The Day Annetta Hacked Erika's Blog (Again)

Do you hear that sound?

That sound would be me laughing gleefully. I am laughing gleefully because, right now, I am sitting in a warm living room, and from this living room, I can look out the window. And there is no snow on the ground. Because it is a balmy 33 degrees outside.

Thirty-three degrees is classified as balmy by us Northerners if it's anytime after October 1st.

In case you haven't deduced this yet, I am no longer in my native state. I am much farther south, visiting Jessica and Kevin, and Kevin's family. Oh, and I decided to bring Erika with me as well, but apparently she doesn't feel like blogging at the moment. So you get to put up with me instead.

This is the part I'm bad at. I think I'm supposed to give all of you random, mundane details like "The ride down was fine" and "We are all doing fine" etc., etc. I'm better at making things up (it's much more fun) but for Erika's sake (after all, I am writing this in her name...) I will attempt to be mostly honest (read: boring).

So the car trip was fine - we arrived at about six p.m., after driving for about six hours. And Kevin and Jessica and all the people down here are indeed doing fine.

Phew, we got that part out of the way. Now I can talk about interesting things.

For instance, did you know that you can buy chocolate shaped like cute little penguins? Jessica, Kevin, Erika, and I went shopping this morning and Erika (with her Penguin radar) discovered the chocolate penguins roughly five seconds after entering the store. Who says Christmas shopping can only benefit the people on the receiving end of the gifts?

We also went to the library. I really like libraries. I like to think that I'm not a nerd (or a geek - believe it or not, there is a difference...I just can't thing of what it is) but when I go to a library I start believing that being a nerd might not be so bad after all. When I'm rich and famous, I plan on owning several libraries.

We checked out a huge stack of movies and Erika discovered a book that she hasn't read yet, so it was a good library. While we're on that subject, have you ever noticed that there are no Thanksgiving movies? There are plenty of Christmas movies (For instance, we always watch It's a Wonderful Life and The Grinch that Stole Christmas) but nobody makes movies about Thanksgiving. At least, not that I've noticed. But I digress.

This is the part where I make wild promises to blog everyday until I get home and you laugh at the computer screen in disbelief because you're very smart and you know I won't do that. So instead, I'm just going to say that I will try to post again sometime before too long...that is, as long as I don't get too many comments begging me to leave to blogging to the expert (that would be Erika).

Signing off!

-Annetta

Houghton Happenings: the first half of November

 So it's a relaxed Sunday evening here on the Houghton Campus. I'm relaxing in the campus center, with Sam, Evan,

.................never mind! Life moved forward and this blog post didn't. I videochatted with my family and went to Koinonia (the Sunday evening worship service here on campus), called Annetta, and now I'm in a dorm lounge with a bunch of friends, some of whom are doing homework, and some of whom are watching TV.

 It has snowed out here a couple times. The first time it snowed, we got about 6 inches of the most photogenic fluffy snow you could ask for. Obviously, I went out and took pictures of it. And Tyler and I made a little snowman too.



Today, Evan and I went to the Fillmore Wesleyan church...that's where I've been attending. I think I've mentioned that one of my profs (Laura) is the children's pastor there, and I've enjoyed going and helping. We go for Sunday School, and then I help with the kids during the sermon part of the church service. Today, they did something special for the college students who attend there. Several families hosted a progressive lunch for us; we split into smaller groups, and went to three different homes and ate either an appetizer, a main course, or dessert with them. So we ate from 1 to about 3:30...it was wonderful :)

 Classes are going well. There's beginning to be a glimmer of light and the end of the academic tunnel of doom. We're getting our final projects assigned, and I can finally see the end of the homework assignments...most classes only have like a paper, a group project, and a book left. I'm not entirely sure how I've been doing gradewise, because midterm grades still aren't up (Jordan, I will say this for good ol' SUNY Fred...at least those profs graded and returned stuff within like a couple weeks! I'm going to get papers back that I won't remember writing.) But I'm enjoying my classes, and the professors are wonderful...they pray before class, and oftentime ask for prayer requests before praying.

 So I wrote that yesterday, which was Sunday. Today is Monday. Just as a random glimpse of what my days look like, here's what I did today: I got up at about 7:40, and got over to the dining hall at just after 8. Nathaniel and I do devotions during breakfast, and usually some other friends join us. This morning, Sam and Tyler did devotions with us (Galatians 4...we just read a chapter and talk about it. We started in Colossians, and then went to Galatians). Then I had class from 9 to 10:05, and then class starting at 10:15. Normally, the second class goes til 11:20 or so, but this morning we had an exam. I had actually completely forgotten about it...so there goes my A in that class :P Actually, I'm not sure what my grade is in that class, but if I had an A, I'm about 99% sure that I don't any more. Yeah...one must study for Case exams.

After that exam of horror, I went to chapel with everyone, and then lunch. After lunch, I had about a half hour before my next class, so Nathaniel showed me some games he just got on his phone which evaluate different parts of your brain, like your memory recognition, spatial memory, verbal and math power, and so forth. That was fun.And then I had class (Biblical Interpretation) and then work for two hours. Once I got out of work, I crashed for about a half hour in my room before supper. And now I'm sitting in the library, theoretically studying, but in actuality listening to Josh Groban and blogging.

 Later tonight, I'm planning to go rock climbing with a few other girls. Most of my friends are doing rehearsal for Houghton's Christmas Prism, which if I understand right, is like a musical celebration of Christmas. So they're doing that tonight...and probably every night this week...so I'm going rock climbing with the other non-music people in my friend group :)

These next pictures are from Saturday, which was a lovely and warm day and I was needing an adventure, so I hauled Nathaniel off with me to the ski hill and we wandered around and took pictures of photogenic fungi and admired the scenic-ness and sat on trees that were essentially perpendicular to the ground.

Anyhow, there's a random and probably highly un-cohesive update! I probably won't blog again til after Thanksgiving break, so I hope everyone has a blessed Thanksgiving :) I hope you all know how thankful I am to have you in my life...I've recently been extra aware of just how blessed I am to have so many awesome friends in my life. And if you feel led, I would love to have you leave a comment and tell me what's up in your life :)