Summit

This weekend, I went to Camp White Pine (Haliburton, ON) for a Power To Change retreat called Summit. It was a lot of fun. We left on Friday and came back today. We were supposed to be at the bus for 5:30 so that we could be ready to go at 6:00, but the bus didn't show up until 6. So we didn't end up leaving until 6:30. It was a 4 hour drive, sitting on an overcrowded (40 seats for 44 people) in the dark. It was quite the experience. Driving along the winding and hilly roads in the dark was kind of scary at some points, especially when we left the paved roads. And we were late, so we missed the beginning of the first session. But it was all good. It wasn't until Saturday morning that we could get a really look at the camp. It's a pretty nice place (although FCC's dining hall is waaay better). The area is beautiful. We had pancakes for breakfast (such a shame I had pancakes for breakfast on Friday). Then we had a session. Each session consisted of worship and a speaker. The worship band was really good and I really liked the songs they played (you should go listen to Cannons by Phil Whikham). The speaker was good too. He spoke about how life is short and eternity is long and how we should live for eternity, not our earthly lives. Saturday afternoon we made a video where we spelt out "Never the same P2C Summit" using out bodies. There I was able to see my friend who I worked with in the kitchen this past summer, it was nice to see her again. Then we had free time with activities running. My friend (the one that I went with) and I went to archery. I did pretty good if I do say so myself, I hit a bullseye and a hanging balloon. Then we sat on the dock and took a lot of pictures because it was so beautiful. The camp is kind of on a point, so they have a lot of "lakefront" property (they have 3 separate docks). We went on one of the smaller docks that was in the shade. It was beautiful weather all weekend. On Saturday it was actually too hot. I would even go so far as to say that this past weekend was warmer than the summer. Regardless, it was beautiful. The trees are just starting to change colour, so there's such a range of colour in the trees. A big part of meal time was the different campuses cheering. McMaster was probably one of the better cheerers. Brock was also pretty good, especially since they didn't have a ton of people. We had some good ones, but Waterloo has a bit of a reputation of not being good a cheering. Luckily, we had the most people, so our numbers kind of made up for it. But it was a lot of fun to cheer about how great your own school is. And then usually at the end, someone would start the "We. Are. All best friends. We are all best friends." cheer. Because we do love each other. The dessert for dinner was one of the highlights of the weekend: it was a giant homemade ice cream sandwich. It was so good. In the evening we had another session and then extended worship (probably one of my favourite parts of the weekend). There was a ball hockey tournament going on, and we watched the final game (Western won). There was a campfire, but my friend and I decided to call it a night. This morning we had a mini session and then broke off into seminars based on what we wanted to learn about. I went to one about how to keep God as your priority. It was good, very practical. All of the talks were very practical and directed towards university students, so that was nice. The bus ride back was much more pleasant than the drive up, but still not great. We took the highway this time, so that made it smoother. Overall a great weekend. They mentioned missions trips, and so I want to see if a missions trip will count towards the international volunteering part of my GEC. 

Things That Made Thursday Awesome

1. I managed to sell my courseware that I bought accidentally.
2. I found $20 on the ground.
3. I had nachos and dip for lunch.
4. I saw a Scion IQ in real life.
5. I ate brownies.
6. I ate Rheo Thompson Chocolates.
7. Laundry (ok, I know what you're thinking, laundry can't possibly be a good thing. But there is one thing I like about doing laundry, more specifically: my bed sheets. Remaking my bed, while a struggle at times, guarantees that my bed will be in perfect shape when I go to bed. All the sheet corners will be tight, everything will be even on both sides, and it looks nice :D I love going to bed after I've washed my sheets)
8. I (finally) got my mail key (I had the pleasure of going through almost 2 years worth of mail, because clearly the tenants before us never checked the mail. And out of all of it, only 2 were not advertisements. Also, Rogers needs to calm the heck down).
9. I got two late birthday presents (tea thermos and sushi!)
10. I actually got more done on my to-do-list than I thought.
11. The repair guys (or rather, the guy and gal) came and fixed everything we had listed on our deficiencies list.
12. Only one more day till Summit!

Things That Made Thursday Not So Awesome
1. I had to go to an extra 3hr class this evening.
2. Said 3hr class gave me more reading to do.
3. I missed my bus and panicked to find another one (I still made it on time).
4. Laundry
5. The repair guy did something to the toilet to fix it, but in doing that, created another problem with it.

258. Something you want to learn.
Crocheting (I would like to become good at it). How to use all the settings on my camera. How to force creative thoughts....

Emma Watson speaks at UN Women He for She Launch

y'all need to listen to this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6XTx2Rg04g

I Did It

I finally told Josh that I didn't have the same feelings that he has for me. I did it over text. Which is probably more horrible than I'm thinking it is. But there was no way I would have been able to tell him in person. And if I did, then it would be awkward, because now he would know, but would we then continue to hang out? Or would it just be a really awkward conversation and then bye? I dunno. I'm just glad to have it off my chest. But I still feel horrible. This is what I sent him: "Hi Josh. I need to tell you before we meet again that while I'm flattered by your feelings for me, I don't see you in the same way. You're a great guy, and you don't deserve to be led on like that."
Is that okay?! Is that acceptable?! I'VE NEVER HAD TO DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS BEFORE. And then, do you want to know what he sent back? "Oh icic well thanks for letting me know:)" It took me a second to realize what the "icic" meant. And it kills me, because there's usually a minimum of 2 emoticons per text and I could tell in that text that he was hurt/sad. And it's killing me! I'm a horrible person. I feel kind of like this right now:

On the one hand, I'm free from that guilt of leading him on, but on the other hand, I feel horrible for hurting his feelings. Ugh. I don't know how girls deal with this all the time.

On a completely different note, I've been listening to Shane & Shane a lot recently. They're a Christian band and I really like them. I'm not exactly where I got their music from, probably from one of the times I air-dropped with people at camp. But really like their sound. I also recently found out about Lecrae, who is a Christian hip-hop artist. I've only listened to a couple of his songs, but I really like them. I really like the messages in his songs.

257. Are your friends mainly guys or girls?
Girls (and I apparently just destroyed my one guy friendship).

My brother would probably kill me if he knew that I shared this with you all, but this is the message(s) he sent me on my birthday (via Skype??)

 (for the record, it did not, in fact, take him 10mins to send all those messages. Skype shows the time the message was sent, and up till then it had only been 3mins. The entire thing took him 7).

Also for your viewing pleasure, more WiFi names that are far superior to "potato". (Torchwood is a Doctor Who spin-off ;D )

255. I'll love you if...
You accept me for who I am and if we have similar interests.

256. 3 random facts
1. The Bible, the world's best selling book, is also the world's most shoplifted book.
2. Owls are one of the only birds that can see the colour blue.
3. Shakespeare is quoted 33,150 times in the Oxford English Dictionary.
I have no idea whether these are true or not. I'm going to go so far as to say they're not true. Some of the other facts on the site I was on I know for a fact not to be true.

WiFi

Of all the cool (or logical) wifi names that could possibly exist, my apartment's wifi is "potato".

254. Things I Hate.
Wow, somebody likes to dwell on the negative.
- when I want to listen to music, but none of my music is what I want to listen to
- bus rides where we are packed tighter than sardines
- when I start to freak out a little inside about not having enough time to do everything, when really everything is ok
- yeah that's all I can think of right now

This year, tuesdays are the days that are held in Stratford, so that's where I was yesterday. In my first class we got to spend 2/3 of the class walking around and taking pictures. It was a lot of fun, and we got some really good shots. We took some by the abandoned building behind campus and also meandered into town and took some by Town Hall. While we were out, ambulances showed up at the Stratford campus. They wheeled someone out on a gurney and took them, I'm assuming, to the hospital. We didn't recognize who it was, so we thought it might be one of the third years, because they live in Stratford now. The second class was nowhere near as fun, but some interesting discussions about some readings. And then, near the end of that class, one girl was having trouble breathing and was all red in the face, so she left too. She also ended up going to the hospital. Not a good day for UWaterloo Stratford campus! Two hospital trips in one day.
After class, my friends and I didn't get on the bus, because we had plans for a GNO, I guess you could call it. We had tickets to see the play Hay Fever at the Avon Theatre. But first we did some shopping, mainly at chocolate stores. Well, only at chocolate stores. I bought a lot of chocolate :) (I love Rheo Thompson!) A lot of stores in Stratford close at 6, so there wasn't a lot of options and/or time. So that was fun. Then we ate dinner at Fellini's, an Italian restaurant. I got pasta with chicken, bacon and roasted peppers. It was really good. I kind of had to shove the last few bits down though because I was so full. And then my friends had told the restaurant that it was my birthday, so they brought me a mini cake. And even though I was full, I still ate it because that is quite possibly the best cake I have ever had in my entire life, no jokes. It was so moist and chocolatey, I wanted to call it a lava cake, but there was no oozing...I don't even know how to describe it. It was so good. It's too bad I had to force it down because I was so full. Then we wandered over to the theatre and saw the play. It was really funny, but not quite what I was expecting. I don't really know what I was expecting. And as a surprise birthday gift, my friends payed for my ticket! So that was really sweet of them. After the play, we got into the car (my friend drove up to Stratford in the morning so that we would have a ride back). My friend who was driving claimed to have a great sense of direction, but then made this one turn out of Stratford that I was questioning. So then we got the GPS out and it told us to make a couple turns. A few minutes later, we were back in Downtown Stratford. (So clearly it's me who has a good sense of direction). Then we were on our way home. By the time we finally got going in the right direction and had dropped everybody off, I got home around 11:30. I had told myself that I was going to to some reading for school when I got back, but that didn't happen. It was a very long day, but a lot of fun.

252. Height.
I believe I am almost, but not quite, 5'9".

253. Role Model
Reagan Butler.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy

This is my favourite thing.

Hey hey hey guess what? One of my classes, Digital Lives, is (apparently) one of the coolest classes in Canada! I've been to two classes so far, and I have a lab later. Both of my profs are pretty awesome. They are very aware of what it's like to be a student (I don't know if that's the right way to say that, they understand what they're putting us through, I guess). My Digital Lives prof is awesome. She's very "hip", I guess you could say. She's really funny too. That course is going to be a lot of reading and a lot of writing,  but I'm looking forward to it.

A Day in the Life?

I was going to go to church this morning, but then I missed the bus because I decided not to cross the street at the red flashing hand -_- So I came back and watched a sermon online. It was good, it discussed the question, "If God knows the future, how can we have free will?" I made some cookie dough, which I'll bake later tonight or tomorrow. Then my friend and I went to the mall, where we bumped into another one of our friends. We bought yoga mats and ankle weights because we are determined to do a mini work out each night. I figured, the only way I'm going to really get into the work out is if I know that I've invested money, cause then I have to make it worth it. Hopefully it works out (no pun intended). Then we all went to Dollarama, which we walked back from. I'm very tired. And now I'm going over to a friend's house tonight. This is too much for me to handle. And I haven't even got my school stuff together. There is not enough hours in the day. I'll just be happy to get into a routine.

250. Description of crush.
Don't have one

251. Fears?
Oblivion. Just kidding. I don't know that I really have a big fear. Sometimes I'm a little paranoid about forgetting things and needing to double check things, but I don't know if that's a fear. Sometimes, when I'm feeling philosophical, I fear the future.

Apartment Life (?!)

(I'm back!)
Everything's going pretty well in the new apartment. Still haven't met two of the girls...one hasn't even moved in yet. Oh well. I'm not complaining. My room is small, but I'm making it work. Now that most of my stuff is up off the floor, it seems bigger :) (I have a lot of stuff. Too much, really. Although I'm realizing now that I did not bring a lot of shirts with me. Guess I'll have to go shopping!)
This is the view out my window:

Pretty dece.
lol jk

This is actually the view out my window. Could be worse, I suppose. At least I'm not looking directly at another apartment building, which is what one would expect in this area. It will take some getting used to living in the apartment, but I'm sure it will all be fine.  The biggest thing for me will probably be thinking of meals to eat. Not even making them is an issue for me, just thinking of what to eat. Maybe I'll just continue on with the camp menu, but with added peanut butter :)
Also I don't know if this is weird or creepy, but I made a picture of Elliot my desktop background and it makes me smile every time I see it. I'm going to miss him so much.
Speaking of boys, Josh is very eager to see me. Like, he hasn't even moved in yet and he's already asking to see me tomorrow. He's already said that he really likes me, but I don't know how I feel about him. But I now understand when girls say they don't know how to break it off. I totally understand that. Because even though we haven't actually had a thing yet, I don't want to crush his hopes and dreams. Ugh. I can't deal with all this drama. I don't know how girls do this all the time.

I'm not going to catch up with the QOTD because I haven't posted in over a month, but I'll do a few and will continue on with them.

245. Opinion on insecurities.
I think everyone has them or has had them at some point. I think they are completely justified and people are entitled to have them.

246. Do you miss how things were a year ago?
Well, a year ago I was a lot more homesick than I am right now and was stepping into first year university not knowing anything, so not really.

247. Have you ever been to New York?
I think I landed at their airport once? I know that I flew over New York City once, because I remember seeing the Statue of Liberty from the air.

248. What is your favourite song at the moment?
Afire Love by Ed Sheeran

249. Age and Birthday?
18, but only for another couple weeks.