Currently Listening Boys Like Girls By Boys Like Girls see related

Making college memories...oh the crazy things we do

Sunday morning I did probably the craziest thing I've done at college thus far.  I watched the sunrise on the beach.   Yes, the sunrise.  As shocking as it may seem (and rightly so), I was up early enough to see that.  Actually I only slept for an hour, but I'm getting ahead of myself.  Oh and yes, I was at the beach.  Is my school close to the beach you may ask?  No, in fact the closest beach (Ocean City, NJ) is around 2 hours away, but that is where we went.  So, for those of you who don't feel like figuring out the math in your head, I, along with six of my friends, left school at around 3am Sunday morning, and arrived at the beach some time after 4:30am (naturally there was no traffic whatsoever to slow us down!).  A few hours later we packed up and left for school again, arriving back home around 11am.  It was quite a morning!

If you want the story, here goes.  A small group of my friends and I (part of the small remnant of people who did not go home for the weekend) spent literally all day Saturday outside.    It was the most relaxing day I've had in a long, long time.  Well at the end of this day (around 9pm) we were sitting in someone's room, and the beach somehow came up.  Out of nowhere, one of my friends exclaimed, "hey, we should go to the beach and watch the sunrise and have church on the beach"!!! Everyone quickly agreed, and naturally the next question was, "hey Laura, will you drive"?  Since I was the only one in the group with a car, and since the beach sounded amazing, I agreed, until I realized that there were 7 of us wanting to go and only 5 seats in my car.  After a moment of disappointment, we decided that we'd just have to find a second car.  So we proceeded to call everyone we knew who owned a car and might possibly be willing and crazy enough to either lend us their car or take us to the beach at 3 in the morning.  After many disappointing no's, we finally found someone with a mini-van (which has 7 seats and therefore would mean taking only 1 car).  After explaining our situation and telling him that we totally understood if he said no, he agreed with the stipulation that he could take my car to church.  So at around 11pm I drove over to his dorm and we swapped keys. 

A couple of my friends and I had driven to the store to buy supplies and then gone to another dorm's open kitchen to make muffins which were now cooling on my dresser.  At around 12:30/1am I finally went to bed, figuring I better at least take a nap.  I slept for about an hour, then got up and threw some  warm clothes on and we left at around 3.  We got to the beach long before sunrise.  It was pitch black except for the full moon casting faint light onto the sand, and the occasional blinding light of my one friend's camera as he documented our elated excitement.  Myself and the other four girls danced around and fairly screamed with excitement.  It felt like a dream, but the guys calmly assured us that it was not (we told them to be excited and they responded with "we're being manly" ).  When the original elation was gone, we spread out our blankets on the sand and lay down.  It was only about 55 degrees outside, so we kept close and tried to stay warm with the blankets we had brought.  Some of them drifted off to sleep but I couldn't sleep for fear of missing something.  Sure enough, I slowly became aware that it was getting light, and soon the sky was filled with the pastel colors of early dawn.  By this time the excitement of myself and two others woke up the rest of the group, and we all sat up and huddled under our blankets as we waited for the sun.  It was one of the most glorious, incredible things I've ever seen.  Gradually the colors in the sky deepened until we could see every color of the rainbow.  Finally we saw the tip of the dark red sun as it began its ascent up the sky.  It slowly became brighter and more orange as the colors of the sky imperceptibly changed right before our eyes.  As it became too bright to look at, we sang worship songs and watched out of the corners of our eyes -not wanting to miss even a moment. 

At around six, when the sky above us was now a brilliant blue and the sun made our faces look bright and warm, we got out our Bibles and a couple of the girls read Psalm 19 (“The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands...”) and Psalm 33 ("...By the word of the LORD were the heavens made, their starry host by the breath of his mouth. He gathers the waters of the sea into jars; he puts the deep into storehouses...").  These Psalms captured exactly what we saw unfolding right in front of us.  No one spoke much, but we sang a little more before finally getting up.  We walked around for a while and collected shells and talked to a couple people who were out for their morning stroll withe their dogs.  We were tired, cold, sandy and salty and in need of some food and a restroom, so we soon left. We got back to school, parted ways before taking a quick shower and crashing into bed as most of our hallmates were getting up and leaving for church.  I only got about 3 hours of sleep because I had agreed to help some friends repaint their appartment so they could move, so  I think I'm still recovering from the lack of sleep. I certainly don't regret the trip though!  It was absolutely amazing.  We had so much fun, and it was a memory I will not soon forget!

Currently Listening Letters to the President By Hawk Nelson see related

Dancing, Dress up and Friends. Oh what a weekend!

Well, it has been ages since I've posted on here! I really shouldn't now because I really do have lots to do I shall post anyways!!

This has been a crazy but wonderful weekend.  It feels like it's been about 5 days instead of 2 1/2.  Here's my weekend in as abbreviated form as I can make it (yeah right!)...

Friday evening was the Spring Banquet, which was held aboard the Spirit of Philadelphia, a small cruise ship.  I returned to my room after class around 3ish, and spent the next couple hours on my frantic hall running around trying to get ready for the Banquet.  We'd agreed to be ready by 4:30 but of course that didn't happen, and we left at around 5:15.  Traffic was insane because there were 3 sporting events, 4 proms, and our dance all happening on the same night!! As if that weren't enough, we had to drive into Philly during rush hour on a Friday evening! Can you say ridiculous??!!! Miraculously though, we arrived at Penn's Landing (the harbor) at around 6:25, and the boat began boarding at 6:30 and left at 7, so we'd made it right on time! The boat was beautiful, as was the weather.  The boat had two floors inside with tables were we ate.  We ate up on the second floor, which had a balcony in the middle overlooking the dance floor below.  I didn't dance at all, but never felt the need to.  Instead I spent most of the night outside on the upper deck (on top of the boat), just enjoying the breeze and the sights.  It was beautiful.  Want to hear something incredible? I wore heels!!!  Not tiny 1/2 inch heels either, these were more like 2 1/2 inches, and I didn't fall or even trip all night!  lol.  It was a great night though.  I went with girls from my hall (well, and we collectively took our adored friend Jeff as our hall date -even if Regan was his official date).  It was a nice night of dressing up, spending time with friends, eating wonderful food, watching people act ridiculous on the dance floor, and enjoying the feel of being on a cruise ship.  Great memories!  After the dance we came back here and just hung out on the hall (we like doing that), and then went outside to "play in the rain" (even though it had stopped raining) and play frisbee on the turf.  It was great fun!

Saturday evening was the big Swing dance.  We danced in the lobby of our main academic building, and we had a live band which played up in the balcony above us.  The dance was a 50's "malt shop" theme, so those who could dressed up in 50's style clothes and they served milkshakes and non-alcoholic mixed drinks.  The room looked amazing, and there were just enough people there to have a decent group but not to many to make the dance floor too crowded.  I enjoyed myself immensely.  A handful of girls from my hall all went, and we got loads of great pics beforehand of us all dressed up (coming soon to facebook ).  We had soooo much fun.  This time I danced a lot, learned some new moves (such as couple's Charleston ), danced outside (amazing! ), did a couple aerials (always exciting ), danced with friends and other fun people (such as Tarzan), did the Charleston (a dance involving a series of kicks which is done in a long line), and, according to Amanda, found my perfect partner (not who'd I would expected either ).  It was a good night. 

Today has been a very restful day.  I didn't go to church (shhh) but Amanda (who stayed all weekend! ) and I slept in late and then went to lunch with ppl, and after lunch spent almost 3 hours studying outside with friends.  Actually we didn't just study, in fact there was reading of sonnets, guitar playing and singing (by two guys who are amazing at both!), water gun fights, and pictures (of course). It was very enjoyable indeed!

It has been a packed weekend, but I have loved it.  I really love my friends and I had a lot of fun with them this weekend.  Now it's time for the final push before finals -just two weeks!! I'm off to eat cake and then go to Bible Study! Au revoir!

Currently Listening Oh! Gravity. By Switchfoot see related

So I just answered the "featured question".  I was in a random mood and felt like defending homeschooling so I did.  I think I could write a whole book answering the question but decided to keep my answer brief for the sake of those reading who are not entirely interested!

Life is crazy.  Have I said that before??!! School is about to get really insane considering that I have a test and a composition (in French) due on Wednesday, and a huge ethnography (anthropological paper) and a group presentation due in two weeks (neither of which I've started yet).  Aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhh!!  Gotta love college.  Although, I must say that I'm a little excited about my ethnography.  I'm hoping to write it on the culture of a swing dance (I'd do contra dancing if we had one nearby but we don't really).  I don't know if I can do it because I'm such an insider (which is a problem in ethnography) but my professor said I should "try it", so I will.  I figure it's something I'm interested in, and I've thought a lot about it already.  So we shall see.....

Church continues to be a struggle.  I won't go into all the details for privacy's sake (ask me sometime if you really want to know), but I'll just say here that it's been really difficult trying to adjust to the drastic changes that have occured.  Yet again I'm being forced to reconsider what "church" means to me. *sigh* Life is complicated.

I think I shall quit my procrasting and try to get some work done.  We'll see if I succeed in this endeavor! Side note: can you tell I'm in the mood to use big words tonight?! Alrighty. TTFN!

Should homeschooling be illegal? Why or why not?

Never!! I was homeschooled from first grade on, and I wouldn't change that even if I could.  Although I resisted the idea at first because I didn't want to leave my friends, that turned out to be a non-issue.  I made many friends through homeschooling (events and such) and also outside of it, and actually found that I had more time to socialize because I was able to work my school schedule around the rest of my life as needed.  Did I suffer academically? Not at all.  I am a Sophmore in college now and doing quite well.  I had no more problems adjusting to college than anyone else, partially due to the fact that I spent part of both my junior and senior years in high school taking classes at a community college, which put me a semester ahead of my peers when I officially began college.  Homeschooling allowed me to work at my own pace in each subject, and I had access to one-on-one attention that I never would've received in public school.  Although without a doubt homeschooling can be abused and detrimental to some, by no means does this call for an overall ban on it.  Countless students have benefited from homeschooling, and the trend continues to increase as more and more people recognize its values and advantages. 

Tonight was an amazing evening/night.  I spent the entire evening/night down the hall in one of my friend's rooms, along with a few of the girls from the hall.  It started out as us just hanging out after dinner.  We haven't really done that since break 'cause it's been crazy and people have been everywhere, so it was good to just "chill" together.  Then Allyssa got out her guitar and we tried to sing some worship songs, which was great except she was having problems playing them so that didn't last long.   Then we decided to watch a movie, and since it's Wednesday (no visitation) we picked a good 'ole chick flick: "Sweet Home Alabama".  We laughed, and sighed at Josh Lucas' amazing eyes (yeah...we're such girls!! ), and all that, so that was fun.  Then it was time for Grow Group, which is our hall Bible study.  Well we were all laughing so hard and distracting eachother that it took a good 15 minutes before we could calm down enough to focus on what Amanda was trying to read!!  So she read from this book we're kinda going through, and then we started sharing, and it was just awesome.  Turns out a few of us are all going through similar things right now, and we were really able to talk about it and encourage eachother.  I think it was one of the best grow groups we've had.  And then Allyssa showed us a video (of Lifehouse's "Everything" skit...go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyheJ480LYA if you haven't seen it it's amazing).  Then we all piled on to Allyssa's bed (literally!) and held hands and prayed together, then stayed in there for even longer just hanging out.  Nobody wanted to leave, but unfortunetly homework and early morning classes were calling so we eventually went to our respective rooms.  I really should go to bed 'cause it's almost 1:30 and I do have class in the morning...but it was just such an amazing night that I had to talk about it. 

Overall there was lots of laughter, some tears, and plenty of hugs.  God was really there with us tonight, and it was very...uniting I guess.  These girls really are like sisters to me and I just marvel at how blessed I am!  To have all these girls together on one hall...who I can laugh with, cry with, pray with, worship with, and just share my life with...well it's just amazing.  We really have done all of the above together and I love them so much! Thank you Jesus!!!