Would you look at that... two posts in the same week! I'm on lunch break and rather bored. I ran all over campus just now doing some errands, i.e. returning a book to the library, turning in my FERPA waiver to the registrar's office, bothering Academic Communications people, trying to find Scott in the cafeteria, etc. So now I'm back in Heritage waiting for it to be 1pm so we can resume cleaning and moving furniture in the girls' wings. We cleaned the guys' wings this morning. That's all we have to do today and it really only takes an hour and a half at most. Andy, the boss, said "Take as much time as possible and I don't want you to come to me at 1pm and say you're already done." However, he's asking for overtime people sometime later this week into next as we're going to be stripping the floors and rewaxing them. Right now I'm just tired and have a headache again. I'm drinking this nasty, medicine-like drink called "Diet Green Tea with Citrus." Nasty!!! I just felt like drinking it. Lauren left it in her fridge which I'm babysitting.

Yesterday it poured almost all day. The sun finally came out around 4 and it was absolutely beautiful! It was quite cool, sometimes chilly, but really nice. Today's high is 84 and sunny. WOOHOO! Too bad I can't go out and enjoy it after work because I'm doing the banquet.

Speaking of the banquet, I needed black dress pants. I don't own any so I tried to borrow some from Ariel. They would fit fine if I grew about 5 inches. Sniff. So I guess I'll wear my skirt, but the shirts we have to wear are supposed to be tucked in and it doesn't work so well with my elastic band skirt. Oh well. There aren't enough girls on campus to have hopes of borrowing a pair of pants that fits. And speaking of being short, we were cleaning some glass balcony things in the BLC and Ben had to go up the ladder to do it. I wanted to go up the ladder and Andy said, "Well that's great but you're too short." Waaaaaah!!!

I have decided to see how many departments I can work for this summer. So far I've worked for the marketing department and campus services. Tonight I'll have worked for food services. Scott was practically on his knees begging people to work tonight's banquet. He doesn't have enough people and there are so few people on campus now. He promised to treat anyone who worked tonight to Rita's. Haha. That's desparate. Andy tried to get him to let us eat for free all next year, but he wouldn't be that nice. The set-up is really nice though. They did an Italian restaurant theme and there are candles and checked table cloths and everything. Really pretty! Kinda crowded though because they used the bottom of the BLC by the museum area which contains random paintings and of course the Fujimura or whatever it's called painting. We have a lot of random decorations around. I just noticed that the paintings one wall are of the Philadelphia Art Museum and the Philmont WaterWorks. Hah! I've been there!

Well it's only 12:37 now so I've got some more time to kill. I don't feel like walking back up to main campus and bothering the different departments since they're all on lunch break anyway. I must be one of those annoying students who walks into every different department to say hi to people. I take every opportunity possible to bang on Gaynell's office window or talk to Liane in Admissions. I like to visit Student Life and bother people there too. And of course I like to walk into Academic Communications and see if anyone missed me. Haha.

Oh, yesterday, we were moving fake trees from different offices. (Yeah, we steal decorations from all over the school just for this banquet) I was carrying a huge tree (from the Alumni office, which, by the way, has a basket of candy!) which pretty much completely covered me. I bumped into Dr Minto and she gave me a really strange look and said, "What are you doing? Are you hiding? Because I can see you." Hahahaha! Today Andy told us to steal the paintings from the cafeteria. I asked if we could dress in black so it would be more fun. Ben was singing the Mission Impossible theme song to go along with it. ;)

It's over... well, almost...

Hmm... goose in the tree! Wonder how it got there.

My room... before roomcheck

And again

Core Creek

Erin and I found a catfish



Playing with the geese

He looks cute but he grows up to be a nasty goose.

Guess what? All my summer classes are done!!! Nine weeks of classes (plus 2 extra weeks when there was no school) are over! I can't believe it has already been 11 weeks since school ended for the semester. Crazy! Time flew, but it also feels like such a long time ago because it was a lot of work. I still have post-course work from this last class and the first TESOL class, but the class part is done! I hope to get most of it done next week, except for the field observation which I will do next semester. It's all due November 9th, but I don't want to wait.

These past weeks have been crazy. Our TESOL class really bonded and we had a lot of fun. The past 2 courses were more fun because we did more. We've had a lot of laughs together, especially as afternoons wore on. You can tell that half the class is made up of elementary ed majors, or at least young "grad" students. I don't think older, experienced teachers would really crawl under the table and flop on the floor for a group activity, even if they were supposed to be acting like elementary kids. See, we put our desks in a horseshoe this week and we used the middle section for teaching. A lot of the activities that were taught were for younger grades and we sat on the floor a lot. Andrea and I were too lazy to walk all the way around the horseshoe, so we developed a habit of crawling under the table on our hands and knees and then flattening out nice and comfortably on the floor. ;) The funniest part about it all was that Mrs Underhill got into character for whatever age level we were playing. One activity today was geared for adults and there were some collective disappointed moans in the class. We prefer to act like kids... and actually, we still did.

The only guy in our class was basically the perfect model of the problem child. We played this game where we all sat in a circle. The first person said, "My name is ____ and I like ____ (a fruit)." The person following had to say "My name is ____ and I like ____ and _____ likes ____" and so on. For example, "My name is Laura and I like watermelon and Ashlee likes strawberries. You had to keep adding to the list, so it involved a lot of memory work. The one guy in the class, Nick, decided he'd be creative. "My name is Nick and I like strawberries. And Julie likes strawberries. And Krystal likes strawberries. And Andrea likes strawberries..." HAHAHA. When we did our critiques of the lesson, everyone talked about how to deal with people like Nick.

We had an open-book final exam for this class. I don't think it was too hard, but I don't think I could have survived as well in that class if I hadn't had Dr. A. for Emergent Lit and Integrated Language Arts. Half of the class had a lot to do with Emergent Literacy issues which have been hammered into my head by Dr. A. I knew a lot of the methods and stuff really well because of that class. It helped because there was not a lot of completely new information I had to learn. Hopefully I'll do well in these classes. It's looking pretty promising from the grades I've gotten back so far.

Now for culinary college stories:
I made my first ice cream cake! It worked fine and tasted great. Yay! Aldi is a wonderful store. ;) I got some Oreo-like cookies and crushed them up with peanut butter. This made them stick together to form the base of the cake since I couldn't bake. Then I softened/melted Moose Tracks ice cream and poured it over the cookies. I topped it with a few M&M's and melted chocolate chips and butterscotch chips together to create icing. (I put it in a Ziploc bag and cut the corner off so I could form letters.) It was Walter's birthday on Wednesday, so the dinner people threw him a surprise pizza party on Monday night.

Another use for rice cookers: Jam! Walter picked raspberries in the woods last week and then went out and got canning jars and SureJel to make raspberry jam. We used a hotpot and a rice cooker to cook the berries and used the other rice cooker and a 20 cup coffee maker which kind

of looks like the picture, only it's plastic, to heat the jars and lids. Walter messed up the sequence for making the jam (he put the berries, sugar, and SureJel all together at once) but it turned out pretty well. The jam didn't firm up as much as hoped, but it tasted good. We ended up with about 8 jars. In order to seal them, we put them back into rice cookers and the coffee maker for 10 minutes. They all sealed fine! Yay for inventive college cooking!

Another thing to do with raspberries: make raspberry pie!

Cook together for 3-5 minutes 1cup of berries and ¾ cup water
Mix together 3 Tbsp cornstarch and ¾ cup sugar.
Then gradually add to boiling fruit stirring constantly till thick and
clear.
Cool then add tsp lemon juice and 1qt of fresh berries put into a prepared
pie shell and top with whipped cream

We didn't do the whipped cream part, but we did the rest. I got a graham cracker pie shell (at Aldi of course!) and it worked well.

We had a hailstorm on Wednesday. I think it killed one of the geese. Geese can provide a lot of entertainment, by the way. ;) So about the hailstorm, during class it started POURING and we were behaving like little kids in elementary school. None of us were listening because we were so distracted by the downpour. Mrs. Underhill finally told us to get up and go to the window to satisfy our curiosity. ;) We were running around the halls, barefoot, with delighted squeals looking out the windows. HAHA.

About changes in the University:
We have a new statement of faith, a new core curriculum, and a new Community Life Covenant. The handbook is being revised again and here are some of the new changes:

1. All academically classified seniors, regardless of residential location and students who are living in Privileged Housing are without curfew. All other students will continue to have a 1:00 AM curfew.

2. All Penndel apartments are permitted to have one microwave. In the past this was reserved for only those in Privileged Housing.

3. As part of an attempt to set a unified decorum for chapel, we are asking all men to remove their hats as an expression of respect for the Lord.

4. You will no longer be required to report your church attendance on a weekly basis. Participation in the local church is an expectation that remains, yet you will only be asked to commit to a local church on your ministry covenant forms turned in each semester. Our desire is to see you active in attendance and participation in a church where you can worship, grow, fellowship and put in place the great wisdom you are gaining in classes at PBU.

5. There has been much speculation and debate about dancing in the new standards. As you look at the new version of the standards you will notice that there is no longer a distinct statement on dancing. Instead the word dancing has been inserted into the overall statement on entertainment. This does not signal a reversal of the PBU position on dance. While you are at liberty to dance off campus, the university will continue to work with student leadership to determine if any further change is warranted.

6. A Disciplinary Affairs Committee has been developed to hear serious cases of student misconduct. This hearing would be called if it is in the best interest of the student. The hearing allows select members of the PBU community including faculty and students to hear a situation and reach a confidential decision of discipline.


I am classified as a senior next year, so I guess I don't have curfew... not that it makes all that much of a difference since I'm never out past 1am anyway.

Tomorrow, Martha Lipsy becomes Mrs. Martha Klaver. Wow... such a weird thought!

Anyway, I'm done talking now. Hope you enjoyed the lengthy post. HAHA.

Dear eagerly waiting world of fans,

I have been way too busy to write! My second to last grad course is almost over! Our last day is today. So exciting! One more week left and I'm on an academic break for five whole weeks!!!!!!!! How beautiful is that?! I actually enjoyed this class a lot.

There is much I could say but I can't because class is starting soon. One thing I've been thinking about is the beauty of words and language and the complexity of all these languages, yet God understands every single one of them. Everyone varies in dialect and intonation, but every human being can praise God. I also have been thinking about the power of words and how we ought to guard what comes out of our mouths. And the biggest thing I've been thinking about is the incarnate Word, the Word that became flesh!

Anyway, class is beginning. Have to go. Do you miss me?!?!? =)

Hmm, haven't written in a significant amount of time. I was in the middle of "crunch time" about a week ago. The last week of Prophetics was probably the worst ever. All my Lit and Arts post-course work was due on Monday and a big paper for Prophetics was due on Tuesday. Then I had the Revelation exam Thursday and a big paper for Prophetics the Monday after the course was over. That would have been fine, but I had 2 books to read plus writing that went with it for my pre-course work for Introducing Second Language Acquisition. Yeah, so that last week was awful! I wasn't able to finish my pre-course work for Introducing SLA on Saturday so I got up at 4am on Monday and finished it. Then I worked on the Daniel paper later that evening since the deadline, thankfully, was midnight! I felt so unmotivated to do anything on Tuesday because it suddenly felt like I had nothing to do with my life (even though I had plenty). I had to write a rough draft for a paper on Tuesday and then turn in the paper on Wednesday. The paper was just my "language autobiography" and all about how I learned to talk. How am I supposed to know that???

Anyway, the past few weeks have been busy and sometimes nearly sleepless, but I think the hardest parts are over. I have one full week to do precourse work for my last 2 courses. Yay! So I'll be at school all next week, working some and doing lots of reading.

I completely wiped my computer yesterday and it seems to be running better now.

Friday-Saturday was a sleepover at Julie's. It was her 16th birthday. I got her a card that said "Wrinkle, wrinkle little star, Can't believe how old you are!" At least *I* thought it was funny. Hahahaha. We watched "One Night with the King" after Pastor Carlson talked about the REAL story of Esther and the issues the movie has. I had already seen it because Dean Hernandez had a movie night with "The Well" (ladies' Bible study on campus). I didn't like it much the first time I had seen it and all Pastor Carlson said was exactly what I was thinking.

Anyway, so much has happened in the past few weeks that I don't really have anything to say! Sooo... here are pics! Enjoy!