Power, Friends and
a Pizza Wedge

It has been an interesting past few days, and a whole lot of memories to combine into one entry. So I'll try and keep it short, but knowing me - it won't be, especially with a few added pictures, but I'll give it a go.

So last Wednesday, we had an impressive storm which knocked out our power for basically two days. It was off Wednesday night until early morning, then went off again Thursday at 10 until 7am the next day. But it was such a good time to slow down and be reminded of how insignificant we are incomparison to nature and God's almighty power. As I was walking to class Wed. afternoon I heard a crazy loud 'crack' and turned behind me to see a huge top of a tree snap off and fall a long ways down until a heard a loud BOOM. Thankfully no one was hurt, but there ended up being a lot of big branches flying around, so we had to keep our heads up.

It's amazing the way a power outage spurs on peoples creative juices, as there was hardcore mud sliding, and my favorite: one guy pulled out his sweet kite and was flying it and would jump when huge gusts of wind came along, and man - he got some amazing air, one gal made it up 8 feet in the air. Two buildings at school had generated power, but my building was pitch black across campus, so thank goodness for flashlights. Wednesday night was extremely encouraging as we had our dorm meeting in the dark, and then brought out some guitars and flashlights to sing and praise the Lord with some girls on our floor. It was so nice to be brought back to 'simple' life and to come together as believers and praise.

The next day most classes were cancelled with a second power outage. Although, my HKIN class was still ago since we were going ice skating which was really fun to be back on the ice. I never knew most Americans don't skate much since it was a first time for many, but then again it's not like I skate a whole lot either. Thursday night brought a lot of mischief with water ballooning people in the dark, hide and seek in a very dark building, and intense pillow fight...it was a fun-filled night, but the power sadly came on again the next day. It flickered a bit on Friday which caused mini-riots in our dorm, so it's a good thing it stayed on.

My good pal Lindsay came over Friday and Saturday, which was such a huge blessing to reconnect with her face to face. She's such a wise girl with a massive heart for people and for the Lord and it's contagious when you're with her. We went to a Taco Fiesta dinner, which Linds was able to pray for in Spanish - she also help me win a slinkee, watched Bourne Identity, walked in the rain, did my children's outreach Sat. morning and walked around the pond with Han. But it was a relaxing time, and always good to hear what God is doing in others' lives.

Sunday afternoon brought on a very much anticipated boat christening. Bryan and Kris built their dream boat: the Pizza Wedge over fall break and it was time to test it. To be honest, I was a little hesitant as to whether it would float or not, but they did an impressive job on it. Bryan and Chris were all suited up for another diving adventure and Kris was prepared to paddle. They broke some sparkling 'champain' (which meant glass ended up everywhere) and slid then the boat it. The pond wasn't actually too deep since the guys could stand up in it, but they enjoyed swimming around in the gross-ness anyways. "My feet are either really cold, or full of glass." Kris
Kris took some of us out for a ride, cramming as many people in it as possible, we all came close to tipping, but we made it out dry for the most part.
Needless to say, the turn out for the christening was pretty good, and we were all impressed. And the guys were pretty psyched.
So it's been a good, busy, funfilled and spontaneous past few days. We ended off on a good note last night by watching "Elf" to enter into the Christmas season. We couldn't find anywhere inside to watched it co-ed, so we ended up watching it outside, but it just added to the Christmas effect.