Ok, this video is for a presentation that Bryan and I are giving on invasive species in Environmental Science tomorrow. We filmed it this afternoon and just finished editing it this evening. I'm not going to post it on facebook until after we do the presentation, but since few people at Bryan (or really anywhere for that matter) read this blog I'm posting it on here.
came back from my first class today and found a the ominous message from my Mom on facebook: "House On Fire! Call home!". I tried and the call didn't go through... you can imagine I felt just great after that. I eventually got a hold of them though, and there was indeed a house on fire, fortunately not the one we live in, but the Inn (as we affectionately called the old building up the street). It's a property that my Dad bought about ten years ago when the last neighbors moved out. He first used it as an office, then as a guest house, then a crazy artist lived there, and then some Church friends lived there for a year, and then the daughter of another friend and her family. Most recently it had been vacant until my Dad started trying to rent his office in Mansfield out and moved all his office stuff back into it. I wasn't there, so rather than tell the story second hand, I'll just refer you to my sisters blog.
There were some roomers this morning of a major winter storm to the North, but nobody seemed to think it would hit this far down the state. Several hours about it started snowing though, and to everyone's amazement kept snowing. At first people just stood around the dorms watching and throwing snowballs at eachother, but after the first two or three inches fell, most of the group moved out toward the soccer fields and started sledding down the steep banks on trays from the cafeteria.
I've talked to a couple people who are seniors now, and they say this is the first time they've ever seen anything like this. I sure didn't expect to see it... not in Tennessee.
The flowers weren't expecting this I'm afraid.
In the past week I have advanced academically from freshman to junior. How did this happen? Well, I was accepted to Bryan so late that I didn't pursue having my transcripts beyond the first one from Mansfield sent. Thus, I arrived on campus before most of my credits did and spent the first week being a freshman with only 24 credits. Soon my 2nd transcript from Mansfield arrived though, giving me my 12 credits from last semester. This coincided with the arrival of my 12 AP History credits from high school, pushing me up to a Sophomore. Today, my official transcript from Saints Bible Institute was processed with 18 more credits, making me, at least by most conventions, a Junior. So there. How do you like me now?
I'm sorry, that sounded terrible, but I just couldn't resist. I wanted to say it on twitter, but I restrained myself to saying it here where I can at least apologize afterwords. I'm sorry.
Classes are going well so far. There's only one that I hate, and there are three or four that I'm enjoying.
I've been thinking a lot about the State Department lately. I had never really considered what it even was before, but then, the other day, I started wondering who works in the dozens of embassies that our country has all over the world. It's the State Department. And I thought that that would be a really cool thing to work for... doing something for the government overseas, but not in the military.
I've been researching it online, and of course, where they want people these days is in the Middle-East... but I've always been interested in that... even if it is one of the 'less safe' parts of the world. So I would really like to find someway to get some experience with Arab culture... and one of the languages... Arabic or Farsi.
That's all just thought at this point of course... but it's something I may look at more.
A few weeks ago I asked if things were worth doing if your only reason for doing them was that you were afraid of not doing anything. I haven't really answered the question, but apparently I'm not the only one dealing with it:
The old man looked as if he had noticed the sudden stop and understood it; but he did not start discussing it; he said, instead, "I don't like what's happened to people, Miss Taggart."
"What?"
"I don't know. But I've watched them here for twenty years and I've seen the change. They used to rush through here, and it was wonderful to watch, it was the hurry of men who knew where they were going and were eager to get there. Now they're just hurrying because they are afraid. It's not a purpose that drives them, it's fear. They're not going anywhere, they're escaping. And I don't think they know what it is that they want to escape."
- from Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, page 65.
Today is Saturday, and since I didn't have much else to do (besides reading Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, which I spent much of the morning + the last 45 minutes doing) I decided to go out and take some pictures around campus. Here is Latimer Center, the building that houses that cafeteria and bookstore among other things:
Walking on one of the little backroads that leads up the hill from Dayton:
It's fun living in a new state, because all the plants are different. Here there is ivy all over the place. Besides that and the fact that their are different tree species, it all looks very much like home. The actual topography of the hills is almost identical to Northern Pennsylvania. I guess it is all really the same mountain range though technically.
Last night I went to a Party at the home of Dr. Clauson, my political science and international relations professor. I ended up leaving early as people weren't doing much but playing cards, but it was cool to go somewhere off of campus.
Today I found out that a friend of mine from back home, Eden, is coming to visit Bryan in a little while, which is really cool.
Shortly after my last post in which I talked about taking someone who was sick to the hospital, I myself became quite ill. It was last Sunday that it started. I woke up feeling less than good. However, I'd promised my friend Abram I would go to church with him in Chattanooga, and so I did. It was a beautiful building, high up on top of a steep, boulder strewn mountain overlooking the city (although that morning it was rainy and thus not overlooking anything but fog). The church itself was one of the most imposingly beautiful buildings I've ever been in (this side of the Atlantic at least). It was a sprawling structure all made of thick stone with beautiful landscaping and a carved oak interior. It was apparently a rather affluent community. I guess could be for this reason that it all felt strangely alien me. Or maybe the fact that it has been so many years since I actually went to a church-church.
Anyhow, by that night I had a fever and chills and just felt crummy all the way around. My roommate had left for the weekend, which was probably a good thing for both of us, so I just slept for a long time... well into the morning of MLK day.
I woke up to find that everyone had left for the 'Bryan College MLK Community Service Day'... which I had not signed up for as I had just arrived. Seeing as I was sick, I didn't really care because I probably couldn't have gone anyhow. What did bother me was the fact that the cafeteria was not serving breakfast. I went back to my dorm and bought a poptart from the vending machine. A few hours later, I found out that the caf was not open for lunch either.... so I ended up going 24 hours on only a poptart and a rice crispy bar. At one point I tried walking down into Dayton, but I realized that the way I had gone I would probably have to cross a freeway, and I was still feeling pretty weak, so I just went back to my dorm again.
So the week started a little bit rough. It got better though. On Tuesday my books arrived, which was a relief. Yesterday I took a challenge test to try and get out of being forced to tak remedial math for the second time in my college career. It was so stressful that I went out and ran four miles immediately afterword... the farthest I've gone since summer. And today, I got word that I passed the test, and will not be forced to endure two hours a week of torture + the $125 text book. And I got into a class with Palmer, in which I will do very little but watch interesting movies. So that's all almost makes up for spending Martin Luther King day in a state of sickness and malnutrition.... which really doesn't even qualify as either compared to what people are going through in Haiti right now.
I felt compelled last night to get in touch with Ange, a friend of mine from Mansfield. While taking a course few semesters ago called Medicine In Society in which we read Mountains Beyond Mountains, a book about Paul Farmers humanitarian work in Haiti, I learned that Ange was in fact Haitian, and her family had emigrated relatively recently. I hadn't spoken with her since sometime last semester, but I just felt like I should ask how her family was doing. She replied that while they were mostly alive, they were reduced to living on the streets, and some people on her Mom's side were unaccounted for completely. So, along with the Haiti in general, if you could pray for Ange's family specifically it would be great.
Last night I had a really, really strange experience.
It was open dorm night, and Cami had invited a number of people over to the 4th floor lounge in Robertson to watch a movie. Afterwords, we sat around talking, and Bryan and Lauren and Ryan and I ended up reminiscing about Italy. Ryan had just had the bug that had been going around campus, and didn't look all that great. The guy sitting next to me also remarked on how he looked, and said he almost wished he would just get it so that he could stop worrying about it. And this is why I am always careful what I wish for.
After about twenty minutes of talking, some people, including the guy I was next to, got up and took the elevator downstairs to leave. About two minutes after that, a girl came running back up the stairs and said that as they were getting out of the elevator, the guy had just collapsed and gone unconscious. We all ran down the stairs, and sure enough, he was lying on his side, with a significant amount of blood splattered on the floor around his head.
Fortunately, my friend Bryan who I traveled in Italy with was there, and took control of the situation, getting the guy a pillow and making sure he didn't try to roll over and calling his Dad, who's a doctor, while some of the girls called 911. The strangeness was only beginning though.
As we waited for the ambulance to arrive, another guy went to the front door to make sure the paramedics knew where to come in. All of a sudden, he just fell over backwards, half in the door and half outside and didn't move. We carefully pulled him inside, and put a blanket on him too. At this point we decided that everyone should probably sit down in order to avoid getting hurt if they suddenly inexplicably passed out (that sounds kind of obsessive as I write it now, but at the time it seemed like the only logical thing to do, and everyone did).
It seemed almost like something from a horror movies or something... and flue going around on a college campus, and suddenly it turns into something worse and in the middle of the night people start falling over and going unconscious.... Anyhow, when the medics arrived, the girls thought that Bryan should follow them to the hospital in case the guy who got injured needed something. Bryan agreed, but he asked me to come with him, because he was feeling a little weird (not to mention we were all still paranoid that we might be the next person to go down).
It was kind of funny, because Bryan and I had been planning on hanging out some time, but, as I told him later, I wasn't planning on doing it in these circumstances! We ended up waiting in the ER for an hour or two until two of the guys friends got there. So we were able to catch up with some of what had happened in our lives since Italy, even if it was a somewhat strange situation.
As of when we left, it sounded like the guys injury wasn't that bad, and they had both just coincidentally fainted because they had the stomach bug.
So that was an interesting evening.
