A Weekend in the Life of a Trinity Student

I woke up this morning wanting to write. Yesterday morning I woke up wanting to go skinny dipping. Today’s yearning is both simpler and less unusual. So what the eeck, might as well write. This weekend was sublime. I started off the weekend with the usual Friday night trip to Vancouver with the crew. The sun was out, the air was brisk, and people just wanted to chat. It was beautiful. We got back to campus just in time to head to Adrenaline Rush. Adrenaline rush is a trinity tradition based on wearing as many glow sticks as possible and dancing like we’re even whiter than we are… but there are black lights so if you wear white you can feel like you’re not white. Surprisingly, this actually gave us an adrenaline rush, so I found myself sitting in my dorm at midnight with two other lovely ladies trying to think of something to do… as usual, this resulted in half an hour of texting followed by the (somewhat sad) realization that we don’t need anyone else to have a good time. An hour later I was sitting in a parking lot with said ladies eating timbits, sipping hot drinks, talking about boys and reminiscing about summer jobs, trips to France, and small town life. What a lovely night.

Saturday morning I woke up late with the sun in my eyes. That’s right, two sunny days in a row in the lower mainland! This is a true sign of spring. After lounging in bed for a couple hours my roommate and I rolled out of bed and headed to the play (Emma)… it was extra special because I won tickets to it so it was free (no, I am not cultured enough to pay to see a play based on a mediocre Jane Austen novel). Anyway, we left at the intermission. It was way too beautiful to spend the anymore time inside, no matter how good of a performance it was. My roommate and I wandered campus for a while and then sat down in the middle of an empty parking lot to talk and enjoy the sun. A few people wondered past and joined us, we listened to some music (modern technology is great) and we napped. When the parking lot finally got too uncomfortable we returned to our dorm for some much needed homework time. Was the day over? Nope. Just as we were about to go to bed, we decided instead to bundle up and walk to the overpass. There we sat, watching trucks zoom past underneath us and singing at the top of our lungs. The day ended with hot chocolate and good conversation with one of the coolest people I’ve ever known.

Sunday. Where to start? Once again, I slept in… what can I say? It’s a bad habit that’s hard to break. Around 11:00 I woke up thinking it was a cloudy day. An hour later I skyped my sister, her fiancé, my mom, and my dad… in the hallway… once you learn to ignore the weird looks from people walking past it’s a great spot! The rest of the afternoon was pretty average… and by that, I just mean that I can’t remember what happened for the life of me (that probably means the afternoon consisted of watching people in my dorm play Tetris, attempt to use the microwave, and sing). In the evening, Allison wandered into my room and we had a pretty intense rap battle about Prince Harry. That’s right, we can both rap, and we’re both super talented. We eventually decided that for the sake of humankind we should hide our talents. This resulted in us leaving the safe confines of our dorm to go on a walk, but it was cold, so we visited Allison’s sister who requested that we go scavenging for some daffodil bulbs that she could plant in her apartment. On the way, we ran into a friend who had just thrown her keys on the roof of one of the buildings. We used our joint knowledge to help her get onto the roof and then watched as she crept along the entire length of the building while trying to look as creepy as possible. The evening, and the weekend, ended with some craft time (aka Allison making a chain of paper airplanes), tetris, and a loud rendition of Christmas Unicorn.

What a great weekend.

Adventure Blog #1

Over the past year, and particularly the past month, the urge within me to travel has grown. I've tried to smother it, to convince myself that travel is, for someone my age, an unnecessary luxury. I've told myself that there will be time to see the world... when I'm older, freer, and perhaps more experienced. Nevertheless, I fear that I have not successfully contained my enthusiasm for all that has any slight thing to do with travel. 

Without realizing it, my collection of quotes on the subject of travel has grown, I've added multiple maps to my collection, and I've bookmarked many a place I would one day would like to find myself. It is not until this moment, as I am writing this, that I have realized the extent to which travel has inundated my life. Yes, a love for the idea of travel is very commonly found among my peers and often considered a (hipster-esque) trend of which to steer clear, yet I wish to act upon this love of travel. I yearn to pick up my bag(s) and find myself in Turkey, Italy, or even Uganda.

This hunger for travel has lead to the creation of concrete(ish) plans. Six months from now I will (hopefully) be on a plane headed to Entebbe, Uganda where I will spend four months doing exactly what I do in Canada. I will study, socialize, and, most importantly, learn a little bit more about the diversity and grandeur of this world. Following these four months I hope to hop on a plane to Europe where I will spend a few months working. What better way to experience another part of the world than to settle down and live there for a short while? After this, my current roommate (and best friend) will join me for 2-3 months of backpacking, making new friends, and living off as little as possible. After eight months of exploration I will return to Canada to once again be bitten by the travel bug... I will then return to fighting the urge to travel until I graduate with a degree in International Studies and a speciality in development and cultural change. From there... who knows!

This is my travel fund... #willingtoworkforadventures!

Below are just a few of the quotes that have inspired made me want to see God's creation more:

"Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one’s lifetime.” 

- Mark Twain

"Risk-taking is intelligent. When you do things you don’t normally do, you learn about yourself - you change, and you evolve."
—Heidi Klum 

"Travel is little beds and cramped bathrooms. It’s old television sets and slow Internet connections. Travel is extraordinary conversations with ordinary people. It’s waiters, gas station attendants, and housekeepers becoming the most interesting people in the world. It’s churches that are compelling enough to enter. It’s McDonald’s being a luxury. It’s the realization that you may have been born in the wrong country. Travel is a smile that leads to a conversation in broken English. It’s the epiphany that pretty girls smile the same way all over the world. Travel is tipping 10% and being embraced for it. Travel is the same white T-shirt again tomorrow. Travel is good wine and too many unfiltered cigarettes. Travel is flowing in the back of a bus with giggly strangers. It’s a street full of bearded backpackers looking down at maps. Travel is wishing for one more bite of whatever that just was. It’s the rediscovery of walking somewhere. It’s sharing a bottle of liquor on an overnight train with a new friend. Travel is “Maybe I don’t have to do it that way when I get back home."

- Nick Miller"

It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all- in which case, you fail by default.

-J K Rawling

"For if every true love affair can feel like a journey to a foreign country, where you can’t quite speak the language, and you don’t know where you’re going, and you’re pulled ever deeper into the inviting darkness, every trip to a foreign country can be a love affair, where you’re left puzzling over who you are and whom you’ve fallen in love with……all good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder."

— Pico Ayer 

When we start being too impressed by the results of our work, we slowly come to the erroneous conviction that life is one large scoreboard where someone is listing the points to measure our worth. And before we are fully aware of it, we have sold our soul to the many grade-givers. That means we are not only in the world, but also of the world. Then we become what the world makes us. We are intelligent because someone gives us a high grade. We are helpful because someone says thanks. We are likable because someone likes us. And we are important because someone considers us indispensable. In short, we are worthwhile because we have successes. And the more we allow our accomplishments — the results of our actions — to become the criteria of our self-esteem, the more we are going to walk on our mental and spiritual toes, never sure if we will be able to live up to the expectations which we created by our last successes. In many people's lives, there is a nearly diabolic chain in which their anxieties grow according to their successes. This dark power has driven many of the greatest artists into self-destruction. 

Henri Nouwen

Edith Pass

"No one wants to be the person who is made fun of for caring too much about something, who treats in earnest a situation that everyone else considers absurd. Even in personal relationships, feeling too heavily invested while simultaneously understanding that the other person couldn’t be more detached is one of the most profound feelings of embarrassment we can experience. Because it isn’t simply the embarrassment of making a mistake or a poor choice, it’s a shame over the kind of human being you are and how you see the world around you. To be shamed for your sincerity is to be reminded that you are dependent on something which is not dependent on you — that you are, once again, vulnerable."

                                                              - Unknown     

Castle Mountain

Glorious Castle Mountain

Vida

Three sky train trips into Vancouver in three weeks.
That amounts to approximately 12 hours of traveling... 12 hours too many? I think not!
I've seen... while not really all that much... I honestly don't think I've ventured more than three blocks away from the stop I've gotten off at... but those three blocks I've gotten to know VERY well.

In these three blocks I've ventured to the top floors/roofs of multiple (nice) hotels, climbed I don't know how many spiral staircases, entered more interior design/furniture stores than I can imagine, and wondered countless times how three blocks could possibly need 30 stores filled with beaver paraphernalia. I've gotten lost, but somehow convinced my friends that I knew where I was going. I have come to love the bustle of the city, knowing that it is impossible to walk 10 feet without practically running into someone is surprisingly comforting.

It's been great, but it has also been hard.

It is impossible to walk through the streets of Vancouver without smelling the smells that can only be connected with addiction. In the middle of this prosperous city live some of the poorest people in North America. It is impossible to meet these people and not fall in love with their humor and their enthusiasm. However, at the same time it is heartbreaking to see how lost and trapped they feel and often are, and it is so easy to doubt that there is hope for them. Luckily for me I'm surrounded by a community of people that regularly remind me that nobody is hopeless. Next time I seem someone huddled in a doorway, smoking who knows what, missing half their teeth I pray that I will think of the potential in their lives rather than the shame and fear. There is nothing that God cannot do.

Fall.

Beach Day

You gotta love a good beach day... the hole in our sandcastle was actually created by the water... it was awesome.

There are some things you will never see in H-town.

Run

There's a reason horror movies often include scenes with people running 

through fields. I think this pictures is giving off creepy vibes... or something.

Forgotten

It's hard to imagine that this place used to house more than just spiders and their webs.

Have you ever experienced the paradise of being shorter than the grass?

Sometimes I wish I could go back to those days.

.... and then I find a friend and we go find an empty field with tall grass :)