Happiness is...

...watching two of your former teachers fight over a book you brought to a book exchange =)

So today was kind of sad for me... Today we had the last day of our current honors "cohort" (literally, the call us a cohort. it makes me feel... mischievous :)
I just wanted to share a few highlights (funny/thought-provoking/etc.) from class:

• Libby sharing a presentation on "Time-Shifty Novels" - favorite new academic term!
• Greta complaining about The Blindside and The Help as stories of "White people helping Black people portrayed as not being able to do things for themselves." Still mulling that over.
• Mr. Tyler Britton, J. Crew dandy, telling me after a discussion of The Road that during class he had been profiling classmates to determine who--in a post-apocalyptic world--would become cannibals. But don't worry, he informed that I would not be a cannibal. So relieving to here.
• Alex's response to the professor's question: "What kept you turning the pages in The Gangster We're All Looking For?" Alex [speaking for the class]: "It was assigned."
• David and Alex pulling up my blog one day during break and exclaiming, "Samara, are you engaged?!?" Wow.
• Nicole's "I'm for the empowerment of everybody" comment.
• Caitlyn describing History of Love as "beautifully sad." Perfect description.
• Wading through Faulkner together. I feel as though we all carry battle scars now.

Those are just a few. This quarter was fantastic and it's been such a different experience to be in a smaller more relational class. I've appreciated it so much. I'm so glad that so many of us are in Kaplan's class next quarter. It'll be grand. But for one and all, thank you for such a fabulous quarter.

"You don't say!"

Conclusions kill me. They always seem so boring =/

Tonight I'm going to...

...make myself a cup of London Fog
...put on comfy sweats
...plug in with my headphones
...and write like a fiend.

Yesterday I forgot my headphones, today my iPod is dead. Lucking out on the music front.
I'll just ponder in silence which book to bring to my hg book exchange

Just wondering, which books are you most embarrassed over having not read?

My list is long... but a few for starters:

• King Lear by W. Shakespeare
• Mrs. Dalloway by V. Woolfe
• Great Expectations* by Charles Dickens
• anything by Steinbeck

*stopped half-way through, had to return to the library after running out of renewals =(

These are the ones off the top of my head. But which ones do you feel like you should've read by now?

Just a glimpse...

...of the fun had last night.

photo credit: stephanie hawn

Ida Baker and Mr. Smith

Look who came home for Thanksgiving to meet his new niece =)

...ok and to see all his other family and friends!

10 days and Airborne will be with us again!!

Having spent too many holidays with loved ones struggling for health, I have been so grateful this year that my friends and family are all alive (miracle--seriously!) and healthy. Over the last few weeks, there have been mutliple times where I've had "a moment"--a realization just how blessed I am. Every time I've teared up over this realization, I've said a quick prayer of gratefulness and for continued protection.

In the last few days, I've seen just a glimpse of the power of those prayers.

Just one specific example: my dear friend, Mrs. Kim White

I love this lady so much!

Over the past year, I have had the privilege of getting to know her

[and her hilarious man, Andrew],

 watch them fall in love the right way,

and get married.

Between wedding showers, staying with her British in-laws, surprise birthday parties, co-leading a small group in our youth ministry, sharing dreams and lots of laughter--I have just fallen in love with who Kim is.

But most of all, I have enjoyed hearing the Lord's heart through Kim. She has such an incredible relationship with the Lord and I love the way she represents him.

Yesterday Kim fell and hit her head.

She sustained a concussion, but I am grateful that it is not worse.

Kim, I am praying for your speedy recovery.

I am so grateful for your friendship and I love you tons!!

It's tonight!!!

Merry Christmas, FoF style =)

Christmas Party tonight!!

I actually get to take pictures this year - yippee!

I am pleased to announce that, as of today, I have finished my reading load for the quarter. Whew!

That equals something like 12 novels and 10-ish plays. 

I'm hoping to have a New Years Eve post listing all the books I've read this year.

I'm very excited to compile that list.

[and grateful that I have a goodreads account to help refresh my memory =]

...but for now, I'm on to paper writing.

location: Seattle Public Library

source: Stephanie Berbec

I may be guilty of this...

We are at the end of the modernist experiment, and we have forfeited, we are missing, truth and goodness. Only beauty remains, but beauty appears to be dislocated and homeless, because, to borrow from Gertrude Stein, “there is no there there” anymore. How do we reconcile beauty and Auschwitz; how do we reconcile beauty and vacuous Madison Avenue? We have launched out into the deep and cast our harpoon, but we have missed, we are missing God. We miss God: we have missed in our attempt to grasp the incomprehensible, and thus we are missing, we are yearning and are pining for God. If modernism was the confident demand for the presence of God, the building of Babel, then postmodernism can be the passion to sift through the ruins of the twentieth century, the rubble of Babel, in a search for the absent God. It is no secret that our culture is experiencing a profound sense of alienation. We are alienated from ourselves, from others and from God. This is what I mean by the absence of God—not that God has abandoned us, but that we are estranged from God and others.

—Don Hudson, “The Dance of Truth: Postmodernism and the Evangelical”

source: Stephanie Berbec

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

...because a bunch of the gifts I ordered arrived today! I can't wait to wrap them and give them to friends and family.

But there was unpleasant surprise in my order.

I got my niece a present and, well, without giving too much away, it was cute and girlie.

What arrived instead today was this:

an OPENED [and probably tried on!] pair of men's under-armor!!! 

[my sister sarah: emphasis on "under"]

YUCK!

Attached to the box was a sticker of what I had actually ordered.

so, so, SO grossed out!

Target, how could you do this to me?

This is Christmas, not April fool's.

gosh... no fun.

Well, I hope that Ida's... ahem, gift, still comes together nicely.

Good luck with all of your Christmas shopping, and I hope you have no traumatic surprises in your future!

Getting SO excited for this monday night!!!

It'll be my third annual--and it is my new, favorite Christmas tradition!

This year, a few friends are joining aaand I finally have a camera ;-)

"I'm holding on to the chandeliers of hope..."

- Coldplay, Christmas Lights

Lovely! 

And free on iTunes this week =)

I thought I'd take just a minute to tell you why I have not been blogging the last few weeks (and won't be for a few more).
Now is essentially the end of the quarter. I am currently writing 3 papers and working on my application for grad school. But I thought I'd give you a rundown of the papers I'm working on:

English Honors: Working with Emma Donoghue's Room and Nicole Krauss's History of Love, I'm discussing the human need for social engagement. Without giving too much away, both of these books deal with characters in cases of extreme loneliness and where relationship does not exist, they create it. While loneliness is a heavy topic, this paper feels refreshing. I think its because I can see, through these novels, what a God-given need relationship is.

English Novel: I am expanding the paper I started earlier this quarter on Nature and the Other. Using Frankenstein as a foundation and building support with Wuthering Heights, Jane Eyre and Hard Times, I'll be tracing the way Nature takes the side of the racially different, the lower class, and the female.

Greek Tragedy: I'm examining Sophocles' Oedipus Tyrannus (aka Oedipus Rex) to try and answer the question: how did Jocasta not realize the truth earlier?? Apparently, this is an original topic, which, to me, is shocking because this play was performed only...... 2,500 years ago! Well, anyway, I think it is fascinating and hope it turns out well.

So there you have it. What I'm currently writing instead of my blog. I hope to check in now and then, but you can expect me to be back full swing around December 14 :)

At a barnes and noble 40% off sale.......
Major weakness for a lit major!!

Just emailed two of the leading Austen scholars at Oxford University to see if I could study under them. [gulp]
Tomorrow I'm meeting with a professor here at UW who graduated from Harvard summa cum laude--summa!--after which he became a Rhodes scholar.
Talking to these people make me feel sooooo small. Which is really good, but not easy.
I was so grateful for Pastor Norm's message yesterday. He shared on John 2--water into wine--and at the end he talked about the 6 stone pots. He pointed out that 6 is the number of imperfection and that these would have been very simple stone pots. But he closed by saying, "The pots didn't contain God's glory, they facilitated it." That is my word for the week!
Jesus help me facilitate your glory... especially to really smart, cool people!

Excerpts from I Peter 5: 
[The Message]

^6-11 So be content with who you are, and don't put on airs. God's strong hand is on you; he'll promote you at the right time. Live carefree before God; he is most careful with you... So keep a firm grip on the faith. The suffering won't last forever. It won't be long before this generous God who has great plans for us in Christ--eternal and glorious plans they are!--will have you put together and on your feet for good. He gets the last word; yes, he does.

Today is a "keep a firm grip on faith" kind of day...

My dad is so precious!! Yesterday we went to the tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree. Of course, with all the rain we've had, the farm was very muddy.
Well, I just looked outside and my dad has a bucket of water, a scrub brush, and all of our rubber boots lined up in a row. He's rinsing them off and scrubbing them down. How cute is that? Ah! So grateful for my dad =)