Today

So I'm settling back into this life. That's one thing about me, one thing that I know about myself, I can adjust to most anywhere or anything. At least so far. Maybe that's why it kind of freaked me out that I wasn't readjusting as quickly as I was expecting. But it's only been two weeks and I've already found my routine. I'll add things and lose some I'm sure, but for now I have this one down.

Fun fact - I learned that my English prof is from Dugger today. For those of you not from Indiana, that's only about an hour and a half south of where I live. I turned in my paper later (I had it ready at class but found some errors so I kept it to correct them, we had till 5pm) so I got a chance to talk to him and he remembered playing Riverton Parke in football when he was in high school, he knew of Southside CoC, and Camp Wabashi and such. It was fun to randomly find out about him after four years of going here.

In Seminar in World Missions: Women in Missions (long name, I know, I usually shorten it to women's missions or something similar) we've been talking about the concept of 'calling' and who should go and such. I don't really believe in the concept of calling - it gets more complicated than that of course but for the sake of the point I'm trying to make here, I'll not get off topic. Laurie Diles is our teacher and she is great. She was a missionary in the Czech Republic and her parents were missionaries in Brazil. Well, this is her mom's list of 'who should go.'
A prospective missionary will:
-be dedicated to God
-be a person of character
-be flexible
-be able to leave family and friends
-be adventurous
-be emotionally balanced
-have a good track record
-expect the BEST
I thought that it was interesting and definitely worth thinking about. She also talked about things like the PeaceCorps and how while it may seem like an interesting choice post-graduation, it's not really what one would expect. The idea had been suggested to me before and had been bouncing around in my head. I talked to Laurie about it after class more and some about the ChinaNow program and similar things. It was a good talk and we're going to continue it later, much as I'm going to have to continue this later :)

Interesting

Today in Christ and Culture we were talking about worldview, amongst other things. Adair listed off about 5 things that we do in America for to make ourselves 'better' physically that someone coming from another culture would probably think were so strange - and that most of us think are strange too. I thought it was ironic that I have technically had 3 of the 5. Botox, implants, jaw enhancement, ab workouts/medical ways to better them (sorry for the bad wording), and membership at gyms. I'll let you figure out the three.

joy

–noun

1.	the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; keen pleasure; elation: She felt the joy of seeing her son's success.

2.	a source or cause of keen pleasure or delight; something or someone greatly valued or appreciated: Her prose style is a pure joy.

3.	the expression or display of glad feeling; festive gaiety.

4.	a state of happiness or felicity.

–verb (used without object)

5.	to feel joy; be glad; rejoice.

–verb (used with object)

6.	Obsolete. to gladden.

Synonyms:
1. rapture. 2. bliss.

Antonyms:
1. misery, unhappiness, sorrow, grief.

Yeah....

So, failure once again I suppose. But I'm not that upset by it. It's now mid-January and I'm back in Ar-kansas, trying to get back in the swing of being a college kid. Eek. I'm taking 18 hours and it's a bit intense. The classes themselves are okay, and I do like them all so far (except for Western Civ but that's just because it's Western Civ and well yeah) but the workload is a lot more than I was anticipating. I'm taking American Literature and there's a ton of reading for it which is part of the problem but that wouldn't be so bad (reading actual books for school? I mean come on!) except that I'm taking another English class. It's a creative writing class that I'm taking online through a school back home and I'm doing it accelerated - so I'll be done on like March 5th which will be nice. The bad part about that is that I have homework due every Tuesday and Friday and it's a lot of homework each time. But I'll make it. I think. This first week has been absolute chaos and if I'm being honest with myself I can't quite say that it's nice to be back. Not yet anyway. It's just that so much has happened and so many things have gone wrong or just not the way that I would've hoped that I haven't been able to deal with them. We get Monday off of classes though and I'm determined to make next week a good one.

To anyone who may read this, on accident or purpose, please send your prayers, thoughts, concerns to Brent Dunkley's family. I grew up with him, was in the same class with him through elementary and high school, did band together, etc. He passed away a couple of days ago. His younger sister is especially taking it hard.

More trivial, but my dog just died yesterday and that's a bit upsetting. But like I said, this next week will be one of victories, not defeats. One cool thing about my schedule is that I only have classes on MWF (also part of what makes it crazy but it works out) so I only have chapel and work on TR. Confession time: I decided to write this as yet another way to stall from doing my homework. But I better get back to it. Maybe you'll hear from me again soon :)