Friday, November 21, 2008

Snow, Football, and Vacation

These are the three things that have been on my mind for most of this week. It has been a beautiful snowy week here in Blacksburg. We've had three or four snow showers that have left about an inch of accumulation on the ground, and it has seemed like gentle flurries have been in the air continuously. What we love is that this is more snow than we saw all last winter in Philadelphia. It seems like all we ever got there was cold rain, sleet, and ice - never any real snow. There's something about the snow that puts April in a giddy mood, makes me in awe of the beautiful creation around me, and makes Mabel a bit hyperactive as she sprints around scooping up mouthfuls of it.

I've been playing on an intramural flag football team with some guys from BCM - we played three playoff games in the evenings this week. We made it to the sweet 16 of the tournament, but unfortunately lost in overtime last night, ending our season. The fellowship and camaraderie with the guys has been great, and I love the opportunity to get out and engage in a competitive activity, even if it's in very cold weather. Monday night was probably the most fun game of football I've ever played - it was our first playoff game, and the snow was falling hard throughout most of the game. It looked amazing with the rec field lights illuminating every snowflake blowing across the field and the football gliding through all of them.

Today is also the beginning of Thanksgiving vacation for all of us here at Virginia Tech. The students (except for the crowd staying for our football game against Duke tomorrow) have mostly left to spend the week with their families. April and I are heading out to Cincinnati for the week after church on Sunday. We are really looking forward to this break and time to spend with family and friends. I've felt pretty drained and unmotivated in my daily tasks recently, and am looking forward to some time to rest my mind and my spirit, reconnect with God, and reflect on these past months.

Monday, November 10, 2008

Time Flies

It feels like there shouldn't have been as much time between this post and our last one but the truth is-it's been a while. Time flies doesn't it? For us the semester is almost over which means pretty soon the students will be packing up and heading home for the Christmas holiday. I certainly can't believe the semester is almost over but then again I can't believe I'm turning 24 on Friday either.

We attended a statewide youth and collegiate minister conference today in Roanoke & during one of the afternoon sessions the speaker spoke about text messaging and how things are changing daily in our culture. He gave an example of how one youth minister conducted a research project to find out just how many text messages his students were sending. He asked the parents to bring in their phone bills after one month and they tallied up the texts. The winner-12,500 text messages in one month that's an average of 400 text messages/day. All I could think was "How in the world?"

Since we've been back here I've noticed that even though I'm not that much older than some of the students, I am an old lady when it comes to certain things. Texting is one of those things. At the beginning of the semester I had to get a couple of the students to teach me how to use the ITAP feature on my phone so I could become a more efficient texter. Nic & I had to increase our texting plan b/c now we get/send text messages almost daily. Before we moved here I averaged maybe two texts per week. Do you catch my drift yet?

So what do you think a/b all this next technology? Are you with the times or lagging behind like me :) ?