Christmas and a Wedding

It was a fun and relaxing Christmas. The whole fam came home, so we were squeezed in our house..but not for long! December 27 saw us heading down to Sioux Falls for the rehearsal dinner of Gus's wedding.

Claudia wasn't able to get home until late Christmas Eve, but at least we had Jessie so the girl-to-boy ratio wasn't too off!

Tessie, Isabel, bro-in-law Matt, and friend Nicole and I did the music for the nuptial Mass. It was a challenging but rewarding project being in charge of wedding music! I think we sounded pretty good. 

My fuzzy photo from the choir loft.

It was a great party and so nice to see so many family and friends at once, since I'll be going back to school soon. 

All dressed up and Christmassy! Christmas weddings should happen more often!

Since getting home from the festivities, we've had some nasty cold temperatures, but aside from going to church we've been curled up at home recovering from the holidays. 

One of the warmer recent days.

So you see, I have an excuse not to have posted in a while, because on top of Christmas and the wedding, I've had finals to study for. I have one more week home and I need to get as much reviewing done as possible before the real deal begins on Monday!

Gratitude

     It's been a crazy time, that's for sure. TAC decided to end the semester early, so we have finals week once we get back in January. While none of the buildings on campus were damaged by the fire, there is a lot to do still, including replacing the food that went bad, getting power back, and clearing out trees that were burned. I flew home early once we got the OK to do so, but some of my friends drove back to campus to grab their books and clothes. Several of them said everything surrounding campus is black and destroyed--it's really a miracle campus is okay.
     It's definitely a different Christmas break than I was expecting, what with not having any of my belongings and having an extra week of break, but it sure is nice to be at home and sleep a lot. My brain is slowly adjusting to the lack of constant California sun and the central time zone. In the meantime, I have time for things like knitting, baking, and watching TV! Crazy.
     So many people helped me in so many ways during the fires. To name the principal ones:
     Thank you to Tahlia, who graciously and calmly drove a very full car off campus that first night.
     Thank you to Leslie, who let us use her car, and to Marya, who drove us from Ventura to Ojai in Leslie's car.
     Thank you to Dominique and Lizzy, who hosted us in their adorable house in Ojai until we decided to leave for a safer area. Thank you for being our moms for those few days!
     Thank you to Mrs. Hurtado, who drove through burning areas to pick us up and take us to her house, and who hosted me for the rest of the week and drove me to the airport.
     Thank you to the several people who went into my room on campus and got the essential things to ship to me in South Dakota. You are lifesavers!
     As you can see, I have a lot to be thankful for.
     Times of crisis like this really show you what kind of people people are. And all I can really say is, I chose wonderful friends. They all stayed calm and cheerful and practical during the chaos. You learn how much you love everyone when you're in danger like that. We have an incredible community at TAC. I wouldn't change it for anything.

     As a side note, one of our chaplains told me to meditate on my death on the first Sunday of Advent. It's been a pretty prominent theme during this Advent, with everything that happened. I'm guessing that's not what he meant. :)

Fires and Finals

Christmas break is right around the corner! We put a mini Christmas tree in our room for decoration. 

We also decorated Maddie's room to surprise her when she got back from Massachusetts. 

Just the other day, campus looked like this....

And then, on Monday night, it looked like this. 

     A huge fire started at the campground right next to campus. Campus got evacuated and we all drove to a church in Ventura. Then Ventura got evacuated, and the group I was in drove to the house of some alumni in Ojai. Late into the night, we weren't sure if we were going to get told to leave Ojai too, so we drove to Goleta, CA (near Santa Barbara) at 3am. We spent a couple days hanging out in Goleta until Emily's mom picked us up and now I'm at her house in Perris. On the way, we passed by some sketchy smoke-filled areas. 

     This fire is still 0% contained so far and has ravaged through 96,000 acres last I heard. They are calling it the Thomas Fire, which we don't really appreciate, since we didn't start it. Actually, campus is totally fine, even though everything surrounding it is burnt up and there's no power. So the authorities are trying to get us all back on campus in time to have finals next week. 

Marya put it well.

     Yeah, they still want to have finals. We've been without our books since Monday and had no classes, but I guess we could still take exams, right?

     We are all eager to get back to campus--and our possessions. It's been a rough few days, but we're counting our blessings. You don't realize how much you love everyone until times like these. I'm just happy I'll be heading home to SD soon, where there is no chance of fires. Until then, we're chilling with Emily's tiny dogs and waiting to hear from TAC.

Thanksgiving Break

Over Thanksgiving I went to my friend Maddie's house in Vista, CA. It was a super fun and relaxing weekend filled with music, games, shopping, and movies galore! The weather was beautiful over Thanksgiving, so we walked by the harbor in Oceanside. It was so nice to hang out in a house with a family and eat non-school food! Maddie and her sisters took us to the Mission of San Luis Rey, the Benedictine abbey near their house, and some fun places to walk around. Our train back to campus on Sunday left at 5:40am, but we didn't let that stop us from having a great time. Being back on campus was nice, too, though--it's weird how quickly we started to miss everyone. It's so good to have good friends.

Section Dinner

First of all, I have a Public Service Announcement: my section (Section 1) is the best freshman section at TAC this year. It's objective.
Now that you know that, I'll recount a fun thing my section did this week...section dinner! Each freshman section goes to dinner at the house of one of their tutors, co-hosted by another tutor. We got two of our favorite tutors for section dinner, and it was such a fun night! It was really nice to be at a house again, eat homemade food, play with little kids, and just relax. We love hanging out together. On the way back to campus, we blasted Christmas music. And later that night, my choir sang for All-Night Adoration, which we have every First Friday.
Now we have a relaxing weekend, with our theology paper due in two weeks. We had no classes on All Saints Day (perks of Catholic school), so we're in a bit of an academic lull, which is nice. Every day it gets better. It's crazy how fast freshman year is going! What a blessing to be here.

Tessie's Confirmation

I flew home on Columbus Day weekend for Tessie's Confirmation, since she asked me to be her confirmation sponsor. It was a really fun and relaxing visit, and a beautiful Confirmation Mass.
She chose two confirmation saints: St. Faustina and St. Martin de Porres. She needed to give one name for the bishop to say during the ceremony, so she chose Martina -- which she told me may be the feminine form of Martin, or may be a mash-up of Martin and Faustina. Who knows. It's cool because my aunt Nina, whom Mom and I visited at her abbey in Germany last year, has the religious name of Sr. Martina after St. Martin de Porres. So she and Tessie are saint twins now!
I feel so blessed to be Tessie's sponsor; it gives us an extra connection over the miles.

Love you, Tessie!

General Life Update

Hello, yes, I'm still alive.

College is absolutely insane, but in a good way. I'm loving every minute of it. 

I love my section and my tutors. Here are my classes:
Math (four times week)
Language (three times a week)
Philosophy (twice a week)
Theology (twice a week)
Natural Science (twice a week)
Literature Seminar (once a week)
In addition, I have 13 hours a week of work-study in the kitchen and sing in two choirs. It's a lot of work, but I love it.
This upcoming week is Don Rags, which we have instead of midterms. It's when your tutors sit down together and evaluate how you're doing as a student. I'm excited because I think it will improve my section a lot, since we will know what we need to work on individually. Another nice thing is Don Rags means we get three days of no class!
We have four fabulous chaplains on campus, which makes it easy to get to Mass, Confession, etc. There is a Dominican, a Jesuit, a Norbertine, and a diocesan priest. They are all wonderful to talk to and such a beautiful presence on our campus.
When people ask me what I like best about college, its hard to answer, because there isn't really any aspect I don't like. It's surreal to be so at peace with a decision I've made.

Well, that's all I'll say for now. Gotta get back to studying.