Adventures

Time Flies

2012-02-11T03:40:00.000-08:00

It's travel weekend, which means I get a few extra days of freedom to relax and catch up on sleep and reading and of course my body decides this would be a good time to come down with a cold... I can't believe I've been back at school for five weeks already and the term is half over! I feel like there's not a lot to tell because it's mostly been routine - classes, Bible reading, walks; I'll hit the highlights as I think of them so they may or may not be in order of occurrence.

My favourite lecturers this term have been Hans Peter Royer and Rob Whittaker. Hans Peter talked about "Turning truth into life," and he brought together a bunch of ideas and connected them in ways I'd never thought about before. In general he was just really honest about how the truths he taught about, like being 'in Christ' and 'praying without ceasing,' played out in his own life. Rob Whittaker talked about John 13-17 in the upper room during and after the Last Supper and Jesus' teachings during that time.

We had dorm life and played a sweet game called 'Progressive Charades' which is a cross between charades and telephone. One group performs a scenario for another group who performs it for another group, etc. until the last group has to guess what it was they were watching. Each group only gets to see the group right before them before they act, and the scenario gets gradually more confused and funny.

On Sunday night Melanie, Emelie and I decided to sleep outside on the balcony to see how our sleeping bags would work and if they'd be warm enough. It wasn't as cold as I thought it would be, but my feet got too cold and I couldn't get comfortable so I eventually went inside at 4am.

I went on a long walk with Angela, one of my friends from outreach. She's been asking some intense questions about God and faith but she's got some significant roadblocks to belief so please be praying that she would keep thinking about what she's heard and seen and that God would draw her to himself. We've also been going running together as I'm trying to get my knee back in shape, and the time spent warming up, cooling down and stretching can be a good opportunity for conversation.

We had about four inches of snow on the ground for three weeks now, and it's beautiful! I'm glad it's not so much that it makes walking difficult because I'd be really sad to lose my walks in the forest.

Next week we are doing a media fast, which means no email, no Facebook, no mp3 players, no computer games, etc. One point of fasting is to get rid of the distractions that keep us from focusing on God. Another is to see what we have been distracting ourselves from or suppressing. John Piper says "We all ease our discomfort using food and cover our unhappiness by setting our eyes on dinnertime. Which is why fasting exposes all of us—our pain, our pride, our anger," and I think the same could be true of technology. I can put up with something for now because in a bit I can go check Facebook and see what all my friends have been up to or maybe I'll have an email from home. It'll be interesting to see what surfaces during the week. The fast goes from Wednesday at noon until the next Wednesday at noon.

That's all I can think of for now. If you think of me, pray that I get over this cold fast and that I can catch up on sleep because I haven't been sleeping the greatest. Have a great week!

Friday Thoughts - Take it or Leave it

2012-01-13T03:15:00.000-08:00

I had some time so I thought I'd blog again. Here are my random thoughts for the week :)

It's a beautiful sunny day outside! The snow we got over the weekend melted completely on Tuesday night so now we are back to green again. In some ways I don't mind, but I do really want to experience some serious snow this winter.

This week our speaker talked about the Psalms. The first class was on Biblical poetry and what to look for, such as imagery and parallelism, and also the three main forms: Lament, Praise, and Thanksgiving. He was very good at reviewing those concepts throughout the week so that I can still remember them! One of his main points was that the psalms were not meant to be read individually but as a part of a complete book; he used the different literary elements to show how different psalms were connected and how they had been arranged in a certain order, sometimes for emphasis, and sometimes as smaller literary units which should be studied as a whole. Most of the rest of his lectures focused on the theme that the Psalms are all messianic, pointing to Jesus, in one way or another. I'm not sure I agree with all his points, but he definitely challenged me to read the psalms in a new way and to look into it further.

As a response to studying Psalms, we were given a class period to write our own psalms in one of the three main forms. Then last night we had a singing and sharing time where we sang songs taken almost directly from a particular psalm and were given the opportunity to read our own psalms out loud if we wanted to. The point of reading them was to praise God in community and to pray along with each other. Here's the psalm that I wrote, and I hope as you read it you will praise God, too.

Let all that is in me praise the Lord.
Let joy in him well up within me!
For my God is a mind-blowing artist.
His awe-inspiring work is on display for all to see.
The Lord paints a picture across the night sky,
using countless stars and galaxies to create a masterpiece.
He calls them out one by one, the first teasing hints visible at twilight;
the whole stunning canvass arrayed by midnight.
He turns invisible gases into beautiful points of light.
He transforms falling rocks into streaks of light.
At sunrise and sunset his palette know no rival
as his brush, the sun, renders the clouds in stunning oranges and pinks and reds
on a canvass of deepest blue.
Only a Creator like Yahweh would dream of using water droplets and dirt particles
to create something amazing.
Only he would take the commonplace and make a masterpiece.
His creativity is not only displayed in the skies above,
I can see his handiwork all around me.
He dusts the trees with snow
and covers the grass and paths with tiny snowflakes,
creating a winter wonderland of breath-taking beauty.
In a night he melts it all away to reveal the green of life beneath
or brown of life awaiting the call of warmth to wake.
Each tree, each leaf, each blade of grass is an intricate system.
Such complexity can only be planned by a mind
of incomprehensible wisdom and understanding - my Lord.
Thank you for creating such beauty.
Thank you for giving us eyes to see and minds to appreciate the work of your hands.
Let all that is in me praise the Lord.
Let joy in him well up within me!

Last night after lecture we had dorm life. We split into six teams and competed in short events: one blind-folded person fed another blind-folded person yoghurt, speeding folding laundry, a crazy hairstyle in six minutes, push-up competition, the classic raw egg on a spoon race, and 'bobbing' for bilar candy alternating between bowls of flour and water. It was a lot of fun!

This afternoon I'm planning to go for a walk (how could I not with the weather so beautiful) and then visit Trista and Hazel and Huxley (the twins). I hope your day is as sunny as mine!

December and Beyond

2012-01-09T10:06:00.000-08:00

I can not believe it is already January 2012! Where did the year go? Here's a brief update on the last month :)

On December 17th I left Holsby with about 10 other students to spend two days in Copenhagen, Denmark. We arrived without mishap and spent the afternoon exploring the down town pedestrian area including the Lego store, the Disney store, a candy store, ... The next day we toured the city with my room mate Sarah as our guide. We also took a tour of the canals.

On the 19th, the large group splintered into many smaller groups as many of the Germans headed home and others headed in various travel directions. Sarah, Bethany, Magda, and I went to Sarah's house in Bredstedt, Germany. We spent the week leading up to Christmas being treated to an enormous amount and variety of delicious food and excursions into the various towns and cities close by. On the 18th we walked on the bottom of the ocean to an island off the coast of Germany. The tides in that area vary so much that at low tide we could walk across and when the tide came in we took a boat back. On our walk to the island, it was quite windy; at first it was also cloudy, then we were hailed on, then the sun came out, and then it turned cloudy again!

Sarah, Bethany, and I spent Christmas at Sarah's house. For Christmas dinner we had goose, chicken, and roast beef, red cabbage and a variety of other vegetables, potatoes, and so much else. We opened presents on Christmas Eve evening, and we were surprised by Sarah's family who gave Bethany and I presents of like three different kinds of chocolate, slippers, a necklace, a scarf, and slipper socks. All in all, it was a good Christmas, but not really like Christmas at home. I called my family on the evening of the 25th, which was their Christmas morning, and it was really nice to get to talk to them all.

We spent a day in Hamburg visiting a Christmas market and doing some random shopping since lots of things are cheaper in Germany than in Sweden.

We left Sarah's house on the 26th for Berlin! We visited many of the historic sights in Berlin including the Checkpoint Charlie, the Brandenburg Gate, and the government buildings. We went to a service in the Berlin Dome, in German; the organist was pretty good even though we did not understand much of the song lyrics or the sermon.

After Berlin we headed to Stuttgart, which was definitely a highlight. We met up with a few Holsby friends, visited the Daimler-Mercedes museum and the Rittersport Chocolate factory. We got to try a few Schwäbisch dishes like maultaschen soup and also raclette (we put a bunch of veggies and meat in a mini pan, topped it with cheese, melted it in a special griddle and then dumped it over some potatoes).

Next came Salzburg where we took the Sound of Music Tour! I wish I had seen the movie more recently so that I could recognize more places in the city that appeared in the movie, but on the tour we saw the gazebo, the back and front of the vonTrapp house (which are actually two different palaces), and the church where Maria and the captain were married. We also heard the story of the real family vonTrapp and sang along with the sound track to the movie. We saw some beautiful mountain scenery too! I would love to go back to Salzburg especially to explore the countryside around the city.

New Years Eve, or Silvester as it is called here in Europe, we found ourselves in Vienna. We had a difficult time finding a place to stay in Vienna because it was New Years Eve and ended up staying with Kate, a past Holsby student, and her family. They were amazingly welcoming, explaining the best places in Vienna to visit and also inviting us to their Silvester celebration. We ate a meat fondue, several different types of salad, and a variety of breads. For dessert we had cookies and a chocolate fondue. We swapped Holsby stories with Kate, and it was really cool to hear about her experiences and what she is doing now, studying architecture. Right before midnight we headed down town and ended the year with live music and fireworks! When we got back to the house at 1:30, we visited with Kate for a while more and ate chocolate mousse. We headed for bed at 3am, only to wake up two hours later in time to run for our train to Venice! Kate had made us breakfast! We sat a little too long over breakfast and because we had to buy a subway ticket and take three different subway lines to arrive at the train station, we made our train with three minutes to spare!

Venice was probably the most disappointing stop on the trip. It was interesting to see all the canals through the city and see the water right against he sides of some of the buildings, but there wasn't as much water as I was expecting. It was nearly as romantic as they portray in the movies either. Maybe you just have to know where to go and what to see because other students that visited liked it better. I though the city was pretty dirty and there was a fair bit of graffiti, and it just wasn't that wonderful. At least I'll be able to say I was there before it sank into the ocean!

Our last stop before heading north again was Rome. We visited the Colosseum, which was impressive, the Trevi fountain, the Spanish steps (and climbed to the top of course!), the Pantheon, and St. Peter's Basilica. On our last day, Bethany developed a migraine. Since we were planning to take a night train, we did not even have anywhere to go to give her peace and quiet and a place to lie down. We ended up spending 3.5 hours in the mall under the train station in the quietest corner we could find until she felt well enough to go visit St. Peter's Basilica and the Vatican. That night we started our 22 hour train journey back to Sarah's house. After spending a day recuperating there, we boarded the train back to Holsby.

It is so, so good to be back here. It has been great to see everyone here again, reconnect, and hear everyone's crazy travel stories. Also, there are eight new students this term, two girls from Austria, one from Germany, one from the US, two boys from Canada and two from the US. One of the new girls from Austria, Franziska, is my new room mate. My other new room mates are Katy from Iowa and Tara from Alberta.

Since I've got back on Saturday, I've already gone on five walks! It snowed a little the day we got back, enough to almost cover the grass, and now the forest and everything is so beautiful. Yesterday was sunny, too! The sun sets at around 3:40pm so I have to take advantage of the daylight as much as I can, but at least we're gaining around three minutes every day so that by the end of January the sun will set at 4:25pm.

Today was Goal Setting day and Prayer day. We set academic, spiritual, physical, and relational goals for this term in order to live more intentionally. After being given a short introduction, we were released to find our own space to pray, reflect on the past term, think and set goals for the term ahead. I dressed warm and headed out into the forest. I found a quiet place by a stream and sat down for a while. When I got too cold, I decided to continue exploring along the path I'd been following and then come back to that spot so I left my stuff there and set out. It wouldn't be the start of a new term if I did get lost in the forest... So much for my hope that it would be easy to follow my footprints in the snow back to where I started. I tried to just walk in the direction I thought I should go in and eventually found a path to follow that I thought was the approximate right direction. It eventually dumped me out on the road to Vetlanda, and then I knew where I was. I think I was only lost for about fifteen minutes, and unlike when I got lost in September, I was familiar enough with the area to know where I was when I hit the road. The rest of the day passed without incident since I stuck to paths I was familiar with. It was really nice to get some time to myself with God after having been with the same people practically 24/7 for the past three weeks.

I have decided I want to learn German. It will be much easier to learn German at Holsby than Swedish since we have far more German-speaking students than Swedes, including one of my room mates. So far I can introduce myself, comment on the weather, count to 1000, ask for things to be passed at the table, and a few other random things. All the Germans seem very happy to teach me.

It's snowing! And the temperature, according to my computer, is -3C so I guess it'll stick! My feelings about the snow are mixed since I don't want it to keep me inside or off the trails, but it's so beautiful and I've never experienced more than a foot at a time that sticks around for more than two weeks. I figured Sweden would be my chance to experience 'real' snow.

My biggest prayer request right now is for the chance to catch up on sleep. I'm not feeling really tired right now, probably because I'm just excited to be back, but I've noticed that I'm doing things and making decisions I probably wouldn't if I wasn't so tired, just little things but still...

Wow, this turned out to be pretty long and I probably missed a ton, but I hope you enjoy reading it. I'll try to add some pictures later, but my camera wasn't working (it kept telling me "Lens Error") so I have to get pictures from my friends. Have an awesome week!

Christmas Plans, Google+, Everything Drime, and Wisdom

2011-12-03T11:40:00.000-08:00

Christmas Plans, Google+, Everything Drime and Wisdom: what do these have in common? You could try to come up with something, but I have no idea. Maybe just that I've been thinking about all of them in the last 24 hours...

Christmas Plans
Yesterday my travel buddies and I sat down to plan our route over Christmas break. I feel like we'll be doing a whirlwind tour of five countries in Europe. We'll start by spending two days in Copenhagen before going to Sarah's home in northern Germany. We'll stay there until after Christmas, visiting nearby cities like Hamburg and Berlin, and then head south to Stuttgart. In Stuttgart we'll tour with some other friends from Bible school. Then we'll head further south to Salzburg and on to Vienna where we plan to spend New Years. Then it's on to Venice, Rome, and finally Paris before hopping on a train back to Sweden. I'm getting excited to travel, but I almost feel like we're going to try to go so many places that we won't get to spend much time in any of them. We'll probably stay mainly in hostels to cut costs and also plan to take two night trains. I'm sure it'll be a blast!

Google+
I just finished talking on Google+ with my family. It's so nice to be able to connect with people back home and even see their faces as well as hear their voices. It's not as good as in person, but it's way better than email or snail mail. Here's a snapshot from our conversation:

Jeremy got some sweet shades from Tyson and you can even see his computer screen reflected in them.

Everything Drime
Last night we had another youth group come to visit. I was part of a drime (silent skit to music) to the song "Everything" by Lifehouse. I was 'Greed' and dressed up sort of business-like. I don't think anyone filmed ours, I posted a link to a version on youtube since it's the same drime that a cabin at camp did this summer. I think it's the first drime I've ever done, and I enjoyed it.

Wisdom
Some friends and I have been listening to old lectures on wisdom by a lecturer name Scott Wallt. I've found it really challenging and helpful so I thought I'd share some of the highlights here. It's hard to explain here the urgency and importance of these thoughts. Wallt starts out by emphasizing the importance of pursuing wisdom; Proverbs 3:13-16 says that wisdom is more precious than silver or gold and nothing you desire compares with it. Proverbs 2 says we should search for wisdom like we would for hidden treasure. Wallt then looks at passages that say that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and explains that fear of the Lord is awareness of his presence and his eyes on me like a coach that wants to correct me in order to help me improve and succeed. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom because wisdom is in your day to day choices, applying understanding in a way that produces blessing. Proverbs encourages us to search for wisdom actively and gives four sources where we can find it: God's Word, wise friends, seeking and taking advice from wise people, and accepting correction and rebuke. If you want to become wise, spend time in the Bible, reading, studying, thinking about it, and applying it your life. Choose friends who are also seeking wisdom and make an effort to spend time with people who are wise so that you can see how they live and fruit it produces in their lives. Seek advice from people who have experience in the area you want advice in (your friends are often not the best choice); it's especially important to seek advice in the areas of friendships and other relationships. Last, make sure their are people in your life who you give permission to correct and rebuke you, and if possible, give them options if you refuse to listen to them the first time. Do you really want wisdom?

The End of November

2011-11-30T08:24:00.000-08:00

Wow, I can't believe it's November 30 already. Where did this month go? Right now I'm sitting in the computer room listening to Switchfoot (Hello Hurricane - Enough to Let Me Go), which is actually making me feel a little homesick since I haven't listened to my own music very much here. The last two weeks have been busy, but I can't honestly think of many significant things that have happened. Like last time, you're going to get the "As I remember it" version of events so hopefully you won't mind jumping around a bit.

The weirdest thing that's happened is that my hands have been shaking off and on since last Wednesday. At first we thought it might be related to the lymes disease I got from a tick bite back in October, but I went to the doctor, and blood tests ruled that out. Now I am basically waiting to see if it goes away in the next week or so, and if not, I guess they'll run some more tests. Your prayers for this would be greatly appreciated.

On Saturday I baked sugar cookies and chocolate peppermint cookies for our outreach last night. We brought cookies with us to share and made up packages of cookies with a verse and "God Jul" (Merry Christmas in Swedish) for the students to take home with them. We had seven or eight different kinds of cookies in all, and I think everyone enjoyed them.

On Sunday, our family group had a surprise birthday party for the two boys in our family group who had their birthdays this fall. We tried to through a kids' party with face painting, pin the tail on the pig, fishing for candy bags, and pizza. The cake was a typical Swedish kid's cake: a box of ice cream dumped out of the box and covered with candy and chocolate syrup. To add excitement to the whole evening, the power went out about an hour before we were scheduled to start so we ended up doing most things by candle and flashlight and the pizzas were barbequed!

We had our first book report due last week. It was only two pages, single spaced and it felt like a lot of regurgitation, but some of it was helpful to help me process ideas. Now we are reading an apologetic book. Out of a choice of three books, I chose On Guard by William Lane Craig. So far it has been really interesting and even intellectually challenging. I don't understand all his points on first read but talking with people helps me to process. I don't always agree with what he says or think that people I would debate atheism with would accept his arguments, but they certainly are interesting, and I'm looking forward to reading more.

About two weeks ago, our new principal arrived! Holsby has been without a principal for about two and a half years, and the director has essentially been filling both roles. I'm not sure what exactly the principal does... but he's here now. His name is Luke Thomas, and he's the son of the current director of Capernwray/Torchbearers worldwide and the grandson of the founder.

This week our speaker is John Breneman, and he's teaching on the book of Daniel. It's been cool the way he takes familiar Bible stories and pulls out new ideas and things to think about. Did you know Daniel was at least 82 years old when he was thrown in the lion's den? We've also been looking at the dreams and visions and how they've been fulfilled or partially fulfilled in history in the Babylonian, Medo-Persian, Greek, and Roman empires.

Last week Monday, I think, I spent the day with Trista, the wife of one of the staff members here and the mother of twins Hazel and Huxley. I was going to help her out with some baking, but the twins were teething and hadn't slept well. We tried tying them to our backs so we could bake but Huxley wasn't going to have any of that so we ended up taking them for a walk instead. When we got back, I help to feed them while Trista made biscotti.

Last week Thursday night, after lectures, the girls played a nice 'prank' on the boys. Over travel weekend, Magda and Sophie wrote emails to the families of all the boys asking for a story and picture from their childhood. They put the pictures into a slideshow, and we read out the stories while everyone sat in the Bik and the boys drank hot chocolate. When the boys went back to their dorm, they each found a cookie with an encouragement note baked into it as well as a cookie in a shape that reminded the girls of that particular boy. It was a pretty elaborate prank and more than two weeks in the planning, and the boys didn't suspect a thing.

Saturday evening, a group of us (mostly girls) sat around a table after dinner and had a long discussion about relationships and marriage and raising families and a lot of other topics that went along with those. Afterwards, I went for a walk; it was dark and kind of windy which made for a really cool atmosphere.

Last Tuesday we had our second prayer day of the year. This time it was a day of solitude. We assembled in the chapel at 9:30 with sack lunches and were told we had to be back by supper. There were some optional stations we could work through in the chapel, which took about an hour and a half but other than that we were on our own for the day. I dressed warm, packed my Bible, notebook, mp3 player and started walking into the forest. I prayed and journalled; I sang as I walked with and without my mp3 player; I sat still for a while; I read the Bible. It was a challenging time but worthwhile.

In general, my knee has been doing okay. I tried it out again a week ago and I made it twenty minutes of running before it started to hurt. Now I am trying to build it up slowly by going for ten minute runs, and I'll slowly increase it. Thanks for your prayers!

Well, it's supper time now so I'll sign off! I hope you had a great November and hopefully you'll have an even better December!

Yo Ho, Yo Ho, a Pirate's Life for Me!

2011-11-15T05:38:00.001-08:00

This last weekend, the Discovery team took a kayaking trip on the Baltic Sea! On Thursday, we jammed all our stuff into kayaks and sent sail for parts unknown. The first day was foggy, making navigation tricky and when dark began to fall, we were forced to find a camping spot on a nearby island even though we we were two kilometres short of our objective destination for the day. Friday was a beautiful sunny day, requiring us to pull out hats, sunglasses and sunscreen to combat the rays. We managed to make up the two kilometres from the previous day and reach our second destination in good time. The third day, Saturday, we awoke to a blanket of fog; I was leader of day that day, which means my partner Melanie and I were given the map and our destination for the day and had to use our compass skills to get the group there. Along the way we also had to fill up on water at a small town and choose a lunch spot. At times when we paddled, we looked around and all we could see was water and fog. At other times, shadows would emerge out of the fog and resolve into islands or large rocks. It was surreal. Timo, the Discovery leader, said he was very impressed with our navigation skills because we always knew where we were and where we wanted to go and then we went there. Sunday, we headed back to our original departure point, stopping for lunch on the way, and then cleaned out the kayaks and headed back to Holsby.

It's hard to describe what exactly we did on the weekend because it just seems so simple. Timo woke us up since we were again without any watches or other electronic devices; we packed our sleeping bags and sleeping pads and clothes, took down our tents, ate breakfast, cleaned up camp, and launched our kayaks. The rest of the day we paddled and paddled and paddled, stopped for Fika (snack break) which we ate in our kayaks, ate lunch on an island, and paddled until we reach our evening's destination. Sometimes we talked, but it was difficult to talk on the water with so much space in between and it wasn't always easy to go exactly the same speed as someone else to stay beside them. Sometimes we sang Christmas songs or Disney songs. Most of the time I just lost myself in the paddling motion and my own thoughts. The evenings also followed a routine: arrive, pitch tents, cook dinner and start a fire, debrief the day, and hang out around the fire until we felt tired enough to go to sleep. Finding a place to camp was challenging because we needed to find a place where we could pull up ten kayaks, flat spaces for five tents, and a place to make a fire; preferably the spot should be out of the wind, although we weren't very good at considering that.

I learned that cold feet are not normal and not healthy and numb is really bad. If your feet are cold, your socks are probably wet and you need to change them; you dry socks by putting them on your shoulders on top of your bottom layer but under any other layers you are wearing so your body heat pushes the water out. The best way to warm cold/numb feet is skin to skin contact, rubbing them, warming them with your hands, or putting them in someone else's armpits :D .

I didn't bring my camera with me because I was afraid it might get wet, but I stole some pictures from Facebook to give you an idea of what it was like and I'm going to try to get some more from a friend as well:

Nothing but fog

Emelie

Melanie

Sunshine and Shades

Danielle

Moonrise

Another foggy day

Me!

The last two weeks seem like a blur so I'll fill you in on a few highlights, in no particular order, as I remember them.

Wednesday morning last week I woke up to discover that I had another tick :( . This one had taken up residence in my belly button. I showed EJ, the girls' RA, and asked her if she could take it off me. She managed to get most of it but not the jaws and while she was working on getting it out with a needle, I started to feel really light-headed and needed to sit down really quickly. After the world stopped spinning, we decided we'd wait for someone else's advice before we dug the rest out. That evening I asked Timo about it, and he said it really needed to come out because he didn't want it to get infected on the trip. I asked EJ to try again, and she got more of it out but after half an hour there was still a piece left so I had to ask Timo to give it a try. He tried for another half hour before we gave up and he told me to wash it really well and keep it clean and keep an eye on it. I think it probably came out on it's own a day or two later because it was gone when I pulled the scab off on Monday. Now I'm a little paranoid about getting a tick, but not paranoid enough that I always remember to check for tick every night.

I don't know if I wrote about this or not, but by left knee has been bothering me since our last Discovery trip. Most of the time it's fine, but whenever I try to do much running, it starts to hurt and then continues to hurt whenever I go up or down hills or stairs. I gave it nine days off before trying to run again last Monday only to have it start hurting again after fifteen minutes. I've not given it another nine days off or so, but I can still tell it hasn't completely healed because it feels slightly bruised when I press on it. It's not actually that painful, just very frustrating that I can't be as active as I want to be. Please pray that I'd be able to stay off it until it's completely better and that I'd be able to learn whatever lesson God is trying to teach me through this.

Steffi, a friend of EJ's who was a student here two years ago, came to visit for a week. She was also an 'older' student when she was here (23 years old) and also in Discovery so I enjoyed talking with her, hearing some of the things she learned here and her experiences on Discovery.

I've enjoyed spending time with Trista, one of the staff here who is the mother of six-month-old twins Hazel and Huxley. I enjoy talking with her and holding the babies, and we've taken them for a few walks, too.

At Adelfors, I've enjoyed talking with Angela, a woman from Germany who is studying Swedish and English with the goal of studying in Sweden afterwards. English is often a struggle for her, but we get along okay and she teaches me the occasional Swedish word or phrase, too. Last week EJ brought string to make bracelets so we did that together while we talked. Angela is probably in her mid-thirties or early forties so it's been cool to hear some of her life experiences. Tonight we're going back to Adelfors so you can pray that God bless our conversation and our relationship.

This week, our speaker is Peter Reid, the principal at Bodenseehof, a Torchbearer/Capernwray school in Germany. He's talking about the life of Peter the apostle and so far it has been really challenging. Please pray that the lectures would be more than information gathering but life-transforming. We get bombarded with so much information and so many ideas and challenges that it's easy to forget the ones that have come before. We had reflection hour today where we got to sit and think about what we learned, but I feel like it wasn't enough to process what we've been learning.

Yesterday I went bouldering (rock climbing a low heights without a harness or rope) on a small rock close by with a few other students. The rock had basically three routes, one that was pretty easy, one that was impossibly challenging for me, and one that I'm making some progress on. Unfortunately, one of the times that I feel, I scraped my hand so I had to quit. Hopefully I'll make it back there before the snow comes.

We've had the warmest November in 100 years; today is the first time we've had frost since our backpacking trip. The warm weather looks like it's coming to an end, and I've heard rumours of snow for Thursday.

I hope you enjoyed this random collection of anecdotes. Hopefully I'll blog again before life gets away from me, but we've got a few assignments due next week and I'm falling a little behind on my Bible reading. Have a great week and remember that God's presence is always with you!

~Quarki

Busy Week!

2011-10-29T01:09:00.000-07:00

Wow, has it ever been a busy week! I feel like things just keep happening, and I barely have a chance to breathe.

Monday afternoon I went for a hike with EJ. We decided to go visit a caved-in mine that she'd been to before. We decided to explore on the way and bush-wack rather than following the paths. We ended up going in circles a few times but finally ended up at the mine with about 20 minutes to explore before we needed to turn around and head back.

An old lean-to we discovered on the way to the mine.

We went on top of the mine where it had caved in before we went to entrance. My breath kept fogging up the pictures.

Here's the cave-in without my breath in the way :)

Here's the entrance we used. What looks like leaf-strewn ground is actually a large puddle.
We walked through freezing water up to our knees until we got to the cave-in.

Another tunnel set high in the cave wall.

We climbed up to it, only to discover it was a dead end.

Looking out into the forest from the mine entrance.

After we explored we started to head back. EJ figured it would take us about 40 minutes to go back through the forest. Unfortunately, we ended up looping back to the road. We knew we could get home on the road in about an hour, and since we weren't sure exactly how to get how through the forest, we opted for the road. We ended up getting home at around 6:20pm, having missed dinner, but the exploring was worth it!

Wednesday afternoon a few girls and I baked some pies! We made apple, blueberry, and chocolate pie and a marble cake. Part of the way through I had to leave to play in the intramural soccer finals. It was an intense game, but unfortunately, we lost. After evening lecture, we had Dorm Life. The girls dorm got together and talked about how we felt we were doing at meeting the goals we set at the last Dorm Life meeting: Relational (being respectful, not forming cliques, etc.), Spiritual (encouraging each other, asking honest questions, etc.), and Academically (not pulling people away from studying, discussing lectures, etc.). The time EJ also challenged us to set individual Physical goals since it's going to start getting colder and darker and we're not going to feel like being as active and going for as many walks and being outside. After that we got to eat the pies we had made and sit around and talk, give and receive massages, paint nails, and put on face masks.

4am Thursday morning, the girls' dorm was awakened to the song "Friday" blaring through the dining room p.a. system. Some of the boys had also stapled together plastic cups and filled them with water and covered the bottom half of the stairs. Upon hearing the music, EJ grabbed her coat, bolted down the first half of the stair, slid down the railing and had the music off within about 20 seconds! I heard the music but didn't actually get out of bed. I half wondered if it was someone having a really late party (which would have been breaking quiet hour) or the boys pulling a prank (because talk of pranks has been circulating quite a bit recently), but I didn't think to get up and see. The girls who got up spent the next hour cleaning up. The boys had also set up a video camera, but luckily EJ found it and the girls took the video and erased it off the camera. In the video, the boys identified themselves so the girls stuck all the cups into their mailboxes. The boys involved got "campus minutes" (time they have to do chores) as punishment for breaking curfew and for breaking into the building (but not for the actual prank itself).

Thursday was our 40th day at Holsby and also Prayer day. The staff set up stations in the forest and we travelled from station to station in groups of seven or eight. Each station would have some focus to think about, and we could choose to process individually or as a group. To get to the stations, each group was given a compass and a bearing and distance from the last station and we had to follow the bearing and count our steps to get there. We ended up walking through some pretty thick bush and over some steep hills. We brought sack lunches and were in the forest from 10am to 4pm.

Friday was work day. Two other girls and I got to clean the girls' dorm. I cleaned toilets and sinks and also mopped the floor. In the afternoon the Discovery team went to a lake to practice kayak rescues - flipping the kayaks, flipping them back over with a minimum amount of water inside, and getting back into them - because our next trip is going to be four days of kayaking in the Baltic Sea! The lake was so cold! Now that we know how to rescue someone else whose kayak has tipped, the goal is not to have anyone tip!

Well, those are the highlights from my week! I hope next week is not quite so busy, but it's hard to say no to fun activities!

Discovery Four Day Backpacking Trip and Some Ah-Ha Moments

2011-10-19T22:57:00.000-07:00

Discovery!

Last week Wednesday, Discovery left on its first adventure, a four day backpacking trip in the back country of Sweden. Life leading up to it was busy with preparation and trying to get ahead on reading that would be due after we got back. In addition to the normal busyness, I discovered that I had a bug bite on my leg that was more than just a normal mosquito bite. I went to see a nurse before I left and she gave me some hydrocortisone cream and told me to come back if the bite didn't get any better.

The Discovery leaders, Timo and Alfred, didn't give us much information about the trip ahead of time. We were told that we were backpacking, and they helped us figure out what to pack. We didn't know where we were going, and we knew the day we would leave and that we wouldn't miss morning lecture but not what time beyond that. At lunch we were told to be ready to leave in 20 minutes. Everyone managed to make that deadline except one girl, who was four minutes late so we all got to do 20 push-ups (5 for each minute she was late). We got into two cars and drove for about 45 minutes before being dropped off on the side of the road near a trail head. We spent the rest of the day hiking, following Timo and Alfred to our first camp site by a lake. Since we were told we weren't allowed to bring any watches or mp3 players or other electronic devices, we didn't know what time it was and went to bed when we felt tired. The next morning we were woken up to Timo's "Good morning! 20 minutes to get up and take your tent down!" which threw us into a bit of a panic as we threw on clothes, threw our backpacks out of our tent and proceeded to take down the tent. Each day started pretty much the same way: get dressed and take down tents, eat a quick breakfast and head out. Each day two students were assigned "Leader of the Day" which means they were given the map and the responsibility to take us to our camping spot for the next night. Each evening we debriefed the day, discussing how the leaders did, what made the group hard to lead or easy to lead and how the day went in general. I learned that leading was more than just walking in front to provide direction, it included setting the pace, encouraging the group along, making sure everyone could keep up, letting the group know when breaks are coming so that people don't spontaneously take their own breaks when they feel like it, and listening to the groups' opinions as to when a break is needed. On our trip we also learned about using a compass with a map, how to take a bearing from a map and translate into real life and vice versa and how to orient a map to your surroundings. One day when we were following orange trail markers, Timo and Alfred took away the map and told us that we had to draw our own maps as we walked along, using our compasses and the number of steps and noting any major landmarks. On the last day, instead of being given destinations, we were given bearings and distances and the map and we had to figure out where we were going and then which trails to use to get there. We walked back onto campus, coming over Sunrise Hill, at about 2:30pm on Sunday. The highlight of the trip was the scenery: sunny weather, beautiful lakes, spectacular sunsets and sunrises, the variety of plants and trees that we saw. Unfortunately, my camera battery died at the very beginning of the trip so now I'm going to have to get pictures from my friends before I can post anything.

Ah-Ha Moments

Yesterday during the third lecture hour we were give some time to reflect on what we had learned so far. I went back over my lecture notes and wrote down the things that had struck me or challenged me at the time but I'd since forgotten about and I thought I would share them here. There's a lot of different thoughts and mental struggles that have gone into this list so if you're curious about any of these points, feel free to ask me about them :)

"To give praise when you don't feel like it is not hypocrisy, it's obedience." ~ Dr. John Mitchell

emotions are not the same as your attitude

Trials rip away the flimsy fabric of your self-sufficiency.
When writing the Bible, the authors may have used their own words but the message is exactly as the Holy Spirit intended

I'm still chewing on this one so my paper topic for this class is about the Bible's "inerrancy"

I am called to submit to authority; therefore, I should be more worried about disobeying God, about disappointing and hurting him, than about being caught by the cops for speeding.
Learning to abide in Christ requires a lot of patience with myself and with others because it's a life-long process.
Repentance is an ongoing activity.
Do everything without grumbling or complaining.
I need to know when I'm tempted most and what my weaknesses are and put up safeguards and make plans against temptation.
Why do I do "spiritual" things like devotions, singing, prayer, ministry? What's my motivation?
Give thanks in all circumstances.

It's breakfast time now so I have to go. I'm interested to know what's happening in your life too so write me an email or even a letter (it's exciting to get mail here!) and I'll do my best to write you back!

A Canoe Trip and a Bike Ride

2011-10-08T10:07:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, the whole school floated down the Emån river in canoes. I was in a canoe with Emelie and Danielle, two other girls from Discovery. We christened ourselves the MadDogs, made up a chant and sang songs as we paddled down the river. We carried our canoe over three short portages. Each of us took a turn at steering, which made for adventures each time a new person took over and we ran into the bank and water grass and ducked under tree branches. We ate our sack lunches at the second portage and had a barbecue at our final destination. To keep everything dry, we put our lunches and extra clothes in a dry bag. At the end of the day, I tried to fit myself into a dry bag :)

Today, Melanie and I biked into Vetlanda to get some supplies before we head out on our first Discovery trip. Unfortunately, as we were finishing up, Melanie noticed that she had a flat tire, and it was really flat. So flat that there was no way she could ride her bike home; we tried to find a place to fill it up but just ended up walking it back, which took us about an hour and a half, rather than the half-hour ride we'd counted on. We got back just in time for her to set the table for dinner. Tonight we are planning to sleep outside at the top of this hill:

The mouse is pointing to Mount Calvary, the hill we plan to sleep on.

Here's a picture from the night we slept out on the balcony:

Bethany, Me, Melanie, and Aurelia sleeping out on the balcony

I'm starting to get excited for our first Discovery Trip on Wednesday!

Hiking, Worship Together, and the Beginnings of Adelfors

2011-10-03T09:49:00.000-07:00

On Saturday afternoon, Melanie, a fellow Discovery student and I loaded up our packs with a some odds and ends and took a long walk/hike from the Bible school to Kleva Gruva, a copper and nickel mine that has been turned into a tourist attraction. We figured it was probably closed but we wanted to walk with a destination in mind. I wasn't exactly sure where we were going but Melanie assured me that it would take about 2 hours for the round trip. It ended up taking us about 3 hours instead. Here's the Google map of our route. If we'd checked this before we left, we'd have known better than to assume we could do it in two hours :p

No wonder they build rock walls when their fields produce so many rocks!

We walked along a quiet gravel road for most of the way.

A gigantic anthill!

Melanie with Anthill Number Two

Proof that we actually made it to Kleva Gruva!

Beautiful Swedish Countryside

On Sunday evening, we had "Worship Together" which I hoped would just be an extended singing session, but although it wasn't, it was still a worthwhile experience. The student who gave his devotion that evening talked about Psalm 1 and how we need to be deeply routed in God to withstand the storms of life, both now and after Holsby. He challenged us to think about goals for this year for how we could grow our roots. Although we've been talking a lot about hopes, expectations and goals for this year, no one had phrased it in that light, and it really made me think again. After fifteen minutes to think, there was an open-mic time for people to share their thoughts and impressions. One person shared how trees in Alaska can't grow down because of the perma-frost but they grow out and intertwine with other trees and the trees work together to keep each other firmly in the ground. Another person shared an experience where tree roots broke large boulders. I thought of boulders as issues that I might need to work through that would try to stop my roots from growing, but ultimately, if God is in and behind the growth, nothing can stop it. My goals are to continually seek God and a relationship with him in my required Bible reading rather than to just read to fulfil the requirement (I've thought about praying to read with new eyes and about listening to a worship song before I start to put me in the right mindset), to spend regular time in prayer and thanksgiving, and to seek community rather than trying to stand on my own. So here's a challenge for you. Read Psalm 1 and then think "What goals can I make for this year to help my roots grow deep?"

This afternoon we had our first meeting of the Adelfors outreach group, which is an outreach to a local collage that serves special needs students, students finish their high school diploma, and those getting collage degrees. On Tuesday night we get to go there and hang out with some students in a cafe. Today we talked about our expectations and prayed over each other and the coming encounters and relationships that will happen over the next year.

To end my afternoon, I hiked ten minutes up sunrise hill, one of my favorite places, and sat and read Classic Christianity (a required book) and The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. In about half an hour there will be a lecture on Worship. I'm curious to see how the lecturer, Donna Schoon, choose to define and describe worship and what she'll say about it.

That's it for now!

Highlights

2011-09-30T13:20:00.000-07:00

When I wait this long to write, the days start to blend together and I forget what has happened. I was planning to run a half-marathon in Gothenburg in May, but we found out on Wednesday that it is already full! So instead of running there, the RAs and a few other people are going to put together the first-ever Holsby half-marathon. Some people were disappointed but I think I'm just as excited to run here as is Gothenburg; I don't really care that we won't be running with 59,000 other people.

Yesterday I went running again in the morning with a few other students; we ran a flatter route than on Tuesday but we ran almost twice the distance in approximately the same time. Since most of the people I ran with have also signed up for soccer intramurals, which run Thursday afternoon, we've decided to change our running days to Monday, Wednesday, and Friday instead of Tuesday and Thursday. In the afternoon I went for a walk with my prayer partner; we haven't talked much before this and I felt sort of like she was only doing it because we were supposed to, but it is good to pray for each other. After that we had our first intramural soccer game. Each team has a good mix of experienced players and new players and I think I fall somewhere in the middle. I managed to take a few shots on goal but none went in because I'm not a very good shot. It was a lot of fun, though. There's one guy on our team who really knows what he's doing and he kind of acts like the coach too, telling people where to go and calling them back on defence and stuff like that. We started out strong and made the first goal but then the other team scored, too and the rest of the game no one managed to score at all. In the evening we had a class on Sweden: a little Swedish history and some basic Swedish phrases.

Today was our second work day of the semester. This time my duty was cleaning the guest cottage and a few rooms in another building along with two other girls. This afternoon we (finally) had our second discovery meeting. We got to learn about the stoves we'll be using and practice lighting them. We also got mini cookbooks that we used to plan our supper menus for the four days of our first trip in a week and a half.

After dinner my room mate Sarah, Hannah, EJ, and I listened to a sermon on Abraham and Abimelech (Gen 20). The whole point of it was that God is in control and working behind the scenes, but he doesn't usually choose to reveal exactly why he's doing what he's doing. When he does, it reminds us that he's working even when we can't see him. Therefore, when we get frustrated, we need to remind ourselves that God has his reasons for what is happening even if we never find out until we get to heaven; then, instead of being frustrated, we can thank God for what he has done and what he is doing. This was a really good reminder for me since I found the second experiential learning exercise we did on Tuesday kind of frustrating because it was taking so long; I kept thinking how we had already gotten the point of the exercise and wouldn't have time to try anything else. I was disappointed afterwards to hear of the other exercise we didn't get to do. Now I'm thinking that even though I may have been done with the log exercise, God was probably using it to teach me and others lessons and we weren't done yet. Maybe not, or maybe my lesson was just a lesson in frustration. If God's been teaching you cool, interesting, or just downright boring and basic things, I'd love to hear about it. (Are God's lessons ever boring?).

From the land of 100,000 lakes,
~Megan

Experiential Learning and Mug Painting Pics

2011-09-29T10:00:00.001-07:00

It's hard to believe I arrived here at Holsby almost exactly two weeks ago. The days have flown by! Tuesday afternoon, as part of a class on Experiential Learning, we got to do a few team-building activities. The first was a 5x5 grid of circles. One at a time, each person had to try to step on the stumps in the right order. When the person made a mistake, they had to go to the end of the line and the next person tried. To finish the challenge, each person in the team had to make it through from beginning to end. The catch was that only the person on the circles was allowed to talk so everyone else pointed and gestured to try to tell the person where to go. The point of this activity was to get us thinking about failure, how we deal with failure, and what we think other people think of us when we fail. For our second challenge, we had to get our whole team onto a hanging log; after we were on the log, we then had to arrange ourselves in order of birth month without falling off the log. There was also a rope hanging near the log which we used for balance and also to swing a few people onto an adjacent platform to give us more room to maneuver on the log. It took us at least an hour to finish the second activity.

I don't have a lot of time right now so I think I'll leave it at this.

Here's some pictures of the mug that I painted last Saturday:

Gotta go!

And the days go by...

2011-09-27T05:48:00.000-07:00

Sunday morning my family group was in charge of organizing the service. It sounds simple enough, choose the number of songs, prayer, speakers and put them in order. The service started out smoothly enough with two songs as planned. Then I thought two girls were going to get up and pray and then I would give my devotion, but apparently they thought I was doing my devotion next and the confused paused lasted long enough that the speaker, the leader of our family group, thought it must be time for him to speak so he got up and launched into his sermon. When he was almost done speaking, he asked what was next in the order of the service because he hadn't been part of the planning and we told him we'd already deviated from it; we sang another song and then I gave my devotion, which went pretty well, and then we had another song and then communion. The downside of giving my devotion after the sermon, rather than before as planned, was that I couldn't concentrate very well on what the speaker said.

At lunch someone asked what I was doing after lunch and I said I wanted to go for a walk but I didn't have anyone to go with. Timo, the Discovery leader, was sitting at my table and he said I should announce a walk for that afternoon and he would be willing to be the 'trail guide.' So I made the announcement and at 3:00pm I went for a walk with Timo, EJ, and Nathan and Megumi. We went further from campus than I ever would have gone on my own, and it was so beautiful!

Trees and meadows

The path we walked

An abandoned when of some kind

The colors of fall are starting to emerge

Sunlight streaming through the forest

A path through sunbeams :)

An abandoned VW van; the trees completely surrounded it so that we figured it
must have been driven there before the trees grew.

In case you needed proof I'm actually in Sweden, and not just my camera,
here I am :)

A Short Cut to Mushrooms

So cool! Any ideas what it might once have been?

I just love walking through the forests, although I'm a little afraid of going by myself now that I've been lost twice.

We ate dinner with our family groups. My family group includes Brad, the chef, and his wife, Cece, their three-year-old daughter Cailee, their four-month-old son Oliver, and five other students: Kathleen, Sophie, Annie, Simon, and Logan. We had pizza together, which was delicious; then the guys put together a TV stand from Ikea while the girls made cookies. Last, we sat down and ate cookies and drank tea and coffee and chatted. Almost as soon as I got there, I asked if I could pick up Oliver. I carried him around for most of the evening :) . I also played with Cailee; she like to dance a lot.

Monday we had lecture in the morning, still an overview of the Bible which has now picked up the pace a bit. I appreciate the faster pace, but some students were saying they were having a hard time following now. In the afternoon I walked up a nearby hill read my Bible for a bit. Here's the view from the top of the hill.

I also encountered an interesting looking spider crawling along a branch!

In the evening we had a lesson on the history of the Swedish church, which was quite interesting. This morning I went running again, having given my blister a week to heal. I went with EJ, Melanie, Kathleen, and Christopher and I found it was much easier than the last time I went. I managed to run for 25 minutes and I didn't feel like dying or wanting to give the whole way. I guess my body finally figured out what I wanted from it. I hope it can stay this way for the next while anyway.

I've gotta go now, but I'll talk to you soon!

Saturday

2011-09-24T11:46:00.000-07:00

Today we got to sleep in because instead of breakfast, we had brunch at 10:30am. We had bacon and fried eggs, which were delicious. Since we weren't going to have lunch, we pots and pans people got to wash up after brunch, but it took about half the time it usually does to wash up after lunch. Then I took up a walk up sunrise hill to read my Bible and journal; I met one of my roommates at the top of the hill who was also reading her Bible. The sun went in and out from behind the cloud and it was getting a little chilly by the time I headed back down.

At 2:30pm we got to paint our own mugs. The kitchen doesn't want us taking their mugs back to our dorms because we might loose them and now we also have mugs to make tea and hot chocolate. All the mugs were white so we had to paint something on them so we could tell them apart. Some of the boys just painted their names on them and left. I started out painting "Holsby 2011-2012" , then I added a penguin, "Quark" and a stylized atom; I painted Lamentation 3:22 on it and then some Greek letters and music notes to take up the rest of the free space; I also turned the handle into a Swedish flag. Now the mugs have to dry and be baked so the paint will be permanent. I finished at around 5:15pm, right before dinner. Some people were really creative and artistic, painting roses and dragons and stylized lettering. I don't think mine is beautiful, but I think it expresses my personality pretty well.

I spent the evening talking on Google Plus with my family. We managed to get everyone on video too! We get pretty weird sometimes when you put us in front of cameras. Here's a taste of what we looked like!

TTYL

The End of the First Week

2011-09-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

As of yesterday evening, I have now been at Holsby for a full week. I feel like I'm pretty well settled in a getting used to the routine here. I've met tons of new people from variety of places and cultures but don't feel close to anyone in particular yet. All your prayers are greatly appreciated.

The lectures on "God's Big Picture" have been interesting but not really earth-shattering. It's an overview of the Bible so that we can fit everything else we're learning into that overview. The key idea for the class is that the big theme of Bible is the Kingdom of God defined as "God's People in God's Place under God's Rule and Blessing." We just starting talking about God's covenant with Abraham.

Scenery on the way to the Migrations Board

Yesterday afternoon, most of the North American students went to the Swedish migration board to get out fingerprints and biometric data taken for our student visas. Since it went much quicker than we expected, we had about an hour to wander around a 'bigger' town, about an hour from Holsby whose name I've heard but actually don't know how to spell. Most people went shopping, but it turned out to be a really nice day so I went for a walk/wander with EJ. We had a really nice talk and found some random nuts and berries which we are going to try to identify (don't worry, we didn't each any!); we think some of them are chestnuts.

Is this a chestnut tree?

Today, Friday, is work day. This morning we were each assigned a variety of duties, mostly cleaning but also wood-chopping and a 'special project.' I was assigned to 'gardening' which actually meant pulling out the flowers which are going to die soon because of the frost and weeding the garden. The sun came in and out but it didn't really warm up. We had schnitzel for lunch so now I actually know what the song "My Favorite Things" is talking about :) . After pots and pans duty, my roommate Sarah, Hannah, and I biked into Vetlanda. My particular mission was to find some Kleenexes since I've somehow developed a cold, despite all my precautions and attempts to get rid of it. I guess there's just no replacement for getting enough sleep. In Vetlanda, we found a grocery store and explored it for a bit. Then we rode around downtown, explored a bookstore and found a place to eat dinner. The ride home was sunny and windy and a little chilly.

Pizza for Dinner!

The pizza diner

A beautiful garden on the bike ride home from Vetlanda

On the way home from Vetlanda, we spotted a hobit hole!

Now I think I'm going to head over to the Bik and see if I can join a game of some kind.
TTYL.

Photo Fun

2011-09-22T10:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a clearer picture of my room. I sleep on the top bunk

The view of the hallway once you step out of my room.

I'm not sure who lives in this house, but it's part of the Bible school property.

This is the main Bible school building, called Brunnsgarden. It has the girls dorms, the kitchen and dining room, the library, and the office. My window it the one on the top left on the end.

This is the chapel where we have lectures and church on Sunday. The upstairs houses the lounge and small store called the Bikupan or 'Bik'

Hanging out in the Bik:

An epic game of Spoons. Whoever doesn't get a spoon has to drink a large glass of water. The game started with a group of at least 15 people. Some people drank eight or more glasses. I eventually had to give up when it got to painful to continue. I think it's the only time I've actually seen a game like that end before everyone got board of it.

A stone wall along the path.

The challenge course! Everything was 10-12m in the air.

This bridge was the first obstacle after the climbing wall. It looks solid enough...

Annie, a girl from my family group crossing the bridge. It swings and shakes so bad mostly because you're shaking!

Just hanging out above the ground :)

Dorm Meeting and the Giant Swing

2011-09-21T10:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday night we had our first dorm meeting. We hammered out some ideas of what we want our dorm to look like and came up with some guidelines/rules to try to put that into effect. The we went up to each dorm room and the occupants of the room each shared something special to them that they brought from home. After they shared, everyone else prayed over them and over the room. It was a sweet sharing time!

This morning my family group got it's turn on the 16m/52ft giant swing. We took turns putting on a harness which was attached to a hanging rope. The rest of the group pulled on another rope to raise the person up and then when everyone was clear, the person in the air pulled a rope to release the brake and swing through the air. I got to go twice. The second time I closed my eyes; it was sweet because it made me much more aware of the sensations on my body, all the different forces and acceleration, and the wind whistling past.

Here's a video of my first swing. I'm not sure what the sounds like because I only watched it on silent, but here it is:

At 3:00pm this afternoon, I decided to bike into Vetlanda, the nearest decent-sized town. It rained off and on, mostly drizzling, so I was glad I wore my rain jacket and rain pants. It seems like I can't manage to go anywhere without getting lost! I made a wrong turn on my way back, but luckily it didn't take me too too long to set myself straight. It made me about 5 minutes late for supper, though.

The first official lectures starts in about 20 minutes. This series is entitled "God's Big Picture" so I think it's probably an overview of the Bible or a look at its overarching themes. We'll see how it turns out!

Eventful Days

2011-09-20T09:49:00.000-07:00

My Discovery orientation yesterday at least gave some idea of what we'll be doing. Our first trip is Oct 12-16. We'll be going on a four-day backpacking trip. Since it starts Wednesday after dinner, we'll be missing about 7 hours of lecture which we'll have to make up when we get back by listening to them on mp3. We've also been told that it's difficult to keep up with our required Bible reading during the trips so it's best to get ahead on those. We'll be getting together before the trip to plan it and learn how to pack our backpacks and what to bring and we also have a short handbook to read before. For some reason, it never really occurred to me that Discovery might generate more homework and take up time I should be doing other work, but I've been told that the homework we do here is nothing compared to what they do at Capernwray Hall in England so I'll count my blessings. The fact that we are jumping straight in with a four-day backpacking trip has motivated me to stick with running and try to hike the trails as often as possible. Once we learn to pack out backpacks, I'll probably add that to my hikes.

I tried to go to bed early last night so that I could get up a little early to run, and it sort of worked, but my roommates didn't really go to bed early and then I was pumped full of adrenaline for the ropes course today so it took quite a while for me to settle down to sleep. I got up a little early to run, but I didn't want to get up as early as the other girls so I ended up running by myself. I planned to run for 15 minutes and then turn around and walk back. Unfortunately, I got lost and my walk took me an hour and a half before I finally found someone who could give me directions back to Holsby and ended up driving most of the way because I suck at following directions. By the time I got home, I had missed breakfast completely (thanks mom for all the airplane snacks, they came in handy!) and I had mega-blisters on the backs of my heels from my new shoes. Needless say it was a lot more eventful than I'd planned.

At 9:30am, my family group got its turn on the ropes course; it was sweet! It starts out with a rock wall and includes several 'paths' between trees; a rope that you jumped to and swung to the next tree, and zipline at the end. The one I felt the most successful completing was two parallel cables between two trees; there was nothing to hang on to so you had to take turns sliding each foot along; it was hard to take enough weight off one foot to slide it along; at the beginning I could only slide them like an inch at a time, but by the end I was sliding each foot several inches and felt like I'd finally gotten the hang of it. I'm planning to post some pictures, but I forgot to bring my camera down and people are waiting for the internet connection.

My duty for the next few weeks is cleaning pots and pans after lunch. The first person sprays the pots down and scrubs them, the next washes them with soapy water and rinses them, and the third dries them and puts them away. I got to be person number one today. My body was exhausted by the time we were finished even though my mind wasn't that tired. I lay down for ten minutes and then met with my family group; we are in charge of planning this Sunday's service. It isn't that complicated, we just have to come up with the order of service, our staff leader is preaching the sermon and I am doing a devotion. Everyone has to do one devotion throughout the year and mine just happens to be the first on the list! I'm so glad I've done devotions at camp before or I think I'd be freaking out a little more right now!

Tonight we've got a dorm meeting so that should be fun!

Fun and Games

2011-09-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

I'm really enjoying the evening game times we've been having. I've played some Foosball, taught some people 3-13, and learned a new game called Yoniv. I hope they continue to happen at least every once in a while even as things get busier.

Yesterday I went running/jogging with a few other students. I'm not much of a runner so I set myself a goal of jogging for 15 minutes and then I walked for the rest of the time. I think the others ran from 30-60 minutes. I'm thinking about running more since it seems like most of the other students doing Discovery are in pretty good shape, but the students I've been running with get up 2 hours before breakfast so they can run for an hour and still have time to shower, etc., and I'm not sure if it's worth missing that much sleep or if I can motivate myself to run at a different time. I didn't get up this morning because I stayed up too late last night to get up at 6am. I think I'm going to have to compromise between evening activities, sleep, and running, and maybe only run a few days a week. I don't really love running, but it's probably good for me.

Yesterday was Sunday so we had our own church service here at the Bible school. The services in the local towns are all in Swedish, but we are allowed to go to them instead if we want to and there will be a few Sundays where the whole school will attend three different churches. It will be interesting to see what cultural differences are obvious and what might be attributed to differences in denomination. In the service here, we sang a few contemporary songs with a piano and guitar accompaniment; I'm guessing they'll add more instruments if students volunteer to play them, although I'm not sure what else the school owns and I don't think many people brought them from home.

In the afternoon we played a game called "Burn Ball" which is sort of like baseball but played with a tennis ball. Instead of throwing the ball to a base, you always thrown it to a designated person in the middle of the bases. There are no outs; if you get caught between bases when the 'burner' gets the ball, it's a point for the outfield team and you go back to the last base you came from. You can have as many people on each base at a time that you want and every person on your team bats once each inning. The bats are much smaller than baseball bats and you throw your own ball into the air to hit it rather than being pitched to. The outfield team gets five points for catching a pop fly with one hand and three points for catching it with two. The scoring was mostly confusing because it wasn't always easy to tell how many people got burned each time. It was a lot of fun though, and I liked the fact that there weren't any outs so everyone got to bat and run. After that I learned another new game called J-Rock, which is apparently a Holsby tradition, with is similar to hand ball or ultimate frisbee; you pass a soccer ball down the field by throwing it and you can't walk or run when you have the ball. You scoring by passing the ball to a teammate who has to head it into the goal. The other teams tries to gain possession by hitting the ball to the ground or catching it.

In the evening we played a few get-to-know-you kind of games like "I've never..." (only we played "I have...". Then we hung out in the lounge and played games until it was time for bed.

This morning we had our year overview and orientation, which answered a lot of questions about assignments, the Bible readings (we are going to be reading through the whole Bible this year), memory verses, curfew and other rules, schedule (although that's still pretty fuzzy), and travel weekends. I think some stuff we're just going to have to ask about as it comes along since some things I'm not sure what to even ask about yet. Our RA, Elizabeth or EJ, seems to have the answers to most questions and she's easy to talk to so that's nice.

In about half an hour I have my Discovery Orientation. There are eight students doing Discovery; I was surprised there weren't more, but I found out that they cap it at eight so now I feel even more privileged to be a part of it. There are four girls: Emelie from Sweden, Danielle from BC, Melanie from Germany, and myself. There are also four boys: Christopher from Germany, Erik and Stephen from Alaska, and James from Manitoba.

There are a lot more students from Canada than I was expecting, probably even close to half; there are quite a few Americans and Germans, two Swedes, one or two from Austria, one from Romania, and few from a collection of other countries. Although many of the students come straight from high school, there are a handful who are around my age. It's kind of nice, though, that age doesn't really seem to matter to most relationships. It's one of the 'introductory' questions you ask a lot of the time but then usually forget pretty quickly.

TTFN :)

First Impressions

2011-09-17T09:48:00.000-07:00

I've now been here two full days, but it feels like it's been a lot longer than that. We had our first official dinner yesterday; they served us a Mexican-tasting chicken, bean, cheese, and rice dish which was delicious. After dinner we hung out in the lounge over the chapel and played games, starting with "Signs and Symbol" where you pass around an invisible ball and the person in the middle has to try to figure out who has the ball. I also played a variation of Uno similar to Swiss Uno. We spent a lot of time just hanging out and talking in smaller groups. At the end of the evening, Elke, the house mother, asked for help to harvest some pumpkins because she thought the temperature was going to dip below 0C and they wouldn't survive the night. After my roommates and I went back to our dorm, we played a dice game called "10,000" or "Zilch" before heading to bed.
Here's a blurry picture of my room. I'll have to get a better one, but it gives you an idea anyway:

I'm on the top bunk. I'm using the space under the bed as extra clothes storage.
Here's a picture of the view from our window:

Our room is on the front of the school on the far left side when you're facing the school.

We had brunch at 10:30am today and then had some free time to explore. At 1:00pm, we were introduced to the staff. Then we headed out on a hike up a nearby ski hill.

The view from the top of the ski hill!

There are many walls like this all over the place. They sometimes look like rock piles more than walls.

After the hike, Emilie and I played soccer with a some of the guys. Now it's after dinner and I'm off to play some games in the lounge :)

Sweden-bound

2011-09-16T03:40:00.000-07:00

Here I am in Holsbybrunn, Sweden. How did I get here? It hardly seems real.

I left Canada on Tuesday to drive down to Seattle with my mom and Nan. On the way, we stopped at Cosco and REI, where I discovered I had forgotten to pack camping dishes so I picked up a cool little kit which was designed for camping and will hopefully work well. We stayed overnight with my aunt and uncle and I flew out of the Seattle airport at 12:30pm. From Seattle I flew Alaska Air to Minneapolis. When I got to Minneapolis I asked someone where I had to go next. They told that I needed to follow the signs for baggage, then the ones for ground transport, then take a tram to the light rail which takes you to the other terminal. It's a good thing she wrote it down for me because I never would have remembered that all but it actually wasn't too hard to follow the signs. From Minneapolis I flew Icelandair to Reykjavik, Iceland, transferred planes and flew from Reykjavik to Copenhagen.

In Copenhagen I had arranged, via Facebook, to meet Katy, another girl going to Holsby. I arrived about half an hour before she did. I waited at the baggage carousel where her luggage was supposed to come and thought I spotted her, but I wasn't sure because she was talking to an older couple. After she picked up her bags and headed out, I realized that I was going to have to take a chance and ask her or I was going to loose track of her. It turned out that she was the person I was looking for :) . After a few attempts, we managed to both purchase train tickets from Copenhagen to Vetlanda. We had some extra time so we wandered around the airport for a bit before heading down to the train station. We needed to change trains in a town called Nässjö, but none of the trains had that name on the display; I was pretty sure we should take the one bound for Stockholm but due to a series of events, we just about missed the train. Then, when we got off in Nässjö, which isn't pronounced at all like it looks, we were told we needed to get on our next train at track 1a. It sounds simple enough, but it took us almost the entire 15 minutes we had between trains to find it and then we ended up having to run to catch it. When we arrived in Vetlanda, Katy phoned the school to send someone to pick us up. We were picked up by the Resident Assistents (RAs), who were very friendly and helpful. We arrived at the School around 6:30 p.m. Holsby time, which is around 9:30 a.m. BC time on Thursday morning. We met at few other students and talked for a while, trying to stay awake until bed time.

This morning a few of us explored the chapel and one of the many trails around the school. I unpacked a bit, too; it looks like it's going to be a tight space for clothing. I am sharing a room with three other girls: Bethany, Linnea, and Sarah. Bethany arrived yesterday too but I haven't yet met Linnea or Sarah.

There are 44 students at Holsby this year, 20 boys and 24 girls. There are eight students doing Discovery.

It's almost lunch time now, and I'm interested to see what they'll serve us :)

The Everything Drime

2011-08-23T19:52:00.000-07:00

The drime that Cabin 8 performed on Thursday night was to the song "Everything" by Lifehouse. It's really powerful. Here's a youtube version of it, and if you get a chance, it's well worth watching.

The End of a Season

2011-08-22T22:21:00.000-07:00

As I sit here, I feel kind of shell-shocked. Jr Teen Camp is over; Sr Teen Camp is over; some of the friends I spent of summer with have already headed for home. Where did the summer go? I feel like I blinked and it was gone.

Yet I sit here trying to remember the highlights of Jr Teen, and it already feels like a life-time ago. What can I remember? Since the age range for Jr Teen was 12-14, we had a few Jr Staff back as camper; it was cool to be able to reconnect with them and spend time talking to them and hearing their stories and camp experiences without feeling guilty that I was taking time away from the kids. There were also a few campers back who I had had in my cabin in previous years who I had the chance to reconnect with, which was sweet. During free time, we also gave kids the option of going tubing, which many campers loved! I had to send two kids home because they threw up, even though we were pretty sure they didn't have a flu or anything. I also sent two kids home with fevers just to get some rest but one of them was able to come back Friday for the last day. Everything else must have gone pretty smoothly because that's honestly all I can really remember right now.

Sr Teen was super awesome! More than half the campers were Juniors who were back as campers. Most of the rest were long-time campers who were more than willing to 'throw off' the coolness and just get into things. There were also a few campers this week that I had had in my cabin last Sr Teen. I was able to talk especially with one girl who had been in a bad relationship, lived with her boyfriend for quite a while and then been dumped and was now back living with her mom is a fairly rocky relationship. It was sad to hear her story of the discouragements and mistakes of the past year. However, last summer, she would never had accepted that what she was doing was wrong and had no desire to make a change. This summer, she felt like everything the speaker said was directed at her and by the end of the week she wanted to make steps towards change even though all her friends would probably pull her back into the lifestyle she had been in and her relationship with her parents wasn't going to be very helpful either. We were able to connect her with a pastor from a church in Abbotsford (where she lives) so we are praying that she is able to follow through with her desire to make changes and live for God rather than slipping back into the life she was living. Camp can change people's hearts so fast but it can often be difficult to keep that change permanent.

Sr Teen I was also dealing with two on-going medical 'problems'. One was a camper so seemed continually worn out with headaches and a bit of a sore stomach. She thought it was a migraine so for the first few days we treated it that way, letting her rest and sleep as much as she needed. She'd feel better and go to participate in some activities but within a few hours she'd usually be back in my cabin needing to rest again. On the second night of this, I finally took her temperature and found she had a small fever, which isn't usual for migraines. I sent her home the next morning since she still wasn't feeling much better even after she had just gotten up. She went home, rested all day, slept in her own bed; she came back the next afternoon feeling fine, but by campfire time she was worn out again with a headache and a bit of a fever. Since it was the last night, I didn't send her home, but I did send her to bed early.

The second on-going medical issue was Sklar, one of our Sr Cabin leaders. She woke up Monday morning with a crusty, red eye that we assumed was pink eye. She went to the clinic to get some eye drops and while she was there she had the doctor look at her sore throat, only to discover that she also had strep throat. She got eye drops and antibiotics and rested for most of the afternoon and evening in my cabin. The next morning when we put the drops in, her vision in one eye went cloudy and refused to clear up so she went back to the clinic. This time she saw a different doctor who told her she didn't have pinkeye but an infection and a scratch on her eye and he prescribed her different eye drops. When we put those in back at camp, her eye began watering like crazy and became super-sensitive to light, it also began to swell so we stopped putting those drops in and went back to the clinic to see the second doctor again the next morning. This time the doctor sent her to an optometrist who told her that she didn't have an infection in her eye, although he couldn't tell if she'd had one before, or a scratch and that she was having an allergic reaction to the second set of drops. The optometrist prescribed a third kind of drops and asked her to come back in two days. After that everything began to clear up and go back to normal (thankfully!).

The third excitement of the week occured on Thursday night when, after a powerful drime (drama + music), the Sr cabin leader fell off the two-foot stage and dislocated her elbow. She and a few others spent an eventful but sleepless night in the ER.

What with the all the goings on, the week just flew by for me and suddenly it was Saturday morning and campers were leaving. After they left, we did our usual paperwork and clean up and ate lunch together. After lunch we began to put our coordinator spaces in order to shut them down. For me this mostly meant organizing my cabinet and cupboards and putting back some of the things I gathered at the beginning of the summer, like extra towels and cups. In the late afternoon I went to a friend's bachelorette party where we worked together on a photo scavenger hunt that highlighted some parts of her life. Since she is one of my friends from camp, camp was a huge theme throughout so my team drove to camp to take some sweet photos. After that I went home and ate a home-cooked meal with my family and my grandparents who were visiting from Vancouver Island. Then I went back to camp where we hung out and tie-dyed T-shirts, most of which turned out amazing!

Sunday morning we went to Northview for the 9:00am church service and then pulled some things together for the VBSs we're running this week. We had a little time to hang out and fill out summer evaluations and kind of debrief our summer and give the highlights and ways training and staff weekends could be improved for next summer. Then we went on the first-ever Camp Staff / Kitchen Staff dinner at a Chinese restaurant in Abbotsford. It was kind of fun to sit down and eat with and talk to the staff who had been serving us meals all summer. After dinner, the goodbyes began. Most of the Sr Staff is staying this week to help with the VBSs we are running in two Lutheran churches, but 7 staff left between last night and this morning.

The VBSs today went amazingly smootly, way better than last year. It sure helps just to have more people helping and to have a better idea of what we were in for. Our program at both churches consisted of chapel, including our game show, some songs, and our puppet show. In the puppet show, I get to be Kiki, one of the monkeys, because the person who has been playing Kiki all summer left last night. It has been a very quick transition since I only got the script this morning and I haven't had much experience with puppets before, but at least the kids are young and fairly forgiving. After chapel, we run Bible study, games, snack and crafts. Then we quickly grab lunch and head to the other church where we repeat the whole thing. In the morning I get to hang out with the younger kids and in the afternoon I get to hang out with the older kids so I get a little taste of each. This evening we got to eat dinner with Nathan and Nikki, our facilities manager and guest groups manager, who live on the camp property together with their two kids. It was great to be able to visit with them and eat some delicious non-camp food.

That's the last two weeks in a nut-shell (which actually turned out to be pretty long!). Pretty soon the rest of us are going to leave camp for many different destinations. Some people have remarked that we are going to be re-entering real life; however, the Colonel remarked that camp really is 'real life,' it's just a specific season of life. Some seasons are long and some are short but they are no less real. I'm sad to see this season coming to an end once again, but I'm so stoked for what God has in store for me next. I'll be leaving camp for the summer this Friday and I'll have around 2.5 weeks in Abbotsford before I'll be jumping on a plane for my next adventure. If you're in the area, I'd love to reconnect with you in person before I leave!

See you soon!
~Quark

Junior Camp #4

2011-08-04T19:41:00.000-07:00

This week seems busier than I remember Jr 3 being. It's our first sold-out camp of the summer! It kind of a combination of the first three because we have campers ages 7-12 with a few six-year-olds and thirteen-year-olds too.

The first night went fairly smoothly until around 10 or 10:30 pm when we had the first throw-up of the week. The girl threw up right in the middle of her cabin (yuck!) . We had to evacuate the rest of the campers and the leaders to stay in the retreat centre for the night. One of her leaders took the girl to get cleaned up, and a few other leaders and I cleaned up the spill. The rest of the night was quiet.

The next morning was quiet, I did some laundry and other odd jobs. At around 12:30, a leader brought a boy to me who had been kicked in the head pretty hard during the swim test and had a bad headache. He was Korean and didn't seem to speak great English, but as far as I could tell, the headache was the only problem so I gave him some ibuprofen and sent him on his way. At around 1:00, as he was heading down the steps with a plate of fries in his hands, he threw up too! We cleaned it up as fast as we could and tried to keep other campers from walking through the area. The boy went home until the next day, but now he's back and doing fine.

Most of my time this week had been occupied with a multitude of scraps and minor cuts and homesickness that takes the form of stomach aches. Today I got to go swimming with a few campers. We jumped off the dock and the floating dock, went down the waterslide, and played "What time is it Mr. Shark?" I sat with one of the campers at dinner and showed my table the paper story I know. My brother Jesse also visited today. It was great to see him and go to Tim Hortons and chat with him during my time off.

It's hard to believe the campers are already going home tomorrow! It doesn't feel like Thursday yet because this camp started a day late due to the long weekend. However, some of the younger campers are definitely running out of steam, needing extra naps or early bedtimes or just being generally difficult to handle.

This weekend is a staff weekend so I won't be home, but hopefully it will be a good time of resting and reconnecting with the other Sr. staff. You might be surprised how little time we get to talk to each other during the week. I hope your weekend is relaxing too!

~Quark

Long Time No Post

2011-07-29T22:48:00.000-07:00

Life has been pretty crazy-busy these last two weeks, which accounts for the lack of communication from me, but now that I sit down to write about it, my brain is too tired to remember much. I apologize for any typos or confusing sentences because my brain is only half awake right now.

Junior Camp #3 was a blur. I had to send one camper home who had a headache and was running a fever, and apparently most of his family also caught the same bug so it was a good thing I sent him home. He was not able to come back that week, but he did come back to visit several times during family camp so at least he got some time at camp even if it wasn't the same experience everyone else had. During Jr 3, two of the youth from my youth group attended camp; I loved getting to hang out with them during free time and wide games and getting to know their cabin at meal times.

This last week of camp was Family Camp. Family Camp has a whole different feel to it from kids camps since there are fewer kids (approximately 50 between the ages of 1 and 17) and they sleep in cabins, rooms, tents, or trailers with their parents. Counselors are assigned to a certain age group during the morning bible study and activity times. The rest of the time they are expected to take initiative to hang out with whatever kids they have connected with, get to know parents and help them at meal times and free time. Family Camp was a bit of a break for me since I didn't have to dispense medication (the parents could do that) and parents also dealt with most of the headaches and bug bites that came along. Mostly I gave out a few tylonols and advils and benadryl (for swollen bug bites). That meant that I got to be more like a 'normal' counselor and spend more time hanging out with kids. It was great because three kids I had hung out with last summer and the summer before had returned. I got to hang out with them at free time and during wide games as well as at chapel and campfire. I pulled a muscle playing Capture the Flag on Monday night because it was the first wide game I felt like I could play hard in all summer since there were bigger kids to chase. Unfortunately, that meant I couldn't run much all week (and believe me, I kept trying every time it felt the better). Looking back, it was actually part of God's plan. Because I couldn't run, I ended up walking with a two five year olds and their three-year-old brother and their mom during the wide game on Tuesday night; the five-year-old girl and I really hit it off and I got to spend quite a bit of 'special' time with her over the next two days. She even drew me a picture! My biggest medical emergency for the week was Tuesday night when a boy rolled his ankle; by the time I got there is was already swelling but he could still move it and he didn't seem to be in too much pain so we iced it, elevated it, gave him some advil and sent him to bed. By the next morning he was walking normally :) .

Now I am home for the weekend. I am planning to go camping tomorrow night with Jesse and Jason. It's been interesting to plan my own trip for once rather than having my parents plan it. We'll see how it turns out :P

That's all for now, folks!
~Quarki~

Gearing up for Jr. 3

2011-07-17T13:06:00.000-07:00

It's hard to believe we've finished two weeks of camp already! This last week we had three campers go home sick. One threw up in his bunk at about 10:45pm, which wasn't fun; we evacuated the rest of the cabin to the one empty cabin and went to work with bleach spray, gloves, and paper towel. Pomello, one of our senior counselors got sick on Wednesday night and went home to rest for Thursday; fortunately, we have enough junior staff that one of the more responsible ones was able to take care of her cabin while she was away.

At the beginning of the week we had a very homesick camper who just did not want to be here. His mom kept insisting that he just needed to give it a try and get involved, but he wasn't willing to involve himself. He just kept asking to call his mom; we tried sending him home just on Monday night, but when he came back on Tuesday, it was evident that he still really didn't want to be here so we sent him home again later that day.

One night a counselor knocked on my door at around 3am to tell me that his camper just couldn't get to sleep and he didn't know what else to do with him. The camper was frustrated at still being awake, too, since he'd been trying to sleep for at least 4 hours. My only suggestion was to do a bedtime 'reset' which is what I do when I can't sleep: get a drink, go to the bathroom, read my Bible for 10 minutes, and then try to go to sleep again. The counselor left and told me the next morning that it had worked great!

I enjoyed hanging out with campers during free time a lot this week. I got to go swimming with campers one day and just hung at at the gym or the craft shack other days. It's also fun to sit and talk with them while they eat their canteen.

Since the campers are getting older, 9-11 years old last week, they are coming to me with fewer minor injuries like 'sprained' ankles and fingers and bruises so my week was a little quieter. Next week the campers will be 11-13 years old, which was my favorite age group when I had my own cabin; at this age they are understand enough to start asking some serious questions but they still manage to avoid most of the drama of older campers since it is still a 'kids' camp rather than a 'teen' camp.

We had our traditional senior staff girls' night out / guys' night out last night, and it was so much fun! The girls went to a cute coffee shop and bookstore in Fort Langley called Wendell's. We walked down the main street of Fort Langley, where they are setting up to film a Christmas movie called "Trading Christmas" and sang Christmas carols. Then we went to Radolfo's house and watched a chick flick. Today we went to Mt. Calvary Lutheran church and now we're chilling until 3:00pm when the junior staff arrive. Since we were out fairly late last night, I think I'll probably take a nap!

Bye for now!

~Quark

Jr 2, Here We Come!

2011-07-10T09:32:00.000-07:00

I'm back home for the weekend, but I'll be heading out to camp again this afternoon. The first camp of the summer wrapped up smoothly. There were a few 'tired' injuries, bumps and bruises that got blown out of proportion by the campers' sheer exhaustion. The boy who slept in my cabin on Wednesday came to me again right before supper on Friday with a stomach ache. He told me he'd only had water at breakfast and lunch and then had a ton of sugar at canteen. I just told him to have a big glass of water and get some real food into his stomach, and he seemed alright with that solution. By the time his parents picked him up he seemed quite chipper.

Thursday night it rained, which meant that the campers slept more soundly and it was colder and consequently 3 or 4 wet sleeping bags showed up on my doorstep in the morning. Friday morning was therefore taken up almost completely with laundry and trying to figure out how to get the sleeping bags dry when they couldn't go in the dryer and the weather did not seem to be cooperating. I ended up hanging one across my bunk bed and one in my bathroom and turning the fan on until the rain stopped and I could hang them outside.

Friday night, we all headed home. I've spent the weekend running errands and relaxing. Unfortunately, my body is stuck on camp time and won't let me sleep much past 8:00 so I haven't really caught up on sleep much.

Next week is Junior Camp #2 with 8-10 year-olds. This camp is slightly fuller than last week with around 80 campers. I excited to see who God brings across my path this week!

I've enabled anonymous commenting, which means you should be able to comment even if you don't have a blogging account. I would appreciate it if you signed your name at the end of your comments just so I know who you are, though.

Here we go again!
~Quark

Staff Training and Junior Camp #1

2011-07-07T14:37:00.000-07:00

I can't believe I've been at camp for almost two weeks now. The first week was staff training. We spent time organizing our areas and planning activities for the campers. I organized the first aid station, checked the first aid kits to make sure they were well supplied, and tried to figure out exactly what I would be doing all summer. We also spent a fair amount of time going through the policy manual and the staff manual which explained how to deal with everything from Bible study time to homesickness. We also spent time team-building: working together through a scavenger hunt, competing in the traditional boys vs. girls bocce game, and spending time hanging out around the camp fire. On Thursday night we headed up to the Camp Luther Seymour Chalet. We played "Mafia," camp style, with good and bad campers, the camp director and the camp nurse as characters. On Friday, we went into Vancouver for Canada Day and hung around downtown; they had some great live music on the Canada Place mainstage. We finished the day with a baseball game with the Vancouver Canadians versus the Eugene Oregon Emeralds. We saw the same two teams last year and the Canadians got slaughtered. This game was a lot closer but the Canadians still lost, 2-5. We had a lot of fun cheering just because it was great to be with a bunch of friends.

This week kicked off the summer with the smallest campers, the 7-10 year olds. Grizzly, the camp nurse from last summer, came to help me out and show me around on Sunday and Monday morning so that I'd have a bit better idea of what I was in for and how to handle it. I was so glad she came! Sunday night was overwhelming enough, even with her helping me through it. Sunday night registration started at 6:30pm. My table was the last stop in the registration line up. I had two junior helpers who collected health forms from campers who did not need to hand in medication, and I collected the forms and meds from those who had them. We checked each form to be sure they had written down their health card numbers, that they had noted any allergies or other concerns, and I made sure I knew exactly when and how much medication each camper needed. Then Grizz and I packed up all the forms and moved to my cabin where we began filling out schedules, medication records, and cue cards with any concerns for the counselors. Since there were two of us working and it was a smaller camp, it didn't take as long as usual. I especially made sure I knew who needed medication that night so I could give it to them. That night Kahuner brought a homesick camper to my cabin who refused to go to bed. We talked with her and distracted her, but she every time we asked her to lie down or go back to her cabin, she said her stomach hurt too much when she lay down. Eventually, after more than an hour, we called her mom to take her home and get a good nights sleep at home and bring her back the next morning. We found out that she had been up until 3am the previous night and probably just exhausted. She came back the next morning and has been having a great time all week. I had another visit from a homesick camper at 3am, but I told her that it was too late call her parents and that she just needed to have a drink of water and sleep off the stomach ache.

Most of the campers who need medications get them at breakfast time so that is my busiest time. On Monday morning, Grizz advised me to eat breakfast before the campers got to the dining hall because I wouldn't have time later. As the campers came through the breakfast line, I would call them over and give them whatever they needed and then record the time I gave it. After breakfast, a counselor brought me the sleeping bag of a camper who had wet his bed in the middle of the night so I washed that. The rest of the day I dealt with anything that came up, little scrapes and cuts, headaches or stomach aches, and "sprained" ankles. Free time was slow enough that I got to hang out with some kids as they ate their canteen and played on the trampoline.

Wednesday I actually managed to get all my routine chores done and go to chapel; I hung out at the craft shack and talked to kids during the morning craft time too. Wednesday is often the hardest day simply because it is the middle of the week and these kids are already getting time. One little more with a cold just couldn't make it to rest time. He came to me with a headache and stomach ache; I gave him a glass of water and he lay down and fell asleep until free time. He came to me again at snack time after dinner just wanting to lie down and he fell asleep almost right away. He's been doing much better today. I've got one little admirer who wants to come see me for every little bump and bite he gets. The mosquitoes have been just horrible this week, and the more kids scratch, the more the bites seem to swell. One girl has bruise spots around three of her bites and another looks like one of his has blistered. Please pray that the mosquitoes subside!

Well, it's free time so I've gotta go now. I get to head home this Friday night, and I'm kind of excited to get some down time and sleep in my own bed!

~Quark

A New Adventure at Camp

2011-06-11T19:11:00.000-07:00

It's been a really long time since I've written here. I mostly forgot about this blog even existed. Now I'm back because someone suggested I should blog about my time at Bible school next year. I thought that this might also be a good way to keep people updated about my time at camp this summer. Blogging instead of emailing means people can also comment! So here goes...

Camp starts in two weeks! It feels like I've been waiting forever and yet that the time has also flown by. This summer I am going to be the camp First Aid Attendant. I'm excited to try something new but also nervous because I don't know exactly what I've signed up for. I took a standard first aid course three weekends ago, which is all I need to be qualified, although in many ways I don't feel qualified. At least I won't be the only first aid person there or even the most highly trained one, so I'll have lots of back-up. I'd appreciate all the prayers I can get!

Back to School

2008-01-10T09:13:00.000-08:00

Sigh... The break was relaxing, but not long enough. (Although I must admit towards the end I was getting restless and bored from spending to much time be myself.) I spent Christmas with my cousins from my mom's side for the first time because they moved last summer from New York to Washington state! Then my family went to Vancouver Island to spend New Years with my dad's family. That was different from normal (higher energy but less relaxing) because my dad's cousin and his wife also stayed at my grandparents' at the same time.

I'm working in the computer lab again this semester and right now I am doing my first shift. It goes from 9-11am. Right now there is no one here. Two people came but they left again. In addition to working in the lab I am going to be "teaching" a tutorial for Calculus II. I haven't talked to the professor yet, but I've been told that entails about an hour of prep and an hour of teaching/being available to help per week. The second hour includes going over three or four problems on the overhead similar to the ones that they have for homework and then being available to answer questions. It will definitely be higher pressure than marking but should be good teaching experience. Hopefully I'll get used to it and be able to relax.

I've gone to all my classes except rockclimbing and most of them look okay. All of them except math include essays :(. Most also include copious amounts of reading. The first one I went to was philosophy (taught by the husband of one of my previous English profs). It looks like that class will include lots of discussion. Education 200 (Principles of Teaching and Learning) looks like a cross between both my classes last semester: lots of reading from the textbook (Educ 211), reading articles (Educ 203 and 211), presenting mini-lessons (Educ 203), and writing essays (Educ 203). Hopefully the content will be new. In Phys 220 (Mechanics) we had a short introduction, then started right in on dimensional analysis. After chapel I had my first dama (Theatre for Children) class. That class promises to be different from the other ones I've taken so far, including adapting a story for readers theatre and puppets, using drama in the classroom, making masks, attending childrens plays, writing an annotated bibliography on ten children's plays, and writing a children's play as a final project. The last class I have taken so far is Linear Algebra. To my dismay, the professor for the class changed from Dr. Atkins (who I had for Calc I and III and can follow his teaching fairly easily) to Dr. Ariel (who I had for C++ and find is disorganized and confusing). Hopefully the textbook will be clear enough that I can figure out what I'm supposed to do. I have my first rockclimbing class on Saturday! We probably won't do much, but you never know.

Tired

2007-11-22T15:50:00.001-08:00

Bored. Can't concentrate... Eyes blur. Random thoughts. Glad I don't have class right now. Must do homework later though. Brain stopped. Blank mind. Last night:Rock Out... Awesome! 2 new songs. Jumped around. Watched tap dance - captivating. Played pool - won! Made new friend - Breanna. Hope she comes back.

Reading Break to the Present

2007-11-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

Well, it's been an interesting, busy last couple of weeks.

On reading break I was part of a team programming contest where teams compete to solve problems as quickly as possible. We came in 18th/77teams in our region, which isn't bad. It was a crazy set-up because at one of the sites in our region, only two people could fit at the computer at once so they made it a rule at all the sites that we could only have two people (out of the three on our team) at the computer at a time. It was a nifty experience for me.

Right after I got back from reading break I went to Grant's and Matt's party. It had already started, but I caught the tail end of it. We had cake, joked around, took pictures, and watched Spiderman 3. It was great to be able to see Grant and Matt again.

On Sunday I went to Walmart to get a new watchstrap, Dollar Giant to get fuzzy socks and gloves, and to Shoppers Drug Mart to look for a new insole the physiotherapist recommended. Shoppers at Gateway didn't have my size and the Shoppers at the mall didn't have the right brand at all so we had to order it. I'm a wearing them for the first time today. They feel a lot different. Sometimes they hurt a little, but I'm hoping my feet will get used to them.

Sunday night I decided to go swing dancing since it was the long weekend and I figured I should get some fun in. I invited Jesse to come too, and he a had a lot of fun. He says he wants to come back, but he has to figure out a way to work around his RPG game, which is on Sundays.

Monday was my first real day of homework. I was planning to do one essay on Monday and one on Tuesday, but to my frustration, the rain and wind had knocked out the power at Trinity so I wasn't able to access the online journal database on Monday. I still got reading done. On Tuesday I worked from 9:30am to 1:00am the next morning. I just wanted to get it finished. I didn't want to have to come back to it.

At Lifeline on Wednesday we went swimming at MRC. The first "exciting" thing that happened was that Bethany chipped her tooth on the bottom of the pool. I spent the evening hanging out with a girl named Melissa. I found out from Natasha later that one girl bumped her head on the slide and a boy had a nosebleed, but I was happily oblivious at the time. After all the students had been picked up, the youth staff went to Phil's house where we debriefed and prayed for each other in small groups.

Last weekend I spent Friday night til 2:00am working on a physics outline that was due at 9:00am Saturday morning. The good news is, I got an A on it even though I finished so late at night that I'm surprised I was even coherent. The actual paper is due next week Wednesday. All day Saturday and Sunday afternoon I spent working on my database group project, which is due on Thursday. It's currently much closer to being done, but not finished yet.

Last night I worked on that essay I didn't get done on reading break. It turned out to be a lot less work than I was thinking because it was more of an opinion piece based on what we learned in class rather than a research essay, which requires hours of research. I didn't finish it, but I think it is possible I will be able to do that tonight.

I am looking forward to Christmas break immensely. I have only 11 days left of actual classes, 15 days including weekends, and 25 days til my exams are finished. On it goes...

School... and other thoughts

2007-11-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

I haven't posted in ages because I've been so incredibly busy. What with midterms, projects, and assignments galore I haven't had time to stop and think. I am hoping things are slowing down a little now tennis and tutoring are both finished. I still have one midterm, three papers, a project, and a mini-lesson left to go. Three of them are due in less than two weeks so I think I'm going to be busy this weekend in spite of the extra two days. On the plus side, I got 95% on my last physics paper so that gives me more confidence for my next one.

Course selection for next semester has just opened today. The first selection period, which lasts for about a week and a half, is based on seniority not first-come, first-serve so it remains to be seen whether I will get to keep all the courses I chose. My current schedule includes EDUC 200 (Principles of Teaching and Learning), PHYS 220 (Mechanics), MATH 250 (Linear Algebra), HKIN 120 (Rock Climbing), DRAM 372 (Theatre for Children), and PHIL 210 (Contemporary Ethical Issues). The ones I'm most likely to get bumped out of by third and fourth year students are HKIN 120 and DRAM 372. I also need to see my academic advisers to make sure that they approve my choices before anything can go through.

I did an article presentation on an article for my EDUC 203 class yesterday. The article actually made me think about the way I view education. The article was called "Teaching for the Service of Love" and it contrasted secular education's view of learning and what the author thought should be the Christian teacher's view of learning. According to the author, culture views learning as was for humans to gain power over each other and other their environment. It's about getting the best job and moving up the corporate or social or whatever other ladder you happen to be climbing. The author says that the Christian's main goal in life is to serve God and others in love and fulfill our God-given mandate as stewards of the earth. The point, then, of learning is to build a knowledge base so we can better fulfill this calling. Learning also allows us to better appreciate the gifts God has given us and by appreciating them we show God that we are thankful for them. Learning should result in responsible action. If these are the reasons we learn than it should result in our serving God and others in love and being good stewards of the earth. This made me ask a couple questions. First, why am I going to school? Is it just because I want a specific job? Is it because I don't want to flip burgers all my life? Is it because that is what is expected of me? Second, if I'm not learning so I can better serve God, etc., how can I possibly teach my students this? Third, what would it look like to change my view of education and is this possible?

Imagine if I looked at every class, every paper, every presentation as a tool God is using to better equip me to serve him and others. How is God using this presentation to make me a better future teacher so I can better serve my students? Presentations are not just exercises to get over and done with; I can learn from them my own teaching strengths and weaknesses, how to keep students engaged when they really don't want to be there, what makes a good conclusion (I think this is something both my education profs have been emphasizing all semester that I just didn't get). Research papers and text book reading are opportunities to broaden my knowledge base. When classes are boring I can ask myself, how is God using this class to equip me to serve him better now or in the future? Papers and presentation are not really about the grades (although grades are an indicator of improvement and of what I still need to learn). If I can actually change the way I view school, I think it will make a big difference in the next few years of my life and in how I teach my future students. Who'd would have thought one article presentation could make any difference?

Natasha is sleeping over tonight! I am looking forward to the opportunity to relax, stay up late, and spend time with my best friend.

Reading break is almost here! Grant and Matt are coming back to Abbotsford. No school for four whole days.

38 days til my last exam. 28 days until my last day of school including weekends/breaks (not including exams). 17 days of school (not including exams). Almost there.

Midterms...

2007-10-16T13:08:00.000-07:00

Wow. I finally get a chance to sit down and relax and my brain won't stop racing in a billion differnt directions.

I wrote my database midterm this morning. Most of it went okay except for one question where I could "see" the relevant diagram in my note but couldn't remember a thing that went on it. I made some stuff up, hoping for part marks, and moved on, but that question was worth a major portion of my exam. Oh, well.

I got my Educ. Psych. midterm back today and did better on the written section than I hoped for but not as well on the multiple choice. Not much I can do about it. I've decided I don't really like multiple choice tests. They usually end up being a lot trickier than I think they will be.

I am finding lately that if I had more time think I would be able to do better on assignments. Before I've always felt pressured but not that I wasn't putting in as well as I could anyway. Now I'm feeling like if I had more time I would go back and revise things and add more of my own thoughts. I am also finding that I am running out of space or reaching the maximum for assignments (e.g. written as close to 1000 words as possible on a 800-1000 word assignment, or completely filling the three page max and still having more stuff to say). It's frustrating. I am not looking forward to writting my database paper this weekend. I either find I have too much or not enough to say.

The new Casting Crowns CD is awesome. It sums up a lot of what I am feeling right now.

"Altar and the Door"
Careless, I am reckless
I'm a wrong-way-travelin'-slowly-unraveling shell of a man
Burnt out, I'm so numb now
That the fire's just an ember way down in the corner of my cold, cold heart
Lord, this time I'll make it right, here at the altar I lay my life
Your kingdom come but my will was done, my heart is broken as I...
Cry, like so many times before
But my eyes are dry before I leave the floor, oh Lord
I try but this time, Jesus, how can I be sure I will not lose my follow through
Between the altar and the door

"Somewhere in the Middle"
Just how close can I get, Lord, to my surrender without losing all control
Fearless warriors in a picket fence, reckless abandon wrapped in common sense
Deep water faith in the shallow end and we are caught in the middle
With eyes wide open to the differences, the God we want and the God who is
But will we trade our dreams for His or are we caught in the middle
Are we caught in the middle

Musings

2007-10-11T15:30:00.000-07:00

I went to see two different profs today about two different issues and I found it interesting how completely different the two meetings were. The first prof I went to see because I wanted to know how to improve my mark on an assignment. We have to do several article reviews throughout the semester and when I got my first one back, I set out to better on the second. Whatever I did didn't work because I got exactly the same mark so I went to see my prof for advice so I could fix the next one. One problem lies in the fact that it is actually a TA who marks the reviews, although my prof does read them. He gave a me a few pointers and wrote a note to the TA to give me more feedback on how I could improve. My prof is a really nice guy and he's really approachable. However, for some reason I was having hard keeping control of my emotions. I had to keep blinking back tears and I'm not exactly sure why. It definitely wasn't anything he was saying. He was being helpful and completely agreeable. Partly it might be because I'm low on sleep (although not that low so it shouldn't be that bad). It probably also because I've been feeling inadequate in other areas of my life and this is just spill-over. I don't know... I just wish it would quite sneaking up on me like that. Anyway, I was grateful for his feedback and he also advised me to try not to care so much about marks. I know that's a weakness I have but I'm not always sure how to deal with it.

My second meeting was with my database prof about concepts and details I didn't get or can't remember. My database prof is friendly, but not in the same way as my Educ. Psych. proof. He shares personal stories from his life and she shares stories from her job experience in the database field. They just have different personalities. I spent about 45 minutes with my database prof (completely dry-eyed I might add) talking about concepts.

At Lifeline last night I made a new friend. Her name is Amy and she is in Grade 8. She only came because her sister (who is in Grade 6) has friends who come, and her sister invited her. For most of the evening we competed as Life Groups against each other in the Food Olympics, which meant that most of the time Amy and her sister were in different groups so she didn't know anyone. There were actually quite a few new faces in our Life Group. During the first event when our Life Group was supposed to be building a statue of some sort out of marshmallows, I sat down beside Amy and Lisa, another girl I hadn't seen before and started asking them questions about school and life in general. Because of the loud noise I am not 100% sure what all the answers were because after I asked them to repeat something three or four times I didn't want to ask again. At the end of the evening Amy said she liked our youth (even though for the most part she had just sat on the sideline and watched) and would probably come back next week and bring a friend. Because we had so many girls, our Life Group discussion time was distracted and scattered so we are going to try splitting into two groups for discussion and next time and see if that goes better.

A Thankful Long Weekend

2007-10-09T14:15:00.000-07:00

It's hard to be thankful in the midst of a busy life.

On Friday night my dad celebrated his birthday so we had my gramma and my Uncle Bruce over for dinner. At around 6:15 I got a call from the boy I was tutoring that night asking me if I could come half an hour early, meaning I had to leave in five minutes. I wolfed down my desert and bolted out the door. I drove down George Fergusen Way and turned onto Ware. There were a couple police cars stopped and one policeman was standing in the middle of the road with a pad of paper in his hand. He waved me past and I didn't really think about it. As I was approaching the light at South Fraser Way a white truck cut in front of me from the right lane, narrowly missing me and the car in front of me, headed straight into the turn lane and went right through the red light. All I could think was, "Woah fella, slow down!" Then I looked in my mirrors and saw a police car with it's lights on giving chase. He had a harder time getting through the light because he wasn't being reckless and the light had turned green so car were accidently getting in his way. I wondered if the police had been waiting specifically for that truck or if they stopped him for something and he decided to run for it. I was thankful that I hadn't gotten hit and that there hadn't been a horrible accident right in front of me and prayed that God would continue to keep everyone safe.

Saturday I didn't have to tutor (which is why I went early Friday night) so I mostly worked on homework all day. In the evening I watched some MASH with my family. I was thankful that I could take some time to relax. Sunday I went to church in the morning. John Stobbe taught our Sunday school and his topic was "Hell." He talked about common conceptions the world has about what will happen after death, will we all just disappear, will we get to choose where to go, will everyone just get to go to heaven. We talked about God being a just and a loving God and discussed whether hell took away from God being a loving God. Since it was just Alan Trick, Matt, John Stobbe, Greg, Cam, and me, we all got a change to express our feelings and views. I was thankful that there was Sunday school for us and that we weren't just lumped in with everyone else.

After church we had our thanksgiving dinner at our house with my gramma and my Uncle Bruce. I allowed myself to sit and chat for a little while and then went to study for my calc midterm. Around supper time when I was ready for a break I asked my mom if we could have popcorn for supper and watch a movie. We watched Karate Kid, which I'd seen before but enjoyed. It was longer than I was expecting so we didn't finish til around eight. Then I went back to my room to do more homework. It never seems to end. I was thankful that I did take some time to relax. My brain just can't keep working non-stop.

Monday I got up around eight, had breakfast and started in on my homework. I read several chapters of my database textbook, read two articles for EDUC 203, and read a chapter from my physics text. I have been trying out taking notes using a concept map. See http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newISS_01.htm for more info. It's supposed to be an effective for helping you to remember and quick to review. However, since I haven't been in the habit of taking notes while reading, it took me a lot longer to read all those chapters than it would otherwise. Hopefully I learned and retained more, though. In the afternoon, my dad, mom, Jason, and I went to MEI to play tennis on their tennis courts. My mom and dad took turn throwing the ball to Jason for him to hit. I offered to do it too, but my dad said I needed the practice. I managed to win one out of five games against my dad, and four out of six against my mom. Then my mom and I played on one side against my dad we managed to win the last game out of five or six. It was fun but I am sore today. Every time I get up I realize my hips are stiff. my shoulder is a little sore too. I'm surprised I'm sore because I have been playing tennis, but I guess it's because I haven't been playing for two hours at a time. After we got home, I continued to work on homework and realized that I wasn't going to get enough done in order to be able to go to Camp Squeah next weekend. Oh well, I tried. I managed to get ahead on the reading in several of my classes, so that's good. It will also allow me to study for my databases midterm next Tuesday, which it was looking like I wouldn't get a chance to do. It will also make for a lot less stressful weekend two weekends from now because I have three projects/papers due the week after. I am planning on either doing two small ones or one big one this weekend to alleviate the pressure. I'm thankful I got a chance to play tennis. It allowed me to work on my serve, which are going in a lot more often now. It seems like fifty minutes in class is never enough time to play. I wish more of my friends liked tennis so that we could play but I know it's not for everyone and most are too busy to find time to learn.

I set Mozilla Thunderbird up on my computer at home this weekend. It's like Outlook Express and allows you to download your emails and check more than one account at a time. I tried it out at school and it is working well so I thought I'd use it at home too. I discovered when checking my email via hotmail today at school that unlike the way it's set up at school, the one at home downloads the emails from hotmail and doesn't leave a copy there. The way it's set up at school, I can read it via Thunderbird and then go to hotmail and it's still there but for some reason it didn't work that way at home. I'll have to see if I can figure out why and figure out some way to fix it. Does anyone know use Thunderbird/know anything about this?

Back from the Sponsor Retreat

2007-10-04T15:29:00.001-07:00

The sponsor retreat last weekend was interesting. I drove to Dogwood Valley with Jeremy, Natasha, and Bethany. It was poring rain and getting dark so the lines on the road were hard to see and driving was scary at times. We had a session not long after we got there. Phil and Andrew (a Velocity sponsor) played guitar for the singing part. Phil and Colin gave away quite a few Starbucks card for answering trivia about Phil and Colin. Then we played "Gorilla, Man, Gun" for two American Eagle gift cards. Then Colin talked about spiritual health. Are we keeping each other accountable? Do we need to rest in God's presence, recharge our spiritual batteries, renew our purpose and calling? I can't remember the rest. Then we had a snack and played games until we felt like going to bed. For Natasha, Bethany, Heidi, and I, that was arond 11:30. For everyone else, especially the guys, it was later.

We had breakfast at nine the next morning and then some time alone with God. Then we split into two groups and participated in some team building activities. We had to get across an acid river using stepping stones and three long 4x4 beams. We had to lay the beams on the stones, pile half our team onto two of the 4x4's and pass the third one to the front so we could lay it to a new stepping stone. If we touched the acid, our whole team had to start over. When we were two stepping stones from getting the second half of our team across, the person in front accidently touched the acid. Colin was nice and only made the second half of the team start over. For the second team building activity, there we large pieces of paper laid randomly to form and filled in circle on the floor. We had to send on team member at a time to touch the numbers in sequence. The next person could only cross the start line after the last person had crossed back over. If we touched a number out of order, we had to start over. We had to try to figure out strategies for how to do it as fast as possible. Things we learned through the activity, sometimes we have to encourage the less vocal people to talk because they have good ideas too. We have to be willing to admit our weaknesses and let other people shine for the good of the team (we let the fast runners go first because they went twice and also let fast runners go to the farther numbers). We encountered difficulty (the first person touched the acid and half the team had to start over) we didn't blame him or make a big deal out of it. We did, however, complain about the wobbly beam. I thought it was an interesting experience.

After lunch some of the team went paintballing and some of us just hung around and did homework. Natasha and I took a short break to see how paintballing was going and watched for a little while. After supper, we had another team session and Phil spoke. He gave some examples about how we are effective in youth ministry even when we don't realize it. He emphasized that God had us there for a purpose even if we didn't see it. After that we played games and went to be.

The next day was a little disappointing for me. We had breakfast, packed, hung around, ate lunch, took a group picture, and went home. I wished we had done some sort of session that morning. If I had been in Abbotsford, I would gone to church so it was disappointing to miss that. Back it Abbotsford, I prepared my presentation for the next day, then took the evening off.

My presentation Monday went relatively well. I ended up with two more people in my group than I was expecting but that was okay. I was one paper short though. I was nervous but I was a little excited to see how it would all work out so that helped.

Wednesday I had my tennis midterm, which was a sinch. It was twenty multiple choice questions and they weren't even very tricky. My Educ. Psyc. midterm today wasn't as easy. There was way more information to learn both from class and from the textbook. I don't think I did as well as I had hoped. I guess I'll find out when I get the exam back. It's a shame 'cause I really like my Educ. Psyc. prof and he gives the impression that he really wants us to succeed. That doesn't necessary mean he's an easy marker.

I hate being sick...

2007-09-28T14:20:00.000-07:00

I hate being sick. That was my general feeling yesterday. All I have is a silly cold but it is just draining the energy out of me. Yesterday I felt like I was barely awake through my first class and wasn't catching many of the concepts, which is a shame because I think it was an important lecture. I skipped chapel :( and took a "nap" in the collegium. I just closed my eyes and listened to music. I was half afraid I was going to fall asleep and miss my next class but I didn't. That nap helped me survive the rest of the day. Supper also helped revive me a bit and gave me enough energy for tutoring. After tutoring I packed for the retreat and went to bed. Today has been a little better. I haven't been quite so drained and I can breathe through my nose occasionally. At least I only had two classes, one of which was tennis, so I wasn't falling asleep in the middle of them. I am planning to make a valiant attempt to go to sleep on time tonight even though I will be on the retreat because I want to have a better day tomorrow.

Tennis update:
I asked my prof about the grip thing on Wednesday. She said that as long as I was comfortable serving the way I had been, I could keep serving like that. She said we wouldn't normally change our grips from Continental to Eastern Forehand until intermediate tennis and that it gives the ball a little spin. However, even though I didn't have to change my grip, I served abysmally today. I kept not getting the ball over the net. Hopefully we will practice enough serving to rectify this. We "graduated" to normal balls today. Before this we were using training balls which are lighter, don't bounce as fast or as far and are easier to control. I suppose that might be another reason my serves were off but I would have thought since I've used normal balls before it wouldn't be much of a deal. Ah well...

After my second class, I went to the collegium and ate my lunch and helped my friend Erin with her homework of Math for Elementary School Teachers course. They are learning exponents and comparison (<,>,=, etc). It was interesting to watch. I was too lazy to walk back to CANIL to get my physics text book to read.

Wednesday night at Lifeline was fun. We did competition among the Life groups to see who would complete six tasks first. First we had to think of a team name and cheer. We called ourselves the "Awesome Possums." Then we had to through five paper balls out of the balcony window into Nickel Hall. Then the girls from our Life group carried me around the church. After that we went down to the gym to score even baskets on the hoop. We ran back up to Nickel hall and spelled "Lifeline" on the floor with our bodies. We had our group picture taken and we around the circle repeating everyone's names. The first person said their name. The next person said their name and the first person's. The third person said their name and the first and second persons' names, etc. We were the first group finished so we won the pizza party. Afterward, some of the leaders said our group had an advantage because I am the smallest sponsor. I found it funny that my size was an asset for a change. After the competition, we split into our Life groups and each sponsor told an embarrassing story. I couldn't really think of one so I ended up telling them about the time I took Jason up in a tree and then slipped and dropped him and he broke his arm. I was ten and he was a year old yet. Then the sponsors all told about how they became a Christian, one time they knew God was active in their lives, and one piece of advice they would give. I told about this past year how when I went to a new school, God had gave me some friends at school and the opportunity to see Natasha once or twice a week even though we didn't go to the same school anymore.

I got an email from Cam today that said Inside Out Sunday school would be starting Oct 14. Hopefully whatever he has planned will be good.

Interesting Developments

2007-09-25T14:54:00.000-07:00

In tennis on Monday we moved back to 3/4 court. Our prof introduced a grip change which brought about an interesting discovery for me. Up to now we had be using a grip called the "Continental." Because now we are further back from the net and we have had a little more practice, we need to have a little more power so our prof showed us the "Eastern Forehand" and "Eastern Backhand" which will become our standard grips. While we wait for the ball to come to us, we hold our racket in the Continental grip until we know if we will need forehand or backhand. Then we rotate the racket to the appropriate grip. However, when I found out what exactly the Eastern Forehand grip was, I realized that I have been using that grip instead of the Continental. At first I thought, "No problem. We are going to be using the Eastern Forehand grip from now on anyway." However, when it came time to serve, I realized I had been serving using the wrong grip as well. I tried the way I was supposed to and it didn't go so well. I'm going to talk to me prof on Wednesday to see if it really matters what grip I use. If it does, I'll have to retrain myself. :( On Monday we also learned the "split step." We take a little hop off our feet just as our opponent hits the ball so that by the time the ball gets to us we are already moving. Our prof says we are "breaking inertia" but I don't really understand how that would work. Inertia is resistance to acceleration and is determined by your mass so how can you break it? Any of you physics types have any idea?

I just finished marking 58 Business Calc assignments for the class I am TAing. I have to mark five questions for each assignment. Some of the questions are harder to mark than others. It is also hard to judge how much work the person has to show. Do I take marks off when they drop limit notation but haven't evaluated the limit? I marked harder last week than this week but it also seemed like a lot more people were getting the concepts for this week's assignment.

I am starting to get excited for the Lifeline sponsor retreat this weekend. I am trying to get ahead on my assignments so that I don't have to cram a lot of work into Sunday night.

I have another presentation on Monday, which I am not excited for. I have to present the teaching methods and philosophies of Maria Montessori to a small group. We had a quick in class brainstorming session but I am still not quite sure what I am going to do with it. Tomorrow the first two groups are presenting on Comenius and Dewey so I'll maybe get some ideas from them.

Last Saturday I went to a programming practice contest at SFU. It was not at all what I was expecting. For one thing, I found out from my carpool partner on the way there that it wasn't a group contest like the real one is going to be but an individual contest. I hadn't brought any reference material or taken a look at the text editor or anything. Luckily, I was able to share reference material with my carpool partner who sat next to me and gave me. He helped me find the text editor and figure out how to operate the terminal and submit programs during the warm-up contest. I didn't get any programs correct but I figured out how to do two and had them working on my screen even though they didn't work when I submitted them. One of them couldn't take big enough numbers and the other one may have had a typo or something like that. It was a good experience. I hadn't forgotten as much C++ as I thought I had.

I was disappointed to find out on Sunday morning that there was no Sunday school for young adults (actually none for anyone between grad and 30). I hope Cam gets something figured out. John Stobbe is going to be teaching it next week so that should be interesting.

Yay, the weekend is almost here!

2007-09-21T14:13:00.001-07:00

Wow, what a hectic week. It feels like the work never stops!

I had a presentation on Wednesday on an article I barely understood (which just happened to be written by my prof.). Luckily, I was only presenting to three other people, but I was still pretty nervous. Monday night as I was working on writing what I was going to say, I was almost panicking because I didn't know what to write. I think it ended up okay. I repeated myself a lot during my presentation because I was nervous and afterwards I was as hot and sweaty as after I just finished playing tennis earlier that day.

Tuesday night I stayed up til 2:00am working on the outline and bibliography I had due for my Databases course on Thursday. I had to do it Tuesday night because Wednesday night was Lifeline. Choosing a topic for that paper was a pain because I don't know much about databases. I asked one of my classmates who has worked with databases for ideas and he gave me a really technical, focused one which I couldn't find many articles on. I went and asked my acedemic advisor for help because he is a Math/Computing prof. but he gave me one that was too narrow and I couldn't find articles on that either. Then I asked my dad and he said he didn't know much about databases but he gave me an idea, based on what my academic advisor said, that I ended up using.

It was a relief when Thursday came around and those assignments were handed in. However, in my databases class on Thursday, we were reminded that we need to start working on our database group project. Our first meeting is set for Monday so at least I don't have to do anything for that this weekend. On Saturday I am going to SFU for a programming contest practice. It is the contest which will determine who will represent SFU at the actual contest and TWU students have been invited to participate just for practice and to see how we measure up. Unfortunately, only two of us are able to make it this weekend so it won't be a very accurate indicator. We get three hours to program a solution to six problems. The group which gets the most correct in the least amount of time. For more info on the contest see http://icpc.baylor.edu/icpc/.

My favorite class this semester is tennis. At first it started out slow, but I am really enjoying improving my skills and working on specific shots gradually. This morning we played our first doubles game but only used half the court (up to the end of the service boxes). We also started our serves with our rackets behind our backs instead of above our heads in the ready position and practiced serving into the opposite service box. I hope I get time to play tennis this weekend but it doesn't look too promising.

The lab is very quiet right now, only two other people here. I guess most commuter have gone home for the weekend already and most residents have their own computers. Or people are just avoiding their homework. I do that too.

Lifeline this week was a blast! We had a water war and a slip and slide and chocolate/butterscotch pudding wrestling. I got soaked though Natasha managed to stay dry. Heidi Buhler cut her foot, which wasn't so great. It took a long time for everyone to change because there was only so much room in the bathrooms. After we were all changed, Mandi and Muffin (Behn) welcomed everyone to Lifeline and Phil gave a short talk. Then we gave out free slushies to everyone who filled out their forms. After that we hung out and some people played on the Wii, or played fooseball or pool. The noise level was overwhelming after not having been there so long. There were lots of kids out and the risers were packed.

Friday!

2007-09-14T14:25:00.000-07:00

So today I had Tennis and Calc III. I actually quite enjoyed those classes. They are pobably the least stressful ones I have. In tennis we practice a micro-serve which means you start with your arm in the air and just tap the ball over the net from closer than half court instead of having to bring your arm up behind you and following through with the swing from behind the back line. We did more of the drills where we take a couple bounces to get the ball under control before sending it back over the next to our partner. At the end we played micro-court tennis using approximately 4m of net, and each side only extended about 3m from the net. We also practiced the scoring system used in tennis. Zero points is Love, a mispronunciation of l'eouf. One point is called "15;" two is "30," three is "40;" and another point after that is "game." I always wondered why it went up in such funny increments. I found out today that is because at the time that is the increments that the French coins were in like out nickels, dimes, and quarters (5-10-25). There's a little trivia for you.

In Calc we looked at cylindrical and spherical coordinates in three dimentions and also at taking derivatives in three dimensions. For 20% bonus on the next quiz and homework, I stood up in front of the class and demonstrated on the overhead that two space curves intersected. It was nerve wracking and I was shaking but I am planning on being a teacher so I guess any practice is good.

After Calc I went to the Collegium to eat lunch and read my book until it was time for me to work in the computer lab. Then I came to the computer lab and got distracted by my friend who was sitting outside the door doing math homework. I helped a little while with that, then came inside. I was hoping to be able to mark the homework for the class I am TAing for while I was in the computer lab but so far the prof hasn't dropped it off. Everything is quiet now and there are only 8 people in the lab.

2007-09-13T15:17:00.000-07:00

So I found out on Tuesday that the outline and bibliography for my Computer Database paper is due next Thursday. Since I know next to nothing about databases, choosing a topic and finding sources is proving difficult. I asked my prof for advice on topics today in class and she gave me some really vague examples that I am trying to track down but am really not sure where to go with them. I am thinking about either researching database security or contrasting two database-creating environments. I got three books out of the library on databases in general so maybe they'll give me more ideas. At least half my sources and the majority of information have to come from sources published in the last two years so in that respect the library was not very helpful. Most books are from 2004 or older. I'll have to search the online databases in hopes of finding something more recent.

EDUC 211 (Psyc. of Educ.) is turning out to be quite interesting. Dr. Pudlas has some interesting examples from his teaching career and we end up learning quite a lot from doing and discussion rather than just listening to him drone on. For example, on the first day he set us to do an article review and gave us no direction and no criteria. Then when we got to class we had to switch papers with our neighbor and give it a mark, again with no criteria. Then we discussed how frustrating the experience had been and how different people had very different ideas of how to do the assignment. It was an object lesson in how as teachers we need to give clear instructions. He didn't take the assignment in for marks, which was a bit of a relief. However, the class has a lot of reading to do and I have an article review due next Tuesday.

My database class is kind of confusing. I have read the first two chapters in the textbook but it is frustrating because they use terms, which those who are familiar with databases know but which anyone else doesn't understand, to define other terms. The class itself is a little better but most of the concepts are very abstract and hard to get a grip. I think I understand what we're talking about and then the prof throw out an example vastly different from what I understood. I hoping it will become more concrete as I go along.

We finally were assigned calculus homework yesterday, which I thought was a good thing because I have a hard time remembering concepts if I don't practice them. As it was I spent a good deal of time flipping through my notes and my textbook trying to figure out the problems.

I am starting to feel a little overloaded as far as homework. I have been able to get everything done on time but it feels like there is always a lot more to do.

School...

2007-09-11T13:23:00.000-07:00

Well, here I am agian in my second shift in the computer lab. My first shift ended up being not quite as quiet as most people had predicted. A TA for a fourth year RELS course came in and asked me f she could scan fifteen pages from their textbook to send to the students because the new ones had not arrived at the bookstore. I didn't really know how to use the scanner (or what the copyright laws were, for that matter) so I got her to call in one of the techies who are in charge of the lab. He came in and together with another student showed her how to use the scanner and make the scanned pages into a pdf so she could attach and send all the pages as one file. I watched them do one page and then helped her do the other fourteen. After we made it into a pdf, we tried to send it and discovered it was too large a file because all the scanned paged were considered images, not text, so we had to go back and create a two new files half the size so they could be sent in two seperate email. By the time we finished, my shift had been over for half an hour, but my replacement had just arrived so I would have had to stick around anyway.

I had two classes for the first time yesterday. The Physics classroom was very full. There were five people on the waitlist who also came and there weren't enough spaces at the tables for everyone. Prof. Sikkema said he has never had such a popular course. We are changing classrooms for the next class. My other class, Foundations of Education, is still a bit of a mystery as to how that will go. I've heard some people say it's hard and some people say it's a breeze, so I'll see how it goes.

Most of my classes, including physics, have one or more papers which I am not looking forward to, but I'll tackle them whenever they come. Right now I have a lot of reading to do.

I actually got most things I planned to do this weekend done. I didn't tell Klassic Catering I want to take a semester off. A good opportunity never came up so I'll just tell them whenever they call and asked me to work again. I did most of the reading I needed to do and finished it last night. I even got to go swing dancing. The part at the beginning where they teach you is the most fun part. After that you just have to sort of wait for a guy to ask you. I danced with James on Sunday, but the rest was just sitting. I haven't exactly figured out very many moves yet.

People actually ask me questions! I've gotten one on how to print power point slides, how to print on both sides of the page, and how to pay the printing balance. I got one I didn't know how to answer on what to do if you can log into the student portal but you can't log onto a lab computer. It should be the same name and password so I have no idea. I just helped one guy with a similar problem who was given a new password because his old one was not secure, but he couldn't log on to the student portal either. No one has had trouble with the duel-boot system so that seems to be working okay. Everything is quiet now so there isn't much to do.

I start marking homework for Business Calculus on Friday. I pick the work up on Friday and have to have it back in by Wednesday. It is supposed to take me about four hours to mark 5 different problems for 50 students. The answer key has been provided for me so that is a blessing.

Tonight I am tutoring Kate, which is interesting, but it also make fitting my reading in interesting too. The last two times Kate has been reading novels from the Little House one the Prairie series. I am enjoying that because it has been a long time since I read them.

Finally started a blog

2007-09-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

After some encouragement from Natasha, I finally found my way to blogspot.com and set up my own blog. Now that I am working in the computer lab at Trinity, I have a few extra hours in front a computer with time to kill. This is my first day on the job and I am doing a two-hour shift. So far not much has happened. I have to get up and walk around the lab every 10-15 minutes just to be a visible presence and check that no one is playing games for hours on end or looking at porn :(. I asked my friend who did it last year and is doing it again this year if she has ever had to kick someone off and she said no. I also have to remind people that no food or drink is allowed in the lab unless is it sealed or put away. Other than that I am basically just answer any question about printers and signing in. There haven't been any so far.

Classes are fine so far. The teacher for my databases course is energetic though a little difficlut to understand because she is from Latin America and has an accent and a tendency to speak fast. I am the only girl in that class. My education psychology prof. seems like a lot of fun too, though he assigned a lot of reading for next class. I found out that my tennis class is a beginner class, which is a little disappointing because I have played before, but the intermediate class is during another one of my classes. My Calc III prof is the same one I had for Calc I but I'm hoping it will be a little more interesting this time because I won't already know half the stuff. My other two courses, another education one and a physics one, I don't have until Monday.

In addition to working in the computer lab 6 hours a week, I am also going to be marking Math homework, probably for a Calc I course. The details haven't been nailed down yet. It is supposed to take me approximately four hours a week, but if it falls during my computer lab time I can do both at the same time.

I am working at Klassic Catering this weekend at 3:00 and I need to get up the courage to tell them that on top of everything else I don't think I can continue working during the semester. That scares me a little, so if you think of it, please pray.

It's been sort of nice to see all the people I met last year back again. It helps to know that I actually know some people in my classes. It is also kind of nice ot see Bethany around campus although I probably won't have any classes with her.

This weekend is shaping up to be pretty busy. I'm tutoring Friday night and Saturday morning, delivering doorhangers Saturday morning before tutoring, going to Party on the Grass on Sunday, and swing dancing Sunday night if I have been able to squeeze in my homework before then. I looks like a lot of fun, if not particularly restful.