I'd Rather be Running

So, its pretty obvious that I haven't blogged in a while, since both I and my computer forgot which email and password this account was under. Dang. To sum up last term and break:

Thanksgiving: New favorite holiday on account of adventure/ learned survival skills/good food (mmmm sweet potatoes). Beating out Christmas because Thanksgiving doesn't ask me to spend money, in fact EVERY WHERE TO BUY A FREAKING CUP OF COFFEE IS CLOSED!!!

End of Term/finals: pretty good I guess, kind of anticlimactic what with everbody wanting to leave a soon as possible. I got kinda stressed about INTL 240 and tried this crazy butcher paper outline review thing:

It sort of worked.

Fall 08 GPA: 3.90 (U of O does this weird +/- thing...)

Ear Surgery: Seattle was v. cool, hanging out with mom was cool. Surgery was fine, little bit painful but I don't have anything against taking prescribed opiates for pain as often as possible. Here is a neat, though slightly overexposed picture of my ear after surgery.

Neat, huh? This was about 5 days after surgery. That bruise was real pretty.

Christmas Break: was fun, relaxed, predictable. I spent about the first week sitting on the couch doing jigsaw puzzles and watching the Office on DVD, because I was recovering, and nobody else was home yet. Eventually everybody got back and we hung out. I went to school a couple of times and saw everybody there. I basically didn't do much of the stuff I was supposed to over break, but had a good time anyway. Particular highlights were: seeing "Enchanted" with Heather, hot tub party at my house, Christmas at Homstad's, Shopping/ chilling in Anchorage on 3 separate occasions, New Years at Marcy's, and seeing "Sweeney Todd" with Fred. Also, we got a wii a while back and I got DDR for Christmas, so that was the bomb diggity.

Here is a random picture of Fred playing DDR after a long day of shopping:
So yeah, that pretty much brings us to this term. I am actually going to leave out the story of my journey back to Eugene, because I don't feel like writing about it, but it is a good story, I guess, in retrospect. Its good to be home.

So this term I'm taking three international studies classes in a crazy attempt to get into the program by the end of spring term. Two of these classes (260: Culture, Capitalism, and Globalization, and 199:Intro to International Issues) are required, and appear to be fairly harmless, big lectures, with pros and cons to each. 260's teacher is Patrick Hayden who isn't a professor, but he's this funny 80's indie rocker type with a really really dry sense of humor, so lecture's actually pretty entertaining, though not in the same way that Dave or Galvan were last term. The subject of the class is pretty boring though, and I feel like I know a lot of it from 240 last term...199 is really pretty boring and basic, especially having taken 240, plus its at 8:30am. However, in class yesterday we watched a sweet documentary about Al Jazeera news, which was very cool, and it set off my transformation into a rabid news hound over the past couple of days. I even watched C-span.

My other INTL class is also called 199 (very confusing for abbreviating purposes) and its a freshman seminar (small class, 25 students only) taught by the Provost of the University, so I took it because of the opportunity to get recognition and maybe a letter of rec from her. Haha $1200 tuition for a letter of rec....No, I actually am generally interested in the class, which is called "international negotiation". I really am not so interested in ever doing diplomacy/negotiation type stuff, but I think its really neat to learn about in context of current events, which I, as a news whore, know a lot about. Anyway, the class is going to be a beast with the amount of reading and the level of work expected of us, but I'm sort of looking forward to it.

My fourth UO class is Family and Human Services 215, which I absolutely adore. Its taught by tag-teaming professors, filled with really cool people, and about stuff that I really care a lot about. I would take an age for me to explain the class, but I'll probably talk about specific things. Haha like yesterday when we had to analyze a case study of and 11 year old boy and it turned out to be Harry Potter...and then we watched like half of the Sorcerer's Stone and did this complete risks/resiliancies/Ecological Model analysis. Harry Potter's actually a great person to case study for that class because 95% of the people feel like they know him pretty well so you don't actually have to explain much...great class, all in all. The work for that class reminds me a lot of that of a high school class, but that should be fun. More on this later.

Other classes/things I am doing include New Testament 1 class through Golden Gate, taught by Ryan Moore of Northwest Collegiate Ministries, also a Christian Leadership seminar taught by Ryan, a Bible study on Jonathan, Int'l Justice Mission, InterVarsity stuff, going to Harvest Community Church, continuing to meet weekly with Lily and Erin, applying to the FHS program, applying for scholarships and, oh yeah, marathon training. What I am probably not doing is getting a job, because of all the things I've just listed.

Marathon Training is intense. apparently. I just started seriously this week, so I'm not really feeling it yet. I'm not even sore right now. Minor problem: I have yet to run (continuously, without walking) more than 30 minutes. I'm not too worried. I'm more worried about making sure I get up in the AM hours for my Friday or Saturday long runs (did not happen today). Also, I got a blister the first time I ran in my new Nike's, which was worrisome, but it went away and has yet to resurface.

The only other big news for the semester I think is my travel schedule. I'm supposed to go on a retreat in two weeks, then to San Fransisco for missions conference in Febuary, Portland (I think) the weekend after that for InterVarsity winter conference, LA in the beginning of March to see Wicked! with Heather, after which the whole family will be chillin' with me in Eugene for a few days. Then some time around finals Fred's supposed to come visit me, and her new school. Finally, for spring break I'll be heading back to LA (this time by lengthy car trip) for NCM's missions trip. Sheesh, it's like high school, but I get to leave the state more easily. What happened to my refreshingly wide open schedule from last term? Meh, I don't care.

So, I have a lot of lesser things to report, but I realize that this post is going on forever (what can I say? I'm a marathoner). Hopefully I will update more frequently this term because I will be, like now, putting off going running or doing real work.