"What Have You Been Doing Lately?"

I normally do kind of thoughtful or artistic blog entries, so I thought for a change of pace I'd do one that actually had more facts about what I do from day to day.

This past week was very busy. On Monday I started it off by having a Biology test and a speech right in a row. I got a very low B on the Biology test, but it wasn't a failing grade, which was all I could really ask at this point. I'm still getting used to the new class structure – Biology II is so different than Biology I was.

I expected to be extremely nervous before giving my speech, because normally before speeches I'm so nervous I feel like throwing up. But that morning in precalculus I was talking to a classmate about it, and she really changed my perspective on it. I got an A on the speech, and on the evaluation sheet my teacher commented over and over on how confident I had seemed. That made me laugh, but as Twinkie told me when I started my first college class a year ago, “the secret to confidence is faking it.” That's something I've carried with me throughout my time in school so far.

Tuesday was the day I went to “Our World Cafe,” as I wrote about in my last blog entry.

On Wednesday, Steve Saint came to speak in chapel. Most Christians are familiar with the story of the five missionaries who were speared by natives in Ecuador. Steve Saint is one of those missionary's sons. He's also an excellent speaker. He talked about missions, and particularly the way we need to change our approach. He spoke both in the morning and the evening. In the evening we all sang Happy Birthday to him, as someone called out that his 58^th birthday was in two days.

Afterwards my sister Telpe wanted to meet him, so Kalmiel and I waited with her for some time until we could actually get to him. I felt like a complete idiot and had no idea what to say, but I think Telpe was happy we got to meet him.

I don't remember Thursday very well, except that I wore a flower in my hair for a lot of it because we were studying angiosperms and conifers in lab and I took a flower with with. Kalmiel brought another one for me later than evening (she's the lab assistant for my Biology lab).

On Friday I had two tests, a quiz, and a party to go to. My first class was precalculus, which got out early, so I had time to hurry to the mail center and pick up my insurance card, student account information, and paycheck. After that I had Western Civ., and my first test. It went OK, I think. I used to hate tests with a passion; they terrified me, and I would get so nervous and upset that I'd forget everything I'd learn and do terribly. I think I'm finally starting to be more confident going into them though, which helps a lot.

After that we had the last chapel of Mission's Emphasis Week, and then I went to work. My older brother, Maranar, came and picked me up after work. We had just a few minutes, and in those few minutes we rushed over to the box office to buy our tickets for the Newsboys concert. I admire the poor guy working the window so much. Mar's instructions sounded something like this:

“We need two together in the second orchestra, and we'll pay for those together, and then we need one by itself on the second balcony and then another by itself as far to the front as possible.”

It took almost 10 minutes to get it all sorted out. I got a good seat though. I'm sure I'll post pictures and videos afterwards (it's on March 6).

Then I rushed to the science building for Biology, which got started late because my teacher forgot to print out our quizzes. Though I had only studied the material during my work shift right before, the information had been more intuitive than most of what we have to learn, so I'm pretty sure I got a 100 on the quiz. After that, I walked across campus to speech class, where we had another test. I was almost falling asleep in middle of it because I was so tired by now, so I started playing Skillet in my head to keep me awake.

After that I got home and ate lunch (it was about 3:30 by now). I spent an hour and a half screencapping more of my Skillet DVD, and then Telpe and I headed to Linte's birthday party.

I'll admit I was kind of proud of myself. I was so exhausted and worn out that I was expecting to be about ready to strangle someone before the end of the night. However, I actually felt OK with it. We made pizza, played Mafia, watched a movie, ate cake and opened presents. I got to meet some of Linte's friends that I've been hearing about for the first time. I did a lot of watching, trying to figure people out. I felt like I was being very loud, but my perception of how loud I am is notoriously skewed, so I'd have to ask someone else if I was or not.

Draug walked me home. She's probably the only person in the state of Texas who I feel completely comfortable with right now. We walked until we were exactly half-way between our houses (we've been neighbors for nearly ten years) and then walked backwards to our houses so we could make sure the other one arrived safely. Of course it was ridiculous, but we had fun.

Today I've already done some graphic editing, and I've read my Biology chapter for the weekend. I have a precalculus test on Monday, which should be interesting, to say the least. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping for the best.

I'm currently listening to Missing Pages by Seventh Day Slumber. I've heard some of their songs on and off for about a year, but never got attached to them until now. It's odd how that works.

May it be an evening star shines down on you.

- Elraen -