Halloween + Farvest Hall : Summit Semester Week 9

The continuous stretch of busyness continues! Lots of fun things happened this week, including snow and running and lots of good food! Read all about it:

What happened this week:

     Sunday's schedule was pretty different than it normally is. After church, a good chunk of our group went to a missionary's house to hear about their mission work. While the rest of us went straight to coffee shops or other places in town. I went to hang out at the coffee shop with a great crowd, where Bella, Emma, and myself actually walked across the street to eat lunch at a Mexican restaurant (we had Shirley Temples and super burritos. Soooo good!). We also just went for a walk around the coffee shop and had a grand time hanging out and laughing it up. We got some work done at the coffee shop a bit, then half of our full crowd went to Walmart to get some stuff. After Walmart, which took like two hours (Dax had a lot of food to get for Farvest Hall this weekend), we went back home. We had leftovers for dinner, my favorite, and we had class, which was a question and answer session with Professor A. It was really interesting, but kinda hard to swallow with difficult topics to discuss. After class, Micaela and I just hung out on the floor of my room just talking about class and what's been on our minds and singing hymns. It was a good day overall.

     Monday was a weird day, just because it's normally our day off and we had so many different things scheduled! After breakfast, we had class with another new professor, Dr. M. When I first saw him in the dining hall, I could've sworn that my Uncle Les had come to visit! Spitting image, it's almost scary. But I love the way he teaches. He spent his morning lecture on the importance of leadership and how that plays out in our lives. One of his really hard hitting questions was, are you a leader who serves or a servant who leads? Just some food for thought. After lunch (lasagna soup – wonderful!), we had family meeting, which we discussed the weekly schedule and still didn't give any insight on what's happening for Farvest Hall this weekend. It's really annoying at this point because I don't see why it has to be kept a secret? We'll know in two days and nothing will change otherwise, except for the fact that we'll have an idea of what's going on. Anywho. We had exercise time following family meeting, when I went up Cell Phone Ridge (our good hiking spot to get cell service at the top) with a group of Tristan, Bella, Brittany, and Emma. We had a good hike, rewarded ourselves with phone calls to family or checking emails or quickly browsing social media, and tried chopping wood when we returned. Some of us were successful, but it was quite enjoyable to watch. I sat with all the children for dinner, which was a big test of my patience, but it was still good. Dish pit was really great too! We often have other students fill in for our regulars or people just like to pray with us after we finish, so we like to give the special guest be the “guest speaker” and pray for our group, which is apparently a rumor that's being spread (not a bad one!). We also hold pinkies instead of hands when praying, because we did it once about six weeks ago and it's now our thing. Class was again, with Dr. M on leadership, which was so good. Before having a mandatory girls' meeting, I went over to the kitchen to find one of the mentors, Molly, making chocolate chip coffee cookies (SOO GOOD) and tossing dough balls in peoples' mouths from a distance. I did it once and succeeded. Our girls' meeting was on guys' appreciation day, which is gonna be happening next week and I'm pretty stoked! Can't tell you stuff to ruin the surprise for any guy classmates possibly reading this blog, but I promise you, they will love it. We spent the next two hours straight working on guys' appreciation before eventually going to bed.

     I woke up on Tuesday to a blanket of snow on the ground! I freaked out and went outside to take some pretty cute photos with Anna, Emily, Madison, and Ashley. We had a bunch of fun, and all but about seven people were thrilled about the snow. We had a snowball fight before class, and in all the lecture breaks, everyone was outside taking pictures or throwing snow down each other's shirts. It was good fun. By lunch though, it was melting pretty quickly. Also, those who participated in the butchering, were rewarded with bags of smoked elk jerky. It was delicious! I was planning on saving a lot of it to share with my family when they come for Thanksgiving in about three weeks, but I'm not sure if the jerky is going to last that long. We had a slight change in the way we did work crews today. We discussed the importance of rest and the Sabbath, and because we're having a busy week this week, we were told to observe the Sabbath a bit today. So we were all split into two shifts, one and a half hours each, so we work during our shift, and when it's not our time, we were told to go enjoy some relaxation. So Micaela and myself went for a walk, ended up having a snowball fight in the process, and I also washed my hair. When it was my work crew shift, I worked in the kitchen with Micaela and Ashley, making dinner for tonight. What a blessing it was! Because it was Halloween, Jillian and I decided to dress up like each other. I wore my hair like hers and she wore my “famous” leather jacket. It wasn't a super elaborate character swap costume, but it was fun. Before class, Bella and I ran over to the kitchen and quickly made Nutella milk (essentially, it's hot chocolate made with milk and instead of cocoa powder or hot chocolate mix, you use melted Nutella). It was quite delicious. We had a night lecture with a new professor, Dr. H, who teaches philosophy at Houston Baptist University, where my older brother attends school! He's super funny, I was laughing the whole time. He made us go all class without writing notes, which is how I concentrate so I was having a hard time keeping still and focusing. I like him and his teaching, though. After class, I made sourdough bread dough with Khyri, and immediately following, I returned to my room to get homemade highlights in my hair with Bella! It was quite an independent and exciting evening.

     Wednesday was quite interesting. Dr. H talked about virtues in a philosophical sense during morning lectures. We got into quite a debate about justice, and how to figure out when to be just in an overall situation or to be more just towards a specific individual and what that looks like. Good discussion. After lunch, I had dish pit, which went really well until the very end.. when running the disposal at the very end, Grace started yelling for us to see that the drain on the floor, beside the sink, was overflowing and covering the kitchen floor with water. Maintenance emergency! Apparently a large piece of steel wool ran through the disposal, clogging up the pipes. We had to mop the floor and used half the supply of towels, so we had to do some laundry. It was probably one of the most interesting kitchen cleaning experiences I've ever had! We were a little late for solitude time, but it was a bonding experience. Solitude time was very relaxing and peaceful, aside from the maintenance emergency. We had small groups after, which was so good to have. Lots of things were going on throughout our small group that we just needed time to share and love on each other and pray. We had a worship team meeting immediately following dinner, which was a little tense. It's our first time singing together, without Jason the worship director to lead us, so it's just a stressful time because none of us have completely lead worship before. We ran through some songs and dismissed for class. Our night lecture was on the virtue wisdom, with lots of discussion as well. After class, I cooped myself in my room for intense study time and reading and note writing. I wrote letters to family and some friends here and did some reading before going to bed.

     Lots of hype was going around the breakfast table on Thursday because was the day before Farvest Hall! I had great discussion with Madeline, one of my classmates, on deep questions that we have that's hard to ask. Like, how do you know if your motives for doing something are completely pure? How do you know what the next chapter of your life is supposed to look like? Our morning lecture took place at the outdoor classroom that they have, which was super fun because it was our first time using it, but there was still frost on the ground and it was in the shade (which nobody realized), so we were all freezing. It was a bonding experience though! We had work crews again, after lunch, which was so fun because it was all Farvest Hall prep! I was in the kitchen, the party place to be. I helped Anna make allergen-free desserts and even made some boats out of watermelon. It was a bunch of fun. We had a question and answer lecture with Dr. H during our night lecture. It was super great, he gave us marriage advice and tips on dating. What do you need to consider before starting to date? #1: Do you have at least $10?; #2: Do you shower?; #3: Do you brush your teeth?; #4: Do you have clean laundry?

  Apparently this is all you need before dating. Simple enough. We had a “pep rally” for Farvest Hall after lecture, which was supposed to come with ice cream, but a plot twist arose. Because one of the staff is a huge Disney fan, all of the students were split into teams based on Disney movies (Squirrel Scouts, Lost Boys, etc) and we were supposed to defend our designated villains (aka the staff members) from “stealing” the ice cream we were supposed to have that night. It was such a fun twist on the evening. I was put onto team Dishes, which are the talking dishes from Beauty & the Beast, and our team is supposed to work together during Farvest Hall to defend the honor of Gaston. We're supposed to do this through working together to complete competitions and activities throughout the day, winning points for our team and getting clues that will lead us to the answer we all want to know: what villain stole the ice cream?

     Friday was Farvest Hall Day, and it was one spectacular day. It started with an obstacle course 5k run/walk, which was actually super fun. I was hesitant at first, because that's three miles of obstacles and it's kinda cold out, but it was really so much fun. I stuck with Micaela and Bella, and even though we were some of the last to finish, we finished strong and it was super encouraging. After that, we went in turns by team to do shotgun shooting with clay birds and 22m rifle shooting with soda cans, as well as carving pumpkins. I shot 2/3 of the clay birds and hit five of our twenty soda cans for our team, which I was super proud of! Our pumpkin won best effort when our team carved out the rose from our iconic movie. After, we played minute to win it games, including doughnut eating and egg on the spoon relay. We also had to make a “gingerbread” house out of graham crackers, replicating the house from the movie UP, which was super awesome because we even had Russel, Mr. Fredrickson, and Kevin the bird, all made of gumdrops (thanks Matthias). We played Fear Factor, where we had to drink “gross” drinks, which only ended up being sugar water, milk, vinegar, and as a team, do as many pushups as possible. Our team of five averaged out at 90 pushups (one of the highest averages), while I myself did 70 alone. That was intense. All of the teams met again and we all had to do a lip sync battle, using the iconic songs from our movies, with the villains as our judges. We had Be Our Guest, and while we had a hard time choreographing something before hand, we almost completely made it up on the spot. We had so much fun and had a standing ovation from the crowd, earning us second place in the competition. After earning all our clues, we were supposed to, as individual teams, come up with cases against the villains we were told, were the guilty ones. Then we voted and put those villains on trial, asking them questions and trying to get them to confess (none of them did, but it was worth a try). The Dishes, my team, ended up having the most votes against the Evil Queen, the villain we thought did it, earning us enough points to make second place overall in the day! I was so proud of our team. We ended up finding out that all of the villains took part in the evil scheme to steal the ice cream we were supposed to get. The first place team got to throw pies into the faces of the villains of their choice, which was quite entertaining. After that, we had our costume party! Micaela and myself dressed up as grandmas/old ladies, her being Ruth and I was Betty. We went around in old nightgowns, telling people how life was like back in our day, and telling them how we met back in the 1950s. We had the most fun, keeping character almost the entire night. We even got jars of candy as a prize for staying in character the most out of everyone. Everyone was so awesomely dressed. We had all the staff, who were once villains, dress up as hipster monks (even the girls), which was hilarious; we had two that were tourists (complete with fanny packs and road maps); Mario + Luigi; some hippies; Annalise, the girl who broke her ankle a while back, dressed up as Tiny Tim, and many other great costumes. It was quite an evening. Fun Disney themed food was served and dancing followed, along with a ping pong tournament. What a day.

     Saturday was a free day, which meant no mandatory breakfast (bless!) and no mandatory activities in the afternoon. I called my family and they were busy, so I did some studying and cleaning before calling again. I talked to my mom for a long while before lunch, which was much needed. After lunch, we cleaned up a bit from Farvest Hall and then a large group of us went into town to hang out. I did some window shopping around downtown and hung out in a coffee shop. After a few hours, we all came back for a late dinner.

What I've learned this week:

The idea of starting a business isn't really that crazy. Dr. M talked a lot about it in his lectures, about leadership and making an impact. He wanted us to all do two things: start a business, and run for office. One of them is a little more realistic (the first), but it was so nice to have someone think so highly of us and see greatness in us. But he shared many different ideas that starting a business really isn't a hard thing. It doesn't really have to be a brick and mortar business, but it could be online or in your home. Businesses like Uber or AirBnB allow you to be your own business in a way. Finding something that you can offer or sell that will make people happy will make you a successful business. It made me really think, what would that look like for me? What could I do to make an impact and make people happy?

What's going on next week:

     Another week of host homes! I'm so stoked about spending time with another family from the church here and hearing about their lives.

     We have two solid days of reading the entire New Testament next week. Please pray for us! It will be a long two days with lots of reading and thinking.

     The girls are planning on executing Guys Appreciation Day this week! I don't want to give any spoilers because male classmates may be reading this, but it's going to be so awesome. You'll probably hear all about it next week (or the week after)! Stay tuned.

Don't forget to subscribe to this blog to get continuous updates on my life in Colorado! Can't believe my time here is almost over. *insert sad face*

Thanks for following along with me as I do life!

Blessings,

Becca

Fun in the snow !

First time shotgun shooting!

The cutest pumpkins of the contest!

Group photo from Farvest Hall