HOME!!!
I made it through my first semester of university and through the crazy week of exams. The last week was full of adventures, late night studying and random activities.
The dorm walls are lined with balloons, one balloon for each exam, waiting to be popped the moment a test is finished. Little 'bangs' echo throughout the halls throughout the day, followed by little cheers and sighs of relief.
Another sign of exams - people who are overtired and have lack of energy, or people who are overtired and strangely have too much energy.

Anyhoo, our dorm headed out to Denny's for a late dinner and one last 'night out' before the holidays which was really nice. The girls are all so rad and I feel really blessed to be living with them. Sadly, one of our Cheryl's is leaving second semester to travel, so we will definitely miss her like crazy. It will be neat to see if we have any new girls move into our dorm after Christmas too.

Random...

So now I'm home and anxiously awaiting the arrival of my brother, as well as Antonia:) I'm so pumped to see the two of them, Christmas will be a grand ol' reunion this year. I'll keep you posted:)

The 'Final' Days
Three exams down, and two more to go. In five days, I'll be sitting at home...I can hardly wait. And then Jeffy and Antonia will be here, and Scott will eventually arrive. I sure love Christmas, we even had a surprise Christmas party here last week. Our parents sent us a little gift, and our dorms sat around a christmas tree and opened them and just hung out. Thankfully Santa and Mrs. Claus made an appearance, so it made the evening perfect.

So, during a spare study moment, Rika introduced me to Wikipedia.com - which she described as the most unreliable encyclopedia around. I guess it's pretty fun because it allows you to edit and add things to the info yourself. But we looked at some random topics, like Mario Smash Brothers. We read the title in Japanese, and found a liking to the word 'sumasshu' = smash. Kari then, who wanted to procrastinate from studying, made Rika and I this lovely little surprise picture, of us and our nintendo friends. One of the most random things I think I've seen, but it made me laugh.

It's strange to think that a semester is almost done...it's been good. Full of challenges but also awesome blessings, especially Hanbanan. It's been so rad living with her and having our random fun, and growing together, with encouragement and prayer. It makes me excited for spring semester.

Candace and I went to a ladies dessert night that my friend Tracy was hosting earlier this week, and I found it really encouraging. The speaker spoke on the gift of Christmas, which a lot of sermons are on at this time of year, but she made it connect in my heart more than it has before. She described what Bethlehem would have most likely been like, a hustling bustling place, overcrowded with people, not enough places for people to sleep. Most of the people wouldn't have been too happy, especially with taxes being placed on them, and being forced to return to their home towns for the census, definitely not a nice place for a young pregnant teen. The little stable would have been gross and dirty, yet this was where God chose to have His precious son born. God could have waited a few months until the crazy census stuff was finished, or had Jesus born into a palace, but instead, he picked a small ordinary stable with a humble young girl and a loyal man. What touched me the most, is that it's such a picture of God's love for us. He sent Jesus to be born into a place that could be considered the 'lowest of the low', and this is also where Christ meets us in our lives. He doesn't wait until we have our lives all beautiful and pulled together nicely, but He meets and loves us when we're falling apart, dirty, unworthy, when we feel like we're at our lowest point. So I was humbled and thankful that the King of kings doesn't overlook us when we're broken and feel ruined, but He lifts us out from that. Definitely a cool reminder to be thinking of during this sweet holiday.
3 more days and I'm heading home!

Tracking Santa...

So for all you friends of Santa, here's the sweet NORAD tracker so you can track him on Christmas eve. Pretty sweet:)
http://www.noradsanta.org/en/tracking.php

Living in a Christmas Dream...

This weekend, Trinity has been hosting the first annual 'Spirit of Christmas' celebration. It's been hustling and bustling around campus with busyness this week, but it looks beautiful. Tons of lights, Christmas trees, and snow creations scattered around.

In our Student Building they have a row of Christmas trees for different departments and groups, so its fun to see the variety of decorations.

The school also has a living nativity scene, where we were guided around part of the campus to experience the Christmas story. I was actually pretty impressed and enjoyed it quite a bit. Especially because they had animals at the end by the stall where Mary, Joseph and Jesus were. Hannah loved the donkey, but I loved the llama. My new friend named Leonard. He was the funniest thing ever, such an interesting face that kept me laughing. It took us a while to snag a good photo of us together. At a moment we even locked eyes and stared straight at each other, pretty special.

There are some pretty impressive snow creations around campus...one of my favorites is this beaver. He even has a large tree branch stuck in his teeth.

This is also an igloo that was built by Hawaiian Chris...he's definitely enjoying the snow, and even slept in it for the first night. Han and I enjoyed sitting in it, but had an unfortunate experience with a young fellow who was at the Christmas celebration. It involved Han getting an iceball in the face and us shoving snow down his back...we made it out alive which is good.