pretty things

it's been pouring rain for the past 2 days in waco. my yard is a lake and my hair is a mess.

so here's some pretty things i found to distract me from the gloomy outdoors. enjoy!

if i could be doing anything right now, i would be laying in that field.

preferably with some sweet tea and good book

i wish raindrops really looked like that.

lovely

pure sparkle

Coeur de Pirate "Comme des enfants"
Uploaded by coeur-de-pirate. - Explore more music videos.

yes this is in french...but its cute and happy nonetheless :)

irony much?

sooo...went to church this morning and laughed out loud when i saw the title of the new sermon series..."What is Love?" if you scroll down a little, you'll see that as the lame-attempt-at-humor title of my last post that i put up less than 24 hours ago. God is funny. what's even better is that He clearly showed me my whole perspective on love was wrong.

i was worried about finding love, while my real goal should be to BE love. today's sermon made me realize that love is not a feeling to wait for. it's an action. a choice. a command from Love Himself. clearly my mindset was a bit skewed, so here's to letting go of my wish for the feeling of love and humbly embracing the undeserved agape of the Holy One.

eph. 3:17-19

"May your roots go deep into the soil of God's marvelous love, and may you be able to feel and understand...how long, wide, deep, and high His love really is, and to know that this love surpasses knowledge- that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

what is love? baby don't hurt me...ha

here we go again.

i don't know what it is but weddings seem to be in the air...everywhere. i have 4 weddings to attend this summer, all within one month. kinda makes me ponder what the heck i'm doing with my life, since i've never had a relationship serious enough to enter that next stage in life that so many around me are moving in to. doesn't help that i saw the movie "when in rome" last night either. it may have been a super cheesy attempt at romantic comedy but i still left feeling a little wishful for that someone to sweep me off my feet. to make things worse, i somehow stumbled up ruffledblog.com which is a site dedicated to the beauty of unique indie weddings. i spent a good hour looking through pictures of happy, in love couples...gag.

maybe its the fact that i'm sitting alone in my house on a saturday night. and i'm perfectly okay with it. i feel like that should bother me. i feel like i should want to get out there and live it up but all i really want is someone to do the pursuing for me. to step up to the plate so i don't have to swing and miss, since my hand eye coordination is less than stellar. still, with all the weddingcraziness that is around me, i can't help but want that

phase of my life to hurry up a little...but i'm trying to be patient enough to wait in the ultimate Love.

rom. 8:38-39

"For i am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither present nor future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, can separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord."

:)

12:01. time for homework.

Not having class until 11 has killed any hope i had for conquering procrastination this semester. Luckily, or not so luckily, one of my required classes next semester starts at 8 am. I'd like to think that i'll actually start my studying more in advance, but in reality I'm predicting that the morning auto-set button on my coffee maker will be well worn by next summer. When it comes down to it, i'm pretty positive that procrastination is in my genes, as i come from a family full of night owls. Thanks dad. I'm not entirely convinced this is a bad thing, however. If God made a moon flower to bloom at night, couldn't He have made me the same way? I think yes.

my alter ego: the moonflower

silver dollar withdrawal

Subtract approximately 12 years from my life and i would currently be in Silver Dollar City, camping with every person i knew thus far in my life and eating kettle corn by the pound. I would spend my days working up the nerve to ride Thunderation, walking and tripping through Grandfather's Mansion, and riding Fire-in-the-Hole (which always ended with me convincing myself and everyone around me that my gun must be broken because i KNOW i shot more targets than it said).

And of course, lets not forget taking the classic tintype picture with the fam, complete with mothball smelling 1800's clothes and awkward serious stares. Those were the days, and the nights were even better. Smore's around the campfire, searching for walking stick bugs, swinging on dad's swing, and the occasional Dino show (tehe).

Without a doubt, i will take my future family to Silver Dollar City to experience the beauty of autumn in the Ozarks. And they will like it. So in honor of my nostalgia, i'm popping a bag of 100-calorie kettle corn and listening to the sounds of Silver Dollar in Nickel Creek.

autumn

Well, i've decided to start this up again. Partly because i feel bad about not updating the rest of my travels this summer and partly because i'm sitting in the language lab listening to Swahili tapes of which i only understand one word every other sentence.

If you really want to hear about my trip this summer, just ask! But in short, after Switzerland i visted Vienna, Munich, Paris, and London. It was a whirlwind but definitely one of the most incredible experiences thus far in my life. There's really no other feeling quite like running after your train that you've just missed and realizing you don't have anyone to rely on but yourself to get you to your next destination. Clearly, i gained quite a bit of independence and respsonsibility. I hadn't really noticed a difference in my everyday life after returning but now that i'm in the swing of school, i've realized i have a pretty different mindset.

For one, my room has remained tidy and clean (are you reading mom?) and i'm much more organized with school stuff. Another thing, that i'm not so thrilled about, is that i wake up earlier than noon and have yet to oversleep a class. Shocking, i know. This is mostly do to the addition of my sweet golden retriever puppy Stella waking me up at 8 am to pee. Oh, the joys of motherhood.

Yesterday was the first day of fall, which i prefer to call autumn. Fall has multiple meanings, but there is not doubting the definition of autumn, plus it just sounds prettier. The changing seasons always remind me that i'm growing older and supposedly more mature, though i'm not convinced those two go hand in hand. Usually i get a sick feeling in my stomach when i think about the fact that i'm actually a junior in college...But today i have peace that i am exactly where i should be. Not necessarily in the language lab per se, but spiritually, emotionally, and physically. I matured in numerous ways throughout the summer and though my experiences have changed me, they have done so for the better.

Happy Autumn! May you have a a prettier one than i am currently experiencing in Waco.

skydiving in switzerland and the world's best milk chocolate

So after deciding to head to interlaken instead of zurich, i immediately started researching skydiving and book a flight for the day we arrived in switzerland! Kelsey and i took our first night train from Florence to Interlaken, and it was quite the experience. Six beds in really crammed quarters made me so nervous and paranoid that i barely got any sleep and was exhausted when we got there. And when we go to our hostel we found out we couldn't check in until 4 so we had to just sit around for awhile. But we took a nap and refreshed ourselves a bit before i headed off to skydive and Kelsey went to canyoning.

It was a cloudy day, so not ideal for skydiving but it was still amazing! The guys running it were really funny and entertaining and i didn't even have time to process what i was doing until i was already in the plane! It was so crazy just falling out of the plane! We did a few flips and stuff and i loved every minute of it! I had paid for a photographer/videographer to tape everything but unfortunately the lens on his camera had moisture in it so i wasn't able to get anything back :( Oh well, just an excuse to do it again!!

The next day, we were still a little tired and were researching short hikes to do, since the alps were SO gorgeous, and we came across a fruit hike! It went through areas where different fruits were made and ended with a fresh apple fritter, so we bought our $13 ticket and headed out to do that... The ride took forever, but the scenery was amazing! When we got there, we couldn't find the fruit hike trail, plus it was really cod so we decided to just get some lunch and head back down...That's when we discovered that we had somehow gotten on the wrong train and were at the top of a mountain that we should have paid $56 for! Haha we had no idea we were even in the wrong place and the ticket people let us go back down for free!

After that, we went to a chocolate show at the Schuh hotel downtown. I guess there is a chocolate convention in Italy every year where they vote on the best chocolate from around the world and Schuh's milk chocolate has been voted number 1 for 3 years in a row! And let me just say...it was amazing!! I bought some to bring home, so if it doesn't melt or i don't get too hungry, i might let you try some :)

So now, we're in Austria and about to get in our room...should be interesting! So far, the hostels i've stayed in have been great and i've met some really cool people, so hopefully they will be like that the rest of the trip! I'll try to upload pics soon!