Go Stephen Go!

What a good way to kick off finals week!

Earlier tonight, Stephen's IM soccer team won the championship game. Stephen scored the winning goal in the last minute of double overtime. I'm so proud of him. What made me even prouder is how, with everyone cheering and climbing all over him, he wanted to leave.

I have never met a humbler person in my life.

There are some pictures on my site.

thanksgiving

I'm posting the pictures from Thanksgiving break.

They'll be in their own file folder on my picture site.

more pics

I'm going to Kristin's for Thanksgiving tomorrow, so I needed to get some pictures off my camera before then.

They're up on the Fall section of my pictures.

These pictures include such things as:

Being at Stephen's house for Fall break.

Chicken wing night to make our friend Cassie jealous.

The view from my window on the first day it snowed.

And the signs the girls on my hall posted for RA Appreciation Day.

vacation!

So I'm here on break in Johnstown. So far I've done a lot of homework and eaten a lot of new kinds of food.

Dr. Kriley thought he would be cute and give us our next Chemistry exam on Monday morning - that's right, the Monday we come back from break - so that explains the studying.

And the Mowerys' love of seafood explains the new kinds of food. Plus we went to this place downtown that kind of reminds me of Taki's where I had this sandwich that they have only in Johnstown called a Sundowner. It's a little burger patty with a fried egg, cheese, chili, and onions on top. Sounds bizarre, but it's actually a pretty delicious combination.

Stephen and I have gotten to do some fun things too, though. Yesterday we went to a pet store for fun and played with some kittens. And then we went to the best store I've ever been in in my entire life - it's an old warehouse that's now a wholesale candy store. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G. Tonight we carved pumpkins and made pumpkin seeds for his parents. Also tonight we went to a Mexican restaurant to celebrate Stephen's birthday, which is next Saturday. And I've been sleeping a lot and watching a lot of movies.

Tomorrow I think we're going to visit Stephen's grandma and Mr. Mowery wants us to rake all the leaves in the backyard. Right now I'm doing homework for a little while longer and then we're going to watch Dodgeball, which I haven't seen but I've heard is really funny.

Till later...

weekend.

So this weekend we did some cool stuff. Friday night we went to Pete's house. (Pete is Stephen's roommate. He's a funny guy. And by funny I don't always mean ha-ha, I mean touched. He's a funny guy. He's a starter on the football team and he's vice president of the swing dancing club on campus and he's a biochem major. So he's a smart, swing-dancing football player. Who knew?) Anyway, we went to Pete's house on Friday. We = me, Stephen, Pete, Jordan, Jackie, Becca and Phil. And Pete's sister, Paige, was there too. Pete lives in Hermatige, which I've never been to before, and it's actually a lot bigger than I thought it would be. (I'm learning a lot about south-central Pennsylvania through my friends.)

We got to Pete's house and were greeted by a really excited dog (great, a dog) and his parents, who I've met before at a football game. I like them. Everytime I see them, they give me food. Mrs. Polesnak kind of reminds me of Aunt Pammy. Actually, their whole family kind of reminds me of the Stus. I think they'd get along well. Anyway, we got there and she made us all sit down on the couch and asked us questions about school and sports and our grades and what we were going to do over fall break (she was very motherly) and then she tried to make us eat some pasta (even though we told her we'd had dinner at school before we came) and then she appealed to the boys' lack of manliness (apparently not being able to eat at the drop of a hat signifies a lack of manliness) and they all got offended and had to eat or they'd feel less manly I guess.

Everybody but Stephen and I went to this really scary haunted house thingie. I'm really not into haunted houses or the dark, and I get pretty nasty when I'm scared so I figured that it wouldn't actually be much fun for anybody involved if I came along and Stephen didn't seem to care so he and I went out to Hermatige lake for a while and sat on a bench there and looked at stars. (Stars I like. Haunted houses, not so much.) Pete got a huge kick out of the fact that we went to the lake. In fact, every time he said "went to the lake" he used quotation marks and winked a lot. Then Jordan would start laughing and then I'd threaten him and he'd threaten Stephen.

(There's usually a triangle of violence like that. Jordan will do something stupid or mean and I'll threaten to - say - stab him with a fork. Jordan knows he can't hit a girl, so then he'll threaten Stephen instead, because Stephen is the next closest thing to me. It usually goes something like this:
Jordan: *mumbles incoherantly something that's probably inappropriate*
Me: Shut up Jordan! You're dumb! I'm going to kick you in the knee!
Jordan: No! Don't! If you do, I'm punching Steve in the throat.
And so it goes. We really love each other.)

Anyway, we all met back at Pete's house where they'd built a fire in the backyard and everybody was roasting marshmallows (YES!) and cheese-filled brats and toasting buns too (that was Jordan's idea. He's good for some things.). And we all sat around and talked and made fun of each other till midnightish when we went home. It was a good night.

Saturday morning I slept in late (Jenn was in D.C. again all weekend) and by the time I got up it was like 10:00 and Stephen called to remind me that we were going to the orchard this morning for fresh apple fritter day. So I met him and Darrius outside and we hopped in the Jeep and headed out to the orchard nearby. (All the orchards are nearby here. I live in the boonies.) I've never had an apple fritter before, but it turned out to be one of the most delicious things I've ever tasted. It's like a funnel cake, only more dense, and it has pieces of apple in it and powdered sugar on top. We also got little pumpkin-shaped jugs of cidar (equally good) and Darrius bought an entire apple pie. It was still warm and it smelled so good on the way home that once we got back, we found a picnic table and got some forks and we ate half that pie right then and there. So good.

Then in the afternoon I went to watch some of my friend Kristin's tennis match. I'd never seen a tennis match before and I was afraid I wouldn't know what was going on until I saw that her parents were there.

I actually have to go meet Kristin for dinner now, so that's all the stories I've got for now.

picnic

So a couple of weeks ago we went on a picnic. We went to a state park nearby and took really un-cookout-type foods like corn dogs and bar-b-q chicken fingers. And - without charcoal - we built a fire and cooked out our non-cookout foods.

It turned out there was some sort of fall fest going on at the same time and people there were dressed up really strangely so we got a picture with two of our favorites.

There should be two pictures from this event in the picture folder titled Fall 2008.

pumpkin day.

Hey, check out my pictures of our pumpkin-carving afternoon today. I posted them under the heading "pumpkin day" on my picture site.

It was pretty sweet.

hm.

I keep having really drastic mood swings.

Maybe it's because I'm frustrated that there should be something really profound here that I should be picking up on, but I can't put my thumb on it.

There'd better be one hell of a good lesson behind all this.

eenie meenie minie moe

What's the difference between a good person who happens to do bad things and a truly bad person?

You all say that I'm usually a very forgiving person, generally implying the hypocracy of the fact that I'm giving dad such a hard time, but why does anybody think that it would be easy to extend forgiveness for such a horrible thing? Yeah, I'm pretty mellow with other people, but I've never had this happen. Why should this be the same thing? Not only were we betrayed, but we were betrayed by family. There's a marked difference. You should hold your family more accountable for their actions than those who aren't that close to you.

But the question I've really been struggling with is the difference between bad people and good people. Maybe there isn't a difference. Maybe people are just people and it's their actions - good or bad - that define who they are. Earlier this week, when I went in to Student Life to talk with the heads of the department who would be hearing Grimace's side of the story, I told them that I wanted to let them know that he was a good kid. Later, Ms. Krepps asked me why I would say something like that. I'd told her that he'd snuck her into his room, that they weren't even going out anymore - that he was just using her for sex - that he didn't care. That he'd tried to blame all the rest of his personal problems on me, that he'd lied to the campus police and to Student Life, and that now he was telling everybody who would listen what I bitch I was and playing the part of the martyr to the max.
"What exactly do you think there is good about him?" Ms. Krepps said. "He's lying and manipulative. He won't own up to his problems. He's immature and immoral. What do you see in him that we don't?"
I saw her point. Goodness isn't just some abstract that floats around us, keeping our sense of morality intact no matter what else we do. But in a society that wants more than anything to be tolerant to a fault, we are taught to justify anything and everything, saying that the person is really good. Kind of like the "hate the sin love the sinner" bit that flies around this school all the time.
Why do we have such a hard time calling bad people bad? Because we're afraid they'll get angry? Because they'll label us as prejudiced?
If anything I'm cutting dad some slack. I have not said to one person that I hate him or that he's a terrible person. I have said that I can't believe somebody would do something like that, but I'm letting him off easier than I would anybody else because he's my father. I can't even think of words dirty enough to describe anybody else who would do that. They would immediately and forever be thrown into the horrible-person pile.

The Bible tells us to forgive seventy times seven. But I have to ask, at what point are we just being stupid and gulible? At what point is it just dumb to keep forgiving? And can you forgive somebody for something they did while still believing them to be a bad person?

grimace and gamma chi's

It's about one in the morning. Jenn's gone for the weekend. I was studying for my Biology quiz on Monday since I'll be out of town on Sunday evening for a concert in Pittsburgh, but I feel like I have things to tell people.

First, Grimace is real mad. Real real mad. He's suspended till Monday night, and even though people keep telling me that I did the right thing, I live in a society and in a generation where the unspoken rule is that if you know something, you should keep your mouth shut about it. As long as someone is getting away with something bad it's okay. They're not in real trouble until they get caught. And then it should be by accident, never when someone turns them in.

When I spoke to a very angry Grimace on the phone last Monday, he brought up a couple of intersting points among a whole lot of very nasty things to say. He said, "I have friends at home who smoke pot. You probably do too, but do I see you ratting them out, even when they're doing something hurtful and dangerous? No. You don't rat out your friends to the cops, so why would you do this to me?" My answer to him was that I haven't been told to turn in my friends who smoke pot, and I'm being paid to make sure kids follow the rules here. He would have none of it, and that's fine, but it bothers me that this is his stance.

The Gamma Chi's, the sorority I'm looking to join, got wind of this situation and sat me down last night. They informed me that, as a sorority, they would not be giving me a bid for membership this weekend because they feel that they don't want to put me in the awkward position of having to choose between upholding my integrity as an RA and not ratting out the group. They told me that they will be offering bids again in November and that they'd love to take me then if this is what I wanted, but that they wanted me to think about the fact that they sometimes do things they're not supposed to and that I don't have to participate, but I will know about these things and I will have to be okay with them. In all, it's been a cruddy week to do with this kind of stuff, but I'm glad that the girls thought to talk to me about this. I appreciate their honesty and I'll think about it for sure.

Last week in Chem lab, we stripped the dye off of M&Ms and ran all kinds of tests on it to determine the nature of the dyes used. All in all - M&Ms don't have that much dye. So eat up.

K I'm going to finish studying Bio now. Have a good night...morning...whatev.

secret date.

I don't have very much time because I have a ton of homework and then I'm going out with one of the sororities.

Yesterday on our secret date, Stephen took me to Pittsburgh. We went and walked around the strip district (and tried a whole bunch of weird food, like apple soda and calamari and juice made out of aloe). And then he took me on a picnic to Point Park. (The actual park, not the university.) And then he took me up the incline to look at the city. It was so awesome.

I posted some pictures online. Take a look.

first week almost done

So class has been okay so far. Today, from 2:30 to 5:30 I have my first chem lab. We're going to be melting pennies and separating the metals they're made of to see how the composition of change has differed in different years. Should be interesting. I'm pretty stoked.

Nothing incredibly interesting has been going on. Yesterday I got to proctor freshman placement exams. I went to chapel this morning and have been doing homework ever since. Chemistry is looking a little tricky, and Stephen's been really patient trying to explain it to me when I get confused.

Tomorrow night I have to be on intervis duty, which means that I can't leave the building, but that other people can come to my room, so Ben, Lariane, Nathan, and Stephen are going to come over so we can finish filling out Ben's application for eHarmony.com. It's going to be a good time.

P.S. - I posted some pictures of my room on the Pictures link I have on this blog. Just go to the album titled "Fall 2008".

This morning was kind of nice because I got to sleep in till 9:30, but then I had to go carry boxes of planners. Then we had a 3-hour staff meeting where we tried - mostly in vain - to sort things out about move-in day. I'm pretty overwhelmed right now, to tell you the truth.

Then tonight we watched a really depressing movie - Tuesdays With Morrie. I hated it. I'm sick of those kinds of movies. I can't tell you how many inspirational stories I've heard in the last week. I'm tired of hearing about things like that. I just want my friends to be here and I want school to start.

all done with training

RA training is officially over. Tomorrow we have the day off for the most part - we're doing building preparations and getting things ready for our girls, but other than that we're all done until Thursday when we help move in the freshman boys. That should be interesting.

This afternoon we had our training test so to speak. They took us into one of the more empty residence halls at this point and set up fake scenarios and made us handle the situations like we would if we actually walked into them. There were rooms with intervis violations, depressed students, a student that was passed out, one with an eating disorder, one with a severe procrastination problem, one who was struggling with being a transfer, one room that had drunk kids in it, and one that had a roommate disagreement.

Right now I'm headed downstairs to hang out with my staff girls for a while. The BEST part about the building I'm living in right now isn't the huge rooms or the bright, clean bathrooms. It's the fact that there is a PIANO in my lobby. Ohhhhh yeah. Good times.

the castle

I'm writing this right now, before I unpack or go and take a shower or continue checking peoples' rooms, so that I don't blow it off later when I get tired again. So there.

Yesterday morning we had a lecture on drug and alcohol policy. The campus po came in and burnt incense tablets that simulate the scent of marijuana and they passed around beer so that kids who don't drink (or work in bars) could smell it. And then they passed around a crack pipe and told us all manner of things that people can do with drugs...things I didn't even know people did or were physically possible. It was crazy. Then we had fire safety (we're so ready now Mom) and they lit a fire out on the lawn and let us shoot of fire extinguishers at it. Pretty neat if you ask me. Then I went to Rite Aid for a couple things and then we left for the castle.

The castle was more like the single biggest mansion I have ever seen in my entire life. Seriously, I didn't know residences like that existed - it was originally the house of some uber-rich guy and then when he died they made it into this hostel-like place for Christian retreats and whatnot. It was ENORMOUS. It took me about a minute-and-a-half (I timed it) to walk from the front door to my room. It was so cool. We played team-building games like human foozeball and a blind walk, and then we had dinner (pizza) and then we had free time (during which I joined an impromptu soccer tourny), and then we were going to play capture-the-flag, but by that time it was pitch-dark outside and I'm afraid of the dark so I opted out. I wasn't the only one who did this, so we sat on the back porch and played board games for like three hours.

Then, as we're playing board games, we hear this enormous explosion. And we look over and way off over some distant mountain (we also were on top of a mountain - GORGEOUS sunset, btw) we see some puff of smoke. And we're all like "is there an air force base around here?" There wasn't, somebody said, so we kept staring to see if it would happen again and wouldn't you know it they were setting off some FIREWORKS DISPLAY about 10 miles away for like 30 minutes and we could see every single one. So cool.

This morning we got up for breakfast, then had devotions as a group, and then we had alone time. We could take only a Bible and we had to find someplace on the grounds with no other people and sit for 2 hours to pray. It was a little daunting at first, but it ended up being a really cool experience. After that, they had worship time. There's just something so cool about seeing 70-some college kids singing at the top of their lungs about God.

Then we had a box lunch and cleaned up the building and came home, which is where I am now. Two girls are moving in on my hall currently, and my project before five (which is when I have to do something next) is to finish room inspections and take a shower, which I really really need. A nap is apparently out of the question at this point.

K that's all. Till next time...

Back at GCC

RA training is a pain in the butt. I mean that only in the best of ways, of course, but it really is. Listening to lectures and having meetings from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm isn't really my idea of a good time, especially because we have all kinds of hall preparations to do once we're back in our rooms, but I guess it'll all pay off in the end. That's pretty much all that's been going on: meetings and lectures. My room is nearly unpacked but I can't find anything at all, and tomorrow we're packing up again and going off to the castle for a night. I don't want to go someplace else for the night. I want to go and come home and sleep in my own bed. I'm tired already.

Also it's strange because there's only one other girl on the hall so far. Varsity sports come back tomorrow, so there will be some more people then, but other than that it's just us. It's weird to go take a shower and be in the bathroom for 20 minutes and not see another girl. It's so quiet. Very strange.

Okay, I need to go. I've had the evening off, so I've been doing some work but I'd really like to hang up some of my own posters and have a snack before I take a shower and go to bed. This was kind of a cranky post, and they'll get better I'm sure, but I've had a lot of information thrown at me today, so that might be it.

'Night!

Last Day

So I'm sitting here on my bed. There are no posters on my walls, no books on my shelves, no clothes hanging in the closet, no food in the fridge, no papers on my desk. My friend Kristin is all moved out - I helped her carry all her stuff to her car - and I'm nearly all ready to go. 

This afternoon is the first day I'm allowed to do anything resembling physical exertion again, so Stephen and I are going to the playground about a half mile up the road and we're going to play catch. This morning, Kristin and I went into town to The Coffee Grove and then walked around and looked at some shops. 

This was a good year. Much much better than last year, and as I've said before, it's been a while since I was reluctant to leave a place. To be sure, I'm glad that the classes I took this semester are over. Verbs was really the only useful one. And I am looking forward to getting to live in the new building next year and be an RA and take some cool science classes and play lacrosse some more and go to the Dominican Republic over Easter. 

Plus there's a lot of cool stuff I want to be able to do this summer. And I like moving, especially when I know it's the end of the year and I start thinking about how somebody else will be living in my room and sleeping in my bed and how it's not really mine anyways. 

Tomorrow I go back to Erie. I guess Erie's okay. I'll be looking forward to seeing my family and eating real food and getting some sleep in the first couple of days back. I'm looking forward to the beach and to making some money so I'm not so worried about things all the time. I'm looking forward to getting to shadow some surgeons, to getting my blonde hair back, to running (and hopefully running that half marathon!), to birthdays and visits and playing soccer in the park. 

This is the last time I'll be writing till August, probably, since I'll be home and I can just tell you things. But this has been a good year. A really good year.

Till August 14th...

finals

Taking a quick break from studying so that I can fill y'all in on what's been going on. 

Friday I had two finals: Phonetics and Spec Mind. Phonetics was 18 pages long but okay. I'd studied really hard so I'm hoping that went pretty well. I was the first one out of the room 1 hour and 55 minutes after the exam began and the last person left 2 hours and 45 minutes after we started. I think it was okay. We'll see.

Spec Mind I probably got a B on. (Please allow me to remind you that B's are really quite good grades around here). Even the exam itself made me think. One of the essays made us write about a situation in which someone we knew had to use a certain tactic to confront somebody they thought was doing something wrong. I wrote about Chris and Ashley. 

This afternoon I had Civ Arts. I studied really hard so I probably got an A. The essay on that one was really cool - he put up on the projector a picture that we'd never seen before and, based on what we'd learned in class about different artists and periods, we had to tell him what period of time the painting was from and who created it. I couldn't help grinning the entire time - it's essays like that where I feel like I really learned something. So cool.

Monday I have my last two tests - Verbs and CivLit. We'll see how Verbs goes. We have only one exam in that class and it's worth 50% of our grade so I'm really really nervous about that. Lit will be a breeze, so it's good to have that for my last exam of the year. 

Finals are a really strange time. I can't tell what day of the week it is, ever, because every single day feels like a Monday. I got up at 6:45 this morning to study. That's no way to spend a lovely Saturday. But this is what I do. And it only gets worse from here. :)

Anyways, I'm counting down the hours till I'm done with exams and looking forward to sleeping in on Tuesday. Mmm lovely. 

growing up

There are some days when I'm here that I stop during my day and wish that you could see me. I'll do something that I'm really proud of or see something that I think is really cool and want you to be able to know what's going on. There are things that I wish I could tell you about school that I can't because you don't know the people I live with or am friends with. You don't know my professors. You kind of know the buildings that I'm talking about. But overall, things don't make sense to you. And on occasion that makes me a little sad.

Anyway.

Finals are fast approaching (and I'm currently taking a study break) and people are starting to flip out a little bit. What's funny is that everybody flips out about the tests and nothing else. Nobody is at all concerned with moving back with their families or getting jobs over the summer. Last year I didn't know any seniors, but this year I know a whole bunch of them and they're a fantastic group of people. Three senior girls were on my lacrosse team this year and I'm going to miss them immensely.

Another funny thing? Being a senior is not a big deal in college. I thought people would be MORE excited about graduating from college than from high school, but this is not true. Maybe it's just the way things are a GCC, but most kids just accept graduating from college as the normal pattern of life. It's not as big of a milestone. Maybe it's because when you transition from high school to college you're gaining a whole ton of independence all at once. I think when you graduate from college, you're getting a whole lot of unwanted responsibility chucked at you. 

On the other hand, I happen to find it pretty intimidating that next year I have to start looking at grad schools. I found out - whew - that I don't have to take the MCATs, but I do have to take the graduate school admissions exam, which is like the SATs on steroids. The rest of the sophomore class is flipping out because it just hit them in the last ten days or so that about ten days or so from now they will be halfway through college. It's a strange thought to somebody like me who still remembers when eighth-graders were scary. 

P.S. - I added a link to the top right hand side of my page. It says "Online Pictures" or something like that. If you click it, it goes to a page where you can see pictures. This way, I can show you some pics without having to email them to you one at a time. :)

going...going...gone.

Apparently school is really stressful. So stressful, in fact, that two kids that I know withdrew in the last week. Just up and left. No explanation at all. 

This is very strange. 

Today I went to see the mens' lacrosse team's final home game. They won, so they get to go to playoffs in Michigan next weekend, which they're really excited about. I don't blame them. It must be very exciting to go to playoffs. 

This is the last full week of school that I have this year. How strange is that? This is still April. I mean, I have about 19 days left here total, but only seven days of class. I don't feel ready to leave just yet. Maybe once finals roll around, I'll feel differently. Who knows.

Right now I have my last project and last paper to work on. Adios and have a great weekend.

two more weeks

Cool things happened today. My Spanish professor told me after Phonetics that I was the only kid in class to get a perfect score on my last homework assignment. Later on, it rained and thundered - and was brilliantly sunny at the same time. Then I laughed so hard that - ironically - my headache went away for an hour or so. Then Jenn and I had a dance party. Then, after an IM soccer game, I went out with Stephen and looked at stars from flat on our backs in the grass for a couple minutes.

Two weeks from today, class is finished for the year. Three weeks from exactly this time, I will be back in Erie. It's amazing how quickly this year went. At the same time, it's amazing how long this year was. It seems like a lifetime ago that it was Christmas. Seems like a whole nother year that I was in BibRev or cracking up with Paul and Haena and Lissa in Bio Lab so hard that there were tears running down my face just about every week. I remember, in October, standing barefoot in my red dress on the soccer field with Stephen after homecoming. In September, I remember the very first time I stood in goal. 

This was a good year. This was a year much better than last year. First of all, I'm leaving school this year with friends. I'm leaving with my personality intact. I'm leaving with far more of a sense of direction than I did last year. I'm leaving with the experience of having tried something new, leaving with an idea of how next year will be. I'm leaving with people I know without a shadow of a doubt will still be here in August when I come back. I'm leaving with the knowledge that there is a person here who loves me and who has my back no matter what.

Would I say that I love this place? Nah. I feel that saying that I love Grove City would be a bit of a stretch. But I have caught myself a couple of times in the past few weeks saying to Stephen or Jenn, "If we lived in the city, we wouldn't be able to ________." See these amazing stars. Look at this sweet creek. Walk this road to the playground. This place is okay.

Last January, I couldn't wait to get out of Erie. Last school year, I couldn't wait to get out of GCC. At the end of the summer, I couldn't wait to get out of the house. It's been a while since I've been reluctant to leave a place. 

This is more abstract and less informational. But I guess the idea of writing to you is to let you understand what it's like for me here. And this is what it's like right now.

It's been quite the year. 

so cool.

For some reason, I keep starting a post today and then I'm unable to finish it. I feel bad, because sometimes when cool stuff happens I just call and tell you about it (which is logical, I suppose), but at the same time I wish I could just write it all down too, because I like to go back and see what was going on. So forgive me if you've heard something before.

This was the best weekend I've ever had at this school. On Friday it was gorgeous and I got to go outside and play soccer (and swing on swings at the playground!) and found this really cool park place by the creek down the road. So cool. 

On Saturday (and I don't think I've told you this yet), I went to a reception for that scholarship that I got when I wrote to financial aid and asked them for more money. The people who actually gave the scholarship are dead, so representatives of the family came to meet us, which was cool, but there were about 200 kids so it wasn't quite the same as that time I went to the Class of 1962's high school reunion and had dinner with them. Not quite the same. Saturday afternoon, as you know, Stephen and I and various other random people tried - in vain - for several hours to catch the escaped bird. Whoever owns said bird is really stupid for not having clipped its wings. It would have been a hundred million times easier to catch if it couldn't fly. Or if it was stupider. Patches totally would have crashed into a wall in the first ten seconds.

Saturday night was awesome. So so so cool. I loved everything about it, especially the little things. For example, that Stephen wore a tux. I'm not sure why I thought that was so cool. Maybe I thought it was cool that he thought it was cool. Most guys dress up grudgingly because they know their dates will be disgusted with them otherwise. But I was really tickled that he thought it was that neat. Also I can't get over the flowers. They're sitting right here on my desk and every time I look at them I get the biggest, stupidest grin on my face.

Tonight was really cool too. The moon was out - and huge - and there were stars and kind of wispy clouds and it looked just exactly like a painting. And Stephen and I went out on the field to see and were there just talking and laughing for a while. It was a great end to the weekend. So beautiful, so cool.

I love it.

see the cucumber. he can't dance.

Just a quick post to show a picture of me and Stephen from the dance - I'll show you these pictures anyways, but Emily P. reads my blog too and I thought she might like to see.

churchdating

I don't usually talk to you about what I'm learning in school, which is kind of a shame, because what I learn now is infinitely more interesting than anything I learned in grade school or high school, and that's when I was living with you and had to tell you what I was doing.

Today in Spec Mind, we were talking about Christian approaches to marriage, which I happened to think was going to be a hideous waste of time since this is that stupid nondenominational "courtship" crap. This lecture ended up being one of those times like when I was taking sociology and I left the room with a literal smile on my face because I'd felt like I'd actually learned something applicable to real life. I didn't agree with everything people were saying, but I definitely feel like I benefited from it. 

There are just some bits and pieces that I thought were so cool. For example, my professor was telling us how one of her friends is a missionary in Africa and he once went to an African wedding. During part of the ceremony, the pastor gave a small bowl of water to the bride and one to the groom. He then got a bigger bowl and told each of them, in turn, to pour their water into it. "Now," he said to the bride, "take your water back." She couldn't. He told the man the same thing, "Take your water back." He couldn't either. The water, explained my professor, was still just as much theirs individually as it had been before it was mixed, but not it was completely inextricable and perfectly mixed. The pastor took a third bowl of water and poured it in. "This is Christ." He said. 

My professor said that a marriage has to be like that - a complete and total sacrifice and mixture of your whole lives - not just your "love", but your emotions and faith and intellect and possessions. 

The next story she told was just as interesting. Once, she said, when she was in grad school, she was having dinner with her pastor and his wife. They were a pretty young couple - maybe in their early 30s - and they were at the dinner table, when all of a sudden, they began to have an argument. And after a couple minutes of this argument, the husband turned to my professor and said, "Could you excuse us for a second, we need to go upstairs." And they did. And fifteen minutes later, they came back down and they were fine after talking through everything. My professor said that this astounded her in two ways. First, that Christian couples will fight. ("Just get used to the idea," she said. "It's going to happen.") Secondly, she was completely taken aback that they would completely abandon their duties as host and hostess to fix the problem. Nothing was more important to them than each other and they weren't willing to let the problem fester or get worse. I love that.

This is something that's been talked about a lot lately. A lot of things I've been reading for school and a lot of lectures are about love and marriage and good ways to approach this. So it's been something I've been thinking about a lot. 

I don't think I'm very much like a lot of other girls. I've come to this conclusion slowly, mostly because I just thought it was taking me a long time to find them, but I've realized that most other girls were told, very explicitly, by their parents growing up how they were to approach dating and relationships and the like. And I wasn't. And I like it, because they're all messed up and I'm not.  

i dunno

You know what's funny? I very distinctly remember (among a whole lot of other things that aren't so distinct) on Saturday night, laying in the CT scan machine and thinking to myself 'I wonder if I'll be like Caiti and leave the ER never wanting to go into medicine'. I remember, in my fairly confused state of mind, that this was the thing I was worried about. Not the fact that I had a head injury, not the fact that this was the first time I'd ever had something go physically wrong when one of my parents wasn't there with me, not that I felt horrible, but that I didn't want to let this experience make me want to quit. 

It didn't, by the way. I still want to be a PA. Maybe even more so now, since I had that horrific doctor who was the opposite of compassion, and how the nurses were just all business. I think sometimes after all that school, maybe people forget why they started doing this in the first place - because they wanted to help people, and because they thought fixing people was just the coolest concept in the world. 

The last couple of days have been really strange. First, I've been feeling really weird. I have a headache, yeah, and a pretty good one at that. But it's more a continually spaced-out feeling. And I have a hard time remembering what happened on Saturday. If I sit and think about it for a minute, I remember playing the game, I remember getting hit, I remember going to lunch with Stephen's family. I remember taking a nap (probably the most dangerous thing I did all day) and I remember most of the hospital visit and the night after. But I have to really concentrate to draw it all up, as if it happened a really long time ago, not this past weekend. Plus I still get a little dizzy-nauseous on occasion. And I haven't really had an appetite since Saturday either. 

On top of physically feeling funny, there's been the whole fiasco with my team. We'd told them what happened and then asked for volunteers (perhaps girls with previous goalie experience) to just try it out and see how they felt about it. Yesterday afternoon, we took one of the girls into the gym and suited her up and I talked her through everything and a third girl shot on her and she was doing okay until people started moving around, and then she panicked. 

We were invited to represent our section in playoffs and the captains declined the invite. They gave our team a whole lot of reasons why not, all of which were suspiciously flimsy and most of which were to make me feel better about the real reason why we're not going: you can't go to playoffs with a fake goalie. You'd lose in the very first game, and it's just not worth it. They won't even let me say I'm sorry. 

So I don't know how I feel about that. Tired, maybe. Too tired and partially disoriented to sort through how I feel right now. On the plus side, I guess, I can go to the formal on Saturday. I just feel like I let down the seniors, because really, I have two more years to go to playoffs and they don't.

It's just a bummer. 

Saturday

Last home games were today. Okay, game. Singular. CMU never showed up to play, which we think is a win in our favor and we think means we get to go to playoffs next weekend. Slippery Rock was a great game. They actually played okay today, but we were better. We shut them out 12-0. It was awesome. I had seven saves in the game. Nothing that they shot on me went in - that's like the best feeling ever - to earn that shutout. Stephen came, of course, at 9:00 in the morning, to cheer us on. 

Also today I went to lunch with Stephen's parents, which was cool. They were really easy to talk to. I like them both very much and Stephen says that they both "absolutely loved" me, so I must be doing something right. His dad is really funny (so is his mom, actually), but what's so interesting to me is that they are such outgoing, dynamic people and I'm not sure how two such boisterous people can have a son who is so shy. I always think it's interesting to meet peoples' families because I think people make more sense when you get to see where they come from (not necessarily their actual hometown - although that helps). 

So it's been a good Saturday so far. I'm at work now, and I need to get some studying done (I have a Phonetics test this Wednesday) before I go to hang out with Stephen for a while afterward. 

goings-on

This was a good weekend. No, really. I came away with a couple new bruises (nothing new there), a really nasty sunburn (due to sitting in the soccer field, in the sun, reading a book for my Lit class), and a lost voice (remedied by fruity cough drops and the eight - no, literally eight - different kinds of tea that Stephen brought to me this morning before my 9:00 class), but it was a great weekend.

Friday night I had conditioning practice with my team, which was great, and then I had the night off. I hung out with Stephen and we watched a scary movie and then I got to go to bed at a decent hour since we had two games on Saturday. 

Saturday games were good. We tied one and won one. The tied game we should have won. We were a better team than the team we played but our defense was lazy starting off. I had a couple of really good saves in that game and also a couple of really close, really frustrating misses. We killed the second team we played 11-0. Ridiculous. We played them two men down, left-handed, and made our offense play defense and vice versa. And STILL we shut them out. 

We came back and had dinner as a team and then went down to the football field to cheer on the boys' team. They're doing okay. In past seasons they've been pretty bad but they're actually doing alright now.

Sunday was church of course (Father only asked for money once yesterday - I think he's learning) and then brunch. And because it was so incredibly beautiful outside, Jenn, Stephen, and I all went down to the bleachers on the soccer field and sat there studying all day long (thus the sunburn). Then I had to work from 5-7:30 and then I watched some of a movie and took a break to go play some soccer before bed. So yeah...good weekend.

Today we FINALLY have our Spanish professor back. Apparently she's been cleared to teach her morning classes but not her afternoon ones, so I'll be having her for Phonetics but not Verbs. Ironically, the lesson she taught in Phonetics today was information that was not taught but included on the LAST exam. Grr. My friend Austin was sitting next to me shaking his head nearly the whole class. I'll admit it was pretty frustrating. 

We have our last two lacrosse games this week. We play CMU tomorrow (hopefully), which is a really big game, since if we lose we don't get to go to the playoffs. If we DO win, we're seeded first in the league. Then on Saturday we play Slippery Rock again. We'll win. Slippery Rock is really pretty bad, plus even in the off chance that we don't win, we've already played Slippery Rock and the league officials only count the first game you play against a team. 

So things are going okay around here. Last week was incredibly frustrating, but things are looking up, mostly because of the sunshine and such. 

Hopefully we'll get to do lots of outside-ish things this week. Also hopefully, I'll remember sunscreen this time. :)

lessons

More lacrosse games today.

Our first game was against the University of Buffalo and we lost that (long story short), but mostly because they weren't in our league. Also because the girls on this team were just the girls who didn't make the varsity lacrosse team that UB also has. So they're essentially just shy of being varsity players. Also, they have a coach, (a paid staff coach) which I think probably helps. We lost 2-10. It was not a pretty game on our part, although I have to say that if we're gonna lose, I want to lose to a team who wins as beautifully as UB did. Their technique was amazing, their goalie was fantastic, their fluidity as a team was just so pretty to watch. If I wasn't so frustrated to be losing, I would have thought it was the coolest thing to see.

Second game was much better. We played John Carroll, who was good, but not as good as UB, and our level of play was already up from playing UB first. We beat JC 10-7 (which was pretty awesome) and I had - count 'em - eight saves in the game. Please allow me to put that in perspective. Remember how I said that coach sat me down and told me that LAX goalies usually save 30% of what's thrown at them on a good day? I saved eight out of fifteen shots. That's not bad for a long-time goalie and pretty damn good for the fourth game I've ever played in my life. 

I think I decided that I like playing on a team better than I like playing individually. I was nervous at first because I had the mindset that if I screwed up, I was letting down twenty other girls. And then it occurred to me after the first game on Wednesday, when all twenty of those girls came charging across the field at me to jump up and down when I made my fifth save, right before the buzzer, in my first game ever, that I was looking at it backwards. When I do well, all twenty of those people are happy for me. 

This is a huge learning experience for me. I mean, learning lacrosse, yes, but also being part of a team, being part of something bigger than yourself and realizing that you're just that - a part. It's not about me. It's not about Roop or EO or Umble or Amy or Lizzy or Cerise or Miller or Buckle or Katelyn. It's about all of us. 

I can tell that playing a team sport is having an effect on other things that I'm doing too. I got three compliments in the last week that I didn't think I'd ever hear applied to me. Ever. First, Lizzy told me after our Wednesday game that I was excellent at keeping my temper in check. There were way way too many penalty shots taken during that game, and it was because of stupid mistakes that my own girls were making. She said that I was good at not getting mad at the fact that I had to deal with their mistakes and also being respectful to the referees. Now, I know I have a pretty swift temper, so I found that sort of impressive.

Secondly, I had to go in and talk with my Civ Arts professor the other day about my paper. After he told me that it was very good, but off-topic, he brought up several points that he thought were off. I had an answer for every single one, and by the time we were done talking, he was smiling. "You know you're the first student who's come in to talk with me who hasn't gotten defensive about their answers?" he said. "And you had answers. I'm impressed. You're a very good, respectful arguer." I've always been a good arguer, but I think working so much in a group and having to tread lightly when challenging refs has really been beaten into me as of late.

Third, my friend Cassie came into my room on Thursday night, plopped down on my bed, and was telling me about some problems she's been having as of late. We talked for about 45 minutes and then I had to go to practice, and when she got up to go she stopped at the door and said, "You know Rissa, you're a really good listener. And you give pretty good advice." I've never been a good listener. Usually I'm just waiting for the next opportunity to talk. And I'm horrible at giving advice. Maybe having to be able to talk with people at practice and having to take instruction and criticism has been rubbing off to other parts of life. I feel obligated to listen to what people are telling me when I play lacrosse, because if I refuse to correct my mistakes, it affects more than just myself. My stubbornness gets my team nowhere.

Plus sometimes I just can't shut off goalie mode. After our game last night, I went to go watch Stephen's hall play IM dodgeball (which is just about the funniest thing I've ever seen) and my friend Jordan kept cracking up because I was sitting on the sidelines trying to direct all their players. Finally Keith got fed up and made me come down closer and actually talk to them while they were playing. So now I'm "coaching" IM dodgeball. 

So it's just sort of cool to see. I'd do a lot for those girls (my bruises prove that, I think). They're really amazing, great girls. And it's a great game. And I think it's the coolest thing that they have lacrosse as a club sport. Because if it was varsity, I wouldn't be playing. And if I wasn't playing, I wouldn't be learning all this sweet stuff.

I'm off to do homework now, and then I'm going to go watch a movie with Stephen, and then I'm going to bed because I have church in the morning. (Oh! P.S.! Stephen is such a sweetheart. Our games today were at 10 and noon. I thought I had him convinced last night not to come in the morning because he'd been at the game at night and it was early and blah blah and we'd meet up for lunch afterward. Nope. Just as the girls were meeting in center field at 10:00 am to draw for the opening of the match, here comes Stephen in his coat and hat, with his coffeecup in his hand and he sat through both of the games today, cheering the whole time. What a swell guy. He makes me smile.)

first game

Okay! First lacrosse game - Done! And we won, 13-8. It was fun - and frustrating at parts, but mostly fun - to get to play and to watch. 

I've got some pics from the game and also a pic of the hideous thing that happened to my knee as I was saving a penalty shot (the important thing is that I saved said shot - the bruise will heal). It's the outside of my right knee. Strangest bruise I've ever had - and the quickest one to show up too. 

ouch

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3HPPobOO8E&feature=related

Check this out. But don't stop watching after she crashes. Watch what she does then.

spanish

It's pretty rare around here that I'm in a day-long state of frustration. Even more rare that that state of frustration extends to a second day, but here I am, so I suppose it's possible.

Today I am angry because I was told this morning that my Spanish professor is going to be taking another two weeks off. So I will not have had her for class for a solid month. They're sending in replacement professors, but it's not the same. I don't want to sound like a heartless, horrible person in saying that I don't think she should take the time off. If you need surgery, you need surgery, end of story. What bothers me is that she's so flippant about it. She didn't warn us that she was going to do this, she still made us take our midterm after not having class for two weeks, and she's having us do half-asses busywork assignments to keep us pacified. And I'm paying for it. I'm just trying to figure out who I can write the angry letter to.

lacrosse

These are a couple pictures of my new helmet, just so you can see what it's like. The top one shows the inside. The red thing is the springy concussion-protector. It sort of cups my head so the helmet doesn't bounce around when I get hit.

The second picture is just what it looks like. The black thing mounted to the face mask is a throat protector. They're regulation on all helmets now. It does just what it says - makes sure I don't get wailed in the throat.

And this is a lovely picture of a pretty nasty bruise I received on Thursday. There are places on your body you just can't cover with padding. Unfortunately, these are also the places I tend most to get hit. :)

kids these days

It's still pretty chilly around here, but for some reason it's really starting to feel like spring. I'm not sure why.



Things around here have been crazy, but so much FUN. Yesterday alone, I spent enough time laughing that it made my stomach hurt. In Civ Arts, my professor spent five minutes singing "Staci's Mom" to try to illustrate to us how Vivaldi uses reaccuring musical phrases in his music. I'm still not sure how that correlation works, I don't think I heard that part because I was so busy laughing at my professor, who was standing at the podium - bow tie and all - singing "Staci's Mom" off-key at the top of his lungs. Hilarious.



On top of that, we had lacrosse practice. It was just a conditioning session, which usually means lots of strength training and lots of running. We did strength training for a solid hour (lots of lunges and pushups and crunches and planks) and just when we thought we were going to go have to run a couple of miles, they took us all down to the basketball arena here on campus and announced that our run was going to consist of follow-the-leader. We thought they were being coy and tricky and that we were just going to run stairs or something (it's happened before), until we realized we were actually going to play follow the leader. Everybody had a turn and we could pick anything we wanted to do as long as we were moving - we played TV tag and Simon Says and Duck-Duck-Goose and did the limbo under the volleyball net, and played Leapfrog and ran sprints and did the Hokey Pokey. And everybody was running around shouting with the biggest grins on their faces. I know we're all 18-22-year-olds, but sometimes you just need to let loose and act like you're seven. Especially because ninety percent of the people around here expect you to act like your forty-two all the time.



And THEN, Stephen and I have got this game going where we have a playing card that we're trying to give back to the other person without them realizing it. I'm not sure how it started and I'm not sure why it's continuing. Maybe it's because we're both competitive people. Yesterday morning, he put it in my hand with a lollipop he was giving me. So I mailed it back to him through inter-campus mail. Then he came stopped by to say hi when I was in the library yesterday afternoon and somehow - I'm still not sure how this one worked - put it inside my wallet in my coat pocket without me noticing, so that when I opened it to get my ID at dinner, there it was. Most recently, I mailed it to his Biology professor in an envelope with a nice note asking to please return the envelope to Stephen Mowery, a student in his 9:00 am Biology class. The rules are - you can't do the same thing twice, and you can't do something somebody's already done to you.



Finally, my friend Brad (a really great kid who lives on Stephen's hall, and who I rode to Columbus with a couple of weeks ago) keeps harrassing me in the library. I'll be sitting there minding my own business and he'll sneak right up behind me and say "hello" in a really sinister voice in my ear. Everytime I get up to go find a book, he steals something off my desk. Once it was my Spanish textbooks. Another time he took every single writing utensil I had in my backpack. Sometimes he leaves his trash on my chair. On occasion, he'll walk by and reach out to take something, I'll slap his hand, and he'll hit me upside the head in a very Gibbs-esque fashion. Then he'll wander off shaking his head, saying, "kids kids kids..."



On a more serious note, my lacrosse stuff should be in today. The club ordered a new chest protector, new gloves, and a new helmet. I'm so excited. I'm used to the decrepit stuff, but it'll be nice to have new things. It was really expensive, though. The helmet alone cost $250, because it has a special spring-mechanism thing that's extra protection against concussions. And the chest protector has a special pad that goes right over your heart, so it diffuses impact from that part of your chest and ribs.



They're having a memorial service here on campus sometime in the next couple of days. We had a terrible house fire just a couple of blocks away on Friday, I think. A twenty-one-year-old fireman was killed trying to save the people inside. They're holding the service here on campus because it's the only venue in town big enough to hold that many people.



Alright, that's all. I'm off to do more homework. Surprise, surprise...

a happy working song

One week from two days after tomorrow, Easter break starts. I've never looked forward to a break so much in my life. The five exams and two papers I have before them are looking a little overwhelming at this point - kind of like an extra finals week - but what can you do? Just keep plowing through, that's what.

I'm angry that my spanish classes have been canceled. I understand that the professor has to have surgery, and there's no such thing as substitute teachers in college, so the only choice the have is to cancel the class entirely. While it's surely a blessing in disguise (did I mention already the five tests and two papers?), I'm angry that two of my six classes are canceled for the next two weeks.

I'm not the only one with problems in the next week. My friend Jason just walked by and said that he has to take a Sociology midterm at 1:00 today. Good luck to him - that was the hardest test I had to take all last year.

Somehow I'm scraping by. Okay, scratch that. I'm doing really well. I have solid As in four out of six of my classes and Bs in the other two, but I have no idea how I'm doing it. Everything just seems to be completely out-of-whack all the time. I'm just plowing through work in what feels like a really disorganized, haphazard way and pulling off these amazing grades. Don't get me wrong, I'm definitely putting the work in - if I'm not at practice or in class I'm definitely studying - but I just feel so pressed for time all of the time. You know it's bad when you start trying to decide if it's wiser to skip a meal so you can fit in another hour of homework or if you should stay up extra late and get up early, or how close to the beginning of practice you can stay in the library and still make it there on time. (People have been misjudging this - we keep having to run sprints because of it.) This past Saturday, I got up at 8:00, went up to the SAC, and did homework straight through till 7:00 at night. Then I did three more hours of it while I was at my job. It's crazy. Honestly and truly, I don't know how I'm doing it. God definitely has a hand in my success this semester, because there's no way I'm doing this all by myself.

On that note, I need to get back to paper-writing and midterm studying. I'm trying to get this final page of the second half of my Spec Mind paper written before lunch so I can study for my FitWell midterm all afternoon and start on my CivArts paper tonight. Sometime, too, I have to do Spanish lab.

This place is crazy. But I honestly wouldn't have it any other way. I always work better when I'm a little bit over my head (in this case, a lot over my head) and between schoolwork and lacrosse and keeping up with all the million things I do around here, I've never been pushed so much, and I've also never been this happy.

So this is me peacing out till next time.

3/3/08

This is the lovliest day we've had in a long while. Warm AND sunny - quite the combination! It was one of those days that's ridiculously hard and ridiculously busy, but so rewarding at the same time. I got to do some really difficult things today:

My lacrosse team went on a road run today since it was so wonderful outside. A four-mile road run. A four-mile road run in thirty-four minutes. It was pretty fast and pretty hard. My stomach hurt for about an hour afterwards and my legs are going to kill me in the morning, but it was so worth it.

Also, I finished writing my Spec Mind paper this evening. I think this is one of the best papers I've ever written. I actually had a really fantastic time researching it - just ask Jenn, I kept coming home from the library spewing all these random facts about death and dying and how cool biology is. I think she's even happier that I'm done with this paper than I am.

Stephen's been awesome. Today we went for a walk and he shoved me into a puddle, which knocked him down a couple of awesome points, but it might have been revenge for the snowbank I'd shoved him into about a block prior.

What an awesome day. God is good.