Spring Break

For the first half of Spring Break, I was not sick! :) My family and I took a road trip all along the peninsula part of Washington.

:)

Road trips are amazing!

& Lucy came with us! :)

We stopped at the Hoh Rainforest in the Olympic National Park

Very very very green

I felt as if I were inhaling only clean fresh O2 (Until I saw someone smoking)

& the city of Port Angeles and Forks. They even had Twilight Tours haha.

You would think that you would see teen girls with their moms all over the city of Forks... being obsessed and all, but nooo!

The only people I saw were 5 or 6 male Indians (not Native Americans) in the age category of 20-30 years. hahahaha ;)

It was kinda weird actually. The city must become more busy when it's not sunny and/or during the Twilight hours... I'm not very interested in finding out though...

Onto the next AND final destination (besides home):

Pacific Beach, WA

God's creation is so beautiful!

My two younger brothers were uber excited about the ocean!

They were both born in Hawaii, but they don't remember it very well.

Lucy got really dirty/sandy...

So we put her in a plastic bag for the drive back to the cabin.

:)

And when we got to the cabin, we gave her a bath and cut most of her fur off. She looks like a mini (white) lion now. Or a hyena.

Until next time.

Cough cough

For those of you who don't know, being sick is not fun.

Out of the blue, I became really sick on Wednesday. Like really sick. Really quickly. Within 3 hours, I went from feeling ok to a 102 point something fever. I don't usually get sick (thankfully), but when I do, it's bad.

-Coughing

-102 Fahrenheit fever (for 2 days)

-painful coughing

-headache

-back and neck hurt/achy

My throat hurts every time I cough, so I try not to cough. But it's hard not to cough when your body makes you cough. Thankfully, cough drops are helping and so is cough medicine, but my throat still hurts. So, I drink water... lots of water.

I have already learned my lesson about drinking water when my throat starts to hurt. :)

A few years ago, I insisted that not drinking water [for my sore throat] was the best way to go. But my sore throat just got worse and worse. I probably didn't eat or drink for 2-3 days (not a good thing to do). Anyways, I ended up going to the ER because of dehydration. They hooked me up to a IV, and I was completely miserable. I absolutely hate IVs or giving blood. Every time I have to do that stuff, I start sweating and start seeing spots, AND almost black out... not fun at all :( Anyways, when the water started going into my wrist (that is where the nurse found a vein- it took her awhile because my veins were really small or something), I could feel the water spreading up my arm and throughout my body... such a weird feeling. haha I don't remember exactly how much water I ended up getting, but it was a lot (maybe two and a half liters).

Lesson Learned: Every time I have the slightest sore throat coming on, drink tons of water :) It works.

So for the past few days, I've just been spending 95% of my time on the couch or in my bed... drinking water or sleeping or watching movies/shows.

In some ways it's nice to be sick during Spring Break, and in other ways it's not. I have minimal responsibilities right now, but I did have a list of things to do before the break ended. I probably won't get as much done as I wanted to. Oh well.

Cough. cough. cough. cough. cough.

Until next time.

Productivity.

Productive is a word I can use to describe my days off Facebook and on Spring Break.

On Wednesday I finished my second quarter of college, and survived ;) I had a Biology and English final. All the tests in biology are scantron based; therefore, it doesn't take too long for the teacher to grade. So that same day my final grade was known. I walked to my teachers office before my next class, and he looked at the records on his computer and told me I got a 94.4%=3.9. Man, that was way too close to a 4.0 (95%+). If I would have gotten 1 or 2 more answers correct on a test or quiz, it probably would have bumped my grade up just enough. How disappointing... He also told me that I had the highest grade in the class! Haha. So I kind of have mixed feelings about that grade. I should have asked him if he could of given me a 4.0, because I had the highest grade... oops.

I had some time to kill, so I walked to the gym at school :) At around 11:30 I headed back to my next class...

English's final was just a paper to turn in :) No in-class essay :D We handed in our papers to him in a addressed and stamped envelope, so that he could mail our papers back and send us our final grade.

And then I was D-O-N-E!

No more school until March 28th. Finals were on Wed, Thurs, and Fri, but both of mine were on Wednesday! Yay, 2 more days of break :)

So, now I'm on Spring Break!

On Thursday, I drove Nate to his final that morning. I wanted to drive him, because I like forcing myself to get up (then I don't feel as if I'm "wasting the day away"). :)

So I dropped him off and went to the gym again. It's a little smaller than the one on post, but if you get there at 7:50am during finals week... NO ONE IS THERE! :) Well, except one person at the desk ha. After that, my mom sent me to the commissary; I used a ton of coupons that my mom had given me:) and I actually lost the shopping list :\ Thankfully I was pretty much done by then. So I was checking out and everything... the African American cashier was scanning all the coupons, and at the end she said, "You saved $13 dollars! You go girl!" Haha I love it :) She was SO nice too! I admire people that always seem cheery and joyful.

:)

By the way, it was St. Patrick's Day that day too, So I made pancakes with green sprinkles for lunch :) And then I babysat our neighbors for a bit.

For dinner I made this 6 strand braided bread. I used the bread maker to make the dough but cooked it in the oven. I added rosemary, some garlic and herbs. The house smelled so good :) The 6 strand thing may sound hard, but it really isn't. I learned to do it from youtube ;) The bread

went with our corned beef and cabbage in honor of St. Patrick's Day.

:)

After dinner my mom and two younger siblings went to a movie on base: Tangled. It is CRAZY how cheap the tickets are there. $7 for 4 people! You cannot beat that. It was such a cute movie :) But I think my favorite part was listening to all the dads laugh throughout the movie :)

Well, needless to say, my first full day of break wasn't exactly a "break". But it was a break from school :)

It was busy, but no deadlines were put in place (thankfully)... which made me happy.

Until next time.

Lent

I'm typing this on my iPod touch, so excuse this short post....You may or may not know this, but I am giving up Facebook for Lent. It is SO weird not getting on! I had my mom change my password so that I literally canNOT get on it... It's only been, what, 5 days. I feel like its been forever. How pitiful. I know it's good for me though...

Happy News

I got into the Chemistry class!!!!!

:D

I'm soooo happy.

I tried to get into it this quarter but it didn't work out.

I had been on the wait list since I registered and yesterday I checked to see what position I was in (1st, 2nd, etc)

And it said, "You are not on a wait list for any classes." At first I thought to myself, oh no! did it just take me off the list? Will I not be able to take the class now...

But then I checked my schedule, and Chemistry 131 was on it!

Woohoo!

God is good!

So now I'm officially taking 18 credits in the Spring. I'm going to be so busy. I hope it isn't too hard.

"I can do all thing through Christ who gives me strength."

:)

Sociology @ 8am (5 credits)

Chemistry @ 9am (6 credits)

Lab @ 10am on Mondays

Intro to Communications @ 12pm (5 credits)

2 Btech classes @ 5:30pm on Tues and Thurs (1 credit each)

:)

*Side note, I was driving to the library the other day, and I saw someone that looked exactly, like a girl I met at camp in Germany! Haha It was really freaky. And the weird thing is, it just could have been her (seeing as we're both military brats... )

Things like that have happen before...

While living in Germany, I took a semester of German at the high school on base. Before I started, my mom and I got a tour of the campus. All the Juniors (new to that school) were invited to come. One of the older students showed my mom and I and this other girl and her mom around.... I'm really good with remembering people's faces and I recognized this girl and her mom... but where were they from... it didn't take me long to remember, but they keep looking at us like we looked familiar. When the tour was over, her mom said, "You guys look kinda familiar. Where have we seen you two before." I was like, "It was in Hawaii, we lived on the same post, and went to the same Girl Scouts (her mom was the co-leader)together." I even remembered her name... Thea :)

Yeah, it was WEIRD. And there we were 6 years later.

It's amazing what the military life can do to you...

Until next time.

Biology

It's hard to learn about a science subject, such as biology, when the teacher won't stop talking about evolution.

It bugs me SO much!

As this winter quarter comes to an end, I look back and am glad that I've been able to push through it.

What makes me so aggravated is that my teacher and textbook teach evolution as a fact throughout the class EVEN when the first chapter says it's a theory... :\ What's up with that?!

At the beginning of this quarter, my time spent in the lectures consisted of me feeling sick to my stomach... my professor was and is teaching a lie, and all of my peers believe that stuff... it crushes my heart.

Now it seems like I'm just "getting use to" the whole evolution thing. I'm not saying that I believe it. That's not what I'm saying at all. It's more like I am getting use to the idea that evolution is a part of this society, and the battle between creation vs. evolution will not end until Jesus comes back. I think I've learned to ignore the lies my teacher throws out at us, and I don't feel nauseous any more.

Sadly for the exams, I NEED to know this evolution stuff. I want a good grade and that means learning the material.

There is definitely a difference, though, between knowing and believing. I can KNOW what the "correct" answer on a test is, but believing those "facts" is a choice. If someone were to tell me to believe evolution while putting a gun to a head, well, I'd be in heaven because of my refusal to believe it.

I mean, look around you... the bright stars on a clear night, the vibrant colors of hot springs, ecosystems and how they work together, snow and sand, how microscopic this planet is compared to the milky way or universe, and how huge it is compared to a little cell... And yet that cell has DNA codes, RNA, ribosomes synthesizing protein, mitochondria making energy from chemicals, etc. And that's just ONE cell. We have trillions of them in our bodies. In the book Crazy Love by Francis Chan*, he says that a caterpillar has 228 separate and distinct muscles in its head!! That's a lot!

*I highly recommend you read this book! :)

The amazing complexity of a single flower.

Point Defiance, Washington

Hot Spring in Yellow Stone.

The more I learn about this earth, the more I figure out that I don't know anything. Crazy how that works.

***

I don't think this happened by accident...

Until next time.