I have retired to my parents' home in Worthington for six days of "real" vacation. It's only twenty minutes north of campus, but what a huge difference. I literally can't go anywhere without a car, which my parents were nice enough to lend me while I'm here. The streets are blessedly garbage-free. And I have nothing to do, except unpack and organize the detritus of my room.

Saturday I went to a travel writing workshop at the Griswold Center and afterwards I browsed through downtown Worthington, which is really cute, almost like a beach town.

Unfortunately, most of the shops closed at 5, so I didn't get to look for very long, but walking around in such a nice atmosphere was lovely after the seediness of campus.

Posted by nice_genes at 7:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

As I wind up my summer on campus, it's a good time to take stock of what I've been doing...
-Working on the WOW web site
-Tutoring science at COSI and language arts privately
- Volunteering at International Friendships
-Co-facilitating a chapter of Next Chapter Book Club
-Riding COTA buses a lot to get to aforementioned activities
-Getting hit on by creepers at the bus stop >:(
-Reading at a much slower rate than normal: She's Come Undone, Chicken Soup for the Christian Soul, A Mind for God, The Purpose-Driven Life, Orthodoxy, and that infernal Brothers Karamazov
-Crafting: crochet, friendship pins, origami, and cutting out thousands of fruit stencils
-Working out so much that the guy at the JOS desk knows my name, haha. And I have triceps.
-Baking, though not quite as much as normal, it seems like
-Traveling more than expected: Springfield, MO; Cedarville, OH; Toronto and Montreal, Canada
-Getting ready to go to Taiwan: writing my testimony and singing in Chinese; making lesson plans; learning to type in Chinese
-Trying to catch up with high school friends and keep up with university friends; not doing too shabby there
-Making new friends in Morning Star Fellowship
-Actually doing a pretty decent job keeping up with prayer and Scripture reading, almost out of necessity in anticipation of Taiwan, really
-Thinking about what happens after graduation @_@

Graduate school...M.Ed and teacher licensure? MHS? M.Sci?
Ohio State? Vanderbilt? Johns Hopkins? Emory?
Peace Corps??? Africa???

It is still a little scary to think that my life is no longer laid out for me. I've always known what the next step is, but now, it is all up to me. Overwhelming, but also liberating.

Posted by nice_genes at 10:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In light of rising gas prices, I present the Buckeye State World Tour. In Ohio, you can go around the world within six hours! Visit lovely:

Athens, Baltimore, Berea, Cairo, Cambridge, Canton [pronounced KAN-tun], Delaware, Dover, Dublin, East Liverpool, East Palestine, Elyria, Genoa, Hicksville [no joke], Holland, Kent, Lancaster, Lima [pronounced LYE-ma], Macedonia, Madeira, Malta, Mantua, Milan [pronounced MY-lun], Montgomery, Montpelier, Oregon [pronounced or-uh-GON], Oxford, Parma, Salem, Sidney, Strasburg, Toledo [pronounced toh-LEE-doe], Trenton, Troy, and Yellow Springs [the English transliteration of the Chinese word for the afterlife]

Posted by nice_genes at 2:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)