I have been in Wolfville for the past few days settling into my new apartment and preparing for the new students to arrive.
They arrive tomorrow and now there is the quiet of anticipation.
Today, a group of four of us put up 250 posters advertising Christian Fellowship events. We put them in every residence on campus, tons of bathroom stalls, the academic buildings, the gym, and on it goes.
It is peaceful here at Acadia this week, and I am filled with great peace and hope instead of the stress I felt during last year's frosh week. I took this photo with my phone the other day and it is true: I am happy to be back. God will take care of us.
There are about 3000 students at Acadia and Jesus died for each of them. God wants to save them and I trust that he will let us be a part of His work :)
This is the end of summer for me. Tomorrow it is back to the responsibilities and joys of university. But my last bit of summer was delicious and I am happy it was the way it was.
I spent last week volunteering in the kitchen at camp. Cooking and baking for over one hundred people, and breaks spent on the most beautiful beach in the world- yes please! Every time I go to camp, I am refreshed. I learn anew about God's creativity and beauty. There are so many souls at camp who are very close to Jesus, and I always feel like I can learn from them.
Peace
And then there was the day after camp: the trip to the Provincial Exhibition. A few minutes before my sister, my friend, and I were going to go to the last night of this week-long event,our neighbour knocked on our backdoor and offered us three free passes! She did not even know we were going to go. So many little blessings in life....
Yesterday after church, our family (minus the one who has not yet returned home...) took a spontaneous trip to Prince Edward Island.
I like when life's biggest problems are
salt water in your mouth and matting your hair.
sunburns
losing in cards
tired arms from kayaking
not being able to decide what flavour of Cows ice cream to have
the music in the car speakers is not loud enough.
Thursday night and it's raining. It's my fourth day home, only. Sunday night late home from the airport, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and then Thursday.
It's hot and muggy all day. Then in the evening it rains.
We had supper, and I want to bake something.
Why not make doughnuts?
Doughnuts are a group effort. The recipe is from the Fanny Farmer cookbook, not that my Mom is big on recipes. An extra egg here, maybe less salt than they call for, and what's one and three-quarters cup times zero point five? It gets our heads all confused, not quite doubling the recipe.
Maritime music comes in from the speakers in the living room: David Myles and James Hill. It is happy music. And the rain keeps on falling.
We use organic milk and Dad knows the farmers, and eggs that Dad buys from a farming woman at work.
We let the dough chill for an hour and I go upstairs. And Dad is working at his desk and somehow the James Hill changes to Tchaikovsky. But I'm OK with that, too.
Finally it is time to fry them! We fill a frying pan with oil and heat it up. To test if the oil is hot enough we drop a piece of dough in and see if it sinks to the bottom and rises again.
The oil is hot enough. We have kneaded the doughnuts and shaped them into, well, doughnut shape.
Almost ready!
Not ready
We drop them in. They sink to the bottom and they turn from light to dark.
Then we flip them.
Then it's time to take them out and we coat them with sugar, cinnamon sugar, or maple sugar.
Oh! Maybe some coffee would be nice.
I brew the coffee, JustUs medium decaf. Roasted just a few kilometres from my university.
Soon there is a plate stacked full of doughnuts and four hungry people.
We eat doughnuts and watch Corner Gas.
Yum.
Being content in all circumstances is easy when these are the circumstances.
Do you ever wish you could live under the same roof as the most kind, cool, smart and funny people in the world, people who understand you and who love you no matter what?
Yeah, that's home.
After two rather exhausting days of traveling that included, among other things, eating copious amounts of pasta and meat at my uncle's Italian family's house in Calgary, crossing two three lanes of traffic outside of the Toronto airport just to find a patch of grass that my uncle's service dog could poop on, and flying on the same plane as the Russian junior hockey team, I arrived in Halifax last night.
Home:
Where my sister left THIS on my night table. Stephen Leacock, Dilbert, a travel book and a VHS of my favourite movie- oh my! And of course my sister's own novel. And a Tolkien quote. And some treasures from the beach at camp. Yum yum yum.
Home: where the cupboard is full of mismatched mugs and Just Us tea.
Home: where the garden has grown so lushly since I have been gone:
Home: where four out of the five members of our family are but with the conspicuous absence of my little brother, who has been to Thailand and Alberta since I have seen him last. Home is not quite complete without him.
Home: where we stayed up last night eating Italian and French chocolate and my parents and sister eagerly gobbled up my anecdotes of summer school. At least I think they were eager, maybe they were just being polite.
But I am pretty sure my sister is actually eager. She just got an iPod and one of the first apps she downloaded was the Merriam-Webster dictionary. She is a born linguist, I think. She thought the back of our school t-shirts, a Bible verse written in IPA, was very cool (my friend Moss designed that, good job)! Can any of you non-linguists decipher this code?
Home: Where my sister and I stayed up far too late talking and listening to music because it did not seem late for me because of the time change and because we missed sharing a room with each other.
Home: Where my first stop, I think, besides home, will be a trip to the local second hand clothing store. Only Maritimers, I am afraid, know what Frenchy's is, and only people in my hometown know what our equivalent is.
Classes here end on Friday (two days from now!) and on Saturday I am flying back across the country, and I do not know when I will return. Amidst all the busyness of finals, I am taking a break to reflect on the summer, this summer of late nights studying in the dorm, Sunday afternoons spent in the laundry room, early morning jogs, and linguistic mind-stretching.
Yes, sometimes the late nights trying to finish assignments were stressful. I calculated it and we had something like 40 or 50 assignments in these short nine weeks, for our various classes. But I am so thankful for my classmates. We live in the dorm together, we have our classes together, we eat together and we study together. You would think I would get tired of these folks- but I am not tired of them. I am completely at home among these people who have similar goals, desires, and interests as I do.
A few memories stand out from my time here. One is our communal suppers. We eat together each night and I love every part of it: the cooking, the cleaning up afterwards, and especially the dinner followed by the long, lingering conversations.
Another memory I have is playing ultimate frisbee. We played each Monday and Wednesday afternoon and it was a fun part of the week, and a great way to get to know people.
I have so many more good memories from my time here too: eventful trips across the border, late night fire alarms, hilarious staff and student skit nights, incredible chapels and a lovely trip into Vancouver.
This is us trying to work on our phonetics homework on route to somewhere
This past Saturday a bunch of us went into Vancouver to watch the fireworks. I guess every year there is a fireworks competition in the city. Saturday was the Italians' turn to present their show of lights and music. There I was, sitting on a park at the edge of the water, the city lights reflecting in the harbour, surrounded by new friends from all over the world. The fireworks show played the song "Paradise" by Coldplay as the sky was lit up by dazzling fireworks. At that moment, I certainly felt like I was in paradise!
