Home Again

I got to come home for the first time in almost 3 months!  Angenette's birthday is on Halloween, so I knew I would be coming home this weekend, but I thought it would be the usual arriving Saturday-morning-at-3am and leaving-Sunday-night-at-9pm routine.  Then Christine and I talked and she said that she was going to come up and surprise Ange, and she would probably be coming up Thursday night.  That sounded great to me because then I could have a full two days to see the people I really wanted to see, do the things I really wanted to do, and I wouldn't be completely exhausted!  Well, Christine decided she was way too excited to get home to wait until Thursday, so she made the executive decision to drive up on Wednesday night.  This meant that I would have to skip two classes on Thursday, but the itch for the foggy weather was too much, so Christine, her roommate Alex, and I arrived in Los Osos early Thursday morning.  

It has been a wonderful weekend so far!  On Thursday I spent most of the day in San Luis with my mom, shopping for Angenette's birthday.  We didn't end up buying much, but we were able to spend several wonderful hours together just talking and having a great time.  I don't remember the last time I was able to spend that much quality time with my mom, and I enjoyed it so much.  I miss my mom so much when I'm gone so it was great to be able to spend that time with her.  It meant a lot to both of us.

Later on Thursday night my friend Miquela (we worked together at Pizza Solo in summer of '07) came and met me downtown and we had dinner at Pizza Solo (thanks, Rebekah!!) and then walked through Farmer's Market for a while.  It was MADNESS.  I don't know if I have ever seen so many people.  Half of them were carrying signs either for or against Prop 8 and yelling.  Then there were all the families with little kids all dressed up (SO adorable!!) and all the adults that were dressed up (masks freak me out...).  The whole thing just seemed so surreal... I had never been downtown during the Halloween trick or treat thing so it was completely new to me!  Imagine that... living in a place for 17 years and then when I come home on a college break I experience something new.  Crazy.

On Halloween (today) I got to go to lunch with John (former owner of Subway, where I worked for two years) and Amy (former manager of said Subway).  I hadn't seen either of them in far too long, so it was wonderful to be able to catch up with them.  We had a great lunch at Cornerview ... Restaurant?  Bakery?  I'm not quite sure of the exact name.  Then Cristen came and met me and Amy downtown and we all searched for Halloween costumes because they wanted to go out later.  Amy found some stuff and then she left while Cristen enjoyed reading some books over at Barnes and Noble.

Cristen and I ended up going out to eat with some of her friends at The Clubhouse in SLO.  We were all dressed up and had a fairly good time.  Cristen and I got a little tired so we left early, and then when Cristen and Amy and a few others decided to stay out later I opted out and went home.  I enjoyed watching last night's episode of "The Office" with Robert, and all I have left to do is go to sleep in Kathrene's wonderfully comfortable bed! 

What a relaxing weekend!

(I wish I had pictures to post, but in my hurry to leave I left my camera in my room!  I'll be missing it all weekend. :( :( :(  )

Friday's Blog.

Pictures from the previous post: the one at the top is me and my brother John when we went to an Angels vs. Rangers game at Angel stadium. I think the Rangers won, but the Angels were still in the playoffs so it didn't matter anyway. The next one down and to the left is me and my dad at my brother Robert's graduation from college, and the one to the right of that is me and my mom about 4 minutes after the one of me and my dad was taken. The one on the bottom left is me and my roommate, Rachelle, and Vinnie and Jarvis. They go to Biola and live on our floor's "brother floor," which doesn't really mean anything except we do some events together. We had a pumpkin carving contest, and Vinnie and Jarvis pretty much took control of that and decided on the ..... most interesting pumpkin I've ever seen. They gave it a mustache. And then they decided it would be really cool to stick knives in its head. It looked different from any carved pumpkin I had ever seen.
The bottom right picture is me with my friend Karin, who lives across the hall. There is this thing at Biola called "Nationball," where all the dorms dress up in their dorm colors and go to the gym and play a huge game of dodgeball. It's two dorms at a time so the whole thing takes a while. Hope's (my dorm) color is pink, that's why we have pink on. We lost this year, which hasn't happened in a long time because until 2 years ago Hope was the biggest dorm on campus and therefore had the most people. Horton (where I lived my freshman year) is now the biggest dorm, but they didn't succeed in beating Hope last year or the year before, but this year they did. :( :(

This week we had our annual Torrey Bible Conference. It was amazing. The topic was "Sex and the Soul," and we heard speakers talking about abstinence, emotional chastity, being on fire for God, and there was this one man who was a homosexual for like 12 years but now he's married to a woman and has two kids, so he had a lot to say on that topic. It was really amazing.

Last night I went to Cheesecake Factory with some people from Disney; we were there for close to three hours! It was good to talk to them though because I hardly work anymore and I never get to see them. We were able to catch up a lot.

More pictures!

Coffee Break

Last night Rachelle and I hostes what our floor calls "Coffee Break," which is something that all floors do but they each have a different name for it. Every week a different room on the floor hosts it and they are responsible for opening up their room for an hour to an hour and a half at 10pm on a Monday night and providing some kind of snack or drink for everyone. Rachelle and I decided to have root beer floats, puppy chow (aka muddy buddies), and coffee. It was wonderful! There were so many people there and I think everyone bonded really well.

Pictures

This is Alyssa, one of my good friends from Disneyland. She is in Hong Kong with Disney until March of '09, and I miss her so much!
From left to right is Erin, Rachelle, Me, and Karin. Erin and Karin live across the hall from me and Rachelle. This picture was taken on the Friday night that we decided to pick up pizza and have a movie night picnic in our room!
This is a picture of me and my roommate, Rachelle. She's going to study in Washington, D.C. next semester! I'm really excited for her but at the same time I'm going to miss her a LOT.

I figured out how to post pictures, so I decided to post a few of the people I love down here at Biola and at Disneyland. Now that I know how to do this I will probably post more often!

October.

It is nearly mid-October... where has the semester gone?? My weeks go by so quickly. When Sunday night rolls around I am already looking forward to Thursday and the weekend. My days are always filled with something; there is never a dull moment. Working at 5am twice a week is starting to wear on me in a bad way, and I am wondering how much longer I will be able to handle it. None of my classes have overloaded me with work yet, but that can't last much longer. Lambda pi Eta (communication honors society) is going really well and we have had at least ten new applicants this semester! I am getting new emails every day from people who want more information and want to join. It's really uplifting, especially since we only had 1 member at the beginning of the semester!

I haven't been home in far too long, and that is starting to really bother me. I miss home so much, and I miss my friends and my family. Lately there have been a lot of things that remind me of things back home, and I always get really worked up emotionally, because I miss it so badly. I haven't spent more than a few days at home in over a year, and I don't like that. I miss the familiarity, though I know that nothing back home is very familiar to me anymore. I think I miss the way things were when I knew it, like Subway, and my friends from 3 years ago. It's so strange to think how much something can change in just a few months. It's almost frightening! I need to stop thinking of change as a bad thing and start to think of it as a new adventure. Change is inevitable.