Writing Retreat

I spent the last week up in the Georgia mountains on a writing retreat.  It was lovely!  We spent all day, every day, for a week, in cabins writing.  In the evenings everyone would get together and talk about our progress for the day...successes, challenges, etc.  Then various people would share snippets of their work and ask for a press, express, address, or bless.  Here are some highlights...

Revised my publishable paper prospectus (my population and methodology changed)
Fun memories with my cabinmates
Walks around the lake
Hike up to the waterfall
Wrote up a book review (hopefully for publication)
Lots of laughter about bugs and 'camping'
Learned more about qualitative research
Meaningful conversations around higher education & life
Wrote my way into my dissertation (I think I have a topic, pending advisor approval ;)

It was a wonderful retreat...although I am extremely happy to be sleeping in my own bed again! Here are a few pictures from the writing retreat (mostly our trip up Anna Ruby falls).

Devotional for the first day of the writing retreat.  I thought it was fitting.

 From my morning walks around the lake

 We each kind of staked out spaces.  Some of the rooms had desks, mine didn't, thus I took one half of the kitchen table.  We also rearranged furniture that first night to make more conducive writing spaces

 On the deck watching the sunset

 We had all sorts of bug friends that decided to visit

 We were given stickers to wear for our hike

 LaQuesha and my cabinmate Carla

 It was a beautiful day.  I love the mountains, cool(er) days and less humidity!

 Danny & LaQuesha are in my program & made the trek (.4 mile hike, ha)

 The group of us that treated ourselves to a break and a hike.

Carla, Katy, Jung-chi, Danny, LaQuesha, Josh, and me

 My cabinmates, Carla, Katy, and Carolina

Water Skiing

It's been a couple weeks since I've updated my blog. Here are some of the highlights from the last few weeks.

Labor Day Weekend!

Hung out in Austin

Watched Baylor win the first football game of the season

Visited with a friend from OR

Hanging out with the Ecklund's

BJs tradition

LEAD retreat

and last but definitely not least...

Water Skiing!

Yes, that's right! I tried/learned how to water ski! It was a blast. I'm hooked. I love, love, love the water and am so excited to try it again!

One of the chaplains and his wife bought a boat and I tagged along on Labor Day. Megan video tapped a few of my attempts. The first time, I mostly got up. Second time, disaster. Third, got up for a bit, only I went to the right and Megan's camera went the other direction. This is my first attempt below.

Really, I cannot wait to try this again...I LOVED it and would LOVE to get good! The chaplain wake boarded and did all sorts of tricks...sign me up for that!

And here's my battle scar from skiing. ;) When I got back in the boat, I noticed my knee was stinging and when I looked down I notice I was bleeding. It just means I'm 'that' hardcore, ha.

Although lots of other things have been happening, I felt the need to catch up a little with my blogging. Last weekend Kristel came into Austin for our friend Britney's wedding. I'll post on that and other adventures later!

Not so typical weekend in Waco!

Last week some friends came into town to play (who will from here on out be referred to as 'the group') . Although none of them were here explicitly to visit me (they were actually all here to visit each other), I was able to join along in much of the fun.

Friday night Sarah and I joined the group at a deep dish pizza place in Hewitt. Yummm. It's definitely a place I will visit again, and, on Thursday nights they have live music. :) From there, we went out to my favorite hide away, Woodway Park. We sat on picnic tables and watched the sunset. Unfortunately for them, it wasn't the best. And actually, it was the most disappointing I had ever seen while at the Lake.

Although the sunset was disappointing, the clouds were in rare form. :)

From there, they humored me on a short walk through the nature trail looking for fireflies. Unfortunately, again, it was quite hot out, and the fireflies were rarely to be seen.

But the night was nice and the company was great!

Saturday afternoon, I went out to the Lake with Megan...again. We stood in the water and memorized words...again. This time, however, we planned ahead and brought our suits! After a few hours of working on words, we headed for a swim. Joking the night before about swimming out to the buoy, I convinced Megan to swim out to the buoy with me. It was a nice little swim...and the water felt fabulous.

Can you see the buoy? I wish I knew how far the swim was exactly. :)

Did I mention when we first got in, we saw a snake in the water?! Yay for adventures!

Saturday night the group had a wedding and I met up with them after. Many, many laughs were shared and some fun memories were made!

Sunday morning was church and in the afternoon I headed to the theatre to see the 3-D movie UP with the group (plus Megan & Sarah)! Although I had heard stories about it being sad, I couldn't believe in the first 5 minutes my eyes began to well up. Don't worry, no tears were actually shed ;). Overall, it was a cute movie and the 3-D adventure was fun. It was my first 3-D movie, and probably not my last ;)

Sunday evening a large group of us celebrated Tiffani's birthday. Tiff is currently pursuing her PhD in Higher Ed at UCLA and has been a great resource and source of encouragement as I've sought to begin this journey into a PhD. After dinner, the group (and Sarah & I) ended up back at the Lake for the sunset and a swim. The second time out to the buoy was a lot easier as the water was calmer than when Megan and I swam out on Saturday afternoon.

Late Sunday night, Sarah and I said our goodbyes to the group as they were heading back to their respective homes the next day.

It was a wonderful weekend full of fun and friends. When people ask me what I'll miss about Waco when I leave, the list isn't that long, but the people are definitely at the top of it!

Creative Studying

It's sad when the baristas at Starbucks recognize you. Clearly, I have spent way to much time at the Starbucks in Bellmead. However, it's a great place to study. It's clean, there are little to no distractions (like a house that needs cleaning, or students parading in the lobby), and with my iPod I can escape to the world of memorization.

Well, not wanting to appear a bigger nerd than I already am, I try not to spend too many nights in a row, nor too many weekend nights at Starbucks. Yet with many words left unknown, I decided to change up the routine.

Megan (who is also studying for the GRE) and I went to Lake Waco on Satuday for some fun in the sun with our vocab words. It was 102 degrees outside, yet with the breeze from the lake and the chilled water on our feet, the heat was more than bearable.

We litterally stood kneed deep in the water with our flash cards. The only regret was that we didn't bring/wear our suits, the water was too enticing and on more than one occasion we joked about getting in our full clothing. We learned our lession...next time, wear the suits. :)

What a nice change to the mundane task of memorization...and I'm sure the baristas didn't miss me.

Sailing

The Waco Sailing Club and Providence Hospice came together last weekend to hold the 10th annual sailing day for the Waco community in order to raise money for the Providence Hospice.

Meredith saw information for this event on the local news channel. So last Sunday we packed up and headed to the lake for a day of sailing.

After waiting in the hot sun for an hour or more, we finally received our life jackets and were headed to a sail boat. We were greeted by a fabulous couple who live between Waco and Austin and sail every weekend they possibly can. They were hilarious and taught us all sorts of randomness about sailing. It was amazing how cool it was sailing on the water (felt 15 degrees cooler when the wind was blowing toward us). Here are a couple pictures from the trip. I was a bit nervous to try and take too many pictures. I can swim, but my camera cannot. ;)

(From left to right: Megan, Meredith, Jennifer, me)

Jennifer and Megan liked to to hang their feet off the front of the boat (bow). During our little excursion, the boat would heel (tip on its side), which they said was completely normal. However, a bit disconcerting because it felt as though we might tip all the way. At which point, I'm not sure if my life preserver would have been a help or hinderance. :)

(From left to right: Meg's friend Lacey, me, Jennifer) We had a great time sailing, but I was happy to be on land, hydrated, and heading home to have dinner. :)

Waco's Best

Although there are many things I miss about California and the west coast, I have come to appreciate my Waco home. Some call this the Waco 'suck' factor. When you first arrive in Waco, it sucks! But then, it kind of sucks you in. I never, ever, in a million years, thought I would be staying in Waco for a 5th year. I mean, there is no ocean, no mountains, no big city, no true theatre, and frankly, not much to do after 8pm.

So what is great about Waco?!

1. No traffic/smog

2. Great people!

3. Cameron Park (2nd largest in city park in the nation, Central Park being 1st)

4. Altos de Jalisco (favorite Mexican food place in the area)

5. Diamondbacks (great desserts/happy hour)

6. Fireflies!

7. Lake Waco

8. Suspension Bridge (1st suspension bridge west of the Mississippi)

9. Close to Dallas & Austin

10. Woodway Park (newest favorite!)

Although these things are all great, many of them aren't things to 'do' or at least not things you can't do frequently. However, Woodway Park challenges this idea. It's a park located right off Lake Waco and offers a couple trails for hiking/walking/biking and probably the best place in Waco to watch the sunset.

One advantage of not having mountains is the fabulous sky scenes we get in Texas. Last night, I went to Woodway Park to journal and watch the sunset. Just as the sun was setting, I was joined by Meredith. Here are some pictures of the sunset we enjoyed!

After watching the sunset, we headed to the trail to find some fireflies. As we walked, Meredith inhaled a bug. Literally, she was walking and began coughing. I was laughing so hard. Mostly because this same thing had happened to Meredith the day before when she was walking the bear trail. Two bugs, in two days.

In her honor, I began singing this little jingle (modified from the musical RENT)

Goodbye bug, goodbye bug

Just came to say goodbye bug goodbye

Just came to say goodbye bug, goodbye bug

hello... disease

I'm sure if you eat too many bugs, you'd catch something.

Anyway. As we were walking, we saw a little cotton tailed rabbit. So being the late twenties young women we are, we followed the bunny. As we followed it down a trail, I began to laugh again. It wasn't long ago that we were watching Alice in Wonderland/Alice and the Looking Glass and commenting if we would be stupid enough to follow a rabbit down a hole. And look at us, what we were doing?! Meredith and I got a good laugh out of it as we joked about the Jabberwoky coming for us :)

As we approached a bridge on the trail we stopped to take in the beauty. There were hundreds of fireflies lighting up around us, about 30 every second. It was unreal. I got out my camera to take a video. After many attempts, I got the video below. Although it does not do justice to the scene, I thought I'd post it for a glimpse of what we experienced. You can only see about 7 in this video. I'm not sure how to get a video that does these fireflies justice, and maybe, again, this is just one of the things in life we are meant to experience once (or twice, or as many times as I decide to visit Woodway Park) :)