Looking Forward
- Posted by under Life at Bethel
- Friday May 29th, 2009
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The end of May term has finally come! It has been a challenging and very rewarding semester, and it is a good feeling to be done. Well, technically I am not done with the class yet. I have to finish a paper that is due by Sunday. However, I am finished with the class itself. We took our final today which included three essay questions. I love to write, and I don’t mind putting together an essay, which is good. However, I love to write. Sometimes too much. As a result, it took me the whole of the available time to finish my test, and even then I was pushing it. I have known for a long time that I am too verbose in my essays. However, I have not yet managed to improve or find much of a solution to this problem. Ah well, I finished, and that is the important part. In addition, our professor brought us Krispy Kreme donuts today–always a plus. Perhaps he felt bad for the rigorous paces through which he put us, or maybe he just loves us. Either way, he received great thanks for the generous action. Krispy Kreme donuts are always appreciated.
I am not entirely sure what to do with myself now that May term is over. It has given me something to do five days a week and homework to keep me occupied in the evening. Now however, it is two weeks until I start my job with the Notre Dame Summer Shakespeare Festival, and until that time, I have no modus vivendi. I am looking into volunteering as a painter at the local Catholic Worker house in South Bend, but I am not sure yet if anything will come of that. Ah well, we shall see. If I am left with two entire weeks to relax, do some reading and writing, then so be it. I wouldn’t complain about that. After all, once I start my new job, I am going to be plenty busy.
Out of nowhere, my life has recently been a veritable flurry of activity. As of today, I am halfway through the May Term session of classes. Yes, that’s right. School gets out and after a week, I went back to school. It sounds sort of lame, but I am getting cheap credits, and I will still be finished (again) before my sister finishes her junior year of high school, so it’s not that bad.
I am taking the Introduction to Philosophy course with Cristian Mihut. He is a fabulous little Romanian philosopher who graces us with high energy and interesting lectures: absolute musts when you are in class for a three hour slog, five days a week. The class is revealing to me that I really do like philosophy, and might even have a head for it, even if I don’t have the credit room for more classes on the subject. Our first week consisted of arguments for and against God (yeah, try fitting all of that into just one week of classes. We only got to spend two hours on the problem of evil, that is way more than a two hour problem), and the rest of the course will be a study of Plato’s Republic.
A pleasant surprise of May term has been that a number of my friends are still on campus, either for classes or work of some sort, so I have not been wandering the campus alone apart from my class. Additionally, my girlfriend lives in the area as well. Thus, there has been plenty of diversion once class lets out. I have seen several movies recently (and one of them twice with different groups of people).
I also celebrated a birthday of late. As of last Friday, I am no longer a teenager, but have entered into the oh so momentous twenties. I celebrated with my family and my girlfriend by having dinner at Red Robin (delicious), seeing Angels and Demons on opening night (a solid film, but not nearly as good as the book), and then having cheesecake back at home (again: DELICIOUS). To top it all off, God sent a fantastic storm filled with lightning and thunder, one of my favourite things ever. It was a wonderful birthday.
Little did I know that the celebration wasn’t over. The next day two of my friends, Chester and Katy (they’re dating, and together or apart, they are two of my favorite people), kidnapped me, took me to Michigan, and we had a picnic on the beach and watched the sunset. Beautiful. Unfortunately, my girlfriend, Hannah, had done much of the planning as well, but alas, she found out at the last minute that she had to work late and could not join us. This was tragic, but we made up for it by visiting her after work and hanging out for a bit.
To round out the weekend of activity, the next day, eleven of my friends and I took off for Cedar Point, America’s Roller Coast in Sandusky, Ohio. Cedar Point is one of my favorite places in the entire world. I had such a great time. In the nine hours we were there I rode 10 roller coasters (a couple of them twice) and a few thrill rides for good measure. One of these happened to be a log flume, not the best idea when it is only around 65 degrees, but fun nonetheless. Finish off with a Cedar Point elephant ear, and I call that a good day.
All in all, it was a fabulous weekend. The only thing that could have made it better was the e-mail I got on Monday informing me that I have been accepted into the Scholar’s Semester at Oxford for the spring of 2010. An entire semester spent studying in jolly old England. I was dumbstruck (clearly, because I forgot to tell people about it). It is such a tremendous opportunity, and I am definitely looking forward to it. Even though it mostly just means more school. Ah well, it would seem I cannot escape it anyway.
Lets start with Spring Break…Since I had not been on a medical outreach before I decided it was time! My friend Kelly is a nurse here and her husband works with a people group called Fulani. They are actually the largest unreached people group in the world. So after driving several hours we made it to one of the Fulani Camps and it was the first time there had been an outreach there. Since I am not a nurse ooooor doctor I was assigned to be the Chemist…PERFECT! When we got there all the men were sitting under this giant mango tree and Tim had to meet with the chief and get things set up. Well Simona, Kelly and I were invited into the womens hut for food…ohhhh yeah, not really an invitation you jump up and down about and rub your belly thinking goooood im sooo hungry!! Instead you do that look where you half smile at the person telling you while looking at your friends with eyes that speak “NOOOOO I don’t wanna die today!!!” ok maybe thats a bit dramatic, but you are at least thinking, this won’t be a meal I am going to ask for the recipe for. So we go into the hut and about 10 of us are sitting around and only one of them speaks Hausa. So Kelly is doing all the communicating while we are just smiling and nodding and pretending we understand what they are saying to us! They were asking what they should prepare, and Kelly told them it allllll had to be cooked no matter what, soooooo about 30 min later we are served….drum roll please!!! Boiled lettuce…yummmm with tomatoes, some kind of rice mush filled with sand and little rocks, even better…something that resembled a chicken that tasted, well like something I have never tasted, and a pot of grey cream of wheat gluey substance that they call “NO NO” hmmmm I wonder why?!?! Anyway that was an experience. Then we set up clinic and Kelly and Simona saw the women and children while Collin and I passed out the drugs…It’s amazing how many things Paracetamol can cure!!!
Trying to put all the babies on me!!!
the most beautiful kids!
Take 1 in the morning, 1 at night...
Raise your hand if if your child has X, Y, and Z, cause if so you need VERMOX!
Shortly after the picture below one of the mothers set her infant on my lap and within seconds I felt this nice warm moisture filling my skirt…yep nothing like being covered in urine for the rest of the day!
A hospital we had to stop at to greet the Chief's son from 1 of his wives
so clever...
After a sleepless night in our tent we headed to another village a few hours away! Bush roads are fun for maybe 20 minutes, not 3 hours!!!
bush road
The second village we went to had a lot more people so when we were leaving I had a little round of copycat with the kids to make the same gestures as me!! So awesome!
#1 TOUNGE OUT
#2 THUMBS UP
#3 AIR PUNCH
#4 WAVE GOODBYE
So the next day after returning from our outreach, a big group of us left at 6 a.m. for a more relaxing getaway!! We were at a place in southern Nigeria about 8 hours away called Obudu! It could have been called Heaven, well not really, but it was incredible, the pictures can’t even capture the beauty of this place!
Presidential sweet!
the cutest little iguana on Joseph
look at his paws...or hands or whatever
team BANANA...
night time
the pools were incredible!
Don't worry I flipped all the way...no back smacker
I should have been a cheerleader!
Who thinks Kari caught it?!!
Can't stop the flow!
Trying to get too many people on the mat
Farm Fresh Dairy was right next door...we bought them out of yogurt!
cable car down the mountain...gotta love the Swiss for building this!
UNREAL!!!
the road up the mountain...pretty crazy!
The third day there we went on a mammoth hike like never before to some waterfall, our fearless leader who’s name happened to be Godsgift, gave us an adventure to remember…thats for sure! Literally we were going straight up and down, and just before the waterfall there was no path so we had to slide down on our butts for about 1/2 hour holding onto grass, roots, anything we thought would save us!
see our path
futher up and further in...we were still happy at this point
breathtaking
and to our butts we go...HOLD ON!
ohhhhh BOY
HOLD ON MICAH!!!
baby cow that decided to follow us...
blazing a trail...just not on foot
Emmanuel's feet afterwards
Ok so after Spring Break, the next exciting thing that happened is my best friend here got engaged!! Her fiance is working in Guinea and decided to come to Nigeria to surprise her and propose! It was perfect and she had nooooo clue what we had been planning for months!! So we had to do a trip to Yan Kari to show Andrew the warm springs and hopefully some elephants on Safari…well no elephants this time…but a sweet monitor lizard! When I asked the safari guide if it would bite me…he said in his Nigerian accent “Nooooo it won’t bite but it will ummmmm mash you with its tail!!” Sounds like a good story to me!
Engagement toast...nasty blue sugar water or something!
natural warm springs beats the pool any day!!
Dustin making sure he gets his money worth since he had to pay $10 to bring his camera in!
the lizard that could mash me!!!
So I thought I should include sooooome school stuff just to prove my “teacher” status:)
Gotta love show-and-tell!!!
they were making up their own cheers about Grade 1!
My classroom was a jungle for 3 weeks while we learned about the rainforest!
My favorite Canadians!!
My 8th Grade discipleship girls!
Phhhhhew, that blog post just took me a total of 7 hours…so I hope it was worth it! There has to be an easier way to do this! When it’s all said and done it’s awesome being able to share life with whoever reads! Thanks for all your prayers…continue to pray about what next year will hold, cause at this point I have no idea where I am going to be!!! Lots of Love!
Closing time - time for you to go out, go out into the world.
The year is almost over, and it is a very weird feeling. I only have one more final to take tomorrow, and then I will be done with my sophomore year of college. STRANGE.
This semester has gone incredibly fast. I don’t know what it is about spring, but it seems to just fly past. Maybe it is because it is colder and everybody spends so much time cooped up inside (January February and March tend to make it seem more like a winter semester than spring, but whatever). Maybe? I had a lot of tough classes this semester too, lots of reading, but it was definitely worth it. I can say that now that things are drawing to a close. Midway through, I might not have thought so.
Last weekend was midnight breakfast again. I was not a part of quite as large or victorious a group, but I was a superhero again and had a lot of fun nonetheless.
The Earl Awards were also held this weekend. It is basically the Oscars except done Bethel style, which means the event is a bit smaller and the statues are not solid gold. Other than that, it is basically the same…
It is a very fun night. It starts with a formal dinner for everyone involved in the shows this year. After that is the awards ceremony. Shawn Holtgren was the Master of Ceremonies, and, as is tradition, he performed a musical medley of songs from the musical and parodied them to be about Bethel theatre. It is always very funny. There was other student entertainment provided as well throughout the ceremony. All sorts of awards are given out: acting, directing, design, academic, and service. I was fortunate enough to win Best Supporting Actor for my part in The Butler Did It. I did not expect to win that one at all, especially since I was up against some very stiff competition. My roommate did pretty well for himself, picking up best actor for Left of Centre (student directed short scenes) and best actor over all. At the end of the evening, we honoured Jon Sabo, the chair of the theatre department who is leaving after this year to teach at another school. We’re going to miss him a lot.
This week is finals. It’s not usually too bad, but this week I have been running around all over campus working on an application to go on a semester abroad next spring year. It is quite the process. My finals did not start until Thursday, and now everything is almost done. Soon I will be moving out of good old Manges. It’s crazy how quickly something can become so familiar. Ah well, there will be plenty to keep life interesting this summer. First I’ll have may-term classes, and then in June, I start work for the Notre Dame Summer Shakespeare Festival, where I’ll work as a carpenter and production assistant. I am so very excited. It is going to be a crazy summer.
Closing time - every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end…
