Thanksgiving in Virginia

Hey everyone! Sorry I haven't posted anything in awhile, but the semester is coming to a close, and I'll be coming home Wednesday, December 14th!  As much as I love Haverford, I really miss St. Louis and all of you family and friends at home. I've been working very hard too, so I need a break. It's truly a blessing that I get to come home for a whole month!

Because I couldn't come home for Thanksgiving break, I went to Blacksburg, Virginia to visit my Aunt Felicia, Uncle Dick, and my cousin, Galen. I'd never been to their house before, nor have I been to Virginia, so it was pretty exciting! My dad, Grammy, and Papa all drove from St. Louis to come for Thanksgiving too.

On Thanksgiving, we went for a relatively tame hike in the mountains, and I saw some of the most beautiful sights I've ever seen.

I brought my camera, but I forgot to take pictures. Uncle Dick had a much nicer camera anyway though, and this also meant I actually got to be in some of the pictures.

This is just a snapshot of my holiday in Virginia. I also learned how to knit (I accomplished a substantial amount on my scarf) and tried Yoga for the first time (What a workout!) I had a relaxing enjoyable time; I hope you can say the same for your holiday!

How was your Thanksgiving? Where did you go, and what did you do? Leave a reply in the comments box below!

Ceramics in the Family: Recent Art Projects

Happy Sunday!

I recently got an email from my former art teacher and Nancy's current art teacher, Ms. A. She sent me a photo of Nancy's latest work of a art, a little boat.

Isn't it awesome? I'm so proud of her. She made this using slabs, a hand building method that I never use. It's much too difficult for me. The first slab project I attempted warped and the second one cracked like crazy. Apparently Nancy has this down pat. Not only does her boat look beautiful, but the form is neither warped nor cracked.

This photo was definitely a shot of humility! I worked in clay for seven semesters in high school and took classes at Krueger Pottery. Nancy is only halfway through her first semester and her slab skills are ten times better than mine. The kid has so much talent. I love it.

Things like this make me itch to get my hands on some clay. What have I been doing art-wise lately? If you read my post about James House, you'd know that the pottery wheels only cater to right handed people, so I can't use them. I've done absolutely no ceramics at Haverford so far. Well, I wrote a proposal for The Students Arts Fund, a grant of $5,000 distributed for student art projects by the Haverford Humanities Center. I wrote up plans for running a six-week ceramics workshop series, and budgeted for a Brent B wheel, clay, and some new sponges. The cost totaled to about a thousand dollars, so I was unsure if the Students Arts Fund thought my project would be worth it. A few weeks later, I got an email notification that they decided to fund the workshops and the wheel, and I'm so excited!

So I'll be teaching four lucky Haverford Students all about wheel throwing. I wish I could teach more students, but we will only have five wheels, and the funding is for wheel throwing workshops, not hand building.  It's possible I could teach hand building to a larger group later on, but we'll see.

Have you been working on any art projects? I love to see photos and hear about other's work, so comment below!

Food Waste Friday: Mushrooms and Positive Change

Happy Friday!

It's been a hectic week for me as I've been catching up on work that I didn't have time to do last weekend on the HCF retreat. It was totally worth it, but it did require exercising my time management skills!

This week I had very little food waste--just a few mushrooms from my pasta sauce last night at dinner. The mushroom pasta sauce looked better than the plain sauce; however, it was really silly for me to get the mushroom sauce, because I don't like mushrooms. I think the sauce just reminded me of my mom's wonderful sausage spaghetti, because mushrooms appear deceptively like meat sometimes. Nevertheless, they didn't taste like meat, and they tasted absolutely nothing like sausage. Oh well.

On the bright side, In about one month I'll get to go home and eat my mom's food. Yay!

On a related note, our Dining Center is creating a new Dining Center Development Committee. Six students will get to be on this committee, and hopefully they will bring some positive change to the food and waste management. Students waste a lot of food at the DC (Dining Center) and it all ends up in the trash. It's a very sad thing to witness, but I have a lot of ideas to rectify some of these waste issues. So I applied to be on the committee. Whether or not I get the position, hopefully I can still present all of my ideas to the committee!

I hope everyone has a wonderful day--I'll be back later today or tomorrow with other news!

What I Learned: About Suffering

Hey everyone!

I know I just posted about the HCF Retreat, but I wanted to share with you a little more specifically what I actually learned.

In an InterVarsity bible study, you look extremely closely at one specific passage.

We had several sessions in which we did this; however, this particular passage, John 11:38-44, we looked at during a personal reflection time.

By breaking this passage down, I was able to truly apply it to my life. Consider the first verse. Jesus was "deeply moved" by the suffering of Mary, Martha, and Lazarus. He didn't just pity them or feel sorry for them. Their sorrow deeply moved him. Often times I find myself filled with overwhelming sorrow, and I think to myself, "No one cares that much. Or at least they don't really know or understand what I'm going through." But Jesus is deeply moved by my pain. I can share it with him. How reassuring is that?

And he's not just moved metaphorically. He's moved to act. He goes to Lazarus' tomb. Jesus isn't just emotionally disturbed my pain. He does something about it too.

However, he requires us to accept his aid. Jesus says to the mourners, "Take away the stone." And Martha doubts, "But Lord, by this time there is a bad odor, for he has been there four days." Though I oftentimes will pray to God for help, sometimes instead of giving me what I think I want or need, God will respond calling me to some sort of action. I'll reject it, saying, "You want me to do what, God? That's impossible! I can't change that."

But God's command is always what I need, and I'll end up doing it eventually anyway. Jesus replied to Martha's doubt, saying, "Did I not tell you that if you believe, you will see the Glory of God?" Essentially, he's asking, "Why don't you trust me? You know that I know what is best for you." Depending on his command, I may struggle against it for awhile, but I will do it.

And when I follow God's solution to my problem? Everything works out. The mourners rolled away the stone, and Lazarus, once a dead man, was alive once again. Though my life won't be perfect (Lazarus' life wasn't perfect--he's later condemned by an assassination plot), I can find joy in the Lord.

In reading this passage, I found myself asking: "Jesus could have just snapped his fingers and resurrected Lazarus. Why didn't he? Why did Lazarus have to die at all? Jesus could have healed him." Essentially, why let the suffering happen?

Because the mourners eventually did what Jesus asked, "many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, believed in him." Lazarus was alive and well, and the mourners had found a new hope in Jesus Christ. Though I don't know the personal stories of these Jews, they probably were struggling with their own issues. However, Jesus used the pain of one family--Mary, Martha, and Lazarus--to transform not only the family, but the lives of many others as well. This is purpose enough for suffering in my book.

The Jews, Mary, Martha, myself. . .We all need time to choose. We need time to believe. We need to learn how to ask for help, be receptive to God's response (even if it requires effort on our part), and work through our sufferings. Because they do have a purpose, even though sometimes we can't always see it.

What are your thoughts on this story? Please post a comment below!

Haverford Christian Fellowship Retreat

Hey everyone!

I know I haven't written anything in awhile, and I missed my regular Friday post. But I was extremely busy this week doing extra homework so I could afford to take some time off. This weekend I went to the Haverford Christian Fellowship Fall Retreat!

Though I wasn't sure what to expect, I ended up having a great experience. Friday I was having a bad day and didn't feel very well, but the retreat gave me exactly what I needed. It gave me time to stop and breath. It gave me time to focus on things other than work. It gave me time to get to know my bible study mates better. It gave me time to have fun. It gave me time to refocus myself and my priorities on God, and I learned a lot about myself.

As far as the structure of the retreat, students from Haverford, as well as Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore, spent the majority of our time intensely studying God's word. It's hard to describe how this could be relaxing, but I think for the most part the change of pace from the college grind did the trick. We studied the stories of Mary, Martha, Lazarus and Jesus. We took small passages one at a time, beginning with the passage that helped me get through my exam a few weeks ago, Luke 10:38-42. Though it's only 4 verses, we 2 hours dissecting this passage! It was hard to believe, but we did.

This is typical of InterVarsity, the Christian college ministry that organizes the retreats. We had several other sessions on Saturday of similar length. With each session, we began the next passage in the story. These included Lazarus' death, his resurrection, and Mary pouring the oil on Jesus' feet and washing it with her hair. They printed out the passages on plain paper double spaced so that we could annotate them. We had time to study the passages alone, in small groups, and with everyone together. It was really amazing what there was to be learned by looking at passages in so many different ways!

We studied intensely, but we also got to have fun too.

We played an Amazing Race game, where we had to make M&M elevators, spray a can of whipped cream into a bowl and eat all of it as a group, pass a frozen banana down a line with our feet, make a marshmellow toothpick tower (above), and much more.

Overall, I had a great time!

How are your bible studies going? I hope learning as much from them as I learned this past weekend!

(pictures taken by Erin Kennedy!)

Snow Before Halloween?

I can't think of a time when I've experienced snow before Halloween. I totally was not expecting this yesterday. Normally, one of the first things I do when I wake up in the morning is check the weather. I've adopted this habit since coming to college because unlike high school, I actually have to walk from building to building to get to class, the library, the Dining Center, and so on. However, yesterday I forgot because I was in a hurry to catch the 8:46 SEPTA train.

Thankfully I grabbed my umbrella, but I was in for a bigger surprise than rain. 

I took this picture from my dorm window, as I was unwilling brave the cold after I returned from my adventure.

My group in my Urban Culture and Society class had to go observe Mishkan Shalom, a progressive synagogue downtown. Despite the weather, it was an interesting experience, as I had never been to a synagogue or a Bat Mitzvah before. Also, it was Shabbat Noah, so I got to read the Noah's Ark story from a Jewish perspective. I relished this short experience, and only wish that the rabbi had spent more time on the subject. However, Bat Mitzvah's incorporate many other traditions, so this was only a small portion of the service. I was definitely surprised at the length of the service--the Bat Mitzvah was two and a half hours long!

During the service, the weather took a turn for the worse. The temperature dropped, and it continued to sleet and snow. Luckily we were able to catch the bus, but the SEPTA trains had stopped running by the time we made it to the station! My group members and I waited with frozen toes for about 45 minutes, until an upperclassman friend of theirs from Bryn Mawr came to save us.

It was definitely an exhausting day, but the experience at the synagogue was worth it!

Did it snow where you live this weekend? I'm happy to say the forecast is sunny here for the next few days. I'm not quite ready for winter yet!

Food Waste Friday: Common Room Waste

Hey everyone!

This week I did pretty well with my food waste, aside from some oatmeal overflowing in the microwave. But I could still eat most of that. My hall has had a bit of waste this week (we often have shared baked goods and snacks), but I don't think this counts as my personal waste. However, I certainly would have eaten it before the mold started growing:

One of my hall mates made this really good pumpkin nut bread and brought it back with her on fall break. It was so good in fact, that it fooled me into asking her for the recipe when it actually came from a mix. This just got forgotten about.

Also, remember my post last week about wasting money by locking myself out? Well, the sign I made has prevented me from forgetting my key! Every time I see the sign, I check my pocket to make sure I have it. And I smile every time, because I saved myself another ten dollars. My mom also sent me a small clip I can use to clip my key to my belt loop, so hopefully that will help too!

On a completely random note, tomorrow I'm going to Mishkan Shalom, a progressive Jewish Synagogue to observe a service for a group project. I'm not Jewish, so I have never been to a synagogue before! I'll let you know how it goes.

How much food waste did you have this week?