BLIZZARD!!

Good evening!

First off, I want to apologize for my extremely boring previous post! I re-read it just now and was disgusted! In my defense, I was practically dead. Hopefully this blog will be more entertaining.

I didn't blog yesterday, but I'm sure it was for good reason. Tuesdays are long days here. We have normal lectures from 9-1ish; we eat lunch; we head back into the lecture room for our assignments and announcements; then on most Tuesdays evenings, except for last night, we go back to the college at night for some sort of meeting. So, after getting home from college pretty late into the afternoon last night, I was a bit tired, but I had to cook. So, I cooked Keira's Chicken Enchiladas, and they were a hit! Well, at least I think they were a hit. They were all gone, but there were only eight enchiladas and six of us eating. Everyone could've just eaten it because they were all really hungry from all the walking they did. Hmm......

After dinner, it started snowing! Properly! We cleaned up and headed over to the the boys house for a game night. It was the three of us girls, the boys house, some study breakers (people who come to the college for specific weeks to just sit in on lectures) and the Clarks. Before we crossed the short back alley to get to 88 Pinnocks way, we stopped in the little park and ruined the beautiful, untouched snow. Does anyone else enjoy ruining snow? It's a highly exhilarating feeling! We had a some fun in the snow, then hurried into the warm house because Andy Clark had arrived and started chucking snow balls at us.

We warmed up in the living room and played some intense Pictionary. I hardly ever played that game back home, but it's a pretty popular one here. Everyone put in four things to draw and there were about twelve of us there, so we it became a long game. It was fun until the very end though! We stayed until about nine o'clock, when the neighborhood kids had curfews to be in by, so they couldn't ambush us with snowballs, which they had been planning!!

We started leisurely walking home until we walked through our neighborhood court and found about 8-10 college students in the middle of a snowball fight. "What have we walked straight into?" we thought to ourselves. We tried not to draw too much attention to ourselves, but once we started picking up the pace a little, they noticed and decided to chuck snowballs at us too! In that case, we booked it around the corner and into the safety of our home.

Apparently it had snowed all night, because this morning we wake up to this:



I'm rubbish at estimation, but I gather there was about 6-8 inches of snow. I titled this blog "Blizzard" because someone here said it was the most it had snowed since 1981. Also, when it snows six inches here, everyone acts like its a blizzard. No one here is prepared for it. I'm sure you are all tired of snow back home, but I've been waiting for proper snow the whole time I've been here! The tree picture is where our "neighborhood court" is.

I absolutely love the snow and I think its gorgeous, but I think its RIDICULOUS to have to walk almost an hour in it, so Loralie and I talked Steven into trying to take the bus to school today.



This is Steven, Loralie, and Dalia waiting under the bus stop for the bus to come by. We waited for probably twenty minutes for the bus and realized that no buses had come either way in the last twenty minutes, so it was highly probable that the buses weren't running today. We have to be at college at 9:00 and it was about 8:53 when we decided to stop waiting for the bus and to just walk it. I was thought to myself, "You have to be kidding....". Nope, there was absolutely no kidding involved. Thankfully, Jesus loves me.
We were probably only about 1/3 of the way there and Paul and Ruth Hettler pull over beside us. Paul rolls down his window and calls out, "We can take two of you." Without hesitation Steven tells Loralie and I, "Go ahead!". I literally said out loud, "Thank you Jesus!" I was just really excited about not having to walk the rest of the way to college! Now, before you think badly of me for not letting the man with the baby ride in the car, Steven is all into this outdoorsy, manly, trudging through snow craziness, so he actually ENJOYED walking/running, through the snow with a stroller. Absolutely outrageous.

We arrived to college around 9:15 and devotions had already started. This morning every desk had a blank sheet of paper. On one side we were to write something we were like before Jesus had redeemed us, and on the other side of the paper, how that's changed because we've been redeemed. Then a few of us went up, shared our papers, and prayed into them. Then we had a time of worship. I really enjoy the worship here. It seems very raw and real. That is the best way I can put it. Raw...

Michael was our lecturer again today. It's been a treat having him. He has such new ways of thinking, and its been great to be able to see into how he thinks. After devotions though, he didn't want to get into teaching before coffee break, so he decided to do a little prophesying first. I was expecting it to be slightly different. I think i was expecting lights to be dimmed, back ground music playing, everyone standing up and praying in tongues, then Michael bringing down the "Thus Sayeth The Lord" on us, but it wasn't anything like that. The way he prophesied was so down to earth and relaxing. Don't get me wrong, the presence of God was still clearly there, but there was just some sort of "down to earth" capacity of the way he communicated with God and in turn, shared that with us. We were all sitting down in our chairs and he would just look at you and you just knew it was coming. I think he did nearly everyone in the room. Then we did some practicing for ourselves. Simon, the principle who comes into the room randomly, picked out about seven of the students to stand up and go to the front and to basically do exactly what Michael had been doing. It was just a good example of how EVERYONE can be tuned into the Father and ANYONE can get a word for someone else.
It was really great to see it worked out and some amazing words came out of it all.

We had coffee break in the freezing hall again, but although its freezing in there, I always look forward to coffee break time!

We finished the afternoon with Michael teaching on adjusting your life and setting realistic goal for yourself, so you can allow the Holy Spirit to be expressed in your life, and tons of other stuff. :)
We prayed for Michael and the bible college he runs in South Africa.

We (sorry I keep starting everything off with "we". I'll get better at this writing thing as time goes on) had lunch then, SNOW TIME!!

Every other Wednesday we have what we call "Emmaus Group". Basically its like a homegroup. You have two leaders, usually a couple, and a group of students in one Emmaus group. Some groups go through books, some go out to eat. I haven't been to an Emmaus group yet, so I'm actually not sure what it's like, but I'll let you know when I find out. Tonight was supposed to be our first Emmaus group, but instead, we were all assigned to go watch Avatar! Not a bad deal eh?? There is an actual assignment behind it, we have to answer all these deep questions about the "hidden meaning behind the movie" but I wasn't complaining about watching a 3-D film for homework. The movie didn't start until 4:15, so we had plenty of time to play in the snow. The car park was practically untouched, so we had loads of snow to play with. We started off with a harmless snowfight and moved on to building snowmen and igloos.

Lou and Tom finishing up the amazing igloo..

Me, Lou, and Lydia in the igloo. We did manage to get five of us in there, but we had to squeeze!

I tried to take a picture of all of us in it, but I couldn't get into the igloo fast enough before the timer on my camera went off! Well, nice smile anyway Chris! :)

Georgina and Lydia starting on the snowman and Andy in the back with the snowballs...

After the igloo and snowmen were complete, everyone was tired and hungry. We hurried inside to grab our bags then we headed into town. We had another snowball fight on the way into town! The road we were walking down was really skinny though, so we were all basically in a single file line, so we were throwing snowballs from the front of the line to the back of the line and vice versa.

Once we made it into town, we bought our tickets at the cinema then ran across the street to Coffee Republic.

I had to take a picture of my coffee and muffin. This was a Rolo Latte and a Blueberry Cheesecake Muffin. Sinful. Absolutely sinful. And by that, I mean AMMMMMAAZINGLY DELICIOUS!

We ran across the street to make it to the film on time. We received our 3-D glasses and had to snap a few pictures:

Lou and I. Apologies about the picture quality, my camera was still a little wet from the snow..

Well, at least Tom was looking at the right camera....

After the movie, we all went to refuel with some food. We hung out around dinner for about an hour or so, then started our hour long walk home. I was not looking forward to it, but the conversations that were had made that walk go by a lot faster.

Now I'm home, trying to warm up and looking at the list of stuff I need to do before bed. I wanted to let you all in on my fun day though!

Have a great day/evening/morning (Whatever time it is when you read this!)
Love you!!