One week down!

The first week of classes always feels ridiculously long, and I realized over the past few days that I bit off considerably more than I can chew. For some reason I thought it was smart to sign up for seven classes, three of them being advanced literature courses. I conveniently forgot that every literature class involves typically involves more reading homework than my brain can ever contain....and that amount is infinitely beyond my abilities (and sanity) when multiplied times three. So when I mentioned to my friends how overwhelmed I felt with my semester workload, they immediately proposed a logical solution: drop one of the classes. Their reasoning was solid, as they reminded me that I would be able to get that same credit during the semester I'm planning to study abroad. As they listed all the reasons why it would make sense for me to make my life easier by dropping the class, I found myself arguing with them....and I couldn't even figure out why I was putting up a fight.

Ultimately, I didn't want to admit I couldn't do it. This was absurd... first, because it's insanely prideful, and second, because I imposed this workload on myself. Dropping a class seemed like an admission of failure, when I'm really just admitting I'm human and that I need my sanity. It was a good wake up call at the beginning of the semester, to see the unreasonable amount of self-worth I put in academic performance and success. This is the last semester that I get to invest in the lives of many of my closest friends....why would I want to spend it pouring miserably over literature anthologies?

So I dropped a class, and I feel really good about it. I'll still have plenty of work (lots of Chaucer, Donne, and Milton in my future) but hopefully not to the point of insanity.

On a less serious note (maybe)......
Great things of an “entertainment” nature this week: Watching “24” while decorating my friends' wedding invitations (that combination just seems ironic to me), enjoying the two hour Lost premiere (twice), and our annual viewing of Lord of the Rings (we only got through the first one, but I'm looking forward to more in the months to come)!

Back...to Bride-land

After a long, restful month at home, I am finally back to my other home in Greensboro. While my break at home has been wonderful, especially getting to see my family, I must say that I am thrilled to be back! It is wonderful to see all my dear friends after so long apart. I don't think I've been alone for a single minute since returning Friday night, which has actually been pretty delightful, even for an introvert like me.

Since my return, one word has filled most of our waking hours: wedding, wedding, wedding! Since four of my best friends (two brides, two grooms) are all getting married in just a few short months, wedding planning has become the favorite activity around here. On Saturday, I went wedding dress shopping for the first time as a friend of the bride-to-be, and let me tell you, bridal stores are bizzare places. We walked in and there was a whole wall lined with mirrors, all reflecting multiple women parading around in a variety fo wedding dresses, viewing themselves with a mixture of skepticism and admiration as their family members and friends surrounded them with loud commentary on the dress in question. After looking through racks of dresses for a while, it was fun to just sit down and watch people try on dress after dress, while my friends and I whispered our opinions of how each one looked (there are some brides with seriously bad taste out there, seriously).

I have a feeling this semester will be filled with many more discussions of dresses, tuxes, flowers, invitations, dancing, music, etc.....the next few months will be quite interesting....and exciting.

In other news, my house is the North Pole right now. Brrr....

Artistic Virtuosity


I spent this past weekend with my great friends Sarah and Rachel in Greensboro. Though I've loved being home with my family, it was nice to visit my "other home" for the weekend. We had a very leisurely Saturday, and spent our afternoon painting on some of Rachel's old canvases out on Sarah's terrace. I haven't painted since high school, so I loved getting back into it! Despite our inabilities, Sarah hung our three masterpieces in her kitchen. Clearly, none of us are going to be the next Van Gogh, but we sure had a lot of fun
splashing color around!









Life Plans (Or Lack Thereof)

New Year's Day was quite a day.

I had lunch with four of my best friends from high school (I didn't have many in those days, but the ones I had were wonderful and still remain amazing). We recounted the adventurous tales from our year and hopes for the future.....one just returned from Scotland, one arrived a few days ago from Thailand, one spent the spring semester in London, and one is about to go to South Africa in a few months. After lunch, I had coffee with another one of my closest high school friends, who shared experiences from her summers doing missions work in Jamaica and Moldova.

It just boggles my mind. When we all graduated a few years ago, we couldn't have imagined or expected the ways our lives would turn out. We couldn't have foreseen the directions our different paths would lead. I know my high school vision of the way my life would unfold was utterly different than the reality of my past few years....and yet, I wouldn't want things any other way. At every turn, my carefully laid plans seem to crumble, only to reveal plans more beautiful than my own, with such a greater depth and scope than my own small structures. One of my favorite songs of this past year was by Sondre Lerche, singing the refrain, "Better be prepared to be surprised." That line keeps replaying in my mind--I feel like that's the only thing I can prepare for anymore.

Today over coffee, my friend asked me what my plans for the next few years are. I thought about for a second and laughed before I replied, "You know, I've always had really elaborate, specific plans for my life. And consistantly over the last few years, God keeps stripping more of those away....and keeps surprising me with how He works. So I'll let Him keep working, and just live step by step, even though it terrifies me sometimes."

Over several days of my Christmas break, I was researching lots of options for the future....study abroad, internships, graduate school, careers, missions....and I started to feel really overwhelmed and afraid. Uncertainty terrifies me....lack of control really terrifies me. I panic when I realize I can't control God, when I can't direct His plans, when His work in my life and in the world doesn't make perfect, orderly sense in my mind. Then I take a step back, and think about His faithfulness....through sorrow, joy, friendship, loss, confusion, peace....and realize how little I had to do with the way my life has turned out thus far. I didn't meticulously plan and carefully research the most incredible opportunities of my past few years....they were handed to me. A few examples: My incredible family of friends in Greensboro (I couldn't have handpicked more delightful, fun, insightful, loving, creative, warm individuals to live in community with me through these years) were placed directly in my path, without me ever looking for them..... A guy in my dorm knocked on my door one night and said, "Hey, there's this camp I love, and I think you should work there".....A friend called out of the blue last October and said "I heard about this missions organization called World Harvest Mission, and it sounds like something you would be interested in." Deep friendships, my summer as a camp counselor, and my internship in Prague are only a few of the many, many doors God has opened for me that I could have never planned....and they've all changed my life forever.

And as 2009 unfolds, I'm filled with hope as much as I'm filled with uncertainty, eager to see what happens next. Two of my best friends in the whole wide world got engaged today, and I'm still grinning from ear to ear thinking about it. Another dear friend called me a few days ago to tell me about the baby son he saw for the first time on a sonogram. Weddings, births, and a million beautiful things I cannot forsee are happening this year, and it fills me with deep joy, the kind that makes you cry as much as it makes you dance.

I'm excited.....and expecting to be surprised.
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Currently listening to: "Now My Feet Won't Touch the Ground," by Coldplay

Done...and still alive!

Okay, so it's been a while. Forgive me, I'm just now beginning to recover from all the insanity. My lack of updates is pretty inexcusable, but let me give you some excuses.

I hit the ground running after returning from Thanksgiving, and there hasn't been a moment to breathe since then. Exams, late night rehearsals, work, final projects, and more papers than I've ever written have filled every hour of my days and sleepless nights for the past couple of weeks. My friend Paul okingly proposed recently that a good night's sleep should be a basic human right, mandated by law, and I'm beginning to agree. I just don't function on four hours like I did in high school.
But now, I'm breathing once again. Life is good. I had a few days to relax with my friends in Greensboro after my last exam, and now I'm back home for the holidays. It's marvelous to feel completely free from the anxiety of homework.

Coming out to the end of the semester always feels somewhat strange. Your life has been utterly consumed with academic assignments, and then all of a sudden, it all disappears. No more constant nagging pressure in your mind or guilt when you're doing something just for fun. Suddenly, the priorities that seemed so important, the work that consumed your thoughts....it all seems utterly irrelevant and meaningless. It's something I've thought about a lot this semester, as my classes have utterly dominated my time and mental energy more than ever.
I remember one night a couple of months ago I was sitting in my living room writing a paper, when I heard one of my roommates say on the phone, "Oh, I can't. I really have to stay at home and do homework tonight." Any other time, this would have seemed like a completely ordinary sentance, but all of a sudden, her words hit me as remarkably strange and sad. "We're sitting at home doing homework?" I echoed disbelievingly. I thought about all the people our age around the world who at that very moment were out fighting for food on the streets, taking care of their families, doing hours of backbreaking labor just to get enough money to survive, or countless other pursuits that are infinitely removed from this small academic world of students spending their hours doing arbitrary assignments designated by professors who are also secluded to this small academic world, just so we can get a degree that "means something" because the people from this limited world say it does. Most of the classes required for my two degrees don't even have any practical application for what I want to do with the rest of my life. We talk and write endlessly about all of this theoretical knowledge and pride ourselves on our academic capabilities, but what good does it do in the world? I could tell you some fascinating stuff about global dance history and critical literary theory...but who cares?

I know that's a limited view of education, and I realize that a quality education can be a valuable resource and a foundation for more tangible pursuits. Don't get me wrong, I am normally the first to argue for the value of knowledge for knowledge's sake.....I just think academics can't become the end goal of your life. It's so easy to get caught up in that system of work and reward, when the whole system of grades and gaining professorial approval is so fleeting.
Okay, sorry for the long tangent. This is what happens when I don't write for weeks....

In the stressful final weeks of the semester, here are my top 5 highlights:
1) I was studying one day in the coffee shop down the street from my house, when the subject of foreign languages came up in my conversation with the owner as he served me my latte. He asked if I spoke anything besides English and I replied, "Well, a minimal amount of Czech." His face lit up as he spoke, "Dobry den! Jak se mate?" I was so taken aback ( and remarkably rusty on my Czech skills) that I stammered for a reply, but it certainly made me happy to hear someone speaking it, and made me wish I had more practice.

2) One of my friends gave me The Silmarillion for Christmas. Needless to say, I was thrilled. When most people think of Tolkien, the Lord of the Rings trilogy comes to mind, but Tolkien actually considered The Silmarillion to be his defining life work. He worked on it his whole life, writing stories for it even in his days as a young soldier fighting in the trenches. I've never read the whole thing, but I'm super excited to delve into it over Christmas. We began reading it aloud before I left Greensboro, and it's really beautiful to hear Tolkien's rich mythology spoken out loud.

3) Another coffee shop moment, but this one was on campus (probably some of the worst coffee known to man, but sometimes I get desperate). After one of my bleary-eyed 8 AM choroegraphy rehearsals, I spent a couple of hours writing papers in the coffee shop before my next class. I tend to get very distracted trying to work in public settings, as I can't help my fascination with people-watching. I sat in the corner and observed as student after student came through the line, placing their orders, all of them flippantly ignoring the kind older woman who served them. Without fail, she called each customer "Honey" or "Sweetie" or "Dear," and gave them the same warm smile, no matter how demanding or rude they were. After a long time of watching this interaction, I was starting to feel quite sad for this woman, and surprised at how consumed my fellow students were with their own lives that they couldn't show a bit of cordiality. Then all of a sudden, this guy came to the front of the line, and actually smiled at this woman. Not only did he smile, but he also called her by name, asked her how her family was doing, joked and laughed with her. He was just an average student, just like all the others who ignored her.The fact that someone would take the time to just treat this worker like an actual human being was a wonderfully bright moment of kindness in the middle of my stressful week.

4) Finishing LOST! This is one of the monumental achievements of my year. My friends and I started the series from Season 1 at the beginning of the year, and it's been a year long journey until last week, when we finally finished the emotional finale of Season 4 after many nights of watching episode after episode. I've been behind for so long that it almost feels strange to finally be caught up with the rest of the world. Action, mystery, suspense, romance, philosophy, intriguing chracacters, crazy plotlines....it just doesn't get much better. Season 5 premieres in January, and it can't come a moment too soon. I'm hooked for good.

5)And the crowning moment.....CHRISTMAS PARTY! A night of laughter, live music jams, games, good conversation, and wonderful friends, old and new. My roommates and I hosted a magnificant Christmas celebration at our home, and I must say, I never would have believed how many multitudes of people we could cram into our cozy living room. We cooked some food ourseleves, and then people came through the door with dish after dish....chocolate chunk cookies, gingerbread, baked brie, butternut squash soup, homemade fudge....by the end of the night, we had a table piled high with delicious treats (which fed us for the next few days). As the house got crowded, we decided to take the celebration out into the streets. We walked (in a rather festively dressed mob) around campus, dancing and singing carols at the top of our lungs, speading cheer (and getting quite a few odd looks) wherever we went.
Nothing says Christmas spirit quite like that!
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frequently listening to: "15 Step," by Radiohead and "Everyday," by Buddy Holly

I will never eat Subway again

So there are many reasons for my infrequent writing, but the first and foremost would be this:

Technology has decided to hate me. In this semester alone, I have experienced a personal technological breakdown: first my camera, then my phone, then my iPod, and the finishing touch this past week, my laptop. It began when my internet stopped working, but at least that was temporarily manageable. Most recently, it has stopped showing any image on the monitor all together. I feel a bit like a laptop pirate these days, seizing open computer time from my friends whenever a brief opportunity arises. I never realized how dependent I am on my computer until now, and I'm seeing how difficult it becomes to write papers, submit school assignments, talk to friends, and keep up with the outside world.

I went to see Twilight at midnight on Thursday with my friend Rachel, which I realize is ridiculously cheesy and probably aimed at a demographic far younger than me, but I simply don't care. I had to go see it after just finishing the book, and midnight just seems to be an ideal time for watching a movie about vampires. This younger demographic I mentioned became quite evident when the movie began. High-pitched squeals of teenage girlish delight filled the theater when the dashing male lead made his first appearance, and continued through most of the movie. Despite a few loud admonishments from the few adult members of the audience (myself included), the shrieking and giggling at every moment that even hinted of romantic tension continued throughout the film, much to my chagrin. Ugh, teenagers. My personal favorite was when an irate adult yelled that they should all be in bed because it was a school night.

I was delighted to walk out of the movie at 2:30 AM to find beautiful white snowflakes falling thick in the cold night air. My exuberance(which led to some parking-lot twirling and jumps of joy) paled in comparison to that of the hoard of high-schoolers charging out of the theater with screams of excitement. Sadly, all the snow had melted by noon the next day, but still, it was a nice way to welcome the holiday season.

And speaking of holiday season....my house is now decked out for Christmas! I came home tired from an afternoon of boring work on Friday, only to be marvelously surprised by the twins, who had spent the afternoon putting up festive decorations around our living room. Peaceful strains of James Taylor crooning "Have Yourself a Marry Little Christmas" floated through the air and the sound of a whistling tea kettle rang out from the kitchen, while sparkling white lights and shimmering ribbons filled the room with holiday magic. It was quite the heart-warming scene discover upon coming home.

That evening, we enjoyed the cozy glow of our twinkle lights as we watched The Painted Veil. This is a recent movie, starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts as a bitterly unhappy married couple during a deadly epidemic of cholera in 1920' s China. The cinematography and music are both absolutely stunning, and I found the story deeply moving. Two people, utterly flawed and horrible, make their lives mutually miserable through infidelity and isolation, but are still forced to co-exist as a married couple through this horrific cholera epidemic. I won't give away the ending, but I would suggest seeing it for yourself.

My friend Peter came home from the Navy for a couple of days at the beginning of this week, and it was wonderful to get to see him after so many months. Monday night, we called our friend (and his girlfriend) Rachel, who is serving as a missionary in Kenya right now. It was incredible to hear her beautiful voice from across the globe, and it made us miss her terribly.

Then came Tuesday....ugh, yuck. As far as I can tell, I got a bad case of food poisoning (and as far as I can deduce, Subway was the culprit. I hate you, Subway). I've spent the past couple of days being very, very sick, curled up in a ball on my couch, and surviving mostly off of saltine crackers and Gatorade. I'm just hoping for a miraculous recovery at this point so that I can eat at least a few tiny bites of Thanksgiving dinner!

Pilobolus and Prayer

Good gracious, I am glad this week is over. Sickness has been spreading around my friends like the plague, and me and one of my roommates were the latest victims this week. Massive papers due at the end of the week were just the icing on the cake.

There were some wonderfully bright spots to this week- in particular, Tuesday, the day of Pilobolus at UNCG. If you have never heard of them, well, you're missing out on some spectacular stuff. They're a famous modern dance company that combines stunning athleticism with visual grandeur. You might have seen them doing some silhouette work at the Academy Awards or in some car commercials. A Pilobolus performance = dance meets circus meets gymnastics meets awesome. Not only did they perform Tuesday night, but they also taught a class for my dance department that morning, which I got to sit in on. They all seemed incredibly nice, very full of energy....and built like steel. You'd have to be to do their choreography. It's the most high energy, high intensity, strength-demanding dance I've ever seen. Hence, the majority of the company is also male, though I've gotta say, the two women definitely held their own in the strength department.

Another great part of the week was 24/7 prayer at my church. Starting this past Sunday, my small church was open 24 hours a day for people from all over the city to come and pray. Though people were free to come in at any time, people also chose to sign up for timeslots during the day, so that at least one person was there praying at all hours of the day or night. Me and a few of my friends took a midnight-2:00 AM shift, and my breath was taken away as I walked in. You could pray as you work on a mosaic, knit, weave on a loom, paint, play music, write on walls, collage, read books, write in books....I can't even describe the environment, but it was a very engaging and beautiful way to commune with God. My church is the most vibrant, loving, artistically and intellectually stimulating church body I've ever seen, and I just consider myself incredibly blessed to get to be a part of it.


Speaking of blessings, I spent Saturday night with some wonderful friends, as we decided to celebrate Christmas early with a mushy romantic holiday movie. We realized we would only have a little over a week after returning from Thanksgiving break to celebrate the best time of the year ..and that simply isn't enough. So we all broke out our our best Christmas pajamas and headed over to my friend Sarah's house for some delicious homemade apple crisp and hot chocolate, which was divine. I'm so excited that the holiday season is upon us!

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