I'm coming home!

I’m coming home!!!! We packing all night long – got less than 3 hours of sleep. And we’ve been frantically packing and cleaning all day. And now I’ have 33 hours of traveling to do – and then I’ll be home! :) I’m so excited. It’ll be Christmas time! Yay. Ok, loooooong plane rides here I come…

See all you guys soon!

Leah

God & Nature week 2 - aka "workload mania"

This was our last week of God & Nature. Our prof, Bret Stephenson, came back to teach again, and I actually think I liked this week better than last. This week was full of bringing up specific controversial topics about the world and the environment and what exactly we should do to care for it. We talked about animal rights, deforestation, GMO (genetically modified organism) crops - which was really interesting, global warming, eco-feminism (don't even get me started), the problem of evil in the world, city slums, etc. All in all, we had some really good conversations. Often heated ones too, because people in our class were on both ends of the spectrum for everything.

We had to do an animals rights presentation for the class - and lead them in a discussion about some of the issues there, and that was really hard for me to remain unbiased that whole time I was doing it. Because I love meat. I always will. And I have no intention of becoming a vegetarian. But it was good to hear everyone's take on that and to learn more about it i guess.



On top of everything we had to do for the class - a ton of work - we had 4 birthday parties! Sunday was Anela's birthday (& Bry's, but we celebrated his Monday), and we had a spa night. Then for Bry's on Monday a bunch of ppl went paintballing. Then for Laura's on Tuesday, we had a runway "eurotrash" theme, which was really fun! And Friday was Bret, our prof's, birthday, but we just had cake.


On top of that we had a Thanksgiving meal on Thursday night. Which was realllllly good. A lot of people made their homemade recipes from back home. And we had soo much food. But it didn't feel like Thanksgiving, because NZ obviously doesn't have Thanksgiving here, and the weather is really warm for November - I think. So we had some even planned for every night this week. Lot of food. Lot of desserts. Good stuff. :)

Leah

ISP week - aka "don't do homework, do random fun stuff instead"

So this week we're supposed to be working on our ISP (Integrated Seminar Project) research papers. Since there is no class time involved in this, it feels like we have a "free" week. Which we kind of do, kind of don't. Well, ok, we don't, but we're not doing so much work as we are a bunch of fun, random things instead. :)

This is Anela's last week of being a teenager, and she she instigated this week of randomness. We started it by sleeping on the porch during the weekend, then that led to making a slide on the stairs (so fun), and they built a fort the other night in the classroom and slept in it.

Yesterday we went paintballing. That was so much fun! I had never been before, and I almost didn't go. Glad I did now. They have a really sweet "course" just a couple blocks away from the Old Convent, and they let us all do it for super cheap - $10 NZD, which is like $5 USD. We played capture the flag, where I felt like I was playing real life "Call of Duty 4", and then splatter hut, which was basically where 1 team pummels the other team who are inside a hut. That was my favorite. :) Got some good welts from it, but it was so worth it.





Then today was Tommy's birthday, so we all played live pac-man, Mario Kart, and Mortal Combat. So much fun! We used wheelbarrows (real and man-wheelbarrows), scooters, and jump ropes for our "karts" in Mario Kart, hahaha. then we had mud pie for dessert. yummm.


Tomorrow I will work on my paper....I will...maybe. :P

Leah

Fire at Westmont

(that's the library at Westmont) So if any of you don't know yet, Westmont campus caught fire earlier today. A wildfire on the hills behind Montecito spread with the huge Santa Ana winds (up to 70mph). The entire Montecito area has been evacuated, and dozens of homes have already been destroyed by the fire.

Westmont students have been evacuated to the gym, but they're safe now. The fire has completely destroyed the math building, physics building, bauder hall (a psychology building), the Quonset huts, and rumors of the prayer chapel as well. There are several fires in Clark, the freshman dorms, that firemen are trying to contain. So far none of the other major buildings have been severely damaged. But we heard there are several spot fires still, that are being blown around by the winds...

This is crazy. We've heard about California fires around the area in years past, but none has ever hit us - it never seem real till now. I can't believe that this is actually happening. I'm praying hard for everyone that they'll be safe and the campus will be ok. The winds have died down a bit, so hopefully not much more damage will be done.

I hope everyone's ok. This is just crazy..

Later:

Fire's out. Official damage report said the prayer chapel is still in tact, but the other buildings did burn down. 15 of the faculty houses burned down, including Mark the RD's house (my freshman RD) and Dr. McMahon's house (my advisor). 67 students (living on & off campus) plus faculty are now without homes, but luckily, no one was hurt in the fire.

It was amazing to see how fast word spread about Westmont and how many people were praying for the college. That's why most of the campus was saved, I'm sure. What is a miracle is that the math & physics buildings and the quonset huts were scheduled for demolition in a couple days and so were cleared out already. So nothing was really lost. The psychology department was the only one to really get hit, with losing offices.

But the main concern right now is finding temporary housing for the students and faculty. Classes aren't starting up again until December 1, so the college has time to fix the damage done on campus and to situate classes again. I wish I was back there, so I could help out.

Roadtrip day 10

We left Christchurch today, headed back to the Old Convent. Classes start at 9:00am tomorrow morning. :(

We spent this morning shopping again. I really just want to stay on this roadtrip around NZ and not go back to classes. A good thing about going back, though, is Jess’s cooking – no more pbj!

When we got to Kaikoura, Catherine and her family just happened to be driving back to the Convent, and picked up 8 of us so we didn’t have to walk back to the Convent with all of our stuff. So nice.

For our community night that night we all talked about our trips. It was fun hearing about what everyone did. Since it was Catherine’s birthday over the break, we had a party too. We played capture the flag, then had cake. Time to sleep – classes tomorrow.

Leah

Roadtrip day 9

We had to pack up and clean up our campervan this morning before we turned it back in. Took awhile. I didn’t realize how dirty and messy we had gotten. We just kinda embraced it cuz we were always so dirty too. The rental people weren’t satisfied that we had cleaned it enough and made us take it to a gas station to wash it. We didn’t want to pay for a carwash, so we cleaned it all by hand, with a squidgy and paper towels. We probably looked ridiculous wiping the car down in the gas station. :P Whatever, we got it clean, and for free.

So we then dropped the van off, on fumes, then headed into town for the day.

It felt soo nice to take a shower in Stonehurst when we dropped all of our stuff off. Second shower of the trip – woohoo.

We spent the rest of the day in town shopping. I probably spent too much money on clothes and stuff. Oops. I’ll be working over Christmas break, so I have money to last me through spring semester. We go back to Kaikoura tomorrow. Wow, this trip went by really fast. It’s been a ton of fun. :)

Leah

Roadtrip day 8

(Disclaimer: ok, just to let everyone know, I am safely back safe and sound in Kaikoura. So don’t freak out too much about this day lol)

We started our long drive back up the East Coast today. We’ve gotten lazier and lazer at getting up early to either watch the sunrise or go on a hike early in the morning before we head out. Anela wanted to get up at 5:00am to watch the sunrise! 5:00am! Haha, yeah right. (sorry Anela, too early for me). Besides it was raining really hard in the morning, so we waited almost 5 hours for it to pass (and for us to wake up) before we went to go see a waterfall. Then we headed out to Dunedin.

We were freezing cold the whole time we were in Dunedin – that seemed to be a theme during the whole trip. But with the cold and all, we stopped to see the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. Nissi and I snuck into the shop, though we were really supposed to pay for a tour to be able to access the store – oops, whatever. We got chocolate for really cheap there. :) yummm.

Anyway, driving out of Dunedin, we saw these 2 guys hitchhiking to Christchurch. When we saw them, we slowed down, almost picked them up, then decided that we shouldn’t and sped off again – they were so bummed they almost got a ride lol. Then we talked about it, and decided we should be Good Samaritans and we should turn around and pick them up. We were going to Christchurch too after all. So we clean up the van, hide valuables and all, then turn around and grab them. They were so stoked. They were 2 guys, Calum (18) and Ben (19), and they had never hitchhiked before. They were just going up to their friend’s house for the weekend, and needed a ride.

I know what you’re thinking, that we weren’t being smart at all by picking up random guys. But it felt like the right thing to do. And they were really cool guys. Made the whole trip more fun, learning NZ saying and slang, talking about the north and south island, and just hanging out. Oh, and they were agnostic, so we got to talk with them about Christ. And Calum was asking a bunch of hard questions that Christians commonly struggle with, like what about the scientific evidence for evolution, why is there evil in the world, why do innocent people die, etc. I had never witnessed like that to a person before, so it was really cool. I don’t really know if I got through to him or not, but I’m praying I did.

We got all the way up to Christchurch, dropped them off, and they gave us a place to park our van for the night, which was really nice. That whole experience made that day pretty eventful.

Leah