fascination, frustration, appreciation.

well, im still in the great state of oklahoma and nothing worth blogging about has happened but i figure if i have the opportunity yeah? who knows, i could be in the high, high swiss alps with heidi and her grandfather and nor have internet to write in a month and then at least youll have this post to read!

i like word tricks. it makes things easier to remember... like rhymes! the three above are the three stages of culture shock that we learned about in class this week. FASCINATION is the excited stage, the exuberant energy.. kinda my whole life actually. FRUSTRATION is the homesick, tired, cranky stage. today we learned that often people run into this in religious situations because our beliefs run so deep that its hard to accept anything different. but this too shall pass into APPRECIATION which is the adapting part of culture shock.
i find it hard to believe ((although everyone has said its true)) that when we reenter the states well have reverse culture shock. its amazing how resilient and flexible the human being is- that after eighteen years and fifty-one weeks i could change in just three months away from my original culture, and then change back!
i wrote a poem in class today to help me stay awake:


"Oh Hapsburgs Oh Hapsburgs
You were so clever and tricky,
It's hard to believe
You got into a situation so sticky.
You started a war,
Made lots of people poor,
And now your only politician is Otto."


dont applaud too loudly, i might go deaf and then i couldnt hear all the lovely austrian orchestral music. side note: i know otto doesnt fit but i couldnt remember his sons names and if they would have worked better.
so thats all really. im a little sick, partially from the plane ride and partially from the new climate. but im taking tylenol and drinking water so ill live.













"awe"ful moment: the week before i got to OCU i had a huge list of things to get for the trip. one of those things was a thumb drive to back my photos up and use for miscellaneous things, but it was on the second list, which meant that it was lower priority than, say, a camera. so the night before the trip i had everything from my first list and most things from my second list ((im a list freak yeah?)) and i was really worried that i wasnt prepared properly. so i prayed about it and about me having a good attitude and i went to go pack. anyway, skip forward a couple days. today after classes ended our sponsor, dr waldo, annouces that OCU has decided to donate a 1 gig thumb drive to each student going overseas. good work OCU. its not like i think that God nudged someone at OCU to give us thumb drives just because i gave it up to him... cause getting the thumb drive wasnt the point. i tried to make every problem i was having my own when really theres too much in this world to do anything without God. at least in my corner of the world there is. that was very long. all im saying is that its worthwhile, giving up control.


funny/exciting moment: so class is over and im walking across the middle of campus where its most densely populated and this huge bird comes out a bush at my face with a buzzing war cry. so i did what everyone would have done- i flung my notebook in the air and myself on the ground and screeched. and im loud, so i definitely wasnt a small yell. and after the danger had passed i got up and looked around, and no one had noticed! a lucky break for me. there was a guy who is going on the trip with me that ive not got a chance to meet yet about ten yards away snapping photos in the opposite direction and i walked up to him and described my attacker and guess what he said. ill tell you. "Oh, that wasnt a bird. it was a bee." are you kidding me?!?!
im adding this experience to my list of reasons i love washington.