(Insert random yet somehow relevant title here)

Reading the Bible and then discussing it has been quite interesting. I've enjoyed it a lot, and my group has really grown during the past three or four sessions. I'm not going to go in much detail though because I could say a number of things that we've talked about and learned and done and I don't really know where to start. So I will just say that I still love where I am and what I am doing. :)

This past week was basically Harry Potter week. Haha! Last Friday and Saturday, I watched all six HP movies with my friends and last night we went to the midnight showing of the new movie. :) Around seven last night, two of my friends and I decided that we were going to dress up for the movie. Not dress up like characters or anything, but dress up nice and fancy. And then they decided to play with my hair and makeup. Let's just say I've never gone to a movie theater looking that nice. ;) We got to the theater around 9:30ish and the line was wrapped allllll the way around the building. We waited in line til around 11 and then it started moving. There were thirteen in our group and we didn't think we would be able to all sit together, but the whole front row was empty and we decided the seats weren't that close to the screen so we got to sit all together which was nice. And the movie ended up being really good! I was very impressed and happy with it. :) Even though I went to bed at 3 and only got four hours of sleep because I have an 8:30 class. It was okay though, because I came back to my room, talked to Cat on the phone for a bit, and went back to bed at 10. I slept til 1. It was quite lovely.

I had my last intramural volleyball game this past Wednesday! It was a lot of fun, and we were so close to winning! If we had won, we would have played in the championship match (of the C league, but still ;) ). We lost 25-23, 11-25, 13-15. And the team we played had already beaten us two other times. So we definitely improved as a team lol. It was still a lot of fun, and I'm definitely glad I decided to play!

Thanksgiving is almost here! Which means Christmas is almost here! Which means I get to go home soon! 26 days to be exact. Yes, I am looking forward to it.

But before that happens I have a lot going on. I'm spending Thanksgiving with my friend Havilah, who lives about an hour away. My roommie is coming too. We are leaving Tuesday evening (because we don't get the whole week off) and coming back Sunday. Not sure exactly what all we're going to be doing. I do know that we will be going Black Friday shopping, which is something I don't think I've done before, so that should be fun! School-wise, my next few weeks are going to be crazy! This is what they look like:

Monday - Spanish project due
Tuesday - Leviticus and Deuteronomy reading and notes due
Thanksgiving break
Monday - 4-5 page essay due for Brit. Lit. (that I haven't really started yet)
Tuesday - Joshua reading and notes due
Thursday - Hebrews reading and notes due
Friday - 2nd draft of 7-10 page Torrey paper that is worth 30% of my final grade and I still haven't gotten it back yet to know what I need to change is due
Monday - Pull Questions due (PQs are questions that we get at the end of each Torrey session. You have to answer one per book, 300-600 words. My Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus/Deuteronomy, Joshua, and Hebrews PQs will be due. As of now, I have not done any of them, but I only have Exodus and Numbers because we haven't had the other sessions yet.)
Friday - Finals start. I might do my Torrey final on this day. I get to sign up for it, but I haven't decided if I want to do it this day or the next Monday or Tuesday.
Monday - Brit. Lit. Final
Tuesday - Piano juries (and my piano minor auditions). I just have to play three songs memorized. It shouldn't be that hard, just depends on how nervous I get.
Wednesday - Spanish Final. Fly home!!

So that is my busy schedule for the next few weeks. And now I am going to go to bed early (yes, I know, on a Friday night too) and get up around 8 to try and finish reading Leviticus before my piano lesson. Good night. :)

"Well, I'm going home, back to the place where I belong."
- Home, Daughtry

Learning is a long and lengthy lecture.

I feel like I've learned a lot this past week. Nothing really different or unusual happened; I just feel like I've learned things. Well, I did have my first Reynolds session. (This is a Torrey session with Dr. Reynolds - the director of the whole Torrey Honors Institute - as the tutor.) On Tuesday and it was on Plato's Timaeus. I finally have an appreciation for Plato now that we're done reading his books. That guy was so brilliant! It's hard to say what exactly I learned because it's so confusing and I still don't understand all of it. I can explain one concept that stuck out to me though. In Plato's Republic (yeah, I know, it was in the Timaeus session but we talked about some of Plato's other books that we'd read, too), Socrates talks about the people who care more about appearing to be just than actually being just. And we applied this to being wise too. My whole life people have always called me smart - if I got anything less than perfection it was always a shock to people. I'm not perfect, nor have I ever been perfect. But I quickly realized that I could get the good grades without really doing much at all. I became lazy. As long as everyone said I was smart, I believed that I was smart. But, looking back now, I think I was more worried about appearing to be smart than actually being smart and learning. Especially during my senior year. The excitement that I felt in elementary school, when I would finish my homework and get to do the homework that my older sister was doing, had left me. I no longer had a love of learning. I think I'm finally starting to get that back, and I have Plato to thank for it. Which is weird to say. But he's tough to read and tough to discuss, but what he says and the way he says it can just be so darn cool. And then our session on Thursday (also on Timaeus) was really good too and beneficial to our group as a whole. Which was what we needed. We're growing as a group together, as we all try to finish our first semester in Torrey successfully.

Dr. Reynolds pointed out to us that a lot of things in the Narnia books are from Plato. C.S. Lewis was that smart. So Thursday night, we watched the first Narnia, and there's this one quote from Plato that Aslan says - "where's the fourth?" - and it has so much more meaning now, and we were nerds and got really quiet right before he said it (the rest of the movie we were talking the whole time, and we assigned people roles in the Narnia books. I got Lucy :) ). Anyways that's my learning experience for now.

Midnight Madness was last night! So much fun! It's basically a pep rally to kick off the basketball season. But it was a lot better than my high school pep rallies (nothing against Northwest) which never worked for the Northwest-Dalton football games. Anyways they had the cheerleaders do a dance, and they called out all the sports teams at Biola, and then introduced the basketball players by name. We learned a cheer to do at the games. They had a 3-pointer competition between the girl and guy basketball players. The girls represented upper campus (yay!) and the boys represented lower campus. Of course the girls won! ;) Then the dance team Xopoc (I think that's how you spell it...) came out and they were AMAZING!! really, really good. It was fun to watch. Then we got to run on to the court, like we apparently will at the end of the basketball games, and they had a bunch of confetti and it was red-and-white madness! It's really weird being a red team now since the red team in high school was our biggest opponent. Oh well.

I have a canker sore on my bottom lip that hurts like the dickens. Especially when I eat, which is super annoying. Hopefully it'll go away soon.

I have my first Bible session tomorrow! On Genesis. I'm really excited to see how it goes. It was weird, going from reading Plato to reading the Bible because I was reading the Bible how I read Plato, and I've never done that before. Normally, when I read the Bible, I read a chapter a day. I read Genesis in three days this weekend. It was so cool! Anyways, I'm excited for session tomorrow.

5 more weeks til Christmas break!

Well, that's basically all I wanted to say. And I wanna go to bed now. So goodnight, and thanks for reading, whoever you are that happened to read this. :)

"There's a road like a long grey ribbon as far as I can see, and it's pullin' independence outta me."
- Independence, The Band Perry