i know you can be overwhelmed and you can be underwhelmed but can you ever just be whelmed?-10 things i hate about you RIP Heath Ledger

as a simple request from my grandmother im writing a new post so that every time she opens the page she wont be forced to look at that nasty bubbling toes. its kind of like the jack johnson song bubbly toes. now thats a good one. but i think he was talking about something else other than frost bite...

things here have been going well. overwhelmed with school work, fundraising, and other extra curricular activities. and on top of that, i am also overwhelmed by the world.

i think the world is the sum of everything going on in my life and what is pulling down on me.

as for school work, most of it comes from my geography, global studies, and missions class. these classes have me studying individual countries as well as our own and the one i am preparing to go to this summer. the reading is overwhelming and hurts my heart often.

fundraising for romania is going not so well. this is yet another overwhelming object of my life. this trip was something i wanted to do entirely on my own. i didnt want to rely on parents for anything since i seem to rely on them for everything. and when i say rely on them i really mean paying for everything. i wanted this to be my own things. one single thing i could do for myself. we are participating in a lot of fundraisers but when you split this money among 10 girls, it all gets chopped up into smaller portions. currently we are doing a change drive (which personally i believe is very ineffective.) who is going to go out of their way to go to the RA rooms and put loose change into a jar. i am also selling fair trade coffee from africa. we sell it for 10 dollars but get six. this is a good deal, but what college student is going to spend money to buy this? i know i wouldnt. other girls in my group are from colorado so they can go to their hometowns and sell but i dont have that advantage. besides this there are other fundraisers were doing spaghetti dinners and such. but nothing that is going to get me 900 more dollars in two weeks. please note that this is not a plea for money, but me venting on my blog. dont take it to heart.

as for extra curricular activities i dont know if i mentioned that i would be working with a refugee family. i am leading a group of 5 other students that are helping a refugee family from burma. we are working with them helping them to learn english and get used to american customs such as riding the bus or grocery shopping. they dont speak any english. i am so excited for this opportunity but so nervous at the same time. tomorrow is the first day that we will be meeting with an interpreter and the family to get to know them, but after that there will be no interpreter. im praying earnestly that god will use this experience to help me grow more than anything.

also an extra curricular is a book im reading its called A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Boy Soldier. This book is about a guy who is from Sierra Leone and is reflecting on his youth dealing with rebels and loosing his family, village, among so many other terrible things. but it is a passionate book.

so as you can see i am overwhelmed by the world. its not affecting me directly but at the same time it is. from this experience of how much i passionately care about this planet and its cultures and its people i feel i have started to learn on what im called to do with my life. i dont know specifically what that is, but i know that it will slowly, or maybe quickly, start to unfold right in front of me.

what if god was one of us

welcome to your STEP moms house.

this is what happens when your RA gets fired for not being able to make it down a 14er fast enough at -30 degrees and is forced to COHABITATE with a boy in a tent on the mountain so she didnt freeze to death. as a result she also received severe frost bite so she cant run for three months or be outside for long periods of time.

thanks to this "kush the dush" forced her to reside due to her "terrible" offenses. so now he is asking us to cooperate calmly while we "process" this "transition".

so now welcome to your step moms house. heres some pictures to back up the goodness.

stretching, flailing, and punching

last night i had a self attack. there i lay sleeping at about five in the morning peaceful and calm. dreaming of sugarplums and who knows what else. all of a sudden either i was stretching, flailing my arms, or just felt the plain need to punch myself in the face. my cast hit my nose and the next thing i knew i was awake and in pain and my nose was bleeding everywhere. i got out of bed and raced to the bathroom where i spent the next ten minutes trying to get it to stop. gross.

wallowing

i fractured my wrist. yes sir i did. my entry will be short since its kind of difficult to type with this fatty velcro brace on. it happened while i was snowboarding. so thats always fun. at least it wasnt from tripping or falling down stairs. so i have to find another doctor when i get to colorado who will take care of me. the chip isnt too bad and im not in a whole lot of pain, more so just sad. thats all for now.

we come from the ak where we dont play sun goes down in the middle of the day

home home home home home, i havent written since ive been here. but what do you expect really? ive been preoccupied with family, friends, and sleep. christmas was good and new years is tomorrow. my first week here was fun and i spent it with my family and my cousin and my grandma who were visiting. we spent hours niffty knitting and watching the hills. wooo.

seeing my best friend mary for the first time in four months was amazing. she picked me up from the airport and i was so genuinely happy to see her. the time ive spent with her so far is amazing. she hasnt changed and our friendship is stronger than ever, but i guess that comes from talking on the phone everyday, at least once a day, every day, that i was away. i love her. its weird to see how my other friends have changed and how i have changed. its helped me a lot to learn who my real friends are or who i plan on staying close to for the next few years to come.

i love my family. being away from them helps me to learn not to take them for granted. of course my mom is great. talking to her everyday on the phone at school is good, she is my best friend, and i love her so so so so much. my dad is crazy, i think that when he sees me it just makes him hyper, because that is how he has been the entire time i have been home, and thats not normal. maybe he changed. but i love him more than ever. my brother is my brother. hes super duper, but he is the same as well, and i love him. having my grandma and my cousin katie here was neat too. katie is special, thats right special. i have so much fun with her and shes so level headed. she makes me look at things in a realistic point of view, and as she helped raise me and teach me life lessons when i was younger, she continues to do that to this day, and i love the advice she gives me. my grandma is comforting. she is a lot like my mom, and both of them are great people. i love to have her around.

so as you can see, i have a lot of love for my family.

i learned that i, among with others in my family, suffer from raynauds disease. which is bad circulation in certain parts of the body. all of my life people always commented on that obscure trait of mine, but now i feel that i can justify it. i also am suffering from whatever the opposite is of acute mountain sickness. being in colorado at such a high altitude its hard to adjust to this low one. ive gotten really bad headaches, tummy aches, as well as being really dizzy. it happened at thanksgiving to, and when i go back to colorado i have the same sickness. i decided i need to pick one or the other place to live and stay there because i cant keep doing this.

what else what else, im in talkeetna right now staying with noelle. its been good to see everyone out here and especially her parents. they are AMAZING. she has a nice bed and good food and theres not much else that i feel i could ask for. im spending new years out here and with her and im looking forward to it.

this post has just been a preview of stuff going on here. as nice as it is to be home im thrilled to be at my other home in colorado. i miss my bed there and the amazing people that i am always surrounded by.

one more sad story. i havent seen the sun since ive been here. it has either been dark or cloudy. so there has been no sun for me. today we slept in till about 130. we got dressed and went out to eat. by three, an hour and a half later, it was already getting dark. this sounds pansy-ish but this is a very serious depressing issue. we need some daylight!!

finals week is....

BORING

all i do is study, sleep, test, study, sleep, test

since there is only like an hour of finals three times this week for me ive had a lot of down time that ive spent studying. but i think there is a point that studying becomes ineffective. right now it is all building up for me. im freaking crazy and i just want to be home. my roommate made me some tea to calm me down. its midnight. i have a final at eight am. i studied all day. ad now i cant sleep. so as you can see, this is me, being finaled. too much sleep, not enough sleep. too many little words on a page, to be notes to review. ahhhhhhhhhhhh i really think you all know this is not the normal me (unless you really know me of course) but usually im really not quite this crazy i guess. i will be home in three days. once again united with my best friend and family and snow and bed and not homework. ahhhhhhhh okay i should sleep. yeah ill get right on that... my mom hasnt called back. come on people. okay, so youve experienced my first finals breakdown rant. the end.

p.s. Elf Yourself

sick

too much christmas cookies and candy.

puuuuke.