Excerpts

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don´t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don´t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don´t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don´t go back to sleep.

I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let´s buy it.

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?

All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.

Spring Giddiness
Rumi

SICK

for the past couple of days.
not okay.
but it's pretty much gone now.
thank goodness.
so call me and let's hang out!

fambly

there's going to be 10 people and 3 dogs in this house by the end of the day

HOME

so joe told me about this trip he is thinking about going on this summer with this organization:
http://thestreetchildproject.org/index.php
which is so cool- they take in homeless street children and give them a home, food, education, and they educate them with the arts so that they will become uplifting and awesome members of society that will impact others in a positive way which is SO COOL (the best part- the college trip's ministry is music based)
i am so impressed that the organization and the people behind it saw the need of these children and are not only filling that but that they are trying to give them opportunities to grow as beautiful children of God and that they are teaching them to create instead of destroy, and about the beauty of this world. i think so often that just gets lost when we get so consumed with other things that we view as more basic needs.

that's what i want to do and who i want to be- a person that sees need and asks "how do we fill this need, and then how do we keep this going? how can this be restored to what God intended it to be?"

people ask me why i am so okay with being away from home, why i want to get off this continent and do something with my life, but when you consider the alternatives, why would i settle for anything less?

TODAY

1 more final in about an hour and then...
hoppin' on the plane at LAX-

i hope i just got that stuck in your head.

everyone's leaving

and i am SO BORED.
i have one more final tomorrow before i leave that is going to be really easy- i'll probably study for like 10 minutes later.
this is the most bored i've been since like the week before school though. there is nothing going on since it's finals and people are gone so there's not many people to hang out with. and they're studying. or trying to think of something to do.
which we can't cause finals have killed our brains.
i got through it though! and some of them were pretty scary- like my PM final which was sight singing in front of my super-intimidating teacher and then presenting my song to the class today (it's okay- not thrilled with it and i could have used more time to work on it, but parts of it turned out good) but now that that's over i feel kind of like a noodle.
oh stress. what you do to us.


my song if you're interested- it's a cover of jar's of clay's "on jordan's stormy banks i stand"
http://www.mediafire.com/?iimfdz2uq4h

looking forward

so everyone's out

at a party filled with people with fake hair.
why do people limit themselves when the world is so vast?
have they forgotten how big life actually is?
how limitless our options are?
cause certain people seem to do the same things over and over and none of them ever get anywhere.
and i don't have the patience for it anymore.




real conversations,
lemonade,
laughing,
eating without worrying what's stuck in your teeth.
they don't know what the heck they are missing.



also,
listening to:
Boy With a Coin
Iron & Wine

http://www.mediafire.com/?kwgz0z4z2zw

1st semester classes are DONE

isn't it weird?

what people are doing now?
people that we sat next to last year in class are now working full time- or sitting around their houses commenting on other people's pictures on facebook all day.
and some people are getting engaged and... having babies?
and as we get older this is just going to get worse and worse.
i don't even want to THINK about our 10 year anniversary.
1st semester of college over.
crazy.

how do you

tell someone you wish you knew them better?

2 Corinthians 6:11-13

"Dear, dear Corinthians,
i can't tell you how much i long for you to enter into this wide-open, spacious life. We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way. I'm speaking as plainly as i can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!"

The Brothers Bloom

watch it.
it's embarrassing how much i love adrien brody in that movie.
i want to marry his character.
a lot.
actually, don't watch it and we'll have a viewing party when i get home!!
1 more week till finals (which i'm not really counting as real school) and once all the concerts are over this weekend, none of my music teachers really care anymore so really, it's almost done and i'll be home before you know it!
and then i get to SLEEP. WHENEVER I WANT.
and talk and see how much everyone has changed which will be fun :)

i am thankful for friends that say real and true things and remind me that this world is beautiful.
i am thankful that we can move and grow and change.
that time and life are fluid.

holiday

isn't quite the word i would use to describe it.
not that parts of it weren't good but the rest of it was just so weird, so not what i'm used to.
i video chatted everyone in tifton at my cousin's house after lunch on thanksgiving and i feel like i talked to about a hundred people- they were lining up in the hallway to skype me and tell me that they missed me and wished i was there.
by comparison, my whole holiday just seemed quiet.
my life feels quiet.

nosce te ipsum

know thyself!

(i'm working so hard to distract myself from the 2 exams tomorrow and the paper i have due)

listen to only when tired and/or sad:

my friend tipped me off to this guy the other day, he's quite the winner.
the emotional, sad, acoustic guitar playing winner, but winner none the less.
http://www.myspace.com/noahgundersen

(if you like this guy and still don't know who william fitzsimmons is LOOK HIM UP)

i wish

that it was okay to spell color with a "u" here instead of just in Great Britain.
it's just prettier-
colour.

into the wild

is probably one of my new favorite movies. it kind of scared the crap out of me the 1st time i saw it cause it made so much sense to me- it was like watching an alternate reality for myself.
it makes this reality seem kinda lame actually. but i'm trying not to think of college as an obstacle between me and my life- i don't want to resent it. i'm trying to think of it as a journey that will make me into the person that God wants me to be.

there are people that hate change. i am not one of them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhe3vb0z7mY

it's funny

how crazy you get over rain when there is never any.
someone said it was sprinkling and all of a sudden i had 5 texts and everyone in the dorm was running outside.
especially the seattle-ers.
they're crazy about it.
it's funny what connects you with home. one of my RAs worked at Dollywood over the summer so at hall dinner all we talked about was the south. cracker barrel, magnolias, porches. it's weird talking about that in the third person- her describing things that were different for her and me knowing exactly what she was talking about. it's funny being on the outside and having that conversation instead of just being there in it.
in a lot of ways, thanksgiving in Arizona is going to be weird.
but it's so soon- it's crazy how fast the semester went.

Fake Plastic Trees.
Radiohead.

everything is illuminated

and by that i mean, it's getting close to thanksgiving. 2 more weeks actually and everyone is starting to look forward.
which is such a relief. i don't do standing still well. it's just frustrating and i feel like nothing's being accomplished. God's been telling me to be okay with where i am and to take this time to work on myself and i am, i am okay. but i like looking forward.
it's more hopeful than the present.

halloween!

was fun.
there was a ton going on on campus-
my dorm hosted the kids of the faculty and staff and we played games with them and gave them way too much candy. it was adorable, so many tiny kids in big pouffy dinosaur and kangaroo (my favorite!!) costumes.
and then there was a "pirate cruise" going on in one of the apartment dorms across the street and they drove us around in vans and we got attacked by zombies and hit with water balloons and our driver accidentally drove into a pole which was probably the most exciting part of it, but it was pretty entertaining. our driver's pirate name was fleckin' face.
then there was a party going on at another apartment/dorm that we went to for a little while to meet up with friends and see everyone else's costumes and stuff. and then we went to the house of one of the cheerleaders cause she had a party going on which was just your standard dance party, nothing too exciting but i got to hang out with people.
that is one of the good things about going to a christian school- not that we don't have our faults too, but you don't really have to worry about alcohol and a lot of the other things that are a lot more present on secular campuses.
anyways, it was long but fun and i got to watch it's the great pumpkin charlie brown like 3 times which = WIN.
since then it's been a PM midterm which was the scariest 7 minutes of my life and performances of Beethoven's 9th symphony on monday and tuesday and now i have a few low stress days before more concerts on friday and saturday (different music of course, they love making us learn and memorize things REALLY quickly) and all of the preview kids showing up and filling my hall with high school students... at least i don't have to host anybody!
side note: tonight was nerd dinner for my hall at the caf and now everyone at Azusa Pacific has seen me wear my super sexy retainer and fanny pack. get it!

listening to:
How To Grow a Woman From the Ground
Chris Thile
(Check it out!!!)

you always wondered

what would happen if your whole college lost power?
i know!
ask me how!
but not really, cause i still don't know how it happened. we'll probably get an email from campus safety tomorrow saying that some kid biked over the central line of power for southern california.
but really, the whole block didn't have power for a solid 3 hours or something crazy like that.
it was kind of tornado-y too which was strange- blustery and dark.
when i mentioned that to the california people they looked at me like i was crazy and then i had to explain what a tornado drill was and demonstrate correct tornado drill positioning (hands over head, up against wall type thing).
never thought i would do that ever again.

homecoming

(girls from my hall at the decades dance)
= in-n-out tailgate.
win.
and laguna beach today.
not even sunburned.
...a lot.
double win.
our homecoming was fun- we had a great decades dance and i wore my mom's fabulous dress from the '80s but talking to my mom today about Norcross' homecoming was a little weird. it's feeling old and sad you're missing it but glad that you've moved on all at the same time. kind of a weird mix of emotions.
but looking forward, i have another midterm tomorrow, all of mine are just starting and it feels like everyone else has been done for weeks. more time to study? kind of?
i really don't work that hard, although i really don't have to. most of what i'm doing just kind of comes naturally or is easy to begin with. aka walk/jog. and health. i really feel like we should be able to test out of health with some kind of IQ test.

PS- i don't think there is ever a time that "party in the usa" is not being played somewhere on my hall.

midterms

'nuff said.
i'm actually not worried about any of them, it's just the desire to do well that makes them stressful.
also, i forget how much i like the shins.

hey-o!

I'm going to start using this thing i think- mass communication makes it so much easier to keep people updated and while it's not really personal, i think it's a good general resource because when everyone lives so far from each other and is so consumed with their own lives and school it gets pretty hard to maintain any kind of connection.
so hello interwebs!
nothing is really going on in my life right now, everyone's hit their stride and things are regular with classes and commitments. while that certainly makes things easier it also makes things less than exciting in a lot of respects. routine is comforting but it also kills our imagination i think, so i'm trying to keep my weeks in line but break out a little on the weekends. there is no lack of things to do in socal certainly. last weekend we went to a taping of America's Funniest Home Videos and got on the front row so if you're not busy December 12th, turn on ABC!
everyone has asked me if APU has lived up to my expectations, and truthfully i came in to college with no specific goals, no real expectations that i could pin point, and no five year plan to direct my life with, i so can't say wether it's really lived up to anything for me or not, but it has certainly changed me.
you don't realize a lot about yourself until you're really alone. this summer was a huge learning experience for me and put me really far ahead of a lot of other people going into college i think, but things really come into focus for you when there's no one else to distract you from it. i wouldn't say that APU has stretched me beyond where i've been academically or mentally or emotionally or spiritually really, but the nature of experiencing all of this by myself has really forced me to call myself on a lot of my own stuff. i'm listening to God's prodding and promise of a better tomorrow if i get through today, and i've been changing myself instead of waiting for someone else to push me into change which has been a lot harder, taken a lot more discipline, but i think i'm living a better story because of it, and that's gratifying.