La Risa

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Yes, it SNOWED...in Raleigh!

I woke-up to a wintery-wonderland this morning! We got a little over 6 inches of snow today.

Monday, January 19, 2009

I actually spent most of the weekend doing homework...I have seriously never had so much. It's not that hard, there is just a lot of it...a lot of reading!

Also this weekend I got to meet my friend Heather's new baby twins!!! She is married to one of the Honduran brothers that Hillary and I are friends with. Poor Heather has five children!!! Jocelyn (7), Hannah (5), Seth (3), and the twins Gabriel and Elijah. I did not know until today that Heather is only 23! I am excited for this opportunity to be her friend. Pray that our relationship would grow and that I would be able to bless her by spending time with her and helping her with "childcare". I also LOVE playing with her other three children...they are sooo fun! Today we played Freeze-Tag for an hour. Fortunately, her mother-in-law stays at their apartment 5 days a week to help out!

Below is Elijah Preston and Gabriel Antonio. They are 3 weeks old!

Big Brother Seth (3 years)

Me feeding baby Gabriel

Baby Gabriel Antonio

Big Sister Jocelyn and Baby Elijah

Seth, Me, Gabriel, and Hannah

Baby Elijah Preston

I also celebrated my friends John York and Jasmine Cooper's birthdays on Saturday. A big group of us went out to eat at P.F. Chang's Chinese Restaurant.

This past week Allison and I held a Knitting Program for our residents. It was a big hit and I see the girls working on the scarfs when I walk past their rooms!

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

First week of class......check.

Factual Statements:

-I lost my voice. Yesterday I was pretty much silent, and today I sound like a man, tomorrow?????.....
- I am currently training for the Krispy Kreme Challenge. (2 miles, 12 donuts, 1 hour, $15 to children's hospitals)
- First Destino Meeting is Tonight and we are planning for Destino Conference in February and just catching up
- Thursday, Allison (co-RA) and I are doing knitting program for our residents. We had 10 girls sign-up. They will be learning how to knit scarfs and we are using chop-sticks (instead of knitting needles) to offset costs!
- Starting next week I will be weekly tutoring an ESL student as a requirement to one of my education courses...and I'm excited!!!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

This semester's theme: READ

For my bulletin board I created a "New Year's" theme. The board has information about new year's resolutions, how to keep them, etc. I also put a large piece of white paper in the middle for my girls to write their personal new year's resolution or semester goal. For myself, I wrote "read more for fun". I really do enjoy stories, but I spend so much time in school reading un-enjoyable books that during my free time the last thing I want to do is pick up a book. But I decided that this year was going to be different...I was going to read more for FUN!

So, classes started yesterday and I have been getting all my syllabi and assignments for the semester, etc....and GUESS WHAT most of my new classes include????? You got it, READING! (Disclaimer: the exclamation mark is to emphasize shock, NOT convey excitement.)

Serves me right. I deserve to spend this semester reading more than ever,...I asked for it, right? Apparently next year I need to emphasize and repeat the "FOR FUN" more than the "READING" part of my new year's resolution. ....live and learn!

As for classes, I will try to give my first impressions in a timely manner:
~Tutoring Adolescents: I start this class on Tuesday
~Educational Psychology: I LOVE MY TEACHER. She was so prepared, not overwhelming, and creative in presentation. She has her Doctorate and she deserves it. I only have her class once a week (but for almost 3 hours at a time).
~School and Society: I like this teacher as well. Not as creative, but very organized and seemingly caring of her students. All her test are online and openbook...however they are timed!. She has assigned LOTS of reading. She is a hefty black lady in her early thirities, has a large gap inbetween her two front teeth, has her doctorate, had a blue tongue on the first day of class (I'm guessing she eats blue candy!), has fake black people hair, and looks more like she should be working in a barber shop in downtown New York...and I like her! Not a sterotypical teacher.
~English as a New Language: This is my ESL online course. It should be very informative and relavent to my life.
~Spanish Oral and Writing: Will be an easy class, but I can use the opportunity to learn if I push myself. Also, after a schedule mishap, my advisors are allowing me to use this class (which I don't need credit wise) to replace one of my Senior Spanish classes. This will help me to have a more relaxing senior year!
~Latin American History: The teacher is a really old white guy. He seems to know his stuff. There are a LOT of reading assignments. Hopefully it will be interesting....but I'm not really a fan of "textbook-style-history-learning".
~Nutrition: I like it so far. Should be relatively easy, informative, and practical (there's always room for nutritional emprovement, right?). After one class, our teacher, Dr. "Something", has already convienced me to never eat a burger at Hardees!

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Last Day of Freedom, with a little bit of Hawaii

So today is my last free day. I start classes in the morning. I don't feel like I have had enough of a vacation, but I guess that happens when you have never really had 2 consecutive college semesters back to back before. (...Costa Rica, Spain...got me use to LONG vacations!). I think this semester will be tough, but I'm ready for the challenge. The past few days I have been in RA training, hanging out with residents, and reading a lot. (I got the book Redeeming Love for Christmas).

Below are a few pictures I stole from Amy (Zach's girlfriend) of them in Hawaii.

In these two pictures they are at a wedding reception (not sure who's though).

Scuba diving....

400 ft waterfall (not sure which one)

Sunday, January 4, 2009

Christmas Break Happenings

My 2 really awesome bookshelves/shoe-rack my dad built me for my dorm room

My fat and very sweet cat Margret Thatcher

My friend Silvia's wedding! Silvia is in Destino with me and her wedding was my first official Mexican wedding, as she is and married a Mexican...all in Spanish.