look in your heart and you'll find

I had an absolutely amazing summer. In addition to working at the daycare back home that I have been working at for the past three summers, I got the opportunity to go on a trip of a lifetime on Messiah’s May-Term Cross Cultural to Germany.  Despite not knowing anyone on the trip and speaking zero German, I had a great time, met the most amazing people, and experienced things I never thought I would. Being able to travel is one of my favorite things and this trip was definitely one of my favorites. If any Messiah student is able to go on a Cross Cultural, I would definitely recommend it. Once I got back to the states, I then got to work at the daycare. I honestly loved every minute of it. Being here is also making me miss all of my children and co-workers. I was also able to spend a great deal of time with friends and take short trips to Pittsburgh and Washington DC to visit.

It is crazy to me that I am now a senior at Messiah. Three years ago I had just moved on to campus and had no idea what to expect. While I have had some good and bad times throughout my three years so far, I am so excited to be starting my last year here. This year is sure to bring with it numerous challenges as well as exciting times, since I will be completed my student teaching experiences: Morning preschool in the lab school for this semester and full day public school teaching in the spring. Because of this I am sorry to say that my blogging might be slightly more scarce than in the past, but I will try my best and I guarantee you that I will have fun stories to write about.

Today was my last day in my second grade class. It was definitely a bitter sweet time. I will miss all of them, but having it be my last day with them also means that it is almost the end of the semester! It was a pretty relaxed day in the classroom with the students going shopping at the class store and making Mother’s Day crafts, but it was perfect for getting to have one on one time with each of my children and allowing me to relax and interact with all of them. Before the end of the day we were able to eat cookies together and take pictures as well. It was a great last day even though I already miss all of them and feel like it will be weird not going to their classroom every Tuesday and Thursday from now on.

Not only was today my last day with my little ones, it was also the last day of classes for the entire campus. Tomorrow is reading day and then we only have four days of finals until I get to leave and go back to Indiana for the summer. Despite the stress of this semester, there is little for me to still do before I left. While I am meeting for all five of my classes, I only have one test and one project to complete for finals week. It is definitely nice feeling as if I am finished, even though I still do have to complete my project and do a bit of studying. The end of this year means that I will be leaving campus as a senior! It is crazy to think that I only have one year left of school, but I am ready. Having my last day as the UVP work study on Thursday will also create a huge change for me next year. Without working in the office and doing the tasks that I have gotten so used to doing over the past two years, next year is sure to be a totally different experience. While I will still be on the UVP council, I will be serving as the chaplain instead of the secretary and will be exposed to a completely different set of obstacles in the process of adjusting to my new life at Messiah.

I can not wait to go home in a week. Even though I will only be home for a week before leaving on the 18th for my cross cultural in Germany, it will nice to be at home again and be able to relax and visit with friends before we all split up again for the summer. The rest of my summer, after my 3 weeks across the sea, will consist of working at my daycare in Indiana, which I can again not wait for. I love working with all of the children. I am astonished every year that I am actually able to get paid for doing something that I absolutely love! I cannot wait to get back to my center and once again start working with the children. I just need to get through this last week of junior year and I will be a senior and will be relaxing at home!

This week I have experienced such a great deal of change in all that is going on. While I have spent much of the semester stressed and constantly worrying about what it to come, this week has brought me emotions which have been of excitement and encouragement. Even though the semester is wrapping up which in turn means loads of work and projects and finals, I am quite content about them. It is also nice to realize that God has had a plan for me and that God has always been looking over me ready to provide these green pastures on the other side. And now that is where I hope to be finding myself. After visiting with my family last week, I have felt much more at peace and calm about my life. Even though we were meeting in a time of grieving, we were able to gather together as a family, tell stories about the past, and enjoy the time we had together. It was a much needed time for all of us I am sure. After arriving back on campus over the weekend and starting classes, I began to notice a huge change in how I was feeling and how I was focusing on the life ahead of me. While I hadn’t fully realized how stressed, worried and frazzled I have been over the course of the semester, I now realize that I am no longer as stressed, worried or frazzled as I apparently had been. It is nice to be able to end the semester with happy feelings instead of the aparent distress I have been in. I can now look forward to Centenial Ball on Saturday, the ending of classes, reading day, and the end of Junior year.

Now after being back from Easter break I feel once again as if it has been forever since I have last written. After only being back to Messiah for just over a week before having another break for Easter, I can feel the stress of the next five weeks while we move into the end of the semester without breaking again before the end. I have had a great few weeks though. Including the nice break with family that I had over Easter, the past two weeks have been a great blessing and two is continuing with that trend.

Today has been one Amazing day and it is not even over yet. I started my day out being very nervous because I had to teach my first full fledged lesson in my second grade classroom today. Even though I had written lesson plans and prepared myself, I still did not feel completely prepared for what I was going to have to do. Once the lesson began this morning however, I felt that everything was going the way I had imagined and all of the children were actually understanding and having fun with my lesson. I was even able to get great feedback from b oth my college supervisior and my supervising teacher. With another lesson set up for next Tuesday which I am also nervous about I am extremely excited to have that positivity going into next week’s lesson.

Today is also TOMS Shoes One Day Without Shoes event, which has been quite a humbling experience. TOMS shoes is a company that provides a pair of shoes for a child in need with every pair of shoes that is purchased ( http://www.toms.com/ ). I recieved my first pair of TOMS for Christmas and have fallen in love with them. They are by far the most comfortable pair of shoes ever. Today though, I am going without them, because of this event. Every year TOMS sponsors a One Day Without Shoes event in order to gain awareness for their cause. There are children all over the world that go shoeless everyday of thier lives and are therefore subject to a number of diseases and infections. Shoes are something I have been priviledged to have my entire life and going without shoes for only one day has been slightly more difficult than I had expected. Even the smallest tasks and walking the shortest distances seems longer and more exhausting. While I am enjoying walking through the grass in my bare feet, always walking with barefeet is not all that it is cracked up to be and I am truely blessed to be able to having numerous pairs of shoes at hand to wear any time I would like.

I feel like it has been forever since I’ve written and there is no way I can write all that has happened in the past two weeks. Exactly two weeks ago from today though, my spring break started. That afternoon, the gospel choir left for our tour to Canada. Despite my nervous before leaving since I had done a great deal of the planning myself, tour was absolutely amazing. I can’t even describe in words how rewarding the trip was and how close the choir became because of it. It is amazing how we can spend at least two hours a week together as a choir and not truly know each other. During our five days on tour though, we became like family. We were able to all be impacted in such a strong way by those we sang for and those we were singing with. No matter where we were singing, at the school, a mega church, or a small country church, we were able to gather together and worship God as a group. After traveling and singing with them from Niagara, Toronto, New York, and back to Grantham, I was actually upset to have to go home for the rest of my spring break.

I definitely enjoyed my time at home though. While I spent a lot of time by myself doing nothing, it was nice to not have to worry about work and to take that time to relax. I did get to see my friends as well and get a little bit of school work done, so the entire week wasn’t completely wasted on nothing either.

Being back at school has been hard to get back into the swing of things. While break rejuvinated me it also helped to make me lazy. Being that I have been back into four days of classes though I feel as if I am getting used to being back again. Next week I will already be back in Indiana for Easter and despite just having a break, it will be nice to have a break again with family and friends.

This week is that last week before spring break. I am super excited for spring break this year not only because I will be able to get a break from classes and hopefully have time to relax at home, but also because United Voices of Praise will be traveling to Canada. We will be leaving Thursday afternoon and missing classes on Friday in order to go into a Christian school in Niagara. I can not wait to leave. It is sure to be an amazing time. Last year our group traveled to Ohio and had a blast. Through the three days we spent together on the bus and singing with each other, we were able to become so much closer as a group. After tour it was amazing to see all of the positive changes to the choir. This year we will be gone from Thursday to Monday and in a foreign country, so I can’t even imagine how much better it is going to be from last year. After all of the planning that I have put into the trip, I am slightly worried about how it will inevitably turn out in the end, but I believe that it will be wonderful and that great things are going to happen to us and through us! In the next entry I write I am sure that I will have great things to say, and I will be thrilled to write about what has happened. I have to get through the rest of this week though with a few projects and tests still to come though before I can officially head out. It is sure to be an amazing time though and I can not wait to see all that is going to come my way.

I feel as if the past week has actually spanned over a number of weeks instead of just one. Last Thursday at this time I was home in Indiana with my friend Jocelyn showing her around my little Western Pennsylvanian town. Over her trip home with me for j-term break, we visited a number of my friends from home, toured Indiana, traveled to Pittsburgh in the freezing cold, and celebrated my Mom’s birthday. It was so nice to be able to show Jocelyn a little bit of my life at home and have a break from Messiah before starting up classes on Monday.

This week has presented itself with a number of new challenges/experiences. Monday was our first day of classes. Being a junior Education major this semester’s classes was completly blocked out for me with education classes and involves me going into the classroom two mornings a week. After not having any classes since the middle of December, it was really difficult getting out of bed on Monday and starting to get back into the swing of things. Now that a couple days have gone by it seems to be getting better, but thinking about actually having class still seems like slightly a foreign concept to me. While being at school without classes was such a nice experience, the experience of getting back to school and actually having classes is a little rough. I feel as though this will be an enjoyable semester though. While it may present itself with some new and exciting challenges, I am ready for them. I am ready to make the most of my time here at Messiah and get ready to be thrown into a classroom. Bring on Spring Semester!

I arrived on campus yesterday afternoon around 4:30 after being away for almost three weeks. While break went by super fast, I found myself surprised that I felt as if it was time to come back. Being at Messiah I have gotten used to being the first one to go back to school after Christmas and the last one to get back before. While all of my friends are still at home enjoying the Indiana snow, I am at Messiah, where snow is almost non existent. I absolutely love snow so having the snow stop falling during my travels across the state yesterday was upsetting. At home it had been snowing non-stop for three days and there were very few breaks in the snow the entire time I was home, allowing for a gorgeous white Christmas and some good times sledding.

Students are all back at Messiah going through their first day of J-term classes today. I, however, am not taking a class, but am spending my time at work and hopefully writing scholarship essays and working on being productive without any real deadlines and pressures upon me. I am hoping that this month becomes one that is extremely relaxing but allows me to be super productive at the same time. Even though I am jealous of my friends back home who still have a week or two to go until they have to be back at school and working, I am good with being at Messiah and working towards accomplishing some goals to start this new year of 2010. In three weeks, it will be break again and I will back back home and I can’t wait to see everyone in Indiana again, but until then I will be at Messiah enjoying my time.

Today was the first last day of classes…if you can follow that. This morning I had my last square dancing class and last Bible class. Tomorrow I will finish up classes with my last days of Children’s literature, reading, math, and instructional design. While finals, two papers, a group project, and UVP’s christmas concert are still ahead of me, it isn’t hard to look forward to the fact hat in less than a week I will be home and done with fall semester of my junior year. Looking back at the semester a lot of things have happened, but it seems like only yesterday that it was move in day. It is absolutely astounding to me that I have completed over half of my college career.

I am looking so forward to going home again and being with family, friends, and relaxation. After having Thanksgiving only a short time ago and talking to a number of my friends who are finishing up their finals this week, I am super excited to have an even longer break. Trying to figure out all of my plans for break it looks like I am going to have a very busy time at home, but I still cannot wait. Having no school work to do and being able to be home and visit and catch up with people is more than enough. While Messiah is getting ready to wrap up the semester and begin getting ready for Christmas, I hope you all have a great one. Christmas is the perfect time to relax and be with friends and family. I wish all of you a great, safe, healthy, and happy holiday with the ones that you love.

This week was that first week back from Thanksgiving break. Coming back I am having the same feelings that many students are feeling: the hustle and bustle of the end of the semester. While coming back I felt as if the semester was already essentially over, there is still so much more to do in the two weeks before I get to go home to Indiana for Christmas break. The life of being a student at school is still alive and well. As I hear some students complaining about the loads of pages they have yet to write for papers, however, I feel pretty lucky to only have two papers and a project left.

Coming back from break also gave me something new. I have been moved from my office in the Office of Marketing and Public Relations on the third floor of Old Main to an “office” in Climenhaga. While I was sad to leave where I have been working for the past year and a half there have been a few pros to my situation. I miss all of the wonderful people, both students and staff, that I have gotten to work with while I have been upstairs. I miss the quiet atmosphere. I miss the familiarity and the comfort that I have gotten from working there. The past couple of months have been a little hard however since I have been working with Jim whose office is in Climenhaga and he took all of my files down there with him. Now that I have moved I have gained access to the files I need and am beginning to do work more easily. I feel over time I will be able to become comfortable in my new work environment just as I was able to do in Old Main. It just might take awhile.