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.