Thursday, January 25, 2007

ME
So these are some pictures from after finals at the end of last week. They show my new haircut!!! The reason I havent really posted any pictures lately is because I thought my camera was broken. You see, it would not turn on and I tried charging the batteries and hitting the camera but nothing worked. Finally, as a last effort, I inserted some regular batteries and it turns on. Now, sometimes I have to give it a good whack (perhaps to knock something into place) to get it to turn on but it works and thats all that matters. All that being said, here are a few pictures!


ECCELSIA:

And here are a few pictures of Ecclesia. This is obviously before everyone arrived but this is the typical setup of our church. The study we're going right now is called "You asked for it!" and it addresses some hard questions that the congregation asked for. We've covered homosexuality and suffering.
"brief" updating

Hm, its been a while since I updated so here goes: No more nightmares. I decided to just take a long nap after school (2-3 hours) so that way I can stay up until 12 or 1 am at which point I can fall asleep fine without any nightmares. haha, I'm being the system! Uhm, as for college I’ve basically decided to go to NIU. Monmouth I think is just too small and too far - not really worth it because I cant imagine the experience being much more than high school. Im still waiting to hear back from IWU which used to be the school I wanted to go to but now I'm thinking its not for me. I'd be paying twice as much for that school and for what? The experience? Im sorry.. I cant bring myself to may an extra $17000 for an experience. Just not gonna happen. Hehe.

What else is new? My classes changed this week. Now I have Partners PE, AP English and Trig (same as before), Chemistry, and Senior Survey. Uhm, yeah all my teachers are female except my PE teacher.. Its not bad per say.. just...different. Haha. The homework so far in manageable but I attribute that to the fact that we're currently in-between novels in AP Lit so my workload isn’t too bad. With my free time I had made it a point to attend writing club and hang out with friends.

Friends, what friends? Well, last weekend I hung out with Theo. Anyone remember him? Lol, yeah I slept over at his house. And this Friday I am supposed to hang out with my friend Chrissie. AND sometime soon I am supposed to sleep over at my friend, Shefali's, house. So I've really been working on building my relationships and committing to being there for people - as well as allowing people to be there for me. In doing this I can say with confidence that I've made mistakes. Things that I'll undoubtedly regret in a few weeks, months, or years but nothing major! Lol.. that sounded really serious! heh.

Hm. Church. It is going good. I love Ecclesia and we've been meeting some pretty awesome people. Still, I feel at least a little disconnected because of my age (I'm 17 and the majority of the congregation is in the mid-twenties) but that’s a small thing and just a gap to be bridged. [bridged?] The small group is also going good. I still find it pretty awkward when we separate to pray together but I'm working on it and the group seems to haev awesome intentions.

One major thing that is taking place is the issues surrounding H2O Club. We want to hold a Praise Night at the end of the year, like last year, and we wanted to hold it in the Auditorium rather than holding it in the band room. We also wanted to fund-raise this year, put up posters so people could actually know the club existed, and just BE a club. We’ve had many meetings with our schools club advisor but each of us (us leaders) has been given a different story. Right now, its down to finding out if our school is federally funded because if we are they are breaking a lot of laws [particularly the Equal Access Act]. But many people I’ve talked to have said despite the commonly held belief that we’re a public school and therefore MUST be federally funded, we are not. I’ve been told that we turned down federal funding last year so as not to be required to start the GSA [Gay Straight Alliance]. 8-O. How they can get away with that...I don’t know...but that’s what the higher-ups have been saying. Recently, they took down our poster (we can only post one poster in the main hallway) and they deleted our clubs website from the school site… even though the link to the H2O Club website has been there for years just we decided to actually update the page and that’s when they deleted it. I don’t know what’s going on and evidently nobody does. Within the next few weeks, all 4 leaders and our club sponsor are going to meet with the club advisor and try to figure out what’s going on. Argh. I’m a bit perturbed. So that’s what’s going as far as H2O goes…

Any questions??? Haha.

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Actually, on New Years Eve....
Okay, so first post of the year 07! Woot. True story. On New Years Eve I, along with Crystal and Erik, went downtown to watch the fireworks at Buckingham Fountain. It was real sweet. I complained a lot at first: "Aww, we shouldnt have come.. its too cold, its too windy. wah wah" but it ended up being real fun. So I didnt get home until 4:30 am and then I got up at like 12:30 to do homework which, consequently, hasnt even been checked yet for a grade. Oh well. Otherwise nothing fun has really happened. I've slept probably 10 hours since Monday night so I'm exhausted but I cant sleep. On Tuesday and Wednesday night I had the same nightmare (not fun) so lets just hope I dont have it AGAIN tonight. Welp, thats all.