October 2007 Archives

Today in German class we read "Erlkoenig" by Goethe. We also listened to it put to music by..Schubert, I believe. Anyway. It was so awesome. I read that poem for poetry reading at German competition, and I think it's a really cool poem.

This weekend I stayed up till three in the morning on Saturday and Sunday. Saturday morning we were watching Grease. I never realised how much bad stuff is in that movie.....I was singing along to at least half of the songs. It was nice.

I'm looking forward to the next couple weekends. This coming weekend Luke will hopefully be coming up and hanging out all day. There are several people who want to meet him, so we'll be hanging out with them too. I'm really really looking forward to that. The weekend after that is the Mute Math concert, which I'm coming home for (hint hint, Dad!).

And the weekend after that..on the seventeenth....ANNA IS GOING TO BE HERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm SO excited about that!!! I'm coming home that weekend too, but whoever picks Anna up can pick me up on the way to the airport, so it works. Right now the plan is that Luke and I will be picking Anna up. I'm not sure what all else will be happening that weekend, but it'll be awesome. And Anna and I are going to go to Taco Bueno. And it's going to be awesome.

Then Thanksgiving, then the weekend after Thanksgiving. I'll be home for Thanksgiving! So yeah. That's coming up and I'm excessively excited.

Last night I accidentally walked into the crochet and knitting club. So now I have yarn, a crochet hook on loan, and I'm making a scarf. I learned double crochet!!! That makes me smile. I've been smiling a lot today.

I have to think of something to write about for Understanding the Bible. It has to encompass Old and New Testaments. I'm really not sure. I'm thinking either something with the Psalms or something about Jesus as the Passover Lamb...yeah. Help? We only need to have a rough outline turned in Thursday, and we can change our topic, but yeah. The paper isn't due till after Thanksgiving break.

Yeah. Smiling is awesome. I'm having a really good day. Little things make me happy.

I hosted a prospective Friday night. That was exciting. I won't be able to host again until next semester, because the next Odyssey weekend is the weekend Anna's coming, so yeah.

I love how my window looks out on rush hour traffic about this time of day....

there was something else but I forgot what it was so yeah.

Parallel Fiction

That would be Aaron, Nathan, and Damian (plus another guy I don't know). Some of you know one or two of them. Anyway, they played at the Door last night and they were really good. So you should go listen to their music.

It was really cool for me seeing how far they've come, because I knew them before they were a band and I remember when Aaron wrote "My Old Guitar". So yeah.

I was a naughty girl. I stayed up till 2 in the morning talking with Anna. And Luke. Three-way phone conversations in the wee hours are the best. I hadn't really talked to Anna in a long time so it was really nice. And I was pretty sure we had three way calling, so hopefully I wasn't wrong....

Today in German I went on a "date" with this guy in my class. We're learning relationship turns (I can now say "kiss" and "cuddle/make out" in German!) and so we had "dates" that we had to describe...It was pretty funny, and what the "couples" came up with was pretty hilarious. Dr. Eidt is going to type up our stories, print them out, and have us guess which one goes with which "couple".

Tomorrow I have no classes. But I still have work-study. So that's pretty much no fun. It'll be all right though.

Today was absolutely gorgeous. It was one of those perfect Texas days. I ate lunch outside with twenty-five or so other people; we'd pushed seven circular tables together in a line. It was awesome. I love this place.

Oh yeah, I'm looking forward to your emails Dad! And if you want to buy Leopard, I have an education discount....hint hint....

So Dad, when are we getting it? :D

So. For those of you who don't know (Luke, basically)...I remember attending Mennonite, Anglican-or-something-like-it-I-think (what exactly was Society of the Good Shepherd??), conservative Episcopal, Orthodox, and Methodist churches regularly, as well as non-denominational, Methodist, and Pentecostal? youth groups. The youth groups were all of my choosing, while all but the Methodist church were churches I went to with my family. We also visited Lutheran, Catholic, and Baptist churches.

So I've been to a lot of different churches. But all I ever did was go to the church services. I went to Sunday school 1st-3d grade at one of the Episcopal churches, and then at the Methodist church in 10th-12th grade.

If you asked me what the Methodist church believed, I couldn't tell you. I could tell you a bit more about Episcopal beliefs (specifically about a sacrament (I think) being an "outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace" -- that's about all I remember of the Episcopal Catechism..sorry Mom!), but not much without looking at my Book of Common Prayer. I have even less idea of what exactly Foursquare believes -- though I think that's part of them, they don't have specific doctrines, they're concentrated more on other things.

Actually, I could tell you that all of those churches (except the Baptist) believe in the Apostle's and Nicene Creed, with the Orthodox leaving out "and the Son." I could tell you they all believe that you must be saved in basically the same way. But other than that? I'm completely lost. I know they're all Christian and I know they don't really agree about a lot of things. It's a pitfall of Christians; they tend to disagree on matters of doctrine. Loudly. Especially Protestants. Aside from Episcopalians, that is; they try to bridge most of it.

I'm fully convinced that they are all Christians. That's not a problem. But now I'm becoming more interested in the doctrines, since I never really learned any of them (aside from the Orthodox's image of the Trinity as a triangle). I'd kind of like to pick a denomination for its beliefs at some point in the future, if that makes any sense.

And since I happen to be surrounded by Catholics, I figured I might as well start learning about their doctrines. Major objections to this exploration are to be emailed to me. It's interesting, because my family has actually never gone to a Catholic church for long periods of time, my grandparents were nominally Catholic, and I've begun to think that Anglicans are Catholics without the Pope and praying to the saints. Though Anglicans definitely have the best music. Or Incarnation does, at least....

In other news, I went to the Welcome Mass at Cistercian a few days ago. There was one lady there with two small children. She was wearing a mantilla, as was her little girl. It reminded me of how I used to have to wear one, and it made me smile. I was going to say something to her about it but I wasn't able to, which is probably just as well.

Also, I got an 84 on the theology quiz which I thought I would get 65-75 on. So that's good. It also means that I currently have two As (in my TWO German classes) and two Bs (the other one is in English). I'll get the grade on my first Politics midterm tomorrow. I won't know my Euc grade until the end of the semester

Oh yes: Anything written herein which is seen as sorely incorrect I implore you to forgive and to tell me what is actually true. That is not the best sentence in the world, but I will leave it as is.

Here's an update!

I'm sure Mom and Dad remember Bill Ferris. He's kind of hard to forget, with that red hair. Well, one of the Charity Week things is a shave-off -- you specify an amount, people donate, and if you raise that amount you shave your head. Bill Ferris did it, and shaved his head. Most of it went to Locks of Love, which is good. That was about a week ago, and now he looks like he just got a buzz cut.

A week ago was the dance. I wore that one dress Anna made me buy back in junior year. The dance was so much fun and SO much better than the choir banquet dance sophomore year. Some of my friends and I went to Empress of China beforehand and IHOP afterwards.

Speaking of IHOP, we also went there on Tuesday (I thiiink) evening and Thursday night. The people who went on Thursday night decided that it will become a biweekly tradition, occurring after those with work-study get their paychecks...Speaking of paychecks, I need to go to the bank.

Schoolwise -- I'm making an A in German. We played Twister in German the other day. That was extremely amusing, because it was ten college students and one doctoral candidate playing. That doctoral candidate is an adjunt professor in the theology department and teaches some of my friends, so I got to tell those friends I played Twister with their professor. One of the girls was wearing a really short skirt. Somehow she managed to get things that did NOT require her to bend over, THANKFULLY....

I had a Politics exam on Monday. I still don't know how I did. Theology quiz Thursday, which I didn't do too well on, but I know I almost certainly made somewhere in the 65-75 range, so that's okay. Still haven't gotten the English paper revision back. Speaking of English, I don't have it on Monday morning because my professor is doing PhD stuff and can't make it. We're either going to have him on Wednesday or a sub, and Friday is Fall Reading Day. But we're ahead in that class, so it's okay.

The thing about my classes is, I have to have at least a B average to keep my scholarships for next year. If I don't have my scholarship I can't go to UD. I need to have a slightly higher average for the National Merit scholarship, but I can survive without that one so I'm not too worried. But right now I don't really know any grades, so yeah.

On Friday, Duncanville tennis had a match against Arlington Lamar. We don't like Arlington Lamar. Anyways, Duncanville team won 10-9. Luke lost doubles, but won singles. And I got to go watch, because Mrs. Olsen is a very, very nice lady. I also got to go home and see Lydia's adorable dwarf hamster!

I'm hoping to go to Incarnation tomorrow morning. I don't know if that'll work out though.

The thing about my bed at college is that it is ridiculously comfortable and makes it extremely hard to get up. This is at once a very good thing and a very bad thing, especially when one must get up early than one would like.

That's all for now!

This week is Charity Week. Charity Week basically means that everyone pays to do all sorts of mean and not so mean things to each other. One of these things is jail. Jail is especially cool because you can put your professors in jail, and thereby get out of class. This happens on Thursday and Friday only. Every person in the class puts in a dollar, and the professor goes to jail!

First class of the day: Euclidian and non-Euclidian geometry. Dr. Phillips takes roll, then a lady comes in and mentions coffee and doughnuts. Apparently the professors have their own "jail" where they can sit and relax with treats.

Second class of the day: Mr. Golden, the theology adjunct who teaches my Understanding the Bible class, doesn't quite understand jail. He teaches for forty-five minutes, then we take him down, give the money to the lady, he gives her money to get out, and then leaves. I felt kind of bad about putting him in jail, because he really didn't understand it but he did it anyway....

There is a certain professor named Father McGuire. He does everything he can to resist being put in jail, and he actually gets put in the real jail. It takes about six people, if not more, to get him into the jail, and then he stages breakouts during which people get out, but get soaked in the process. This guy is definitely on the older side of middle-aged, but he still manages to give the jailers a hard time. It's amazing and quite amusing; he's become a legend when it comes to the Jail.

Third and last class of the day: Intensive Elementary German. Dr. Eidt goes willingly, on the condition that we take him to the jail while singing the German national anthem. This, we soon find out, means walking up and down the Mall twice while singing. Next to playing Pterodactyl in the Catherine common room, this is one of the craziest things I have seen college students do. So we do that, he goes off to jail, and I enjoy free time. We're doing it again tomorrow, as we have him every day.

Also, any illegal drug paraphernalia is now illegal on campus. This includes hookahs. Hookahs look like the pipe the caterpillar smokes in Alice in Wonderland. The substance smoked in them on this campus is apparently not illegal. There are at least two or three on campus that I have seen. Anyway, hookahs are not allowed as of today and it makes me laugh, because a noticeable amount of people smoked from them in obvious places.

That's all for now!

On Hannah's trip home for the weekend we saw this most unusual site at 60 mph. For the new driver it is often a mystery as to why one often sees mattresses on the side of the road. What a wondrous opportunity we had to see a great bad example. Kids, they won't teach you this in college. So here you go: DON'T try this at home --or on the road. By popular request here is the photo.