Tuesday, March 02, 2004
Overdue blogging...
I haven’t blogged in ages. My life has been really busy for the last week and a half, both at home and at work, so I just haven’t done anything on here! Um, let’s see. Various updates, not necessarily in chronological order!
Two weekends ago:
I had dinner with a couple of girls who were English majors at Biola a little while before I transferred there. It was cool to compare Biola English department stories and have some good book conversation. After dinner, I rushed off to the YAF Retreat with PBC. I went into it knowing hardly anybody, but I met a lot of great people over the weekend. It’s really a fun group of people! They'll be forming some new small groups in the coming weeks, so I feel like the timing is really right for me to jump in with this group. I'm looking forward to getting more involved, since YAF's pretty large.
Fun stuff: the retreat of course included the requisite dumb skits and opportunities to look stupid in front of large groups of people. Most elaborate of these was the YAF version of American Idol. It was hilarious, they had a host calling himself Ryan Piecrust and the judges were Peter Abdullah (who gave everyone a score of 10), "Simone" (female, you see), and guest judge William "Hunk" of "She Bangs" fame. The rest of us were in teams and each team had to pick a song to perform, complete with dance moves. Our team, consisting of three girls and 6 guys, did “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and the guys got totally into it. Kinda scary. But not as scary as the other team who stole our song…they had guys in makeup. With purses. Singing falsetto. THAT was scary.
It's funny, because my main purpose for the weekend was to get to know people, rather than any spiritual reason. Not that I didn't expect to hear from God, it's just that I didn't go looking for any deep revelations. But Sunday was really a wonderful time of worship and God speaking to me about some things that I've been struggling with for a while—about missions and what role that will play in my future, and the tension I feel between the now of publishing and the desire to serve in overseas missions at some point.
What else…
The Oscars were fun on Sunday. Go LOTR!! I got together with some coworkers to watch and we had fun making fun of some of the fashions as well as predicting winners. I didn’t do so well on that. Darn documentary categories. I made Heather’s vacuum cleaner bars for the event, and they were a bit hit. We had some interesting conversations about politics during the course of the afternoon. They were blown away by the fact that I’m a Republican. Laryssa commented “I don’t think I’ve ever met a real live Republican before!” And Anne said, “It makes sense, though, cause you’re really Christian, right?” Hee hee. Then Laryssa asked me what my views were on gay marriage. It's funny, because my beliefs are really SO very different from theirs, and it's weird to have so little common ground to start from to discuss some of these things. It was a good conversation, though, and it’s been good to share a bit of who I am and what I believe as I get to be closer friends with these girls.
A while ago, but I didn’t mention it here:
I got the time off to go to Wales this summer with the team from Green Hills!! I’ve even booked my flight, since I found an amazing deal on the web…the internet is a wonderful thing. I’m really looking forward to this trip. I know it’ll be a bit of stretching for me this year, since my mom has asked me to teach a group of my own rather than just co-teaching with her. Kinda scares me, but it’ll be good.
This is getting hella long. Hee hee! I had an elaborate discussion with some people at retreat about the word “hella,” apparently widely used by San Jose high school students. So using it myself makes me laugh. Anyway. Enough of this; I’m off!
Two weekends ago:
I had dinner with a couple of girls who were English majors at Biola a little while before I transferred there. It was cool to compare Biola English department stories and have some good book conversation. After dinner, I rushed off to the YAF Retreat with PBC. I went into it knowing hardly anybody, but I met a lot of great people over the weekend. It’s really a fun group of people! They'll be forming some new small groups in the coming weeks, so I feel like the timing is really right for me to jump in with this group. I'm looking forward to getting more involved, since YAF's pretty large.
Fun stuff: the retreat of course included the requisite dumb skits and opportunities to look stupid in front of large groups of people. Most elaborate of these was the YAF version of American Idol. It was hilarious, they had a host calling himself Ryan Piecrust and the judges were Peter Abdullah (who gave everyone a score of 10), "Simone" (female, you see), and guest judge William "Hunk" of "She Bangs" fame. The rest of us were in teams and each team had to pick a song to perform, complete with dance moves. Our team, consisting of three girls and 6 guys, did “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” and the guys got totally into it. Kinda scary. But not as scary as the other team who stole our song…they had guys in makeup. With purses. Singing falsetto. THAT was scary.
It's funny, because my main purpose for the weekend was to get to know people, rather than any spiritual reason. Not that I didn't expect to hear from God, it's just that I didn't go looking for any deep revelations. But Sunday was really a wonderful time of worship and God speaking to me about some things that I've been struggling with for a while—about missions and what role that will play in my future, and the tension I feel between the now of publishing and the desire to serve in overseas missions at some point.
What else…
The Oscars were fun on Sunday. Go LOTR!! I got together with some coworkers to watch and we had fun making fun of some of the fashions as well as predicting winners. I didn’t do so well on that. Darn documentary categories. I made Heather’s vacuum cleaner bars for the event, and they were a bit hit. We had some interesting conversations about politics during the course of the afternoon. They were blown away by the fact that I’m a Republican. Laryssa commented “I don’t think I’ve ever met a real live Republican before!” And Anne said, “It makes sense, though, cause you’re really Christian, right?” Hee hee. Then Laryssa asked me what my views were on gay marriage. It's funny, because my beliefs are really SO very different from theirs, and it's weird to have so little common ground to start from to discuss some of these things. It was a good conversation, though, and it’s been good to share a bit of who I am and what I believe as I get to be closer friends with these girls.
A while ago, but I didn’t mention it here:
I got the time off to go to Wales this summer with the team from Green Hills!! I’ve even booked my flight, since I found an amazing deal on the web…the internet is a wonderful thing. I’m really looking forward to this trip. I know it’ll be a bit of stretching for me this year, since my mom has asked me to teach a group of my own rather than just co-teaching with her. Kinda scares me, but it’ll be good.
This is getting hella long. Hee hee! I had an elaborate discussion with some people at retreat about the word “hella,” apparently widely used by San Jose high school students. So using it myself makes me laugh. Anyway. Enough of this; I’m off!
| posted by Barbara | 10:02 PM