the many adventures of being back home

so, I've been home a full week now and fully recovered from the all-nighter i pulled the day i moved out.
Thursday was all of our last night's there, so we decided it would be fun to go out and see iron man 2, plus we had two cars available (my mom's and Barrett's parents') so we were able to get back that late, seeing as the shuttle doesn't run. the movie was pretty good...i fell asleep for a bit (it was late haha). when we arrived back to campus, i loaded some stuff in the car. yes, at 2:30 am. after that, i turn to Amy and Barrett and say, "well, i think I'm going to go to bed". they immediately broke into protest, saying "it's our last night together" and "that's so lame!". so, they convinced me to stay up for a while...till 5:30, in fact. i then said "alright i really need to get to bed". "but what's the point now? you've almost stayed up all night. come on lets go to our favorite spots on campus and watch the sun rise". well, i do enjoy sunrises :)
so, off we went into the early morning cold. we climbed the giant bolder and watched as the sky lightened, we climbed the roof of the post office as sat under the trees (totally breaking the rules), we climbed the rock by the library and laid on top of it, watching a bunch of bats fly over us (they have a nest in the library roof as we discovered),we went down to the track and the observatory and the stairs where we have had many long and good conversations. quite a sentimental evening :) around 6:45 we were getting quite sleepy and hungry and decided maybe we would go to the D.C at 7 when it opened, but ihop sounded more appealing than cafeteria food. so we went and got in Barrett's car and drove down to state street, getting quite lost along the way because Barrett just had to drive through the hills. eventually we made it and enjoyed a lovely early-morning breakfast. our return trip to campus was quite smooth and when we arrived we found the dorm waking up and people out packing up their cars. they were all shocked to hear we had stayed up all night.
saying goodbye was much harder than i expected and though i was really excited to come home, tears weren't optional. i know it's only for four months, but that seems like a long time when you all have been living together and see people everyday.
but, home-life is great. I've been enjoying spending time with my family and have seen August and my other Amy since I've been back.
i enjoyed a great trip to the tide-pools with August on Wednesday and an adventure to old-town Pasadena with Amy on Thursday.
the tide pools were great. we found lots of little creatures and neat shells and it was so fun to get to spend some time with her...i hope this summer will hold a lot of that. after, my parents called to see if we wanted to meet them at the farmers market, so we did and then ate dinner.
Wednesday with Amy was good as well and we enjoyed exploring part of southern California neither of us had really been to before. we found a cool Indian restaurant and had some amazing food. oh, and we got stuck in a parking garage thanks to me. Amy drove, so i said i would pay for the parking. there was no guy in the ticket booth and the machine said if you were there for under 90 mins to just put your ticket in, if not (like we were) go to the pay station machine. Amy pulled over and i hopped out to go to the machine. i paid and then got a receipt, thinking i wouldn't need a receipt, i threw in in the trash on the way back to the car. so, now how do we get the arm to go up? oh, you must need the receipt. brilliant. i got out of the car and went to dig in the trash to get it, found it all crumpled up and then Amy proceeded to try and put it in the ticket machine. it wouldn't take it. we pushed the "help" button and begin explaining our problem to some guy, who goes "the machine should have given you your ticket back". i said i didn't think it did, but ran to go check anyway. oh, yes there it was in the machine. another brilliant move by me. it took us a good 10 mins to get out of a parking structure...never again.
there is another embarrassing moment you can borrow, august. :)
oh summer...so delightful

ch ch ch ch changes....

in the words of David Bowie (one of my most recent music obsessions)"...turn and face the strange...time may change me, but I can't trace time".

lot's of changes happening right now. i can't believe my freshman year will be over in two days! two days! where did this year go? and it's amazing to me how much my attitudes about college have changed. i absolutely love it now, where as at the beginning of the year, i just wanted these four years to go by as quickly as possible. it's hard to imagine my life without some of the great people I've met and hard to imagine that just ten months ago, I didn't know any of them.

in addition to my freshman year almost being complete, rooming for next year was decided a couple weeks ago! meet my two new roommates! Barrett and Amy! both of them are great and i can't wait to live with them next year! it's going to be so cramped, since the room in which we are living, is not actually designed to be a triple room, but it's going to be so worth it. i can only imagine all the crazy memories that will come out of this living situation yay for Armington A (my new building!) both of them are such blessings in my life. and to think that i didn't know them just 9 months ago. they have become such major and important parts of my life. we always have a blast and are constantly laughing, but i'm also thankful that our relationships go deeper. we were stalking our new room and took a picture outside the window
Polaroid's are awesome! :)

other changes include my official declaration of my English major! not that it's life-changing, but in a way it is. the responses i've gotten when i tell people i'm going to be an English major are all over the map. some say how excellent that is and that English is such a lost art amongst all the Business and Science majors of today. others will look apprehensive and say something like "oh, and what are you planning to do with that? teach? what else can you do?". however, i'm trying not to worry too much about my plans after college. after all, i've still got three years and who knows where i will be then...just going to see where things take me. it will all work out.

quite another big change that i'm looking forward to, but has also been weighing on my heart is my application to the San Francisco Urban program. i have decided to take advantage of Westmont's off campus programs and explore the city of San Francisco. so, if everything works out, i will be in San Fran. next spring semester. this is extremely exciting, but also comes with drawbacks. but, i will continue praying about it and know that whatever happens will happen for the best.

anyway, finals week has been...pure hell (for lack of a better phrase). amidst studying, papers, packing and spending time with friends before summer, i haven't had much down time. but, it will all be over soon and then i can enjoy some r and r before taking off for the many trips my dear family has planned this summer and before i start my GE's (luckily they are online so i can do them from anywhere in the world-a nessecary measure for this summer's travel plans).

well, over and out.

oh, by the way, happy star wars day...May the fourth be with you. haha get it? extremely corny? yes. :)

19!

i can't believe it's been another year already!
but, i think bigger than the reminder that i'm another year older, was the reminder of how many great people fill my life.
my parents and katie came up for the weekend, which was great and they got to meet a lot of my friends and all go out to dinner.
all day people have been so great, asking if i'm having a good day and if i want to do anything. but, as decisive as i am, it wasn't good to leave anything up to me.
i went out to brunch with my parents and then they headed home, so I came back to campus to relax a bit. i hadn't been back in my room 5 mins when Shea and Brad came running in, throwing balloons at me and singing.
after, Amy wanted me to choose something fun to do, saying that I had to decide since it was my birthday. finally we reached the conclusion of Frisbee since we had, had so much fun playing ultimate the other day. after some Frisbee, Leif, Shanan, Amy, Clara, Kathryn and I hit a volleyball around, trying to see how many hits we could keep it in the air. after volleyball, we went to dinner then Amy and i ran around Clark, throwing rocks at peoples windows and talking to them...quite random and fun. later that evening we went to vespers (worship session) and then came back, watched Flight of the Concords (awesome show) and enjoyed some of Kathryn's apple, blackberry cobbler she made earlier.
it was a great day!
i was blessed with some many messages and "happy birthdays"
thanks all!
i hope this next year can be a year that is full of growth, learning and laughter.

Kayaking and Spring Formal

last saturday afternoon, my section decided it would be the perfect day for a NCTO (stands for non-committal-take-out). we went kayaking! it was really fun. Kathryn asked Dean for me, which was fun and i got to ask Westley for Barrett. on our kayaking adventure, Amy and her NCTO date decided the water would be good to test and ended up accidentally tipping their kayak over. whops. it was really fun...Dean and i had fun racing Barrett and Wes as well as crashing into them.
that evening was spring formal, which also was a blast. it was held at the double tree.

some of our group. Left to Right: Emilee, Allison, Brent, Shanan, Barrett, Me, Amy, Kristina picture where Barrett and I aren't killing each other? :)our Lil Wayne face. we have a mild obsession with Lil Wayne's facial expressions, criminal record and rapping skills haha. me and Amy!DJ, who didn't go to the dace, but sat outside on a lawn chair, rating all the dressed up people as they walked by haha. haha we weren't ready so it looked like Brent and I were holding hands and Shanan had to break it up (fyi we weren't haha) Brent and Shanan...yeah i don't know why he is holding a pair of heels...that's Shanan for ya.

oh dear...

Kathryn and Reggie

future roommates!!! :) love them! can't wait for all our crazy adventures...

we were going to take a funny picture and then Shanan decided to smile at the last minute. thanks Shanan, thanks

fun night! when we got back, Amy, Barrett and I were starving and decided to order a pizza at like 1am. one of the best ideas ever! haha :)

you know it's late when...

last night two friends and i were up late talking. one of my friends was telling us a story about when she was in high school that related to something within our conversation. after telling us this story for a good ten minutes, she suddenly stops and goes "oh, i'm sorry, what i've been saying for the last ten minutes is completely irrelevant to the story...anyway."
we then finally, after much laughter, got the real story we were supposed to be hearing, which was about a quite hilarious prank her class played on a teacher during one of their last weeks of high school.

pretty great.

welcome springtime

you know, jumping rope is something i haven't done in a while. neither is dancing through grocery store isles. and it all started with a box of strawberries that my mom and i had picked up at one of those great little strawberry stands. well, actually the jumping rope is independent of this random grocery adventure, but i just thought i'd throw it all i there.

i was able to have a four day weekend for the Easter weekend, so yesterday, justin came over to hang out and spend Easter with us. when he arrived, my mom requested we make a trip to the store to retrieve some chocolate for making chocolate strawberries. she also gave us $50 for said chocolate and told us to go wild and get whatever else we felt that we needed to get. we had no problem with that. we even added to the fun of dancing up and down the isles, allowing strange looks and laughs to come our way. funniest thing that happened was a little girl that was pushing a shopping cart began staring at us as we danced on by. she began laughing and then bam! she rams the cart right into her mom. it was pretty hysterical in a sad sorta way.

we eventually dipped our strawberries and then proceeded to eat them with dinner. and then we all relaxed with some nice jacuzzi time. well, after gary and katie went inside my mom, justin and i got some relaxation. katie is a cutie but she is 4 haha.

after some relaxation, justin and i went to rent a movie, came back to watch it and got roped into (haha pun) some jump rope. for some reason there was a jump rope on the couch and gary wanted to see if we could get more than one person jumping with it. one person turning and the other jumping in front of them. so, we made it a competition. that evening justin and i won; we definitely had the best timing together. but, the fight was not over and we had to resume our competition the next day. justin and i then decided that we were going to stay up super late in order to watch our movie and make a couple cd's for me from his computer. so much for that idea. justin was out half way through the movie, which is funny, cause usually i'm the one who is asleep. i woke him up when it was over and he sorta stumbled off to bed mumbling something about early tennis matches are killer. haha

easter sunday was nice with an early morning and then a late brunch with the family at gary's golf club, where a bunny bit me as i was trying to let katie pet it. it was in a petting zoo; don't worry it wasn't wild. when we came back to the house, we had a great little easter egg hunt. on the roof, up trees. yeah, pretty awesome. katie's were easy though, since obviously she can't climb trees and houses. after our great hunt, we got out the ping pong table and had a nice not-so-friendly game of ping pong. haha just kidding...it was nice, just competitive. we then abandoned our ping pong game for some more jump rope in which betsy and i hold the record of 48 two person jumps. we also got three people going.

then it was time to start work on those cd's. justin ended up giving me 720 songs with a flash drive. he just went through his entire itunes and gave me a random mixture of genres. what a great cousin. :)

as we were doing this, a nice little earthquake hit. our pool had tidal waves going over the edges. so, then we had to go get in it. :) justin and i were trying to get katie to jump in, but she wouldn't do it off the edge. so, we told her to come push justin in and after she pushed him, i came up behind her and tossed her in to justin. poor katie. the look on her face was priceless and she ended up liking it after.

anyway, great weekend at home. i absolutely love hangin' out with my family.

Spring Sing

since i have returned to school, life has been non-stop action. last week, amidst being quite sick, every night constituted of Spring Sing practice. now, lets do a little overview of what Spring Sing is for all y'all who don't know. Spring Sing is perhaps one of Westmont's biggest traditions. it is a competition between all the dorms, in which each dorm (both men and women) get eight minutes to put on a skit that includes a few famous songs with the lyrics rewritten to go along with the plot. so, you have acting, singing, dancing...the whole shabang. unbelievably silly, but loads of fun. each year there is also a theme phrase that everyone must use in their skit; this year it was "the whole nine yards".
Clark's (my dorm) plot was a search for a new king (RD), since our current RD, Mark, is leaving after this year. although we didn't take the awards for best men, best women or sweepstakes, we did make Spring Sing history. we were the first ones to ever have men and women of a dorm to team up, making one 16 min skit, instead of two separate 8 min ones. women went first, opening with the song Everybody by the Backstreet boys. here were our lyrics:

everybody (yeah)
stop your body (why)
hear ye hear ye. got some news for clark. say goodbye to mark
oh my gosh what will we do
he's leavin me and he's leavin you
gonna travel far and travel wide
got a question for ya. can you tell m why
is he gone for good (yeah)
will we miss him so (yeah)
can we still facebook him (yeah)
now a rulers what we need we better find a new king now. everybody.
the skit then went on to search for different kings, with our main characters of five knights encountering a lion (king of the jungle) and the next song opening into i just can't wait to be king

he's gonna be a mighty king
so emmerson beware (emmerson is another dorm)
we'll we've never had a king of clark that gave us such a scare
he's gonna be an epic king this jungle carnivore
his mane is thick, his teeth are sharp, his prayer life i hardcore
seems like a Ben Patterson kind of thing (he is our campus pastor)
oh i just can't wait to be king

the song ends to discover that the lion has eaten one of the knights, no longer presenting him as a good candidate for king of clark. the knights continue their journey and hear a high pitched scream. thinking the lion has gotten someone else, the knights stop, worried. but, it is just good ol' MJ (king of pop...cleaver eh?) telling all the other kings to just "Beat it":

heard clark was looking for a king around here
we think he's just the man he came to volunteer
you others don't compare so we'll make it very clear
just beat it. just beat it
the king of pop he wants to be in command
and he can turn this kingdom into neverland
he's gonna be king, rule with one gloved hand
so beat it (beat it), beat it, (beat it)
too bad you'll all be defeated
showin' how funky and strong is his might
it doesn't matter if he's black or white
just beat it.

but, again returns the lion to claim Michael Jackson. too bad. so, as clark is still in search for a king, our skit ends with "another one bites the dust":

another king bites the dust
another king bites the dust
and another one down
another crow turned to rust
hey, we've got a lot to do
this quest has been a bust.

so, the girls skit had no resolution, but then the boy's picked up right where we left off, eventually bringing in the new RD for clark next year.

the whole process was so much fun. it definitely promotes a lot of dorm unity and is a great way to meet new people. that was a lot of what my weekend was. if i find pictures, i'll be sure to share them. i was a bird in the lion king, so my costume was pretty crazy. my mom came up, so it was good to spend time with her this weekend and show her all the different restaurants and shops.

over and out. :)

mid-march and 80 degerees?

since my last update, life has been incredibly busy. incredibly busy, yet incredibly good (mostly).
august came to visit me up in Santa Barbara, which was awesome and i was so thankful that she could do that. it was great to see her. we spent the weekend catching up, i showed her around campus and we got to spend some time looking around State st. and the art walk on the beach. we also sat inside a Starbucks for a few hours simply talking and even walked out with a pretty creative poem about a man selling yo-yo's along the beach.

the rest of my week finished not a minute too soon, though there were some fun things that went on. for example, thursday, Allison was going to the train station to head home for spring break and it happened to be her birthday on Saturday, so we decided to surprise her early. we decided it would be pretty great if we picked up some food for her and met her at the station. Amy and i did an excellent job of playing off that we were going to dinner on state, but couldn't ride the shuttle with her because i had an English thing at 6:30 (which i didn't) and so we would have to go on the earlier one. the look on her face when all of her friends left her on campus to go have fun was quite unfortunate. Shanan, Shaun, Clara, Kathryn, Amy and I hopped off the shuttle, made a quick stop at chipotle and then hurried to the train station in order to get there before Allison so we could surprise her. when we got there, we got a text message from Barrett, who was supposed to be meeting us there, but somehow ended up on the same shuttle as Allison, which was rather inconvenient, seeing how Barrett didn't need to go to the train station. we all decided it would be a good plan to hide behind the entrance wall and jump out at Allison when she arrived. we got some pretty odd looks from passers-by. then we saw the shuttle go by and as we all wondered why, Allison comes walking up from the opposite direction (the shuttle had gone by to drop her off closer to the station). she saw us all crouched behind the wall and i think was a bit confused. worst job at surprising ever. haha but, where was Barrett? we called her and she asked if it was okay to come now, since she had walked the other direction to not look suspicious to Allison. we replied yes and 10 seconds later see her running across the train parking lot from behind a dumpster. crazy experience... haha
anyway, i have quite thoroughly been enjoying my time at home. from the minute i arrived, it has been non-stop action. my Aunt Julie and Uncle Jeff are here visiting from Utah, which has been fun. I've been able to get out and play some tennis with them, as well as go watch a few of Justin's matches this week. also this week i have been treated to some quality time with my aunt and my mom, as uncle Jeff watched Katie Monday afternoon, giving us the opportunity to go explore little India over in Cerritos before picking up Justin for a belated birthday dinner for my mom at the melting pot. i have also been loving this change in weather, though it is a bit hot at times, but enjoy it.
well, gotta go watch Katie for a bit...i think she wants to play some wii. :)