The Rhine and Mosel River Cruise

I thought I'd do a short blog series on the river cruise that my family took. There were 10 of us all together - my grandparents, my uncle and aunt and their two children, my other uncle, my mom, my sister, and me. We traveled on the Rhine and Mosel rivers through Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, France, and Switzerland. It was a great experience. The family time was awesome, the scenery was beautiful, the culture and history we learned was fascinating, the food was delicious (though a bit too fancy sometimes), and the ship crew members were handsome. What more could a girl wish for? ;-)

Here are some photos to get things started.

The ship (as seen from a hill I climbed - more on that later)

Michelle on the lower level deck.

Mom and I up on top deck. I tried to get some work done on the cruise. At least, I pretended to...

Grandma and I up on top deck with vinyards in the background. There were vinyards EVERYWHERE.

And, of course, some scenic views

Dancing is My Life

I didn't fully realize how much I missed dancing until I got back to Columbia. I've been dancing every day since. On Thursday, I went with a salsa group to a local nightclub (Deja Vu), and a guy who was trying to pick me up asked what I did beside dancing and being a student. I realized there wasn't really anything else. It amused me to be able to honestly tell him that, since I wasn't interested in being picked up by him.

Dancing is my life. There really isn't time for anything besides that and work (and God, but guys tend not to be interested in hearing about that). Of course, sometimes I go out and do other things (like exploring local parks, eating out, or watching movies) with my dancing friends. Even more infrequently, I take the time to draw or write something for fun. But, really, dancing is my fun, my hobby, my social activity, and my exercise. If that means that guys don't fit into that life as anything more than friends and dance partners, it's too bad for them. Perhaps if the right kind of guy came along, I'd be willing to be a bit flexible, but that sort of guy is incredibly rare, so I'm not holding my breath.

Sister Time

The main reason I flew home to Delaware for this first part of the summer was to be here for Michelle's graduation. She graduated second in her class, and consequently had to give a speech at graduation. Michelle, like me, is very sensitive, and she has a acute fear of public speaking. Nevertheless, she decided not to back out of the opportunity (other people offered to do the speech for her) and to face down her phobia. I was so proud of her! She got a bit choked up a couple of times during her speech, but everyone in the audience clapped for her until she was able to keep on going. I nearly started crying myself - I was so proud.

Michelle with some of her graduation presents.

After we went home and Michelle opened some of her graduation presents, I took her out to IHOP for a late-night celebration dinner. She has now experienced the joys of stuffed french toast covered with strawberries (one of my IHOP favorites!) We got a booth by the windows so that we could watch the thunderstorm outside.

It's been great to have time to hang out with Michelle. We've had fun watching a ridiculous number of movies, listening to and critiquing music, dyeing our hair, shopping, playing card games (and creating our own rules), and just generally being silly. I've also been teaching Michelle ballroom dancing.

We tried to dye our hair red, but it didn't entirely work. Here are pictures.

Fun at the Beach

Mom, Michelle and I drove to the beach today. It's only an hour away, but we hardly ever go. It's a bit crowded, and very much commercialized, but we had fun anyway. We created two different sand sculptures (Mom did most of the artistic work) played in the water some, sat in the sun, and got a bit crispy around the edges (I forgot to put sunscreen on my lower back).

The horse was about life-sized, and the cat was a bit bigger than a house cat. It got washed away once while we were working on it, so we had to start over. It's one of the hazards of making sand sculptures.

On the drive there and back, we listened to the radio, and sang along with some of the songs we knew. Mom put up with it nobly.

Tie Dye Fashion

Two summers ago, I was the arts and crafts director at a camp in Pennsylvania. I created quite a few extra shirts as templates, and I found some of them in my closet. On a whim, I decided to cut them up a bit and see what kinds of styles I create. Here are some of the results.

Girl Time

Last weekend my friends Lynne and Jenn came from St. Louis to visit. It was great to have some girl time. We got all dressed up, and went out on the town - first to the Piano Bar to listen to some live music, then to Generic (a local dance club). We got home around 1:30am, had icecream and cheetoes, and started watching "The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants." In the morning, we finished the movie, made apple cinamon chocolate chip pancakes (yummy!) and then went thrift-store shopping. While we were shopping downtown, it started pouring rain. At first we tried to stay dry, then we embraced the downpour, and went running and laughing and screeching through it. We were a bit cold in our wet T-shirts at Chipotle when we went to dinner, but it was a fun experience. I need to play in the rain more often. :-)

Creating an Open Space

Allowing God to work in us and through us requires us to make space in our hearts and minds. Today as I was praying, I saw more clearly some of what I need to let go to create that open space.

I have been thinking for some time of what it would be like to live every day in trust, and with a full expectation of goodness - to have a deep certainty that God would provide all that I needed, and that most importantly, God had already placed within me all that I needed for happiness, wholeness, success, and fullness of joy. The question then is, if I truly believe that God is our Father and Mother, why am I so reluctant to accept this goodness?

I think what I need to let go of is the willful belief that it is my job to carve out for myself a place in this world, and the fearful belief that I am incompetent to do it. With these beliefs come a huge weight of human baggage.

In letting them go I can see:

• My success as defined by God, not by society
• My happiness as built-in, not gained by achieving certain goals set by myself or others
• My worth as established by God, not conferred on me by anyone else
• My spiritual strength as a beloved child of God
• My beauty as spiritual and pure, not physical
• My unbroken relationship with my Father, Mother, God

To experience this freedom, there are some old habits of thought and action that I need to set aside. I need to stop accepting a false picture of who I am.

We read in the Bible the following injunction: "Put off concerning the former conversation the old man, which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; And be renewed in the spirit of your mind; And that ye put on the new man, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness." Ephesians

Setting aside the fear, willfulness, cynicism, and baggage of an imperfect human history is not an easy thing. I think in my case it requires that I stop the human effort to change myself from something flawed and imperfect into something better and more "worthy." This is hard to do, because then I have to face the fear human rejection and failure. But, unless I stop this human striving, I can't be open to see that God has already created me (as He created each of us) complete, whole, and perfectly good. I have to trust with my whole heart, that even if I cannot see my true identity clearly right now, and even if others never see it, it is who I am, because it is what God created.

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is." I John 3:2

Thoughts on TAing

This was my first year serving as a TA (teaching assistant). As a TA, I led discussion sections, reviewed material from the lectures, graded papers and exams, and answered student questions.

It's very different from teaching environmental education to little kids. However, I enjoy being able to lead "grown up" discussions. I could only talk about how Mr. Tree needs sunlight to grow and Mr. Deer needs leaves to eat for so long before Ms. Crystal began to need to talk to someone who exceeded the height of Mr. Knee and could carry on an actual conversation.

Here are some of my general conclusions on teaching college students:

1. Giving out grades is not as heinous as being graded oneself, but it is close.
2. College students actually have about the same attention spans as three-year-olds. They just try harder at faking attentiveness.
3. College students are better than three-year-olds at figuring out when I don't know what I'm talking about.
4. Three-year-olds are more motivated to be "good" than college students. It's just that the three-year-olds lack the self control to follow the rules. College students have the control, but lack the motivation.
5. Text messaging is the devil's invention.
6. Students who fall asleep in class do not enjoy having erasers thrown at them, but it makes class much more enjoyable for me.

I leave you with a few excerpts from one of the papers on cloning that I graded at the end of the semester. The student who wrote it appeared to be generally intelligent, and participated in discussions. I really don't know what happened with this paper. I'm not sure if the student was awake while writing. My suspicion is that she wasn't. Here are a few choice passages:

"Just because a parent has the thought of a potential life saving bonus coming from cloning doesn't shy away from deeper feeling of desire to have that clone."

"Cloning could have potential peril effects"

I love the lack of punctuation here:

"Human dignity is the underlying subject that is trying to be protected by this objection and it is saying that we should treat them in ways that they themselves on reflection and deliberation would believe to be good and cloning is a possible downfall of violating their human dignity and subjecting clones to being used on instrumentally."

And my very favorite:

"No one wants to be used, or be a pon, or be the escape goat for anyone else, so this objection for cloning violating human dignity appears to be a solid argument."

Classes and Dancing

Spring semester went well as a whole. The classes I took were very challenging, but in the end, I got As, and my writing improved, so I think it counts as a success. My dancing has also improved, and has become my favorite passtime, my primary social activity, my exercise, and my passion. I've never been very athletic, but dancing has shown me the exhileration that can come from physical activity. When I can feel the music through my body, connect with my partner, and let my movements just flow, it is like magic. There is nothing else like it.

It may seem a bit odd, but as a generally guarded and closed person, I tend not to be very physically affectionate, even with my friends. Dancing has been great in helping me to be more comfortable opening up and expressing myself in that way.

Dancing is also great when you don't have a boyfriend - you can still experience romance and be swept off of your feet. :-)

It's great to have dance partners that I am friends with as well, because then I can just let the chemistry and magic of dance happen without feeling awkward. I dance best with people I know and trust - at least to some degree. For lindy and blues, I primarily dance with Scott, and for the ballroom dances, I have been dancing with Krishna.

Here are some pictures of me dancing with Scott.

Photos were taken by Mandy Watkins.