More Penguins!

And more penguins compliments of the BBC. These festive fowl are from a zoo in South Korea.

This is keeping with the ridiculous amounts of snow we've been getting in Chi-town - first 6 inches Tuesday night which resulted in some fun times at the Pittsburgh airport and a frantic-ish rush down the terminal to catch the last plane out that night - I got bumped to a different flight because mine was first delayed from 8:25 to 11:55 and then to 1:45am - ew. Thankfully I landed, got my luggage, and was out of the airport by 10pm (central time)! And last night we got another four inches. Suffice it to say I've been shoveling a lot. Either way, it's so great to be home and seeing family and friends!

Penguins! Penguins! Penguins!

Following mad studying yesterday and before the candlelight service and before more mad studying, Manda, Bethany and I exchanged presents. Apparently I've been giving off a penguin-y vibe because I got things with penguins on them from both of them - not planned either. But penguins are cool so I'm not complaining (almost as cool as ducks, but not quite).

And now all I have left is my C&I final for which I wrote my essay this afternoon and looks to be pretty easy. Issues in Education went well this morning and didn't take nearly as long as I'd thought (I studied for way too long) and because of that I had some extra time before going to meet my co-op for the first time. She was great and I'm so excited about working with her. The school itself is really nice and the principal was very welcoming. Yay student teaching!

Merry Christmoose!

Okay, I thought I was original, but apparently not. Still, it tickles me to mild hysterics. Something about the phrase, "christmoose" just makes me feel inordinately silly. There is a very good chance, however, that that is because of finals.

Speaking of, four down and two to go! Yay! My most difficult run of finals is over - I had one last night, one this morning, and one tonight - yikes! And the symbolic logic exam took 3 hours and that's when he cut us off - I definitely could have spent longer on it. But I did see my French professor today and she'd already graded our exams for cinema from last night and apparently I (and everyone else) did very well!

And now it's off to bed and getting all set for my Monday morning final which is looking to be my most challenging.

The Homework Song

In reference to the Arthur post earlier, here's the homework song by Mr. Ratburn - sadly, only with the audio and a lovely picture of Mr. Ratburn.

To Root, To Toot, To Parachute

What a fun name for a book! Amanda came back to the suite this afternoon with this book, and as a languagey person, I thought it was really hilarious. The pictures are great and here's an excerpt: "To root, to toot, to parachute, to play the flutophone or flute, to dare, defend, descend, disturb - if it's an action, it's a verb! Sweep your sidewalk, paint your curb, and know each action is a verb! Have and has belong here too, like 'I have green eyes, she has blue.' Or 'Mindy has a mini mutt.' These verbs can tell us who's got what!" Haaa, what a great book. (Either that or my brain is fried from too much writing papers these past few days.)

And tonight, hopefully I will have my book read and my paper and outline written, so then I can go watch Prince Caspian for CSL, for which class it was green and red day. Yay for an auditorium full of people wearing Christmas colors!

Great are you, Lord!

Today's sermon in church, was unique to say the least - though very thought-provoking. The pastor spoke from Hebrews 1:1-2: "Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world." And in the theme of creating the world, pastor went on to show a video of the Hubble Space telescope looking into deep space, i.e. 78 billion light years across the universe (which is how big the universe is). It stared for days at an 'unremarkable, blank' patch of sky only to reveal tens of thousands of galaxies there! And within each galaxy are millions of stars! Psalm 147:4 says, "He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names." Every single star out of millions He calls by name! Amazing!

So in the end, the universe is too large for us to even fully grasp the idea, but however large it is and however small that makes us feel, we have a God that loves us, cherishes us, cares for our needs, and that is all we really do need at the end of the day or even a lifetime.

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." 2 Corinthians 4:16-18

Arthur's Almost Live Not Real Music Festival

Blast from the past! I just found this on YouTube and couldn't resist sharing a small, strange piece of my childhood. Yay Arthur!

The Dumbest Generation

Continuing our discussion in Issues on the book reviews, today Laryssa talked about the book she read called, The Dumbest Generation by Mark Bauerlein. It talks about how we as a group (under 30 years old) because of technology and loss of common goals and morality, are progressively leading the United States towards loss of its principles and leadership in intellect. The scary part is, when asked, this generation said, "Yes, I know I'm bowing to peer pressure and pop culture. Yeah, I can't read, but I don't care." How sad this is!

Now, I realize this Calvin and Hobbes block isn't exactly showing that, but it does show an attitude too prevelent in today's society and somewhat links back to the main point of the book: "Young Americans need someone somewhere in their lives to reveal to them bigger and better human stories than the sagas of summer parties and dormitory diversion and Facebook sites." (Bauerlein 199)

Craftiness

Craftiness in the way that I have been making a flurry of paper snowflakes (haha) and some fun collages this week. It's been great except for a few side effects - paper snowflake explosion in my room; it's a little overwhelming and slightly obnoxious how many there are. Also, I keep finding mod podge under my fingernails and my room smells kind of chemically.

On the plus side, I'm almost finished with the Narnian Chronicles - only The Last Battle remains. And, I got the book Planet Narnia for my birthday and have slowly started to work my way through it - my prof for CSL said it was an excellent read although somewhat theologically stunted. We shall see.

Official Report

And official reports of the fire alarm showed up on all the doors of MAP today - it wasn't an 'accidental,' 'purposeful,' or 'fake,' but a 'legitimate' alarm. (Those were the choices on the sheet.) And it wasn't Christmas lights like everyone thought - a water fountain caught on fire. Only at Grove City.

Also only at Grove City - a wedding photographer ad in our mailboxes today - wedding in your future?

Not a Fire Drill

Boo for fire alarms going off at unseemly hours. I was just about to hop into bed right about midnight when all of the sudden I could hear the alarms starting to go off and travelling down the hall towards my room (kind of a cool Doppler effect like the ice cream truck going by in the summer). This lovely sound was accompanied with even lovelier shouts of dismay from the residents and then our individual alarms in our rooms went off (soooo loud). So I grabbed my coat, scarf, blanket, book, shoes, and went to wake up Amanda (who is in the middle of student teaching and goes to bed much earlier than I do). We got outside - it was freezing and I was glad for my blanket - and then after about 10 minutes got shunted down to the chapel, where I just spent the last hour and 15 minutes.

The firemen unfortunately have to search every single room in the building and with this being the largest women's dorm on campus, there were about 400 of us in the chapel. The rest of the girls were probably in the SAC or library. And the chapel, being the lovely Gothic stone building it is, is not warm. Yay fleecy warm blanket! Thankfully I grabbed my book for Thursday so I got some work done. It turned out to be a freshman girl's Christmas lights that had sparked an electrical fire and her hall had to stay behind to get lectured by campus safety and the firemen on fire safety or something like that. Now it's 1:15 and I am back in my room soon to go to sleep with no interruptions....I hope....

A.B. - After Birthday

Post-birthday celebrations: making paper snowflakes and listening to Christmas music this afternoon! It will also be a break later on after I finish this stinking observation report I'm working on - I think it is the last one of my undergraduate career... and that makes me smile.

Today was quite good - I got a letter from a camper I had this summer, a birthday card filled with sparkly constellation confetti (which is now all over the floor of my room), a solid two hours of grading language labs for Madame, and finishing up my revisions for a case report due Wednesday (actually took about 10 minutes, but it means I got to cross something off my list and that makes me very accomplished-feeling).

Hopefully the rest of this week will be as balanced as this afternoon was and not like this morning where I spilled my cinnamon plum tea (better than it sounds) all over everything papery on my dresser on top of running late. Silly break made my morning all off-kilter.