My Dog is Indecisive Too

I am known for being indecisive. I change my mind about 100 times before setlling on choices in matters big and small. The questions "Where do you want to sit?" "When do you want to meet?" and "What should I wear today?" are all generally first answered with "I don't know."

Well, apparently Valencia is just as indecisive as I am.

I sometimes grab two of her toys and ask her "which one?" and she takes whichever one is most appealing at that time. I did this tonight with her kong and her bone. She grabbed the bone, then changed her mind and grabbed the kong, then changed her mind again and grabbed the bone.

At this point the decision process most have been too difficult, as she let go of the bone and stared at me as if to say "But Mommy, I want to play with BOTH of them!"

Hmm maybe throwing them will help.

I tossed them in different directions. Valencia ran to the kong, to the bone, and back to the kong before settling on the kong as her toy of choice. Of course, by this time the effort of making a decision had worn her out, and after a minute of playing with the kong, she dropped it and curled up on her bed.

Don't worry Valencia, I totally understand.

Statues are People Too

Statues are funny things sometimes. They represent people (in many cases, not always as you can have a statue of just about anything) yet they're so different from pictures or paintings. I think the funny thing to me about them is the general lack of realistic color. In fact, the only realistic thing about them is that they are 3D and sometimes life size.

Raelene and I ventured to the Hazard Center tonight for dessert at Applebee's. The Hazard Center is named for one of the original families in San Diego. The Hazards owned most of the land in Mission Valley (the part of SD where I am presently living). Anyway, on our last trip to the HC (for some fro yo) we noticed a statue of Mr. Hazard Sr, and decided that at some point, when one of us had a camera, we would need to take pictures with Mr. Hazard.

That night happened to be tonight, and I think we look quite lovely next to "Pappy" Hazard. lol There is at least one more statue in the center that we will need to pose with at some point and, while out to lunch with my mom last week, we found a Mark Twain statue in a different shopping center. I see a picture collection forming!

Patience vs Reality

At what point does "waiting patiently" turn into "being too stubborn or stupid to let go"?

There are some things in life that would just drag on endlessly if we didn't put an end to them...how do we know what those things are?

Where's the magic point at which the pain of letting something go is less than it would be if things were left to drag on?

Please tell me there's some sort of equation for this

Settling In

I'm in the middle of my second week of fall classes and starting to feel comfortable with my routine. Mondays and Wednesdays I'm home all day working on homework or tidying up until I head to campus for class from 5-8. Tuesdays and Thursdays (starting next week when clinic starts) I'm on campus all day (8:30-8). Fridays I'm on campus from 9-3, and the weekends are spent doing homework and hanging out with friends. It's actually rather manageable, so far.

Thanks to bootcamp, the building is already starting to feel like home, though I still miss the Biola clinic workroom. The condo is definitely home, I just need to do a better job of getting into this thing called "cleaning"...yeah, about that...

I still miss Biola, but I do love San Diego so much, it's good to be back, and there are always weekends. Speaking of which, I am spending my entire Thanksgiving break with the Tildens. Thanks to university furlough days, I don't have class at all that week, and I'm off the Friday before. I'm really excited to get to spend another week with Tad's family, and to get to meet his extended family. It will be interesting to experience a holiday with a different family, hopefully it won't be too traumatic :o)

I best start getting ready for class now. If I get ready soon enough I'll have time to get a pumpkin spice sweet cream at Starbucks beforehand!

Back to the Bubble

After two weeks of intense, public school classes, I needed some time away. Time away from the stress of school, and time away from the secular world I was sheltered from during the 4 years at Biola.

It has been so strange, I went to public school my whole life until Biola, but during those 4 years I re-sensitized to everything. The difference is, now I'm a lot more comfortable and sure about what I believe than when I left high school. Still, the adjusting is hard, being reminded over and over again on a daily basis that not everyone believes what I do.

All that to say, I needed a fun weekend with some Biola people. I rode up to Orange County Friday afternoon with Anja and her boyfriend James. They dropped me off at Krista's house where I met up with both Krista and Becky. Becky drove us to Biola, and we spent some time roaming the halls of the music building.

I had about 16 hours notice that I was actually going to be in the Biola area, so most people were very surprised to see me, which is always kind of a fun thing. I stopped 4 different conversations simply by walking past the bandroom :)

Justine joined our party, and we made a very important stop: Commons. Nothing more refreshing than a Common Grounds' raspberry, peach smoothie. Commons now carries cupcakes so Krista got one for us to share.

Becky had already had plans for Friday night, so after our snack, she departed and the rest of us went down to surprise more people in Hart. We dropped in on Krista's last roommate Raeleen and Raeleen's current roommate Tia, stopped by to say hi to Charlotte, and hung out for a while in Amanda's room.

After a while everyone left for a bro/sis floor event (oh HUOD/Heat events!). Since Krista and I no longer possess Biola mealplans (fancy that) the 3 of us (me, Justine, and Krista) had dinner at Panera (am I using enough parentheticals?). And, of course, what Biola Friday evening would be complete without Berry Cool. Especially cool, I had filled my stamp card during finals week, so I only paid 16 cents for my fabulously wonderful honeydew fro yo :)

Justine dropped me and Krista off at Becky's townhouse. Since it was a characteristically hot SoCal Labor Day weekend, Krista and I opted for a dip in the pool. Swimming pools are amazing for hot, sticky summer nights.

We took advantage of the dvd collection at Becky's place and watched The Wedding Planner. Becky got home pretty soon after and we unanimously decided it was time for bed.

Saturday morning Becky made grits for breakfast, yum! She had a rehearsal for most of the afternoon, so Krista and I were once more let loose on campus. We spent a bit of time just chilling in Tia's and Raeleen's room chatting while they "worked" on homework. We left them alone to their homework and talked with Amanda in the upper lobby for a while until we decided to get lunch at Eagles.

Amberly met us at Eagles and the four us talked while Krista and I ate lunch. Krista and I spent some time checking email in the library, and I got to spend time sitting outside the library thinking and just being. That's always been one of my favorite places on campus. I love the trees by the library, and on weekends it's so calm and quiet there. Great place to sit and pray.

Krista and I spent the last hour before Becky came back playing a house rules version of Outburst in the sub. We made a really yummy pasta and salad dinner at Becky's and followed it up at Starbucks with Christine. We took turns sharing about our summers and boys over pumpkin spice frappuccinos, which are amazing!

Becky and I dropped Krista off at her house and made it back to La Mirada in time to see Up at the dollar theater.

Sunday Becky and I went to church at Redeemer, picked Krista up from Grace, and got lunch at In N Out. The girls dropped me off in Placentia where I met up again with Anja and James to come back down to SD I spent Sunday night at home so I could get a bit more time with my fam and a chance to hang out with Raelene.

It was so good to get to see my Biola friends again, and to just be on campus. It doesn't feel any different to me, which is great. It means I can just forget about everything else I have going on and enjoy my favorite place in LA. I came back very refreshed, which is good, because this will be a heck of a semester.

Also, apparently my internet browser just hates me, I still can't upload pictures with it, which greatly displeases me, but there isn't much else I can do, so oh well. For pictures of my life, see facebook, they're all there anyway

Surviving Bootcamp

Today is the last day of SLP (Speech Language Pathology) Bootcamp for us first year MA students at SDSU.

Thank goodness

It has been a crazy two weeks. Last week we had class from 8:30-4:00, with a lunch break in the middle, every day. Bootcamp is designed to get all of the grad students up to speed and at the same starting point before regular classes and clinic start. We've had our diagnostic methods and clinical methods classes, and have been meeting with our clinic supervisors.

I am so thankful I have the background from Biola. I feel so much farther ahead than a lot of the other students. Most of the Diagnostic and Clinic methods classes have been review for me, plus I'm not spazzing about clinic like everyone else is. Biola's comm disorders program is amazing!

I'm super excited about clinic, scared about classes though. I'm registered for 19 units. I never took more than 17 a semester at Biola! AHHH!!! I'm also having a bit of a difficult time adjusting to being in a public school again. Hearing people talk frankly about "hooking up" isn't exactly what I'm used to anymore. *sigh* Welcome to the world Lindsey.

Anyway, I had a very nice relaxing weekend (despite the crazy heatwave we're having). Raelene and I had dinner at Ruby's Diner Friday night, window shopped at Express, and came back to do a bit of facebook stalking. Saturday I got to hang out with a couple of friends from a ministry I was in freshman year, and spent the rest of the weekend staying cool and hanging out with Anja and her boyfriend James.

We tried out The Rock on Sunday, and decided we're a lot more comfortable with the Flood, as opposed to a rock concert rather than a worship service.

Oh and Tad helped me fix my computer so I can upload pictures to the internet again, so I'll be adding pics to my last few entries if you want to check them out :)

One more class, and then a four day weekend, yay!

6-2 Trip to Rossiori

Tuesday was a very early morning for us. I believe we were on the road by 6:30. I spent a bit of the time sleeping, but was awake to see a couple storks' nests as we drove past and the city of Alexandria as we drove through. The big exciting thing on our drive was passing through a gypsy village. Oh my was that interesting. Everything was very extravagant looking, big ornate houses. Jenny told us though that those are all fronts, the real house are quite small and behind them.

Our home base for the day was at a local church in Rossiori. We set up and put on a concert and carnival just like at Peris, except that these kids were crazy. It was kind of scary doing the cake walk with them because they were doing so much running and shoving.

We recovered over some lunch and then had free time. I did a bit of shopping, tried authentic Romanian sausage (called "meech") and bought a scarf.

We put on one more concert for a second group of kids and another carnival. These kids were much less hyper than the first ones, thankfully. One little girl was very cute, when given her candy she exclaimed in Romanian "I've won something!"

After carnival we packed up, got sack dinners to go, and made the drive back to Pipera. We could tell on our way home that a storm was blowing in and just as our van got back to the team house, rain drops started falling. These were HUGE raindrops. I made a ran for the porch, and no sooner had I made it up the steps then it started pouring buckets. This was absolutely the biggest thunderstorm I have ever seen.

Some of the others were not quite so lucky and were drenched by the time they made it inside. Gusting wind, pouring rain, and booming thunder...definitely a good night to be inside. There was pizza waiting for us for a little extra dinner, now that's a good pizza delivery service!

Tues night was when I hit my low of the trip. I was sitting on one of the couches pondering the week and the storm, and then it hit me. I thought of the babies at the baby hospital, lying in their little cribs, alone, in the dark, in the middle of this storm. Babies who don't have parents to rush in and comfort them if they're scared and crying.

It only occurs to me now, several months later, that this could be an analogy for unreached people: alone, in the dark, in the midst of storms, with no one to shed light into their world. How important missions are for all the lost and lonely people in this world!

After pizza consumption we had night light and hot seat. Hot seat quote, Ryan to Katie D. (who are dating) as he picks up paper and pen "Describe your perfect date..."