Semester's End

It's hard to believe that the end is finally here! As of tomorrow afternoon, I will be halfway through my time here at CBI. We are finishing up a week of finals/projects and everyone is getting rather stir-crazy! It doesn't help that it has been insanely cold this week and we haven't been able to burn off excessive energy outside. But anyways, Clara and I are muchly looking forward to being home and spending a few weeks at the funny farm.

And here are some random pictures from life of late:

Thanksgiving at home was perfectly splendid! It was such fun to spend it with friends and family and to do lots of non-school-related activities.

Like making 15 million cookies. And watching crazy movies. And going on random adventures. And staying up exceedingly late talking about everything and nothing.

We had Clash Day last Friday. It was a rather painful visual experience.


Mr and Mrs Charles decided not to comply. The little stinkers. :-)

In the midsts of tests and cleaning for White Glove, we had a Christmas decorating contest. Room Five was festive with a blue, silver and white theme.

Mr. Cello obliged us by playing the Joseph role for our Nativity scene.

And Lysander had his own Christmas tree.

We wrapped our door like a big blue gift (with a big blue tarp - isn't that resourceful?).

And one last picture of everyone in 2008. Hooray for the Cornerstone peeps!

It's Friday!

I don't have any pictures for you today. So sad! I need to bother Clara into uploading some recent shots from our experiences here in the magical world of Cornerstone Bible Institute.

Last weekend started out on a rough note. I was cleaning out the fish bowl of my beloved Yorick and he accidentally flopped into the side of the sink...without the trap. I hollered, "AHH! What do I do?" And as I was reaching down to pick him up by his adorable little pink fin, he flopped down the drain. Yes. My fish went. down. the. drain. I stood over the sink in shock. My fish...my wonderful little pink and orange fish...was gone. Just like that. And I didn't even get to say goodbye!

Sigh. I went through the rest of the day proceeding through shock, anger, grief, denial, and finally made it to coping by about 10pm. There just will never be a little fellow like him. Our Room Five will never be the same. I loved that fish. Clara says that I shouldn't name my pets. I think that I should just get a Christmas cactus or a venus fly trap or something prickly.

But maybe I'll get another fish. A punky little blue fish. And maybe I'll name him Lysander.

Random adventures

• Clara and I attempted to be good citizens yesterday and give blood. We hiked down the hill to a mobile blood bank with a bunch of other students, only to realize that it wasn't a Red Cross unit and we would have to wait for a long time before we could get in. Oh well. It wasn't like we wimped out. Next time!
• Thanksgiving break is in only 11 days. Only 11 days. At this point, it feels like a mirage of an oaisis in a blazing hot desert. Is it real? Will we make it? We are going to have a jolly conglomeration of friends staying at our house for break: Leah from Ireland, Celeste from Kansas, and Steve from California. Let the good times roll.
• I am praising the Lord for His provision of a laptop! YAY!
• Choir is such fun, but sometimes I get frustrated with the lack of attention to detail on the part of other choir members. If it says forte, sing loudly! If the cut off is after two beats, cut off! I guess I just care about accuracy, but it's hard to be a loner in that department sometimes.
• It is ridiculously windy and cold here today. Cold and wind? It must be South Dakota in November.
• I polished off the last of my Starbucks coffee beans this morning. Tragedy! When you lose control and you've got no soul (or coffee beans), it's a tragedy!
• If you could go on any random adventure today, what would you do? Where would you go?

Missions conference pictures

Our choir sang two songs during the week of Missions Conference. I was bumped over to the alto section after practicing the soprano part for six weeks - talk about a mental switch!

Graham and Clara have exceptionally bright yellow coats.

After a week of listening to amazing missionaries from all over the world, we were pretty pooped.

It was really neat when Mr. S pretended that he was a tribal man from Papua New Guinea. He remained in character for most of the morning and it was eye-opening to realize how much culture plays into not only our interactions with people but in our presentation of the gospel.

And now for a little life update:
Clara and I are keeping quite busy in balancing school, work, and people. It's hard to believe that it is almost Thanksgiving break! I led a Bible study for the first time in my Ministries of the Christian Woman class yesterday, and it was such an encouraging but also humbling experience. It has been amazing to see how God coordinates what we are learning in each class to create this huge big picture of Who He is and how He works. Greek continues to be challenging, but ridiculously fun, and theology class pretty much rocks my little socks off. I joke about wanting to find a ministry in which I can read books and write about them...and I think that writing Bible studies fits the bill!

The main reason why my updates are so infrequent these days is because my computer officially gave up the ghost. I'm praying that somehow I will be able to afford/acquire a new one in the relatively near future. In the meantime, I sneakily use Clara's little piece of technology.

Anyways, I had probably better scoot off to lunch....

A post at long last!

We celebrated the weekend before missions conference by forming the Daniel Bradford fan club. He signed our arms.

And we had fun on an all-school walk.

Liz and I went wading in the hot springs of Hot Springs.

We had a grand time at the "Open Mic and Coffee Night" at church a few weeks ago. It was so much fun to drink coffee and listen to various and sundry peeps perform various and sundry music.

More pictures

Fall is so beautiful here. This is the tree outside of our dorm.

On Friday a bunch of students went down to Harrison, Nebraska, for a football game. It was freezing cold, but we had a great time together.

See how foggy it is? At one point, we couldn't see the opposing team's sidelines. Go Purple!

Brrr!!

Some more random pictures from life at CBI!

It's fun to have game nights over at the Georgeff's house.

This is me trying a piece of venison. I think.

Our Junior Class fun chapel was in observance of CBI Safety Day. Please note the matching Safety Day t-shirts.

Ruth and I pulled off the "Who's Safe Today Anyway?" game show.