Mk's reunited at last !

This past weekend, my best friend from Ouaga (Ouagadougou, BF) came to spend a few days with me! Her name is Rebekah (Beka) Joyce. She currently goes to school in Springfield, MO. We have not hung out (but have seen each other) since I left Ouaga four and a half years ago. God blessed us with such a great weekend together. It was so encouraging to know that after such a long time, we could pick up where we left off. Sometimes it felt so weird to have someone from my past, and might I add a completely different world, merge into my present world. Wherever we went, I always introduced her as the person who helped me socially develop! haha! We spent the first night looking at old pictures together, re-living the memories, trying to remember everything we could. I showed her pictures of my last two years of high school and tried to catch her up on what my life was like those first few years in the US. One fun aspect of having her come was being able to show her things that I never could have overseas: my baby pictures, my house (she especially loved the attic), etc. I brought her to Emporia and showed her my campus, dorm room, church.... We had a GREAT time together. We laughed a LOT, talked even more, took lots of pictures, and created unforgettable memories. (I guess, memories implies that they would be unforgettable!!!) Finally, I was with someone who knew my history and my past without me having to explain. It was hard to say goodbye again, but not NEAR as hard as last time. I miss her a lot already, but cannot wait until the next time we are together!

--This is just a side note, but I was thinking about how each of my developmental stage took place in different countries. Elementary - Central African Republic ; Middle School and early High School - Burkina Faso ; Later High School and College - Kansas. No wonder my personality is like it is!!!

--A few of the pictures are from 10th grade year at ISO. Have we changed at all?

Tomato Rice Soup !

I thought I would share one of my new favorite recipes with you. I made this for the first time last week and LOVED IT! Absolutely mouth-watering. And super easy for a dorm room.

Ingrediants:
- 1/3 jar of Mom's delicious home-made canned tomato soup
- 1/4 cup (1 serving) of Uncle Ben's brown rice
- 1/2 cup of water
- parmesan cheese

Directions:
- Mix water with rice and cook in microwave for 5-10 minutes (or until rice has absorbed all the water). Let it sit for another 3 minutes. Remove from microwave and set aside--covered, so as not to cool. Pour 1/3 jar of Mom's delicious home-made canned tomato soup into a microwave safe bowl and place in microwave--just long enough to heat. Only about a minute or two. Remove from microwave and pour the rice into the bowl of soup. Sprinkle on top some parmesan cheese and VOILA!!! You have yourself a yummy rice and sauce. Or as I like to call it: Tomato Rice Soup.

Eat while still hot. Serve alongside 6 cherry tomatoes and 8 baby carrots. Adding 5 whole wheat ritz crackers is yummy as well.

ENJOY !

Valentine's Weekend = A Series of Unfortunate Events

Sherlynn and I could not wait until Sunday to celebrate Valentine's Day, so we started Friday evening. We set out to hit up the thriving metropolis of Emporia! We were on a quest to find Sherlynn a pair of new running shoes. It was not a hard quest, we found some at our first stop: JCPenney. One of our friends works there, so we chatted with him, distracting him from his work, and nearly got him in trouble. oops! We felt so bad we offered to buy him a coffee.....another time, when he was not at work!

Our next stop in our Valentine expedition was, I hate to admit it, Wal-Mart. There we stocked up on strawberries, dark chocolate M&M's, and other essentials. Before heading back to the dorms, we OF COURSE had to make a stop at Starbucks. (It is conveniantly located close to Wal-Mart!) With a bit of heaven in our hands, we swung by Family Video to pick up a couple of movies. Here is the list of the honored three we were looking for:
1. An old Disney Princess movie (hopefully Beauty and the Beast or Aladdin)
2. Moulin Rouge (a girls-only movie that would fit the theme of the evening)
3. Cool Runnings (in honor of it being the opening evening of the 2010 Winter Olympics)

To our dismay and chagrin, Family Video did not own Cool Runnings. The two copies they did own of Moulin Rouge had been stolen. The Disney Princess movies we did find were all checked out. We spent a good deal of time roaming the rows of movies and found none to our liking. We left in great sorrow and with no movie. (The only joy I found was that the man working there was extremely attractive. I think I told him "bye" when he told me "hi"! haha!)

We finally made it back to our dorm room, tired and vexed, but excited for the upcoming festivities. We ate chips and dip, chocolate covered strawberries, dark chocolate peanut M&M's (my weakness), and pretzels dipped in chocolate. We had rented a projector from the school and used the reverse side of some wrapping paper for a big screen. We watched an old American classic, The Bandwagon, that I had received for Christmas, but had never seen. It was terrible--virtually no plot. Another disappointment.

And that was the end of our Valentine's Day.

P.S. The first picture was my Valentine's gift to Sherlynn!

Facing Fears !

For those of you who are unaware of this fact, this semester I have embarked on a new and bold adventure of a having a personal trainer. (Emporia State provides them as a FREE service to all students. So why not?) For the sake of keeping the identity of my personal trainer confidential, let's call her 'PT'! (Original, I know!) Once a week, I meet with PT and she assesses how I'm doing, trains me in new ways of working out, and provides invaluable tips on exercise and diet. Now, you need to know something about the Rec where I workout. It is a great place, but there is one room where I have never ventured more than a few steps into: the weight room. Typically, this room is full of guys who look like they could all be offensive linemen. They scare me, therefore, I refrain from entering. Last night, PT decided she wanted to introduce me to a new weight machine in the just-mentioned weight room. I panicked, but meekly followed. What else could I do? (PT works out every morning with the ESU football team, therefore, she was not intimidated.) The designated weight machine was located all the way on the OPPOSITE side of the room, so we had to meander our way through. The machine that she placed me on was extremely close to another machine where this man was doing some sort of pull-up. To make matters worse, the two machines faced each other. I tried not to make eye-contact while I pushed myself up this little pulley. All of this to say, PT made me face my second biggest fear. (My first fear is falling off of the treadmill while I'm running, which actually happened to a guy next to me the other morning.)

Under the Mercy

Over Christmas Break I read A Severe Mercy and absolutely LOVED IT! I highly recommend it. It is a true story of Sheldon and Jean (Davy) Vanauken who, as unbelievers, fall in-love and attempt to create a love so strong and so powerful, that nothing can shake it. While studying at Oxford, they are placed in a group of Christian friends and slowly, over time, their hearts start to yield to Jesus Christ. It is during this time that Sheldon strikes up a life-long friendship with C.S. Lewis. SPOILER ALERT: Unlike Davy, Sheldon has a hard time wholly submitting his life to the Lord, and it is only through Davy's death, that he is able to do so. My little synopsis really does not do the book justice. It is truly beautifully written. I cried.....a lot, but then again, that is not too unusual. Here are some quotes:

"The best argument for Christianity is Christians: their joy, their certainty, their completeness. But the strongest argument against Christianity is also Christians--when they are sombre and joyless, when they are self-righteous and smug in complacent consecration, when they are narrow and repressive, then Christianity dies a thousand deaths" (85).

"It is not possible to be 'incidentally a Christian.' The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing."

"I am v. glad to hear of the righted wrong and still more to hear that you are re-visiting England. We must have some good, long talks together and perhaps we shall both get high." - C.S. Lewis. (I love how one of their favorite things to do together was to discuss theology over beer!)

There's a fantastic passage that talks about time and eternity and the natural longings of our heart. It's too long to type the entire thing in my post, but here's a part of it:
"C. S. Lewis, in his second letter to me at Oxford, asked how it was that I, as a product of a materialistic universe, was not at home there. 'Do fish complain of the sea for being wet? Or if they did, would that fact itself not strongly suggest that they had not always been, or wd. not always be, purely aquatic creatures?' Then, if we complain of time and take such joy in the seemingly timeless moment, what does that suggest? It suggests that we have not always been or will not always be purely temporal creatures. It suggests that we were created for eternity. Not only are we harried by time, we seem unable, despite a thousand generations, even to get used to it. We are always amazed at--how fast it goes, how slowly it goes, how much of it is gone. Where, we cry, has the time gone? We aren't adapted to it, not at home in it. If that is so, it may appear as a proof, or at least a powerful suggestion, that eternity exists and is our home" (203).

Coffee and Cooking Catastrophes !

I have a terrible time making coffee. One would think it easy, but in the history of my coffee-making, here are all the mishaps that I am guilty of:
- pouring the water straight into the coffee filter (this was the very first time I ever made coffee!)
- leaving the empty coffee pot on for an extended period (days) of time. (sshhh.....my Dad still doesn't know!)
- leaving the coffee grains in the filter and forgetting about them over Christmas break.
- carelessly placing the filter so that a side sagged down allowing grains to flow through the coffee.
- never measuring precisely, ending with either extremely weak or extremely dark coffee!

But...I am improving!

Sherlynn, my roommate, takes great delight in experiments--especially those that involved food and drink. This week, we have suffered through 2 of them.

1) When went over to our friend's apartment to use a "real" kitchen, only to find out his oven didn't work. I was awfully disappointed because I was going to make garlic bread. (Note: Garlic Bread in the microwave only becomes soggy and chewy--yes, both are possible at the same time.) Sherlynn was disappointed because she was going to make brownies. Well, she decided to make brownies anyway.....in the microwave. Unfortunately, she did not stir them well enough for when she ate her piece of brownie (which we called 'brake' because it was in the shape of a cake), she bit into a piece of uncooked chewy egg! GROSSE! My piece was alright. (Note: if making brownies in microwave, mix well and eat immediately, for they will turn rock hard within a few minutes of removal!)

2) Sherlynn was craving some hot chocolate, but was curious to see how it would taste in coffee. But instead of simply mixing it together once the coffee was made, Sherlynn dumped the hot chocolate powder into the coffee filter with the coffee grains. The end result was pitiful. The water piled up in the filter and only a trickle made it through into the pot. It literally smelled like creamed corn.

This Semester's Reading

This is a picture of all of the books I will be reading this semester minus 2 that are in my backpack and 5 that I have to read on my own. As you can see, they range from Shakespeare's histories and romances, to young adult literature such as Hoot and Inkhart, to textbooks. I have currently read two books already and have only been in classes for a week and a half. With so much reading to do, I try to amuse myself by finding interesting quotes. Here are a few:

In my Early British Literature class (the books is monstrous. The picture does not do it justice) I am currently reading Beowulf (which I read in high school). The 'he' in the quote is Grendel, the monster.

"he grabbed and jauled a man on his bench, / bit into his bone-lappings, bolted down his blood / and gorged on him in lumps, leaving the body / utterly lifeless, eaten up / hand and foot."

Disclaimer: This quote is not cited correctly according to the MLA Handbook 7th ed.

There are simply too many good and funny quotes from Shakespeare to be able to incorporate them all on here. Last night I was laughing out loud while reading. His plays are simply hysterical! Here's a fun word that I think the modern English language should re-establish: "boon". It means "favor". Ex: "Will you do me a boon?" "All I ask of you is one boon!" (Richard II)