I’m Janice! I hail from the wonderful (but relatively unknown for some reason) little town of Flemington, NJ —
home of Liberty Village Premium Outlets and the courthouse where the Lindbergh baby trial took place. I’m a transfer
student, majoring in Social Work & Bible, and I’ve finally made it to my senior year! I may be a TKD black
belt... but I’m terrified of bugs.
What is up with this crazy weather?!! It's freezing then it's warm, then the wind picks up so much that I think I'm going to topple over..
(wouldn't that be awful? You're just walking around, doing your thing... and then a huge gust of wind comes a-blowin' and you fall over without warning. Bam! I mean, Dorothy was lucky that she was blown away -- when you fall you usually don't go very far.)
Well, despite the wind.. a couple friends and I went over to Cracker Barrel for lunch today! Two of us had never been here before, so it was an interesting "first-time" experience. Just growing up in the household/town/state that I did, southern food was never a big thing in my life.. for quite obvious reasons. I must have stared at the menu for the longest time, wondering how "fried" the foods that were described as "deep fried" actually were :P my final decision was the catfish platter! With hush puppies! Quite tasty, I must say.. but I think I had more fun exploring the store after stuffing my face~
One thing that I have noticed during my time here at PBU, that was especially noticeable amongst the trio I went out to lunch with, was how the length of our studies affected our thinking. I know that my biblical worldview has drastically changed throughout the course of my three years here, and that my thinking and approach has matured in ways I did not know I was entirely capable of. It is just so.. interesting to see people change and grow as we dive deeper into our respective bible classes. Mmhm. It makes me so hopeful :)
P.S. Several changes have been made within Admissions, lately.. and while it's all splendid I can't get over the initial shock of how strange it is seeing Jamie (the new Director of Admissions) around the office! It's all good, though~ hi Jamie!!
I feel like I say this every other minute of my life, but today has seriously been one of those days. One of those weeks. Heck, one of those months!
You know how you will hear a song for the first time and your initial reaction is "nuh uh.. there is no way I will ever, ever, EVER like this song" -- only to have it stuck in your head and stomp all over whatever shred of dignity you tried to hold onto.
Alas, my friends.. for the past x-amount of time I have been subconsciously bopping along to this one song that I tried so hard to stay away from. I bet you that if you have walked past me or seen me wandering off to class recently, I am singing the song in my head. Unwillingly, I might add -- but that doesn't change the fact that it has invaded my life and all I can really do is let it run its course before another song comes along and has a death grip on my very existence. I hope my lack of dramatization does not go unappreciated.
Shame this song is so catchy. Maybe some of you out there will like it better than I do:
(and then we can all bop along to it together!)
The funniest thing I've heard today: "Love ponies, hate phonies"
My initial reaction was more along the lines of "....what?" but as I kept thinking about it, the funnier it became :P maybe that's just me. Sorry.
One of these days I am going to host a week-long blog series about soap. I suppose you could call it a new passion of mine? And no, this is not to say I've never heard of soap before -___+ what I'm talking about is the REAL deal -- soap without the added gunk, soap that does what it's supposed to do! But like I said, I'll blog about it some other time.. I just wanted to pique your interests! (if that didn't make you curious, how about this? Using real soap can save you money. Yeah, MONEY, you poor college student..)
All bubbles set aside, I wanted to share SIFE's Anti-Piracy video with you all. We watched it during the meeting today and I got a good laugh out of it. Happy watching!
This week... semester... year... has been a whirlwind of activity and I have been quite busy, even though I'm not exactly sure what I've been up to. The realization hit me a bit hard as I dragged myself through the door a little after 10pm tonight -- I've been up since 6am and with the exception of two 1-hour breaks, I've been running around non-stop all over the place. Dude, I'm tired.
(but to be honest, I'd rather be crazy busy than go crazy from boredom)
The funny thing is, the busier I am, the more time I seem to have on my hands to consciously spend in God's presence. Isn't that all sorts of strange? The more hectic my schedule is, the more time I have to spend in prayer, do devotions, etc...
I suppose it is just that much easier to put off doing things when I know I actually have the time or something among those lines. You know, I would try to make it sound a hundred times more insightful, but my brain is pretty much on autopilot at the moment.
Oh! I do want to mention this, though -- representatives from Sam's Club were on campus today, and they were giving out free goodies! That and they were awfully nice (: I know that I occasionally complain that Langhorne is in the middle of nowhere and junk, but really, I appreciate our community here so much. There are quite a few businesses out there that simply do so much for the students at PBU, whether it's through fundraiser activities or simply coming to the students to give us all sorts of cool opportunities. Yay~~
(seriously, I think it may be bedtime. Right now.)
That dreaded day has finally come. The first exam of the semester takes place tomorrow morning promptly at 8am. Oh woe is me. I feel... I feel... awake?
I took a catnap earlier and now I'm just about to fall out of my chair now from the anticipation! (of the studying I'm about to do... or something along those lines) My textbook is propped open and flipped to the right chapter. My study guide is all filled out and ready to go. There's a pad of paper and a pen to my left should I feel compelled to jot down more notes during my studious workout, and my handy dandy cellphone is being kept close by in case I have to use a lifeline. I think I'm prepared. Studying will commence the minute I publish this entry.
SO EARLIER TODAY as I was walking back from lunch with two girls who were visiting PBU, one of them asked a question but as I opened my mouth to answer a huge gust of wind came a-blowin' and basically what happened next was something like me inhaling for an additional 5 seconds. True story! It's okay though, the girls were too busy trying to not get blown away to pay much attention to my perplexing situation...
I've been feeling a little out of it lately and I pray that it's not the onset of a cold or anything terrible like that. I have this fantastic ability to catch every germ that comes floating my way, you see... and one of my apartment-mates is currently coughing and being all sick-like. I've been running around lysol-ing everything around the apartment the past few days out of fear that I, along with my other apartment-mate, will succumb to illness as well. Yeah, I'm a tad over-dramatic when it comes to being sick. I know, I know.. I play it off like it's nothing!
Alright, that's about enough of my nonsense for tonight. There's an exam to study for!
It's Global Mission Week! In the past it's been a week-long event held prior to the official start of the spring semester, but you know PBU -- always changing (in the best possible way, of course..), thriving, and basically being awesome.
Global Mission Week has been incorporated into our chapels and classrooms this year, which is a really fun change. Just the other day I had missionaries come into a couple of my classes and speak about their experience, which had me completely intrigued as they also incorporated their experience into what we are studying. See, it's one thing to simply think about missions.. it's another thing to hear it all from first-hand experience. It's captivating, I tell you!
Ah, and like past GMWs, breakout sessions are also taking place. I have yet to go to one due my crazy weird schedule, but I'm going to try to make it to the dorm fellowship with the missionaries tonight! AND TOMORROW IS SUPER THURSDAY!! Meaning classes are canceled all day and it's an all-you-can-attend breakout session buffet. Yum.
ANNOUNCEMENT: so at the SIFE meeting earlier today, it was said that PBU has recycled 4.1 TONS per month. Not pounds, TONS. I am unsure how many more times I will have to type that in caps until it starts to sink in...... TONS. TONS AND TONS. Yes ma'am, that's a whole lot of recycling.
To be honest, for the longest time I had deemed recycling to be an unnecessary hassle and so I simply didn't do it if the opportunity didn't present itself right in front of my face. That excuse pretty much went flying out the window when our campus went green and all these lovely recycling bins popped up in oh-so-convenient locations all around campus, making it just too easy to toss my [insert recyclable here] into the recycle instead of the trash! Hooray!
(.......that and the fact that a friend of mine who shall remain nameless would scold me mercilessly every time she caught me throwing recyclables into the trash.)
And to hear that all this recycling our campus is doing means 4.1 TONS less in landfills...? Well then! The task is simple enough.. keeps me out of trouble.. and does the environment good. Do I sound like a commercial yet? But are you convinced yet? At this rate I'm going to find myself buying those reusable shopping bags...
Alright, so -- my best friend Minjung and I haven't seen each other in over a year (because we're such busy bees) but this past weekend we FINALLY found the time to meet up :D we went into NYC to play~ caught a show on Broadway, ate crazy Italian food, shopped, and basically walked around until we seriously could not see straight because we were so tired.. yeah, it was grand ;)
The set: (prior to the start of the show.. shh)
Minjung (we're in M&M world.. yay!)
Friendships normally require a bit of maintenance. But some friendships come much more naturally, I think~ and it's the ones that occur and remain effortless that I believe is just another way God shows us His love for us. He knows we're crazy creatures and often times run in the opposite direction from Him (and half the time no one knows why, not even ourselves xP).. so He put a few physical barriers (our friends) to keep us in line, in love, in Him.
