or basketball or whatever. That is not the case. Actually, I just like to get really excited about things. Example: movie releases, or, better example: Harry Potter book release. Sports is more generally accepted as a 'normal' thing to get excited about, especially amongst college students at a huge top ten school like the U or O. Don't get me wrong, I am definitely a duck fan, but I haven't been willing to skip class to stand in line for tickets until today, when I was hanging out with people who made it seem completely awesome.

Also awesome: The Office in The Basement party that goes down every Thursday night in Hamilton basement. Much fun and laughter and general 'Office' fanaticism.

In other news, Fred is supposed to call me in an hour to catch up on life together, and then me and Lindsey are going to walk around campus and take pictures while the weather is still lovely. Also, am going to the NCM college dinner tonight, which will include much yummy (free!) food, and some weird board game thingy? I want to learn.

Meanwhile, I am reading a case study about rape victims in recovery (v. depressing, also fascinating, kind of like watching a car crash or a building burn down...), which I am doing to avoid working on my actual homework, which is reading about political ideologies that I don't extremely care about in their pure forms, but which I will need to write a big paper about later in the week. Hmm...Those reasons, plus the fact that I am behind in the readings, are all good reasons NOT to skip the study group tonight. That's too bad. I have a plan: I will work really hard tomorrow, both before and after INTL 240, and not have to do anything tonight! Yay! I love having an easy, flexible schedule this term.

Feeling Strange

So, this weekend is family weekend here at U of O and since I don't have any family right now, it's kinda weird, like the first few days of school all over again only now we all know each other. Getting to know Jessica's mom and sister is interesting, and I definitely realize how weird my family is compared to those of my friends. Just the fact that my parents are still together, don't drink (in front of us), and that we all get along really well, is, well, weird, compared to the majority of people that I come into contact every day. I should maybe stop being surprised by that.

I should also realize that people are in many ways shaped by their families, and, perhaps more importantly, hurt by them. Families can be just as much a source of pain and deep wounds as they can be a place of love and comfort.

Wow, I know I'm getting a bit deep, but that's what I'm thinking about right now. I've been thinking about that a lot actually, as I've been reading Wicked a a bunch and also since I'm having more personal conversations with people (What those two things have in common... I don't know).

Well, will try and post more often. Ta-ta, and GO DUCKS!

Working up to it

I really am going to post something of substance one of these days. Really. I am. I am going to post about the ridiculous Eugene weather and about philosophy of education and competition among college students and other Very Interesting Topics. I might even rant about my love life or about how I'm gonna get fat eating all this yummy campus food. If we're really lucky I'll review some indie films and new bands. Probably though, this will all become a narrative. I hope not though, because I have a lot to say about my Freshman year here at the U of Oregon, but right now my contacts are blurring over.

Goodnight.