MEHA--Mideast Honors Association Conference

Good weekend! On Friday, Tabitha and I were excused from our 3:00 class so we could pack for a weekend in Indianapolis. 7 of us from the honors program signed up to go with our Honors director to the conference for the Mideast Honors Association. We piled into a 12-passenger van and got to Indianapolis around 8 PM. We had missed the activities earlier in the evening but we were able to join the Icebreakers events and get settled in our rooms. For Icebreakers, we did things like split into groups and play the Numbers Game. Ever played? There are a list of questions about the members of the group, and each question has a quantitative answer. For example, "What is your shoe size?" Then you add up the group's answers and compare them with other groups, and whoever has the biggest number wins. Pointless but fun. (We didn't win.)

Tabitha and I stayed in a room with Christy, and that night the three of us went out exploring the city. It was awesome. Most stores were closed, but we got some great pictures, which I can't post yet because I don't have them. Then on Saturday and Sunday we had presentations about things such as stem cell research and how to expand your honors program. They were actually pretty interesting and useful. We explored the city some more on Saturday night. Walked along the canal, posed for pictures with awesome public art, had mint hot chocolate at the Chocolate Shop...it was a really nice time. I would definitely recommend the conference to other honors students. It's a nice weekend away, a great chance to explore a new place, and you can meet other honors students and learn really important things. I plan on using things I learned at the conference a LOT, such as fundraising ideas and strategies and ways to organize committees. It's definitely a conference for people who want to be leaders.

Now we're back at Bluffton and I've got a speech due on Wednesday, a speech due on Friday, and a huge science test tomorrow. Gotta go study!

here we go again...

I have pictures from the break!


Here's one thing that Bluffton students do for fun...we sit in our dorm rooms and throw beach balls around! The ball actually came from Marbeck Center Board, the group that does activities. They stopped by the dinner table a month or two ago and gave out stuff to promote their Friday night activity, which was a luau. I only stopped by the luau for a little while, but this ball has lasted awhile.

This is Eli, who came to visit us. Good times!

The last couple of days have been unremarkable. People gradually trailed back to campus on Monday. I think I hung out with the guys but I don't really remember! I didn't do much of anything yesterday because I didn't have classes. Last night, Chris and I both had papers we had to work on, so we didn't watch a movie or anything, but each of us had done the paper that the other one was doing, so we helped clarify stuff for each other, which was helpful. The papers were for Introduction to Biblical Worldview. His was an in-depth study (well, a few pages' worth of study) on Matthew 5-7, while mine was about "the good life."

Hall Association is winding things up for the year. I thought of an interesting idea last night to boost our income from the Pepsi-brand vending machines in the lobby. We used to get around $200 every month and now it's down to less than $50, so I wondered if maybe a change of selection would help boost the sales again. We're going for more "girly" drinks, like more flavored water and less straight energy drinks. We'll see how that change goes over.

Little Sibs Weekend is coming up soon, as is Capture the Flag with the other "south-side" halls, Bren-Dell and Riley Court. Details about Capture the Flag are still a little up in the air, but it sounds like it'll be a fun thing! Also, Cat, an RA from Ropp Addition, decorated the lobby for spring, and it makes it look really festive. Pictures will be posted next blog! That's one reason I love Ropp: the Hall Association makes it look adorable. We have big windows that we paint with words and symbols to celebrate different events, like hearts for Valentine's Day, and we decorate for things like Christmas and Halloween. It looked pretty magical at Christmas, I thought--lots of twinkle lights and several decorated trees. So at night when you came back to the dorm, you'd be walking in the glow of the string lights! (Sometimes, I have no idea why, the lights in the lobby are off in the evening/night. It's actually a little spooky. I should bring that up at Hall Association!)

See you all later, I've got another paper to write!

fun with the guys for Easter

Well, this weekend was pretty awesome! I spent all my time with Chris, Peter, and Eli. We had picked Eli up from Goshen on Thursday afternoon and hung out that evening. The next morning we had planned on meeting up for lunch at Marbeck, but then they called me and said oops: Marbeck isn't open this whole weekend! So we drove to Community Markets, which is rather expensive and not very large but really close by, and picked up a few things, and then made the 20-minute trek to Wal-Mart to get a TON of food. We planned on 6 meals for 4 people, but it ended up being way too much, because Chris and I were gone the whole day Saturday. We drove to Perrysburg, his hometown, to take his sister shopping for her birthday, and we also went to Biaggi's for dinner with a lot of his extended family. They're fun and wacky. I had been to Biaggi's once before--they have one right outside of Rochester--and it was pretty good.

So anyway, that left only Peter and Eli there to eat food on Saturday, and then Eli left today after lunch. Our Easter dinner was ridiculous--it was tacos and Hawaiian rolls! Not exactly traditional. But it was fun nonetheless--and maybe it'll be a new tradition, who knows?

The campus was dead this weekend. I'm not sure there was ANYONE on my entire floor except for me. If there was, I didn't see or hear them at night when I was around, and there was no evidence of them in the bathrooms. The RAs put up these pieces of colored paper with questions on them in the stalls and you write answers to them. So I've written my answers and nobody else has put anything up yet, so I'm assuming I've been the only one here! I saw my RA on maybe Thursday night, but after that, it was so empty. I don't really know what the international students did. I bet some of them were invited home by friends.

At least nobody being here gave us plenty of room in the floor's freezer to store our food!

We also hung out with 3 friends of Eli's, two who go here and one from Goshen. They came by Chris's room and watched part of Enchanted with us...They didn't like it too much. Too girly for them. But they confirmed my best friend Adam's opinion that I am Princess Gisele personified/she is the movie version of me! So if you want to know what I'm like, just watch the movie :-)

Oh, I forgot. On Friday night the guys and I went over to Rodney and Marie's, friends of ours who live just outside of town, and had dinner with them. Then we played Five Crowns and I came in first place! I'm pretty proud of myself. I saved the scorecard to put in a scrapbook :-) It's a good game, you should try it!

spontaneity

I expect this weekend to be a good one! It's going to be pretty empty here because most people have gone home for Easter. But I wasn't up for an 8-hour car ride on Thursday and Monday to get home, so I'm staying here, as are my friend Peter and my boyfriend Chris. Plus, Peter and I drove to Goshen today to pick up our friend Eli, so I did end up spending about 6 hours in the car, but it was 2 sets of 3 hours, so it wasn't as bad as going home would be.

Tonight we watched "Right at Your Door," a slightly creepy and disturbing movie about dirty bombs going off in LA. It was unnerving to think that we're so vulnerable, but it made me feel better to know that I'm in a small town where it's presumably safer. But the movie, all in all, was pretty lame. We've been watching lame movies lately because the Movie Gallery in town just closed, and so they were selling DVDs for $1.50. But by the time Chris got there, they were pretty cleaned out of good ones! I did end up scoring some great deals (of course, the guys don't want to watch mine), but it's sad that they went out of business because they're the only movie rental place in town. Although the McDonald's does have one of those new DVD rental machines!

Speaking of McDonald's, I went with the girls (Melissa, Danette, Kristy, and Meghan) to McDonald's the other night right after dinner to get Shamrock Shakes. We decided that we were hungry for them and so we just hopped in the car and went! It's nice to have such freedom and to be able to be spontaneous like that. And the same thing happened a different night--I was at dinner with Kristen and some of our mutual friends, and we decided that we were going to go to Movie Gallery that night that it was $1.50. So, again, we just hopped in the car and spent like an hour browsing the store!

It's good times like those that make college so much fun!

outside!

Back from spring break…not a great one. I’m kind of glad to be back to my normal routine at school.

Tonight I'm hanging out with Alen, Chris, Peter, and Chris's friend Adam from Cincinatti. Earlier they did something that I think is really cool, even if I don't do it myself--they played Ultimate Frisbee in the field by Adams Bridge. They have it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 4. It's just an informal type of thing, I guess, but sometimes a prof joins them, which is funny to see. Today it was supermuddy but they played anyway, so Chris came back with a handprint on his shirt. I should have taken a picture!

Another outdoor activity that I haven't taken part in is sledding. There's a couple of small hills on campus, one by the art building and one by Bren-Dell dorm. Sometimes we hear little kids sledding down the hill, but a lot of the time it's actual college students who are sledding. My girl friends have had some snowball fights, which aren't my thing, but a few days ago we staged a fake snowball fight for the Putnam County Sentinel for a friend who works there:

These are the girls from my floor that I go to dinner with every day. Kristy on the left, me in brown and pink, Meghan in red, then Danette, and Melissa being the victim of our attack. It was totally out of character for me to be throwing a snowball--and throwing it Melissa--but it turned out to be a really cute photo!

I guess the good thing about being in a small town is that you have a better chance of being the newspaper than you do in a big city! :-)