Blog for week 10

Sadness has started to creep up on us during week 10. At family meeting, Dustin reminded us that we had 18 days left until graduation...I feel like I've been here for awhile, but it also feels like time has just gone by so quickly!

It's been a good week though. Monday, a bunch of students went skiing. I stayed back and wrote papers and finished “When Character was King” ( Ronald Reagan's biography). I also went to town and spent time with Matthew and Marcie at a cute little coffee shop downtown. I've really come to enjoy spending time in coffee shops. Not only my mind, body and soul have matured, but so have my taste buds ;) My love for coffee has definitely grown while being here. The caffeine doesn't effect me...unfortunately, so it doesn't help me stay awake during morning and evening classes. But I really love a good cup of black coffee...no cream, no sugar! I do like flavored coffee when I go to Starbucks though...only because they usually burn their coffee... I think they do it on purpose so that costumers will go for the more expensive fancy flavored drinks, since their regular coffee is so crappy. Anyway, I sat by the window facing the river, eating a cinnamon roll and drink a vanilla latte, reading C.S Lewis. What a glorious way to spend a Monday afternoon.

Tuesday was even better than Monday! It was “Ladies Appreciation Day”! A few weeks ago we put on a “Guy Appreciation Day” where we made and served them breakfast and dinner, covered their dish crews, wrote them each a letter (so each guy got 19 letters!) and line danced after dinner. It was a great evening! But the guys...the guys went above and beyond on their day. They made us parfaits with fresh fruit and granola, and scones for breakfast. They did our dish crews too, which is always nice...since we do so many dishes here! For lunch they made us orange chicken, special Asian rice (made by our very own Asian/Mexican/Hawaiian boy) and vegetables...it was so delicious! In the afternoon we had work-crews. I was on the crew that chopped up trees, carried the logs to the barn, and then chopped the logs into fire-wood. I spent the first hour and half throwing the logs down the mountain to Peter, who loaded them into the wheel-barrow and took them to the truck. Before we did any of that though, I had to shovel a path from the mountain to the drive-way so that we could push the laden wheel-barrow through the snow, which was about 8-10 inches on the mountain. After we had finished that, we drove the truck down to the barn, unloaded and began swinging our axes and chopping that wood! It was my first time chopping fire wood and I thoroughly enjoyed it! I thought I would be super sore the next day, but I wasn't...probably because swinging an axe works the same muscles as rowing does. After work crews we were told we couldn't enter the main lodge until 5:30 and that we needed to dress up. So of course all the girls freaked out and ran to their rooms to go shower and dress up. It was really fun...we were all borrowing each others dresses, doing each others hair, etc... At 5:30(ish) one of the guys came over here to escort the ladies to the main lodge. When we got to the door, each girl got escorted to the tables, were we each had a name-placement card. The tables were covered in red table clothes and set for a 5 course meal, which is what we were served! The guys didn't even sit down to eat...they served us each course! It was so cute how they were all dressed up, and polite. They cooked each course themselves, since the cooks were girls they too got the day off. We had amazing freshly baked french bread, followed by Tomato Basil soup....

Ok so I wrote all of the above about 2 weeks ago...so I don't remember what we had after Tomato Basil Soup...sorry to leave you hanging. Im sorry for not posting anything last week. I must admit I've been a little lazy in bloging lately due to the fact that I only have a week left at Semester.

Lots of stuff happened this week, Thanksgiving, Baumans final class, and of course Christmas parties. Thanksgiving was lot of fun, I ate too much as usual... I ate 3 full plates of food. Everything looked so good, that I just had to try some of everything... duh! After napping off my food baby, I went for a run, which was extremely painful. Food baby was definitely kicking during my run! It was really nice to see everyone's families who came to celebrate TG with us. Although, it made me miss my family even more... Spending TG without my family was a weird feeling, but luckily I had my summit family to celebrate it with.

On Friday we went to go chop down our tree...and by we I mean everyone who remembered to wake up early and go walk to miles to cut it down...and yes, I slept in by accident. I did want to go help get the tree though :( The rest of the day was spent listening to Christmas music, playing Settlers of Catan and making ornaments!

Unfortunately I have to leave civilization so this is the end of this post! Sorry folks

Blog Post for week 8-9

It's been too long since I've last sat down to jot down the exciting events of my life for y'all. I'm not even sure where to begin since so much has happened in the past two weeks! I guess if God began at the beginning, I should follow in His example and begin at the beginning.

Last week, Monday October 31^st, we had celebrated Halloween the Christian way with a Fall Festival. Except here at Snow Wolf Lodge we call it “Farvest Hall”. Originally it was “Harvest Fall” but the past director kept accidentally referring to it as Farvest Hall, so thats what we call it now. Anyway, its our Halloween celebration and we do all sorts of fun things. Our day started off with a 5k, which I did not participate in. One of my closest friends, Sarah Donely, won for the girls, and Steven Forrester won for the guys. After that we had a photo-savanger hunt! My team definitely did not win...but we had fun. And I did actually take some pictures, so here are a few of them:

Farvest Hall Finish line!

New friends!

Silhouette 

Hold the sun

Defy Gravity/ Horrible picture of me, but its cool so I posted it

Where's Waldo?

Anyway those are some of the pictures we took. After our hunt, we had a wonderful lunch of some weird pumpkin squash soup in a bread bowl. Then we had shoot competition (No I did not win), carved pumpkins, and made candy apples. My first pumpkin carving was a disaster! We tried to cave Jacob wrestling an angel into a pumpkin...yeah not my idea, and it didn't look anything like an angel. HAH!

After that we got into our costumes!!! Anna, Amy and I decided to dress up like the three guy mentors. I was actually able to borrow some of Jeremy's clothes, which was nice and made it easier for me to look like him. It was so fun to see everyone in their costumes! There was an award for best costume, and I won for the girls, and Jon won for the guys. The ironic thing was that we had both dressed up as somebody of the opposite gender! Then we had an EPIC dance party! I used to think I sucked at dancing...and I found out that I don't! It just takes a lot of practice to get good at it. We do a lot of line-dancing, swing, and freestylin' here. With the occasional dubstepin'. When our wonderful day was over, we all plopped into bed exhausted. The mentors had decorated our classroom and turned it into a really pretty room with a bunch of finger foods and stuff, it was quite lovely.

Some of our more artistic students painted this and put it on our ceiling.

Add caption

Tuesday we went back to normal routine... I honestly cant remember anything special that happened that day...

Wednesday classes with Bauman started again... same with Thursday and Friday and Saturday... Although it did start snowing again on Thursday. And it didn't stop until Sunday!!! We got about a foot total. It's covering everything! Its crazy!!!! We had another huge snowball fight on Satuday...we had so much more snow this time that we got to erect a giant snowman, and a fort...I also had adequate gloves and snow pants this time, so it wasn't miserable. Sarah and I really enjoy throwing snowballs at Koert's (one of the guy mentors here) window and then hiding...Im not sure why we hide though, since he totally knows it us. Sometimes he throws pennies at us...I'm not sure if it's supposed to be payback, but I like getting paid to throw snowballs! It's so weird going from living in Florida, where it gets really cold because of the humidity but doesn't snow, to living in Colorado where it snows a whole foot before Thanksgiving! I'm not sure that I like Colorado better than Florida. It might be because I live in the middle of no-where in the mountains here...I think that if I lived in the city, I might like it better here. But I also really miss Florida.

Sunday 21 students and 4 staff took a road trip to the Grand Canyon! The roads were covered in snow! The driveway from SWL to the main road was pretty icy, and we left at 6AM so it was dark, which made it all the more scary! It took us 8 hours to get to the Grand Canyon, 5 of them were spent driving through Arizona desserts...SO BORING!

I did get some pretty cool pictures with my iPod though.

Arizona

We got to the GC at about 3PM and set up camp...yep, I just said set up camp. It was under 30 degrees when we arrived and by the time we were ready to go to sleep it had dropped to below 20. After setting up camp we went on a 1 1/5 mile hike to see the canyon. Koert got us lost though, so what should have taken us 20 min, took us an hour and a half. Almost immediately Sarah drops one of her precious mittens into the canyon. Luckily, it didn't fall more than 20 feet before it landed on a little ledge. She started freaking out about how she needed her mitten and how much they had cost. So a bunch of the guys decide to use a rope and a little hook thing to try to grab it. After about 20 minutes of unsuccessfully trying to grab the dad-gum mitten with the rope, Koert gets the bright idea of climbing down to the ledge to get it. So he climbs down there and throws the mitten up. Then the problem arises...how to get back up. He tried rock climbing for a few minutes but to no avail. Then the boys throw him the thin little rope and tell him to tie it around his waist. Picture a 6 foot 5 tall dutch-man, tying a little bity rope around his waist and having 4 normal teenage boys pull him up! It's quite a comical picture. While all this was going on, many foreigners passing by, stop and watch the whole ordeal. I think I counted at least 4 Asians who muttered “stupid Americans” and a few Mexicans who said “Stupid Americanos”...it was ridiculous! I was thoroughly embarrassed, not to mention surprised that no park ranger showed up to kick us out! So Sarah got her mitten, Koert felt like a true hero, and I felt like an embarrassed American. But for real...I saw SOOOO many foreigners...I think there were more of them than there were Americans.

So we got the mitten...PTL! While all of this was going on, my blood sugar had started to drop rapidly! It had been dropping on the hike to the canyon, but I had eaten three apples and it had been better. But apples only last so long...ya know? When my blood sugar gets low, I start getting really grumpy and tired. We start hiking back, and guess who gets us lost again?? If you guessed Koert, you're correct. This time it took us about an hour to get back...and the whole time we could have taken a shuttle...(we didn't find that out until we were 5 minutes away from our campsite, when we got on a shuttle and the driver told us it'd be faster to walk now...ugh). It was getting cold, it was snowing, my blood sugar was low and we had to hike for an hour. I was so close to passing out...it was really embarrassing. Thankfully, Andy bought me some peanut Mms which lasted me like...5 minutes. All the way back to the campsite I kept thinking about how much I looked forward to getting back to our campsite, and then I would remember all I had to look forward to was a tent in 20 degree weather...but I still looked forward to it.

We got back to the campsite and I ate 2 packets of Gatorade powder...talk about nasty. But it did help. I ate a lot of granola bars during the next few hours...some of the boys made us a really nice fire and all 25 of us huddled around the little fire trying to stay warm. My biggest complaint about the whole trip was that the snow kept putting out our fire. Being from Florida, snow has always been somewhat of a novelty to me. I've always enjoyed snow, up until that point. I cursed every flake that fell down anywhere near me. After singing songs, telling scary stories and of course making sh'mores, we all went to our tents because the snow was getting us really wet and cold. I was in a tent with Marcie, Teiter, and Caitlin. We all stayed super warm all night because a) Caitlin brought at least 12 blankets with her, b) 4 girls in a three man tent is pretty tight so our body heat kept each other warm and c) I had on 2 pairs of socks, short spandex, long spandex pants, ski pants, a tank-top, under-armor, a t-shirt and my super warm jacket. Not to mention my body heat...I'm always warmer than other people because of my metabolism. Marcie an Caitlin stayed warm all night partly due to my body heat.

I slept like a baby!! I as so warm and toasty all cuddled up in my mummy bag! I woke up the next morning, looked outside and saw everything covered in 6 inches of snow! I also got out and ran to the car to get the water boiler so we could make hot chocolate :)

The trip was a lot of fun...even if I did almost die. We didn't get the best view of the actual canyon because of all the fog and snow clouds...that was a tad bit disappointing, but we had a totes epic adventure!

J.P Moreland is our lecturer this week. The topic: Philosophy. I've been getting a headache during most classes, just mulling over things he's telling us. So far we've covered: epistemology, the problem of evil and where it came from, evidence for God's existence, how to choose a religion, do animals have souls, and free will.

We've also discussed modern day miracles, which is the thing I struggled the most with. This week has reallllly made me aware to my ignorance of many topics. I'm going to read up on all this stuff when I get home. I'd read about it here, but I seriously have no time to read anything other than required reading.

Saturday we get a day off...which will be really nice. We get to go into town and use the INTERNET, whoo hoo!!!! NOT that I NEED it or anything, but I want to check up on all my peeps on FB, and post this on my blog, and maybs skype my family.

Sunday, the church we attend here is having a big thanksgiving dinner after the service. So we're going to attend that, which should be fun and totes delish!

Thank you to all my loving, adoring fans who have sent me mail while I've been here... it's been really nice and encouraging to get mail. Debs, Shep, Dad, and Molly, special thanks to you for writing me every week!

As some of y'all already know, but I get to stay an extra 5 days in Colorado with a good friend here! So I wont be flying back until December 8^th.

Toodles!!!!

ps. I couldnt add all my pics because the internet is too slow. my apologies :(

Blog post for weeks 6 and 7

This week has been really packed...we had absolutely no free time, which didn't actually bother me that much. I got a lot done this week! And I've learned quite a bit.

Dr. Donald T. Williams was our speaker this week. His lectures included “literature, humanities, theology through literature, worldviews through literature, poetry, and the philosophy of Satan.”

I must confess, that I never fully appreciated poetry until hearing Williams discuss the topic with us, and read us some of his own works of poetry. In the past I have made a futile attempt at composing poetry...all to no avail. All my past attempts have been rubbish, but I feel inspired to try again. If I do actually try again, and if it's presentable...I shall post it, but don't get your hopes up, because I sincerely doubt any “poem” I ever write will be available to the public.

We've had a lot of reading to do this week! “Mere Humanity” by Donald Williams was one of our required readings for this week. Many of my fellow students found it to be boring...but I found it very interesting! Williams is writing about what man is. He uses Chesterton's “Everlasting Man”, Lewis' “Space Trilogy” and “Chronicles of Narnia”, and “Abolition of Man” and Tolkien's “ Lord of the Rings Trilogy” to aid him in describing what man is. I highly recommend that you read it... if you happen to be a member of my family (which probably about 60% of my readers are...) you can borrow it from me. If you're not... well then buy it! I've also had to read “Romeo and Juliet”. I've been reading it with my buddies, Natalie, Sarah and Erik...we fight over the role of Juliet (except Erik, he gets Romeo whether he likes it or not). When I was a sophomore at CCA, we read a lot of plays, one of which was R and J. So I know how to read Shakespeare's language...which turned out to be very helpful when fighting for the role of Juliet ;) Some other books I've read this week; Church History- Shelley, Historians of the Christian Faith-Bauman, and “A Grief Observed” C.S Lewis. The Lewis book I read on my own, and it was sooooo good! Lewis is one of my favorite authors, second only to J.K Rowling!

Its been 6 weeks...Semester is half-way over! I'm not sure whether I'm happy or sad about that... While I really enjoy being here, I miss home, family and friends, so I'm excited to come home, but sad to leave my friends here. I've learned so much in the past 6 weeks, and changed a lot (for the better). The first weeks I was here I was focused more on building relationships with others and on having fun. But this week my attitude toward Semester changed. I was having my devotions one evening (because I never wake up early enough to have it before breakfast) and realized that I need to focus more on learning and studying. All week I focused more on my studies. I spent much more time reading and studying...which in the end actually gave me more time to spend with people! I found that I have a true love for reading and learning! It took 19 years, Mom, but I think I finally realized the importance of reading good books! Not JUST reading them, but receiving them, and digesting the content! I wish I had learned this sooner, but I'm glad I finally came to the realization!

Alrighty, on to the events of this week! As I previously stated, we didn't have much free time this week. Sunday I learned how to butcher an elk!!! It was rather disgusting, but very interesting!!! My hands were covered in blood...as I chopped up part of the rump! After cutting all the silver and fascia and fat off of the meat, I chopped the rump up into small pieces. Then I put them in the grinder, and turned chunks into ground elk! It was actually pretty fun, once you got over the fact that it was raw, bloody meat... Monday, which is usually our day off we had class, Tuesday we had class, and work crews. Yes, I sanded, again...but this time it wasn't that bad. We've moved to the west wall of the lodge, which for some reason is a lot easier to sand. I feel like I need to write about sanding, because I spend a lot of my time here, doing it! At first I hated it... it sucked...my nasal passages get filled with sawdust, sawdust gets in my eyes, I have to listen to my music turned up all the way, to sound out the loud whining of the sanders. Sawdust gets everywhere...in my hair, on my arms, on my arm hair, all over my clothes... its just a pain in the butt! After spending a total of 18 hours in 6 weeks of sanding, I finally began to appreciate it. It's so good for one's character! It's also nice because you get to see right away the results of your labor! Sanding is not my favorite thing to do... it probably never will be, but I do appreciate the character it helps build, not to mention a good work ethic... Wednesday...nothing exciting happened.... we had class...

Thursday I woke up 15 minutes after breakfast started, so I got my first late mark, which was depressing since I haven't gotten one late mark yet. It was also embarrassing since I had to walk into the dinning hall 15 minutes late, with sleepy eyes, and wild woman hair...when you walk in the dinning hall the door squeaks, so of course everyone turned to look to see who was coming in... totes embarrassing! A lot of students went to Opal Lake...but I stayed behind to study. I also cleaned my room and bathroom, did my roomates and my own laundry, made my bed (for the first time in about a week!!) and wrote some letters...all in all I had a very productive day! At the end of the day some of the more talented students put on a play that Dr. Williams had written : “Revenge of the DWEMS (dead white European Males). After the play we had a reception of sorts... basically it was just an excuse for us to have desserts...Desserts are about as rare as getting enough cell service to make a phone call, around here.... Then we had an impromptu dance party! At first I was hesitant to attend, homeschool kids don't tend to have the best dance party, BUT it was actually super fun, and we didn't just play hymns... we danced to dubstep, Party in the USA, Spice girls, Cha Cha Slide, Electic slide, like 5 other various slides...we learned the Virgina Reel...which was super fun, and we basically just danced. I busted out some moves I had no idea I was capable of. Steven, Jon, and Matt S. even did the worm... it was a pretty legit dance party!

Saturday we went to the sand dunes. It was like going out in the middle of the desert. Everywhere I looked it was just sand everywhere. Most of the students climbed to the top of the mountain of sand. It took us two hours to get to the top...I wish I had pictures, but I didn't want to get sand all over my camera.

Sunday we got split up into groups of 2, 4, and 6 and families from the church we attend here, took us back to their homes to provide lunch for us. I was in a group of four, and we had a blast. Granted, we didn't get Internet, because we sat talking at Gary and Jane's dinning room table for 3 hours...but we did get to shoot guns and hangout in the man cave. I also had the most amazing hamburger...We eat a lot of chicken at Semester, so it was realllllly nice to get some beef!! Gary and Jane pelted us with questions. I cant remember all of them, but one of them was “ where do you see yourself in 10 years, in detail”. So I had to explain in detail what I wanted my future husband to be like, characteristics, etc... and even what kind of dog and car(s) I wanted. It was pretty intense. Sunday night a few students braved the freezing cold and went camping by a river a few miles off campus. It was really fun....for the first few hours while we sat by the fire and talked...but when it came time to go to sleep... it was rather difficult because of how cold it was. I slept in a tent with two other girls, and apparently they didn't sleep too well...but after I fell asleep, I slept for most of the night. I maybe woke up twice, just to make sure no bears where trying to go through my backpack or anything. Again I apologize for not taking pictures, although this time I don't really have an excuse. I just really hate taking pictures. I hate being “that girl” that has to take pictures of everything and everybody all the time. And I'm just lazy....

Monday John Stonestreet came, and we had class monday afternoon and evening. This week is going to be our longest week yet, John stayed until Thursday morning, Bauman is teaching us Thursday-Saturday... so we didn't get a day off this week OR last week.

Monday morning we got to shoot a bunch of different guns! I did get some pictures, but...they're not that good. Most of my friends here take pictures and put them on Facebook, so if you are my friend on FB, you can see them :)

This weekend is alumni weekend. So a bunch of past Semester students are coming up here to visit and stay for a few days. So we are having to clean a lot this week. We already have two students families here, and a few extra guest. Dish crew... is starting to take forever, because of how many dishes we are having to use. You're probably not interested in hearing about how many dishes I'm having to do here, so I'll cease writing about it. Next week we have “Farvest Hall” on monday... and then I think/hope we have a normal week. Next Sunday I'm going with a few students to the Grand Canyon! I'm pretty excited, although its about an 8hr drive there, and 8hrs back. So we are camping....and its going to be freezing...But hey...I get to camp at the Grand Canyon, which is something I've never done before. So it will be two weeks before I can post again :(

Blog Post for week 5

I had quite the week... It all started Monday when I got to spend the evening in downtown Durango. It was lovely. I went with 8 other students and one mentor. We wandered around visiting candy shops, toy stores, outerwear stores (those stores were so cool...they had the most amazing stuff, but everything was so expensive...we left quickly because we felt poor haha), and my personal favorite: Maria's bookstore. We spent a long time in there looking at old books, new books, fat books, skinny books, fiction books, non-fiction books, helping books, religious books...you name it that bookstore had it. After wandering around for awhile, we went to dinner at an over-priced not so tasty Mexican restaurant. Then we drove to the airport to pick Anna up, because she'd been gone for a few days. That was my favorite part of the day...getting to see her impatiently waiting by the baggage claim, and then jumping into her arms...just kidding, but I did enjoy getting to pick her up.

                      Tuesday, we had work crew. I got to work in the kitchen, I made lots of bread, pizza dough, baked ziti, and scoured a billion pots and pans.

Wednesday-Friday Bauman came back and classes started. We went over Sir Philip Sydney's works, which where so interesting! If there is one thing Im going to take away from Semester, it's a great love for books. We also watched “Leap of Faith” with Steve Martin...it was a really weird movie. At first I thought it was giving a bad rep to Christians, but after discussing it...it had so many biblical references, and had a good ending. I didn't really enjoy the movie...but it made for good discussion. I also got really sick on Wednesday. Turned out I had the 48 hour stomach bug, because I didn't really stop feeling sick until late on Friday night. Basically, half of my week I didn't do anything but read, throw up, and feel sorry for myself.

Since I had such a boring week, I asked my friend Amy what I should blog about. Her answer?

“ Blog about me!”. So the following paragraph will be all about Amy Boyden.

              Amy Joelle Boyden was born on August 2^nd 1989 in San Jose California. Amy likes good books, writing poetry, laughing, and long walks on the beach. She used to train for marathons but for some reason has stopped training. During the five weeks I've been here, I've killed a lot of bugs for Amy. One time she even came into my room in the wee hours of the morning, and woke me up so I could come kill a spider for her! I think she's been learning about courage though, because it's been awhile since she's asked me to kill one for her. Although there is a possibility that I just killed all the bugs/scared all the living ones away. When I asked her what she wanted to be “when she grows up” she replied “ A circus trainer.” I don't support her decision though, she wouldn't look good in vertical stripes...and a top hat would totes ruin her beautiful locks. I could see her training monkeys and elephants how to dance, beg and sing...and I would definitely pay good money to go see her jump from swing to swing hanging super high up in the air. THAT would be funny! I can just imagine it now, I'm sitting in the stands eating my boiled peanuts and cotton candy, and Amy is wearing a tutu and fly through the air...

                  Now, I'm supposed to tell a good story of something we've done together.... I creamed her in pool one time... throughout the whole game we talked in ridiculous British/Russian accents. We also got to work on kitchen crew together one time. She burned the rice... and I got mad. We like to play volleyball...but not on the same team, we always run into each other, because she'll call it and I'll still go for it. She likes to scream “you're so ambiguous when you play volleyball! I never know where you're going to be!” It's her fault though...if she could actually return the ball to the other team, I wouldn't have to try to hit it all the time. And yes she is sitting next to me harshly whispering “FALSE!” She too has a blog! Amyjoelleboyden.blogspot.com “ In Every Season”. I highly recommend you go visit it, because she's really awesome and I love her a lot.

Until next time, folks!!!

Snow-volleyball, Green eggs and Blue Potatoes, Apology to the citizens of Pagosa, and Why I'm a Christian

I'm not going to start by saying that nothing happened this week...like I have for the past two weeks. Although, it wasn't the most eventful week, several things worth noting did happen.

We had a different speaker this week! Eric Smith is here and we've been discussing the Bible. It's “Bible Class”, so obviously we talk about the Bible. But we're not just discussing whats written in the Bible. We started out talking about the reliability and why we believe the Bible is true and God inspired. More importantly, I had to write down why I am a Christian. I thought I'd share those reasons with you.

Why are you a Christian? Because its true. Just because something has the best answers does not mean its true. I believe Christianity has the best answers, but I also believe its true. Sometimes I wish it wasn't... there are a lot of rules and things we need to do...but it's worth it, and I do it because I love God. If you love God you'll want to obey Him. Its like when you're in a relationship, you really love someone and care about them, you'll want to please them. Right? In the beginning you try to impress them...of course, but with God it's totes different.

SO here are my reasons for being a Christian:

1. Nature- design needs a designer. Everything around us points to a God, the God of the Bible. Origin of the universe- best explanation.

1. sin- need for redeemer is true. Best answer to sin and evil.
2. It's the only religion not based on works, which is necessary because we are sinful beings incapable of keeping perfect law
3. It's historically accurate/ reliability. Jesus was the son of God and we're called to be Christians.

• No one can deny that Jesus existed, but Christianity has the best answer as to why. Not just ancient, but how has Christianity shaped cultures where that world view has been dominated.
• No other religion can compete with christianity for what it's done for other human beings. We love our enemies...not many other religions truly love their enemies.

4. Christianity has sustained many trials over time, and has prevailed
5. It makes more sense than other “far-fetched” religions
6. Only religion in which the God came down and died for sinners/humans
7. Only religion where the God has a relationship with the human, we need to be fearful and in awe, but we also have a relationship with Him. Other religions are afraid of their god, and they don't have the relationship with him/her/it.
8. Most logical
9. Destiny
10. God's work in my life- personal and transforming...satisfying

I write differently, when I take notes, its not as personal... but you get the point. I didn't expound on point 9 because I think its obvious.

Anyway, on to more exciting and less controversial things! Here's a little peek at what I did this week:

            Monday I had my first official day off! I slept in for the first time in a month :) Then I went to town and sat in a coffee shop and used the Internet and drank some amazing coffee and read. It was a very relaxing and much needed break. Everyday here has a packed schedule. Since Eric Smith is only here for one week (and then one more week later on) we have to pack a lot of class in during the 5 days he's here. It's been very educational, and I've learned a lot. But I have to admit that I get really tired of sitting in class... from 9-12 Tuesday-Satuday we have class, and then again from 7pm to 9pm. So I get pretty antsy during the morning session. Especially during the 11-12 hour, because thats right before lunch...

            Tuesday, we had class in the morning and then work crews in the afternoon. I usually enjoy work crew, last friday I got to work in the kitchen and my friend Cliff and I made 10 loaves of bread, ruined a batch of croissants (because Cliff killed the yeast so it wouldn't rise), chopped up like 20million lbs of carrots, and cleaned a giant oven that (and I kid you not) I climbed into to be able to adequately clean the back. During work crew I've also cleaned barf (not my own) off a 15 passenger van, gotten high off of paint while painting a bathroom, dusted 2 giant lodges, and taught 3 people how to drive and park 15 passenger vans, as well as sanding the walls of a giant lodge. But for some reason I did not enjoying painting bathrooms on Tuesday... it just put me in the worst mood.

We had a few families from the local church over to eat dinner and have a campfire with us. It was really fun. Then for our small group time all the girls got together and made brownies and watched Sabrina (the old one...I like the new one better. Fact: Harrison Ford > Humphrey Bogart).

               Wednesday, I started training for our 5k that takes place on Thanksgiving...ran three whole miles on mountain roads and in mountain air. IT KILLED...but I finished. The road I run on is all down hill for the first mile and a half, but the second mile and a half is all up hill and is absolutely killer, so I'm going to find a different place to train on. We also had class...

                   Thursday, an odd thing happened...while we were eating lunch, big white stuff started falling out of the sky! It really freaked me out, until someone informed me that the white particles were called “snow”....IT SNOWED!!!!!!!!!!!! It was so exciting it just started pouring down snow. And it just kept snowing all day.

The view from my front porch :)

Floridian in the snow! And yes I did go running in the snow, thats why Im dressed like that :)

SNOWBALL!!!!

By 4pm there was enough snow for us to have our first snowball fight, and it was so much fun. I've never had a snowball fight before...but apparently Florida girls are really good at them, because I bruised a guys face...and I also accidentally punched Andy in the face... Its a long story, but basically he hit my friend Sarah in the face really hard with a snowball. So I took a snowball and smashed it in his face, REALLY hard...and one of my knuckles happened to slightly graze his upper lip, needless to say, he got a swollen lip from it. But no worries, he's fine now, his lip is just the size of Angelina Jolie's lip...nbd. I got hit pretty hard a few times too. My biggest complaint though is how sore your back and arm feel after throwing snowballs for 2 hours straight.

We also played snow volleyball (its like sand volleyball...but in the snow). That was really painful, if you've ever hit a rock covered in snow hurtling toward you at 20 mph with bare arms...then you know exactly how we felt while we played snow volleyball. To top off my amazing day I got a huge package of food from my family!

! I also learned how to play cribbage...its a card game thats all about adding. Not as fun as Dutch Blitz in my opinion though. While playing cribbage I over-heard two fellow students pull some of the staff aside and ask permission to do something, and then I watched the staff talk amongst themselves and then heard them give permission for them to to whatever they had asked to do. Curiosity got the best of me, and I followed the two girls outside and asked them what they were up to. They wouldn't tell me...so me and two other girls (all dressed in black and carrying 3 snowballs each) decided to follow the mysterious other two girls around. After an hour of careful spying we found out that they were just moving all the tables and couches and stuff in the class room around so that when everyone came into the room in the morning everything would be mirrored to how it usually is. Not as exciting as I had hoped for. But it was really funny to watch people's expressions as they walked in the next morning.

              Friday, I woke up and looked out my window and everything was covered in a beautiful white dust. It was as if God had shifted powdered sugar over everything. There are few things, in my humble opinion, that can top looking out your window and seeing mountains sparkling with snow in the early morning light. It was truly awesome. The snow started to melt, and fell in large chunks off the roof, barely missing my head as I walked to breakfast. Wouldn't it be embarrassing if I died from having a chunk of snow fall on my head?! I can see the headlines in Pagosa now “ Floridian girl dies from snow falling on her head!”... that would be embarrassing! Death by snow is not what I would consider a good death...

After a delicious breakfast of pumpkin cinnamon rolls, we went to class and talked about sin and Genesis 3. Then Eric asked us what sin was. Now, me being a Pittman I like to show off my catechism skills, so I raised my hand and when he called on me I proudly stated “Sin is any want of conformity unto or transgression of the Law of God”. After a long pause, Eric looked at me and said “that was not what was running through your head when I asked the question”. I replied “ Actually, it is. Would you like me to explain my answer? Conformity is not being or doing what God requires, and transgression is doing what God forbids.” Eric laughed and put the definition on the board and said that it would be our definition of sin from now on.

I cherish my academic accomplishments (since they are few and rare), and am rather proud of them as well. But I want to thank my mother for making me sit through hours of catechism at the breakfast table every morning...as horrible as it was at the time, it sure has payed off now. I'm convinced that the topic of sin might just be my area of expertise...what with me being reformed and all...I know quite a bit about how sinful we human beings truly are.

                 We had work crews again on Friday afternoon, I continued painting bathrooms. I actually enjoyed it this time...maybe it was because I had a better painting buddy...maybe because I finished one whole bathroom. The feeling of accomplishment I felt after working on one dirty ugly bathroom for 5 hours (over two days) and turning it into a beautiful bathroom, with new light fixtures and everything, was a great feeling. Working hard on something ugly and turning it into something beautiful is so satisfying. If I had the talent of being artsy, I would totes become a painter (like the kind that paints pictures not walls and buildings). I really admire anyone who can capture the beauty of creation through paint/ink/lead/etc...

I also learned Jujitsu on Friday night! I learned how to flip people, peg people down, get out of holds, etc...Next person who tries to give me a hug when I don't want one... GETS FLIPPED!

Ever since it snowed, I've had to watch my back or I'll get pegged with a snowball. I was wearing a button-up and nice jeans and some rude boys pegged me with snowballs as I was walking back to the classroom! Fact: Looking classy while living in the mountains is hard. AND if you walk around the little mountain towns wearing classy/preppy clothes, you get weird looks. To the citizens of Pagosa: “ I'm sorry I don't wear hiking boots with everything! I'm sorry I don't own any flannel. And most of all I'm sorry I don't wear hiking boots and flannel to church on Sunday!”

Today is Satuday, and nothing exciting has happened. Unless you count having green eggs and blue potatoes in our breakfast burritos this morning. Which I think is more disgusting than exciting...We have our Bible Mid-term later today, I'm not too worried about it, seems like it will be over really basic information.

Some pics of my room:

My bed and desk

Roomie's bed and our shared closet thing

roomie's desk

classroom!! if you look  close enough you can see my laptop on the last table in the middle row, on the the left side. thats my seat!

Next week on “Dear Bob”- Walmart Trip, Picking Anna up from the airport, and the return of Bauman!

Volleyball, terrorism, and photos-shoots

This week went by super fast, so I didn't have a lot of time to write out a lengthy blog post. According to Debs (aka my mother) lengthy blog posts aren't good anyway, so I guess this is me listening to her advice...sort of.

Nothing exciting happened this week, and I mean nothing... we had 19 hours of class (not that much), ate meals, slept, played a lot volleyball.... sand volleyball has become my newest passion! It's not like I can just go out and row on a lake around here... and even if I could, there are no lakes! I play about 6 hours of volleyball a week... which is nothing compared to my rigorous crew practice schedule from highschool, but its a lot for being stuck up in the middle of nowhere on a mountain! I'm not very good at V-ball...yet! I'm good at spiking though! I have two giant scrapes on my legs because the sand is really rocky and coarse, so it scraps us up pretty bad every time we fall. But it's ok, they make me look legit ;)

I really hate side-ways emoticons...yet I just did one, weird. If I didn't do one you guys wouldn't be able to tell that I was being kinda sorta sarcastic-ish!!!!

I try to include some of the things I learn each week, in my blog posts. This week in Politics class Bauman talked to us about terrorism, for three evenings in a row... it's been really interesting though! Here's some thing's I've learned:

Terrorism- deliberate and systematic murder, maiming and menacing of the innocent to inspire fear for political ends.

• Terrorists kill children because they're potential soldiers, and women because they're soldier producers.

• Terrorists call themselves “freedom fighters”

We talked about how the media really actually helps the terrorists instead of helping the anti-terrorists.... terrorists want attention. They want everyone to know what they did, they want to be internationally broadcasted to tvs everywhere! So when some big attack happens and the media freaks out and puts it all over the news for hours on time....it's just encouraging the terrorists. Bauman gave us a list of things the media could do to help fix this problem:

1. Authorize self-discipline- no more free rights for terrorist propaganda. Tell the facts but dont celebrate it by hours of global broadcasting.
2. Make sure to avoid rationalizing for the terrorists. why doesnt America like the word “ terrorism”?! Call them what they are!!!
3. Media is sometimes so out of bounds that it sometimes injures anti-terrorism attempts! The media is THAT stupid! They only care about people listening, reading or watching what they broadcast/ prints.

Isn't that interesting?!

Bauman went on to talk about prevention of terrorists attacks and then he called on me and asked if I thought that killing a terrorist was the right thing to do. If a terrorist came and attacked us, and I had the chance to kill him, would it be right of me to do it? What do you think? Personally, I would totally kill that idiot. If he comes and attacks me! Then I totes have the right to defend myself and kill him! I think I have the right to, and a reason to.

Bauman went on and read us some tips for being in an airport, and I think their quite hilarious.

Personal things you can do:

• Since so much terrorism occurs around/in airplanes, make note of your passport numbers etc... so that you can have it some where safe after they take it on the plane...
• don't fill in the names of loved ones on your passport
• Dont have your passport stamped if you ever go to Israel... because hijackers will look at your passport and if you seem to be sympathetic to Israel you're a target
• don't put meds in check baggage in case you need it....
• don't carry alcohol or pornography... (well duh....)
• don't have anti commonest or Islamic literature
• clothing: don't wear veterans clothing or military uniform/apparel. Loose fitting comfortable clothing, don't wear outstanding clothing, fit in.
• While in airport, go through lines quickly. While by gate, sit away from windows or trashcans
• if your under attack in an airport and theres no directions, hit the floor!

So thats just a little bit of what I learned this week!

Oh!!! Something exciting did happen this week!!! My two “best” friends here and I had a photo shoot!!! Andy (one of the boys here) is a professional photographer, and he took some pics of us! I think they're pretty awesome! So here's a few of them, although most of them will be on facebook too. So if you're my friend on FB go check 'em out!

This reminds me of twilight!!! To my right with the curly hair is Sarah, and to my left is Natelie.

This is looking out from “Cell phone hill” aka the only place I can make phone calls from! So if you ever call me...this is how high up I have to go to get a decent number of bars!!

This is my favorite puppy in the world!!! His name is Cheerio and he's about 10 weeks old!!! We hangout a lot!!

We like to do the peace sign and say “holla” a lot. And thats not a mis-spelling of hola...its “Hollar” shortened!

We were supposed to look tough... but I think I'm the only one who actually looks tough... haha.

Tune in next week for another episode in the crazy life of MaFa!

Week 2 at Summit Semester

I'm not sure where to begin. This week has been pretty tough. Living with the same thirty people for three months isn't as easy as it sounds, and thats saying something since it doesn't sound easy at all. I can't fully explain it to people who aren't here experiencing it with me.

I don't really have much blog worthy stuff to talk about... nothing exciting happened this week. So I guess I could talk about things I learned throughout the week:

1. That it takes 6 men to gut and pack out an Elk
2. That the most compelling argument for a fetus being a human and being independent from it's mother's body is “ your mom cannot have four eyes and a penis.”
3. Sanding a log wall for three hours is not good for your sinus passages.
4. Sanding a log wall for three hours is not good for your ears
5. Sanding a log wall for three hours is good for character building
6. “A pear is an L of a long way from a pearl”

Ok, so on to more serious and pressing matters, Clement of Rome. Clement was a Hellenistic Jew who lived around the same time as Paul. He wrote a letter to the church at Corinth, which was almost added to the Bible. However, it had a few problems. One of which was that he believed in an ancient Egyptian myth about Phoenixes. The story is that there is a Phoenix that lives for 500 years, and every time the 500^th year comes around the Phoenix goes to its nest and begins to die. After it is dead it's body juices leak onto a worm (which just happens to be there....). The worm then turns into a Phoenix and carries the nest and the bones of it's parents to an ancient Egyptian alter everyday on the 500^th year. Clement believes it's a symbolism of Jesus and the Resurrection. Far out right? The other interesting thing about Clement was that Hebrews ( the book of the Bible who no one knows who the author is) is written freakishly similarly to Clement's letter to Corinth. And there is a lot of proof for him being the author of Hebrews, but I won't bore you with that.

One of the questions Professor Bauman asked us today was especially tough. In fact our whole class argued for an hour and a half about it. If you were a guy and you and your wife were expecting, and then you got in a car accident and the doctor told you (the husband) that he could only save your child or your wife, who would you choose?

My first instinct was immediately that I'd save “my wife”. As we discussed it however, I could see why someone would save the baby. One guy in the class even went so far as to call anyone who would choose the wife over the baby, a “murderer”. I disagree of course, but I challenge you think about who you would choose, and why. I didn't change my mind after the whole discussion...but some people did.

Some more of the questions we've been asked have been:

“ What is a human being?”

“What is a good life, and what good is life?”

“What good is death, and what is a good death?”

“What is good love, and what good is love?”

“What is the purpose of living?”

“Are you a body with a soul, or a soul with a body?”

“Is your soul as fallen as your body?”

“What is the purpose of free speech? What is free speech? Is absolute freedom of speech beneficial or harmful?”

I've had to answer at least three of those questions in class... with no notice whatsoever. In front of a bunch of smart kids, and a super intelligent professor.

We discussed a lot of things that I learned in highschool, like Augustine's Just War Theory, the rise and fall of Rome, why Rome fell, Why Rome fell and Christianity survived, why were Christians persecuted, Beowulf, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, etc...

One of the students here is really into giving us all personality tests, to determine what our personality is. I took mine the other day and came out ESTJ. If you don't know what that is/means...shame on you! Go look it up. Although I am almost an F not a T... 

Also this week, I got a knot the size of a golfball in my neck, so for the past five days I havent been able to do much physical activity. But I should I have notified the authority figures at Semester before it had been five days... Anyway, I have to skip camping sunday night, and hiking on monday, because I have to go to the chiropractor...sadness. Other than that, I don't have much to complain about! I'll catch up with y'all next week!!!

Blog Post 9/9/11

I'm on my flight to Phoenix Arizona, a 4 ½ hour trip... which by itself is pretty bad in my opinion.

I'm by the window and the view is great, the seat next to me is empty, which is even better! However, the people sitting behind me have two kids, probably 2 and 3. Don't get me wrong I like kids... I really do. But I do not like kids on airplanes, especially when they're sitting right behind me. This particular child speaks Spanish fluently and loudly (who knew a 3 year old could have such a good vocabulary. At least I assume he has a rather large vocabulary since he wont shut up. But since I don't speak Spanish I have no idea what he's saying. He could be cussing me out for all I know...) as does his mother. The kid continuously and simultaneously kicks the back of my seat, opens and shuts his window cover, slams his car on the side of the plane and shouts random things in Spanish. I don't get how he can be so talented, but so annoying...I guess I feel the same way about opera singers, radio hosts, recorder players and Rebbecca Black. Actually scratch that, this punk behind me has more talent than Ms. Black. I'm hoping that the mother cannot read over the seat...although my computer screen is pretty big so she probably can. Mrs. Spanish lady sitting behind me, if you can read this, please refrain your child from kicking my seat, its starting to annoy me. Good thing I have Modest Mouse to help me block him out.

I've been up since 4:30am, and I was hoping to sleep on this flight since it's so long, but obviously the kid behind me had other plans for me. On my previous flight I was stuck by two giant women! At least, I'm 70% sure they were of the female gender...but I could be wrong. Have you ever tried to sleep in the tiny space in between the driver's seat of your car, and the center console 3 inches from your seat? Probably not...but thats about how much space I had. I had to pee so badly on the last flight... but I held it since the “being” sitting beside me was asleep, and as every fairytale tells you: waking up a giant is either very brave or very stupid. In this case it would have been stupid, so I held it for 2 hours...anyone who knows me can attest to the fact that 2 hours is a long time for me. It might even be a record.

Since I have nothing better to do, I'm going to continue to ramble. Airports are the best places to meet weird people, or to just watch weird people interact with other weird people. This morning in SC I saw a woman with a 5  foot long braid!!! I mean come on! Like that's just gross!

Pros and Cons of having 5 foot long hair/a braid:

Cons:

• Weird looks from everybody who doesn't also have a long braid.
• Maintenance... has to be difficult to brush, wash, braid...and dont even get me started about how hard it would be to condition that mess, she probably uses up an entire bottle every time.
• The inconvenience of tripping over your own hair
• Looking stupid when you trip over your own hair
• Failing job interviews because of sanitary hazards
• People mistaking the braid for a poisonous snake, so they attack it in an attempt to save your life.
• The inconvenience of either having to carry it, or having it drag all over the floor

Pros:

• Being able to use it as a weapon
• Using it to conceal actual weapons
• Hiding gross moles on the back of your neck and back
• If you ever run out of clothes you have plenty of hair to cover your whole body.
• Great conversation starter
• I'm pretty sure it's big enough to carry a baby in.
• If your pants start falling down you can use it as a belt! Or if you have a skirt it can serve as a sash as well.
• Getting enough attention to have a blog post written about you!

After going over the pros and cons... I hope I convinced you that getting a 5 foot braid is something everyone should do!

I hope I didn't lose all 2 of my readers (my mom and my very dedicated older brother) during that...Mom if you're still reading this I apologize for all the grammatical and punctuational errors I made already...writing is not my most talented area of life.

Whatever state I'm flying over right now looks like a checker's board... its all split up into rectangular sections of land, varying in color. Probably Texas or New Mexico. Really boring and flat looking.

I hate how everyone charges you for everything now...I can't even get peanuts for free now! They used to give out like a whole freaking meal! I did get a cup of sprite for “free”. I think they include the drink in your ticket price. If I ever own an airplane company I will serve my consumers free peanuts. FREE PEANUTS FOR EVERYONE! 1300 miles till touchdown...aka 1300 miles till I can ride myself of this family behind me. The 2 year old is crying now...please God if there's going to be a rapture...make it happen now. I'm ready.

Well I'm going to try to take a nap since I'm running on 3 hours of sleep right now.

September 13

Well I'm at Summit Semester! Colorado is so beautiful, I haven't gotten any good pictures yet because I've been really busy ever since I got here. This is the second slot of free time that I've gotten...and its not really free time, I have 10 minutes between dinner and exercise time today, so I'm using it to start my blog post because if I dont...I will keep putting it off.

Okay so today we had our second day of class! Mike Mandt was our teacher, and we learned a lot about evolution and creation. I have never fully grasped the concept of how much space there is... like earth is so small in comparison to everything else in our universe...our galaxy is even tiny in comparison to the universe...it's insanely crazy! I cannot even begin to comprehend how small we human beings are compared to outer space. And if there is that much space out there...then the probability of there being other living creatures out there somewhere seems pretty likely. No, Mom, I'm not admitting to believing in aliens... but still...It does make me wonder.

       I want to walk you through my day today, I have no idea if everyday is going to be like today, but at least you'll get to see what one of my days looks like.

I woke up at 6:30am to go on a morning hike with my buddy Sarah. We hiked on Cell Phone Hill. Dubbed that due to the fact that it's the only place on campus that one can get enough service to make a phone call. Some of you have been lucky enough to have gotten a call from me, and you can attest to the fact that its a pretty tough climb, since I'm always out of breath when I call. Anyway, we hiked all around Cell Phone Hill and came back in time for breakfast at 8am. All of our meals are served “family style”. Ten people per table and we pass the food around and it forces us to talk and get to know each other better. Meals are mandatory (not like I have a problem with that anyway...). After breakfast we have class at 9am. Class lasts until noon, when we go have lunch. Everyone is assigned to a “dish crew” each crew has 6 students, and we have to do the dishes, clean the dinning room, sweep and wipe down the kitchen, set the tables for the next meal, and dry and put up all the clean dishes. My dish crew had lunch today and it took us forever to clean up...when we wash dishes we have to rinse, wash, put in bleach water, and rinse again. I was the lucky one...I got to do the bleaching... and of course I didn't think about asking for gloves. 10 hours later, my hands still reek of bleach!

Most days after lunch we will either have class again or go study for 2 hours.

        Today we studied, all we were assigned was to read “ An Experiment in Criticism” by C.S Lewis. At first glance I was like “Ha! I have no problem with criticism...” But the book is all about what makes good literature “good” and bad literature “bad”. At 3:30 we had an exercise hour. I ran 2 miles, which was pretty good for a Floridan in Colorado if you ask me. I have not yet adjusted to the altitude, so I get out of breath really quickly. Then I played speed volleyball (be proud of me Osterbye...I actually made a few points!). At 5 we had dinner, and since it was someone's birthday we got cookies! Which was exciting because we dont get dessert unless it's a birthday. I'm really missing all my sugary snacks/desserts at home . Y'all should send me some!

             We had class again at 7 and got out at around 8:30. Everyone is just chilling or playing games/musical instruments now. One of the cooler things about Semester is that the students make their own rules. Our second day we got together and decided on 3 values that we have, and then based some rules off of the values. We don't really have many rules, only really basic ones like being on time to classes and meals and such.

My dorm room is really small...I have a really short hard bed, but I love it because by the time I crawl into it I'm just too tired to care how nice it is. I have a wardrobe (like the one in Narnia, but a lot smaller) that I share with my roomie, and we each have a desk. We also share a bathroom, which isn't too bad. I really don't have enough room for all my stuff in my room... I brought a ton of stuff!

               We had our first work crew... it was actually pretty tough. Thats coming from a girl who's father made her work every saturday! I sanded log cabin outer walls with an electic sander. Work crew is about three hours long and I got about 5 logs done. It takes a long time to sand them sufficiently. The logs are really dirty and dark brown, by the time I finished working on them they were basically white. Before and after pics are below, but it rained this morning so they dont look as clean, gahh!

before

 

after

            We have our first test next friday!! Its on C.S Lewis's book. Doctor Bauman is our main teacher and he is pretty scary! He has a list with all 30 student's names on it and he randomly picks one and asks the lucky student who got picked a question. But not easy questions, questions that really make you think. Yesterday he called on me, and as soon as he said my name terror entered my heart! I'm totes not the type to get embarrassed easily, but I have trouble answering hard questions in front of 29 smart students, 4 staff, and a really smart professor. So Bauman and I went back and forth for about 10 minutes, discussing education, and who should be in charge of it. When we were done and he finally proceeded to ask someone else a question, I realized that my shirt (mostly near my arm-pits) were completely soaked! In 10 minutes I had gone from chilly, to overly hot and sweaty. THIS IS WHAT BAUMAN DOES TO STUDENTS! No matter what you say, he will argue the opposite side.

I apologize for the lack of pictures...its sad that the only two up here are of logs... but I promise next sunday there will be many more!