Houghton: First Week Back

It is the end of the first week back to college. Break finished up well. We lost electricity a couple of times due to blizzard type stuff, and I had to break my "no going outside if the temperature is in the negative numbers" rule, and discovered that it was cold. Philip came over and went rustically camping in our woods, and by rustically I mean eating blueberry pancakes, homemade ice cream, playing games, and watching movies...and sleeping in the woods. We had fun sledding with him and Rachel too. And I got to spend time with my ol buddy Sarah, which was good.

And my mom and dad and Hosanna brought me (and allll my stuff!) back. We unloaded, ate supper, and I showed my dad the campus. And since then, it's been a crazy hodgepodge of classes, work, friends, and homework.

And I will now bore all of you and tell you about the classes I'm taking, in chronological order:
-Metaphysics, Morality, and Mind: the required philosophy class. It's good so far...but fairly similar to stuff I've read/heard, which I guess is good cause it's not like all new stuff.
-Foundations of Youth Ministry: this is a half semester class that will be replaced with Christian Formation of Youth, taught by the same guy. The name is pretty self-explanatory.
-Chapel: well, it's not really a class, but it's MWF between class and lunch.
-Systematic Theology: it's taught by Dr. Case, the guy who I took Intro to Christianity from last semester. It promises to be a difficult, engaging, good learning experience.
-Educating Exceptional Learners: this is a little more difficult, just because I don't know a lot about the public school system. But I already know I'm going to love this class, and I know that it will be super helpful for me, just because of where my interests lie.
-Backpacking. This is going to involve hiking in the woods every week, as well as a day trip in February and an overnight camping trip the last weekend of April.

So those classes, plus work Tuesday and Thursday morning, and MWF late afternoon, pretty much make up the framework of my schedule. Last night, several of my friends and I went for an evening hike on the ski hill. We had a good view of the stars at a couple places. Saturdays and Sundays are a little different schedule-wise, of course. Most of my friends take advantage of the weekend to catch up on sleep, but since I don't do well mixing up my schedule too much, I get up around 8 or 8:30. Sunday of course is church, and Saturday...well, today I ate breakfast and then talked to Stephen. And now I'm planning to do homework, and maybe get over to the music building and play some flute.

Another thing that added to my week was that every time I ate food, my stomach would tell me it wasn't happy to digest it. Somewhere around Thursday, I decided to be smart and start cutting out the food groups that have bothered me in the past (...with those being gluten, some dairy, some fats, some spices, and some vegetables). And, after strictly cutting out gluten for the past couple of days, I am feeling a lot, a lot better. This semester, Houghton has added an area in the cafeteria that serves food that doesn't have the 7 most common food allergens in it. So it's not impossible for me to get good food that is completely allergen-free. I'm very thankful for that!

So...no pictures, but that's a fairly decent update otherwise! Hope all you home friends are doing well!

Home and Houghton

Well, 2013 was a doozy of a year. A funeral, a bridal shower, a trip to FL, a college graduation (entailing a trip to MD/VA), a wedding, a trip to NC, a trip to MD, a highschool graduation, a transfer to Houghton, another trip to MD over Thanksgiving break, and the completion of my sophomore credits. Adventures in our back acres, dancing Scottish country dances with homeschool friends, taking my sister's senior pictures. Working at Bilerio's fruit farm, and finding a cute baby snapping turtle and a huge, huge toad. Picking blueberries barefoot in the rain. Making friends with the boss's cat. And then at college...so many things happened this past semester, and I really don't think I can summarize them. I made a lot of really awesome friends, I took 17 credits, I started working custodial, I started attending Fillmore Wesleyan Church with Evan and helping out with the children, made pizza, shot nerf guns, attended concerts, and managed not to fall asleep in any of my classes. I got to go home a couple times...once to go out to Indiana for a wedding :) And several of my friends came and visited me...I got to give several campus tours. Jennifer and Elizabeth came out the beginning of December and we went to Prism:




My last final was on December 19th, and classes start on the 13th. Break's been good: I've made and eaten a lot of food, caught up with a lot of friends, gone roller-blading with friends, gone sledding with the little siblings, watched a couple seasons of White Collar and Sherlock, and celebrated Christmas.
(Speaking of Christmas: I made gingerbread eggnog trifle, and peach-cranberry ginger crisp. Both of them were new recipes, and they were really, really good, so the links here and here. And yes...for the second one, I substituted peaches for pears, and if anyone's wondering, you really don't need to add any liquid with the peaches. That's the only thing I'd change if I did it again.)

 A bunch of friend and sisters and I went and saw The Desolation of Smaug. Our family enjoyed the fellowship of lots of people, especially when involving homemade ice cream :) And, I attended a Scottish Country dancing ball this past Friday.

 Rachel and I rock the "northern country girls go to a ball" look, I think? :)

 And we were able to pull some decorations out of storage for the ball...reincarnated wedding reception flowers paired with pinecones was very wintry and festive!

 

 Shiloh has done a great job teaching our homeschool group the various dances over the past 6 months, and she did a great job announcing dances, teaching dances, and MCing the whole thing.

 And the dance demonstration groups did a great job!

I have about a week left before heading back to college. We're planning to go sledding again, make ice cream and cookies and hot chocolate, and hang out with friends by eating food and watching Sherlock with them. And we've been collectively battling against the raging cold and violent winds that have been blizzarding around us. Apparently right now, it's 1 degree fahrenheit, but with a wind chill of negative 22. I have a new rule that I just made up that says that I don't go outside if there's a windchill of anything in the negative numbers, so I'm trusting weather.com.

Anyhow, I hope you all are having a good break! Keep in touch over the semester :)