The First Two Days of School: Lessons Learned

• Lesson #1: There are weeks in California when three layers with a scarf and mittens aren't enough. Corollary: I need warmer clothes.
• Lesson #2: The point of a rolling backpack is defeated in uber rainy, flood-the-side-walk-type weather.
  
• Lesson #3: I'm usually the only girl on campus without SOME type of faddish article of clothing/accessory. This semester, it's knee-high leather boots. And the skinny jeans that fit into those boots, for that matter. I'm still trying to decide if I really even WANT knee-high boots.
  

Musings from the First Day of School

Well, today was my first day back to school, the start of my sixth and third to last semester. I've been dreading this day since the first day of the holiday break. I kind of decided it would probably knock me off my feet and leave me gasping for breath until the middle part of May, but I was actually wrong. At least about the FIRST day knocking me off my feet. The first day was actually relaxing and fun. I really enjoyed seeing all my physics friendies again. We've really bonded over the semesters, having been through some tough times, long days, and impossible problems together.

I even liked greeting my professors from the semester past as they passed me in the halls. They look just as happy to have us students off their hands as we are to be out of them. You see, I've found that in the physics department, the professors welcome each end of the semester and even eagerly look forward to it, not because they don't enjoy what they do, but because each semester is a four-month long, nastily tiring collaborative effort between the professor and students to get as much knowledge and experience packed into our tiny incapable brains as possible. We ALL look forward to breaks because for us they mean a chance at some oxygen.

After two and a half years, I've finally succumbed; I've become a rolling backpacker. I've heard all the bashing, I've even bashed them myself, but this time I decided that I care a whole lot more about my long term posture and comfort than short term shame. And as of yet I'm still a polite rolling backpacker: I haven't accidentally tripped anyone yet, though I did get it caught in the door more than once today....I'm still getting the hang of it.

I had three classes to go to today, and the middle one was canceled. When I heard the news, my reaction was literally, "Ah, man! Really?" You see, the class is Greek and Roman Mythology. Upper div GE. Jackpot. It's the one and only class I'm taking that would truly break my heart if it canceled for the semester. I can think of only one other class that I've ever felt this way about, that was Dr. Clementine Oliver's Western Civilization. Why, you may ask, are you majoring in astrophysics when you feel so light and happy about history and legends? Well, I think it's the difference between a hobby and a passion. A hobby will ALWAYS put a smile on your face whenever you get the chance to play around with it because in your NORMAL schedule, the schedule you've chosen, you hardly ever find the time to fit it in. But your passion may not always make you sing and dance and skip, in fact at times it may make you sigh, simply because you're tired of working constantly at it in the schedule that you've chosen. But when someone asks you the right curious questions about the passion, the kind of questions that hit right to the heart of WHY the subject is your passion, or when the textbook takes a turn to talk about EXACTLY the things that motivated you to chose astrophysics in the first place, the singing and dancing and skipping comes back.

I was sitting in my Experimental Physics lab today as my professor did a grandiose job of summarizing some of the breakthrough physics experiments we would be studying this semester, and it made me smile to listen to him talk about the difficulties that all the most brilliant minds on earth had in conducting these experiments, the YEARS that it took to come up with the experiments and get results, and the years and further experiments it took to understand the results. It made me smile because I knew that all the while, in the midst of all the years and effort and stress, our God had ALL of the answers to ALL of those scientists' complex questions. He knows exactly why the universe obeys the laws it does and what exactly black matter is (if it's anything) and what would happen if someone like you or me were sucked into a black hole and how gravity relates to the nuclear force and IF we need something like the String Theory anyway. He knows all the answers because He spoke the laws and answers and phenomena into existence! Every semester I'm excited afresh because I know I'm going to come away probably more confused than when I started, but also more in awe because I KNOW the God who understands it perfectly.

Tea Party at 6 AM

I was really craving scones for breakfast. So on Sunday afternoon I baked cranberry scones and made devonshire cream in preparation for the next day's breakfast. The only thing was that I had a meeting the next day for my new job (see below) for which I needed to leave early in the morning, so the only option for enjoying my cranberry scones in relaxing peace was to have a tea party at 6 AM. I even prepared real British tea (a christmas gift from Vichka's family to me) and drank it from a china tea cup and saucer given to me by my friend Holly. And, I couldn't stop there so I prepared a pretty table spread complete with a pink placemat and a lit candle. I tried to get my Dad to join me in my tea party, but he wasn't available, so instead of having my tea party in lonely silence I turned up a christian music mix that Heather had prepared for me. So it turned out to be a lovely tea party, even if it was at 6 AM. I thoroughly enjoyed the scones, but I think I would have enjoyed them more if I had a better devonshire cream recipe...mine turned out tasting not much different from cream cheese. Does anyone have a good recipe?

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I recently got hired for a new job at CSUN that will start with the beginning of the semester! My official position is a Supplemental Instruction Leader for college algebra. Supplemental Instruction is a program that was developed for students in classes with a historically low pass-rate, college algebra being one of those classes. My role will be to attend the students' lecture class with them in order to model good student behavior AND keep up with what the professor is taking them through week by week, and also I will hold additional study sessions for the students twice a week. The Supplemental Instruction sessions will not be as formal as a classroom setting but will also not be as casual as a tutoring lab. My goal will basically be to help the students learn how to help themselves by teaching them study skills, help them learn how to work with one another in mastering college algebra techniques, and occasionally I will help them specifically with homework. The meeting yesterday was a training meeting that relieved almost all of my anxieties about the new job and made me really excited to get my hands on the work. And I think I really like my supervisors and the other SI leaders I'll be working with. I'm so thankful for God's provision in this new job!

The Holidays/I'm in Love With the Golden State

Hey there!

Hope you all had a merry Christmas and a very happy New Year! I quite surely did. The holidays were pretty much the same old, same old for my family, but I'm so thankful for the blessing of the same old, same old. Who would have known that for so many years after the eldest sibling was grown and out of the house and the second eldest sibling was married and had a baby, that the entire family could still be together in bodily form for Christmas? Every year I try to soak up the memories and feelings in my heart because I know of the possibility that the blessing won't continue.

And by the way, the same old same old for the Hays family has changed quite a bit with the addition of Matt into the family AND Matt and Heather's baby girl, Georgie. These two people only added to the fun of the season. I'm so looking forward to next Christmas when Harrison gets to introduce Vika to her first Hays family Christmas! The growth of the family is such a blessing.

I plopped with a sigh onto our couch the other evening, causing one of my family's guests for the night to ask me if I was exhausted. "Yes!" I answered without a pause. Of course I was exhausted. It was the end of the holiday season, who wouldn't be exhausted? But it was such a different, much more gratefully accepted type of exhausted than that which comes with the school semester. It's such a relief to be exhausted because you have the time and privilege to set the table in extravagant Christmas-ware for the sixteenth family holiday dinner instead of the exhaustion you feel as you cram some nutrition into your mouth before finishing homework for four hours before bed. It's so special to be exhausted because of searching the home far and wide for a space, just a little space, to wrap Christmas presents in, a space where there is not already a family member hovering over his shopping bags and merrily barking at you to get away and not look inside his bags. Such fun to be exhausted because you can't sleep on Christmas Eve on account of all five siblings piled in the same room, keeping you awake with laughter. It's giddy fun to be exhausted because your dad wakes the whole family up at 6 am on Christmas morning to go open presents. And, of course, who in the entire world would miss the exhaustion associated with staying up way past your bedtime with friends and family just to ring in the new year with poppers and sparkling cider?

Yes, it's been a good holiday season.

And now I'm on a spontaneous road trip! (Ahem..I WAS on a spontaneous road trip when I started this post.)

When Matt and Heather's scheduled date of departure from LA quickly came into view, Hunter and I decided that we hadn't quite had enough of them and our niece, Georgie. I was so thankful when I remembered that my friend Andrew would be taking a roadtrip up to Washington for a wedding the same week that Matt and Heather were returning home by car. Hunter and I asked Matt and Heather for a ride up to Washington and we asked Andrew for a ride back. Both eagerly accepted.

I'm writing now from my little home-away-from-home (I WAS writing from there), the place in which I lived with Matt, Heather and the little bear cub for a month last summer. It's been two days of intense driving, but we made it and are all happy to finally stretch our legs again.

The ride up was really really fun. Probably the most special part about it was that every once in a while, when the cub was awake, I'd be looking out the window or reading a book or something and then would glance in her direction only to see her studying me with amazement and anticipation written on her face. When I would finally lock my eyes on hers and give her a smile she would smile back with utter glee as she kicked and waved her arms all around. Hunter had many similar experiences with little George. It got to the point where one of us would have to inform the other sometimes that, "Oh, Georgie wants you to smile at her." She appreciated our help because she always got the smile from us that she was seeking. Other times both me and George would be taking a nap, my elbow resting on the side of her car seat. I would wake up at the feel of her little hand placed decidedly on my elbow. I would look at her and she would just be looking at me with slightly grumpy wake up eyes. But that little hand on my elbow assured me that I was not the object of her grump. Also some of my favorite experiences of the drive were Georgie's serenades. She's got a beautiful voice.

So, I'm not exactly sure at what point in our drive Hunter and I crossed the line of "the farthest point north in California we've ever been," but we passed it before San Francisco. It was such a delight to visit and pass through the dreamy places I've always heard existed in my state. I'm telling you, I've never had much affection at all for Southern California. I appreciate my home's location because of the church, the beach, the proximity to camping-worthy mountains and the fun of Beverly Hills, but I've never quite gotten over the heat, the smog, the lack of greenery, the traffic, the busy-ness, etc. But man, when we crossed that Golden Gate Bridge on our way out of San Francisco, I felt like I had finally entered into the land where the stork SHOULD have dropped me. (And the rest of my family...couldn't survive without them.) Only about 30 minutes north of San Francisco Hunter gleefully hollered to us, "Yeah, look! Happy cows in California!!" We looked left and saw lots of cows contentedly grazing in wide open spaces of rolling green hills. The rest of the drive north we periodically saw cows and sheep living happy lives in green pasture lands, it gave me a lot of comfort for some reason. Like the poor animals that are cooped up in those cram-packed, smelly, uninteresting cow farms north of the Grapevine might hopefully take some comfort in the fact that many of their relatives are, in fact, enjoying the blissful lives of happy California cows (and sophisticated California lives at that...they're in CLOSE proximity to the rolling Napa Valley hills!) I greatly enjoyed putting down my gripping book in order to soak in the sights around me as we passed the happy cows, drove through romantic Napa Valley, and then meandered into the beautiful forest of the Redwoods. The beauty of the Redwoods increased exponentially as we approached the Humboldt area, where we were to stay with Matt's brother and sister-in-law. I'm so thankful for Spenc and Melody's hospitality that night...it was so comforting to have a real meal for dinner and a place to rest our heads for the night!

The next morning our drive quickly found us in Oregon. I loved the scenery from the highway. So so much scope for the imagination in the wide open fields, farms, great big old barns and farmhouses. And, of course, the limitless sheep.

Once we reached the city-ish part of Oregon, the metropolitan area didn't seem to end until we reached our final destination (home!), so I dived right back into my book. (About a climb of Everest. About the time that we crossed the Oregon/Washington border I had just finished acclimatizing at Base Camp.)

Man, it was so great to just chill with Matt and Heather that night. Matt cooked us some wicked good chicken and chili cheese rice, and we had homemade fresh apple cider for dessert. We also watched the video of this year's talent show. A few hours later my friends Andrew, Anton and Naomi arrived for the night (Anton and Naomi had come along just to see the sites up the coast.) We all got a restful night's sleep and then departed for home the next morning.

We took a minor detour in our route home to try to get a good look at Mt Rainier, but unfortunately the weather never allowed us to get a glimpse even though we were probably only a couple of miles away. Ugly-ish weather did not want us to get very far that day, so we didn't even end up making it to the Redding area until the following morning.

Okay, Sacramento. I'd been once before, but only as a very small girl when my family's one mission was to visit my great-grandmother where she was living. But this time me and my fellow travelers drove right through the heart of the city and saw enough of Old Town Sacramento from the freeway to whet our appetites for getting out and taking a look. First we deliberately found our way to the Governor's Mansion. Unfortunately, it was under rennovation so we didn't really get to see what it looked like (What's up with the 2000's and rennovations galore? It seems almost every major historical building I've visited in the past six years is under ugly major rennovation. Ugh.!), but I saw enough of Sacramento on that little detour to realize I wanted to come back for at least a weekend vacation. Preferably on a rainy weekend. The part we were in was just pretty and quaint and fun. And then Old Town Sacramento was a blast. Right on the water, there were old-fashioned cruise-liners that had been converted to swanky hotels. I REALLY wanted to explore the hotel rooms, but not enough time. We did visit an old-fashioned candy shop and got some yummy kettle corn.

The rest of the drive home was pretty much uneventful, though I felt like it was eventful because my book was just so enrapturing. We got home late that night, man it felt good to be out of the car for GOOD.

Thanks for all the fun, Heather, Matt, Georgie, Spencer, Melody, Andrew, Anton, and Naomi!