All you need is love

I've been reading through parts of the gospels this week and have re-discovered the core of Christian teaching. In the words of Christ, "Love others as I have loved you." The gospel is all about love. At it's core, it's about God loving the world so much that he gave his one and only son to die so that it could be saved from it's sin. It's about Christ loving us so much that he gave his own life so that we may live with him eternally. It's about his call for us to love everyone, including those that we may consider beneath us.

I think it is very profound how Jesus washed the feet of his disciples, showing them that no matter how superior you are socially, morally, or economically, you should still serve the least of mankind as much or more than the people society would have you believe you should be serving. Everyone, is deserving of your love, just as God thinks we are all deserving of his love, even if we don't believe we are. Peter was very opposed to Jesus washing his feet, claiming that he instead should be serving Jesus instead of the other way around. But Jesus tells him that Peter can't be his disciple unless he allows him to wash his feet. I found this to be much like how I feel towards God's love for me. I'm far from deserving of the love he has shown for me, but in order to follow him I have to accept Christ's love and sacrifice for me, despite how far I am from deserving such infinite love.

God loved us so much when we never deserved it. And I think it'll be very helpful for me to think about this any time I don't think I should be loving others. Often I tell myself that someone has done nothing to deserve my love or my help. Perhaps they've been unreliable in the past, or perhaps hateful or has hurt me physically or emotionally. Yet I've done so many things that have hurt God in the past, yet he never ceases to love me despite my failures. I should show the same love to everyone who has wronged me, or just never done anything specifically to help me. I think this is the main justification behind Christ's teaching on loving your enemies, which can be one of the most difficult commandments to put into action.

Remembering what to take true joy in

Summer is almost to an end, and I'm really ready to get back to Rice. I even bought my first car yesterday with a little over 1/3 of my total income for this summer. I realized that God has blessed my life with a lot lately. I have a great job that I've learned a lot from this summer and made a lot of money from at the same time. I have amazing friends that I am still in contact with even though I've been gone for two years, including Kameron, James, Franklin, Ashley, Sabonis, Geoff, and Andy from my high school and Matt I, Matt M, Patrick, Ciera, Charlie, Geoff, Christa, and Eddie from youth group that I've been able to spend a pretty good amount of time with this summer, plus many others that I'm leaving out. I have an incredible girlfriend who constantly makes me feel loved and who I can talk to about anything with. I now have a car that is completely mine, and was able to pay for the car, insurance, and gas on my own. And my future is brighter than it ever has been. Aside from national fame (which I will gladly do without, thanks), I've got just about everything that popular culture says you need in order to be happy.

And don't get me wrong, I'm really happy with life right now. But there is a great danger in deriving all of my joy from worldly pleasures. The Bible offers incredible bits of wisdom when it commands us (and I'm summarizing because I'm terrible with memorizing scripture) to not strive after earthly pleasures, but to take joy in serving The Lord. I could lose any of those earthly things that are making me so happy at any moment. I could lose contact with many of my friends. My car could get in a wreck or be stolen. My job is almost over and my money will be gone before I know it, and I may not even get to work here again next summer. Robyn and I could break up. All of these things could happen, and many of them probably will at some point in my life. I think it is important for me to realize now, while times are good, that while they bring joy now and will no doubt bring sadness when I lose them, God will stay with me forever. But there's nothing that can ever keep me from serving Him, and from my experience, that brings much more happiness and satisfaction than any of my earthly possessions ever can.

And I should also take more time to thank God for blessing me as he has. Because all of these things, even those which I often think come from my own hard work and smart choices, come from Him. Which is even more reason to follow his word and serve him in everything I do.

Awesome dream

Last night I had an incredible dream. I was back at Rice and it was the first two days of classes (the dream spanned two days). As I went through my classes and activities, people randomly began singing songs from Disney movies. I remember going to my Business Communication class and was a few minutes late. The prof was like a fatter and balder version of my accounting professor from last fall. After getting upset about people being late (it was the first day, come on!) he started singing "Let's get down to business" from Mulan. I really appreciate my own unconscious sense of humor. I think "A Whole New World" from Aladdin was sung at the beginning of one of my classes, probably during Fluid Mechanics to describe how completely different it will be from solid mechanics. I think Neil Patrick Harris showed up to teach one of my classes, perhaps music theory(?). It was interesting that even in my dream I had my entire class schedule memorized and in correct chronological order.

The finale before I woke up involved Robert Downey Junior in a hospital bed drugged up on painkillers, one of my engineering professors in Ryon Lab, and Felicia Day in the engineering quad sitting on 180, singing "Can you feel the love tonight?" from Lion King in a style similar to "My Eyes" from Dr. Horrible where it kept switching between multiple people. I don't really know what this had to do with being back at Rice, but it was epic. I love my crazy dreams.

Then I got an email from my fluid mechanics prof an hour ago. I was hoping that it would be written in rhyme. It wasn't. MLIA.

I hope the first day of fall 2009 is very similar to this. It would be a great start to my senior year.

Leadership and Friendship

As of the end of today, I'll have exactly 3 weeks, only 15 days, left working at ARL for the summer. Despite what I thought at the beginning, summer did actually manage to fly by pretty quickly. While I'm really excited to go back to Rice and stop working, I still feel like there will be some things about summer that I'll miss. The lack of stress and deadlines, weekends where I am free to do whatever I want, and my friends in Austin which will become harder and harder to see in the future as they are going off to college, or finishing college and moving to wherever jobs take them.

I also noticed today that I've actually grown pretty close to my boss at work, Anthony. Despite how strange he seemed at first, he's quickly become the best boss/ supervisor that I've had at a job. He does a good job of making sure I get work done and don't slack too much, but he's also an incredibly good teacher and takes time out of his work to teach me things that he thinks I will use for the rest of my engineering career. We also discuss our weekends, complain about annoying co-workers, and discuss ridiculous news stories from time to time. It almost feels like a jedi master/ apprentice relationship. I think relationships are really helpful to being a good leader.

I've had my share of good and bad leaders (this includes bosses at work, theater directors, coaches, etc), and I think there were two qualities that made a big difference in how much I liked and respected those in authority. The first is how much the leader knows about what they are supposed to be leading. My best coach in my opinion was Coach Rotich, who was a world class runner who had won marathons. If someone has proven that they are knowledgable and experienced, it is a lot easier to trust them to make the right decisions. On the opposite end of the spectrum, my worst boss was the program director when I was working at Camp Sol Mayer. She had never really worked at a summer camp, yet due to her position in the local boy scout council, had been put in charge of the camp. Even the youngest and most inexperienced staff had a better idea of what was going on than she did, and as a result she wasn't very well respected and most of us never felt very compelled to listen to her when she told us to do things. It was a nightmare.

The other important trait is how well a leader can relate to his or her followers. A leader who came from the same background as those that he is leading, or one who makes an effort to get to know his followers, is much more effective at understanding what motivates his followers and can be more effective at communicating. The underlings also will feel more relaxed if working for someone that they know and understand, and are more likely to work efficiently. The fact that Anthony has decades of experience in our field, and tries to get to know me as a person, has made me respect him quite a bit. Theater directors who have pushed me, but still had realistic expectations about the amount of time the cast and crew had to give to the show, were much more respected than those who sacrificed the morale of the cast and crew just to put on a good show.

There are definitely many other traits of good leaders, but these are two that stick out to me as I've been spending time working under Anthony, and two traits that I should keep in mind the next time I find myself in a leadership position.

Robyn comes to Austin!

Robyn came to visit me and meet my family and some of my friends from high school this weekend. And it was really, really fun. Friday night she showed up right in the middle of Peter's 18th birthday party, so we ate leftover pizza and played rock band with Peter and his friends. It was really cool that Robyn clicked so easily with my family. My mom really seemed to like her, she spent a lot of time just talking with Victoria to get to know her, and she enjoyed spending time with Peter and his friends too. It was cool that she stayed at my house for an entire weekend and it almost felt like she was a part of the family.

Saturday we slept in for a bit, watched a couple movies (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Enchanted) and went to Schlitterbahn with some of my youth group friends. I could tell at the beginning that it was probably kind of weird for her to be crammed into a minivan with 6 people she had never met before, but she warmed up to them pretty quickly and seemed to have a really fun time. It started raining right as we were about to go on the first ride, but we still managed to hit about all of the good parts of the old section of the park. I was a bit upset that we didn't make it to the new section with the awesome wave pool and insane water slides, but I found it easier to dwell on how much fun we did end up having and not how much more fun we could have had if we'd decided to go for the entire day or if it hadn't rained for an hour. This was especially helpful since people were already upset about Geoff losing his keys in one of the tube float rides and the possibility of not being able to drive back to Austin loomed over our heads. Fortunately one of Geoff's parents was able to drive down and give us a spare key, and even offered to pay for our dinner on the way back at Dairy Queen.

On Sunday I drove Robyn to UT before going to mass so she could visit one of her band friends from high school. After picking her back up again much earlier than I expected to be seeing her again, I took her to see my high school and outside of the building that I work at this summer (unfortunately you need quite a bit of clearance to actually go inside the building). She thought it was really cool that my school was broken up into different buildings so we could be outside so much, something I hadn't really appreciated much while I was there. I guess it would have been pretty awful to be stuck inside one building all day. Then we went to Mangia, one of the best chicago-style stuffed deep dish pizza places ever, and later drove up to a Target in Cedar Park to visit TJ while he was working. Robyn was worried that it might be awkward for the two of us to see him together since neither of us had seen him since before we were officially together, but it was actually pretty nice to see him and not really awkward at all. We were especially lucky since we managed to get there right at his 3:30 lunch break. Still trying to figure out how a break at 3:30 counts as lunch though.

And I'll get to see her again in about 3 more days when I go back to Houston for the last time this summer. Then it'll just be 2 weeks and 5 days until I move back home to Rice!

Well at least I'm better than that guy

After a lot of prayer and thought, I've noticed a common problem with my own spiritual growth that I think also affects far too many Christians. We often get caught up in the mindset that "Well, I'm not as bad as this person and that person, so I must be living a good life." It seems like I often inflate my idea of how righteous of a person I am by comparing my actions to people who don't act as morally as I do. I see people who get drunk every night and pat myself on the back for only having a drink or two every few weeks. I hear of people having sex before marriage and congratulate myself for keeping to just kissing my girlfriend and keeping my virginity. I hear people gossip and tell myself that it's good that I only say bad things about people who truly deserve it.

What difference would it make in our lives if we instead compared ourselves to people on the other side of the spectrum, or to how Jesus Christ acted? Maybe I should be asking myself why I even drink occasionally, when these other people completely abstain, knowing that that is what God calls them to do. Why don't I strive to be like some couples who save their first kiss for their wedding day, to keep from any lustful temptations, but instead continue to put myself in situations where lust takes hold of my mind? Why can't I seek to be like some of my friends who I've never heard a mean word come out of their mouths all my life?

I think the key sin here is my own pride. It's so much better for my pride and self-esteem when I build myself up by focusing on how much better I am than others. If I were to instead think about the ways in which I fail, and set my goals for a higher ideal, it would kill my pride and my own sense of accomplishment.

I think Jesus knew exactly how dangerous this mindset can be to people. After all, the 2nd and 4th beatitudes specifically call us to set our pride aside and seek to become more righteous instead of dwell on how great we already think we are. Christ says, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land," and calls us to humility. CS Lewis writes in Mere Christianity that all sins can be linked to pride, which I think is true, though the same could also be said of idolatry. Jesus also says two verses later that "Blessed are they that hunger and thirst for righteousness: for they shall have their fill." It seems counter intuitive that by recognizing our faults and striving to live a more righteous life, we shall be more satisfied than if we build ourselves up, yet I've noticed that this tends to be the case.

When I first came to Rice I was overwhelmed by how little I was beginning to realize I actually knew about the world. Although I was now more knowledgeable then I ever had been, I felt as if I knew less than I had before. The annoying thing is that the same is true in our spiritual walk. The closer we tend to grow towards this ideal of righteous living and the more time we spend in communion with God, the more we realize how much further we have to go. While I feel like I've come a long way since I really started thinking seriously about my faith at the beginning of high school, I feel like I'm more inadequate now than I ever did back then. Perhaps my blindfold of pride has been slowly disappearing since the beginning of high school, but then every time I think about how far I've come I fall into the same trap of pride in my own righteousness that I was in to begin with.

Where did summer go?

I realized when coming into work today that I only have 4 full weeks left of working, and then a partial week before moving back to Rice. I've already worked for 8 weeks, which means that summer is basically 2/3 of the way over. I'm getting more and more excited about going back to Rice. Perhaps I'm also just in a good mood because I had an amazing weekend. Phantom of the Opera was incredible, and although Robyn had to work for part of the weekend, I still enjoyed just getting to sit in the same room as her. And I'll get to see her in Austin in just 4 days. I spent a lot of June waiting for July to get here because it meant getting to see her more often, and now that it's here I'm pretty excited.

As Mithun commented on my last post, I've noticed that a lot of my problems seem to come with not being completely convinced of the importance of devoting myself fully to God in everything I do, and I don't see the benefit of doing that over just giving him control over 70 or 80% of my life. I need to find a way to become completely convinced of that again. I think this was the theme of DWC during my freshman year. Perhaps it would be good to try to find any notes that I took while I was there and see if any of the verses or points made by the speakers are relevant to my problems. Maybe even spending more time in prayer and reading from God's word will convince me of the importance of giving him total control of my life.

Another thing I've been thinking about is how far is too far in a relationship? It's something that I'd always considered irrelevant when discussed back in my high school youth group and something I didn't pay much attention to. Every Christian knows that holding hands is good, and premarital sex is very bad, but where is the 'Do Not Cross' line somewhere in between the two in the spectrum? It seems like every Christian couple has a different idea of what they consider too far. Some will consider everything short of sex to be ok as long as they aren't losing their virginity. Others think they should save kissing for when they're married. I haven't done anything that I think I'll regret at this point, though maybe I'll find that I have and need to stop doing things to remain faithful to my beliefs, but it's still something I think I should look into now that it's something that might actually influence my future actions. It seems like something I could find answers to in John Paul II's Theology of the Body, though there might be something about it in the Bible.

It looks like this is going to be a very busy week. I've got something going on every night this week (Soccer on Monday, Movies and a Meal with the college aged church group on Tuesday, Harry Potter on Wednesday, and frantic cleaning on Thursday). As someone who really likes constantly having things to do, I'm really looking forward to it.

So close!

In just 25 hours I'll be getting on a bus to go to Houston. I haven't been this excited since Beer Bike, Christmas, and the first Rice football game of the year. It's strange how dependent on one person you can become, where going a day without talking with her, not knowing what she's been doing in the past few hours, and particularly not being to see her for 6 1/2 weeks become really painful, but getting to hear her voice or be with her are some of the most exciting moments you have in recent memory. Maybe it's still just infatuation that's lasted since last September when we first started hanging out and unofficially dating, or maybe she really is that special.

Spending a weekend with Robyn is going to be amazing, but nowhere near as amazing as heaven will be. So why do I keep putting my spiritual life on the back burner, letting it simmer and focusing on "more important" matters? I've made a lot of preparations for getting to see Robyn this weekend, yet I rarely do anything to prepare for heaven on days aside from Sunday morning, and even then my mind is often elsewhere, thinking about my plans for later that afternoon, or remembering fun times from the day or week before instead of worshiping and praying. I constantly find myself falling under the assumption that my relationship with God is as important as my retirement plan, or who I'll marry, or what company I want to work for after I graduate. "I'll have time to worry about that later. I need to focus on the here and now," I often tell myself. "What am I going to do this weekend? How am I going to get this project finished on time?" I spend more time worrying about trivial present concerns and never about the infinitely more important concerns of the future. I wish I could think of a way to get rid of the procrastination Christianity mindset that I've been taking on so much lately.

Also, I've probably already talked about this, but I've noticed how greatly the people I interact with, the tv I watch, and the things I read, influence my thoughts. I think I am too easy to convince to believe something, and just as easy to convince to return to what I originally believed. I wonder how long it will be until I start to let the worldviews of others seriously change mine and I start to become the kind of person I don't want to be. When will the temporary rewards of stupid actions start to look better than the long term consequences? I think the two solutions are to spend more time talking with people that I want to be like, and to spend more time talking with God.

So that was a pretty God heavy post so far. I guess I don't have a whole lot else to say. Life has been going on basically the same course that it's been going this summer, though I did get to see Monica, my former roommate's girlfriend, on Saturday for 4th of July. And today my roommates and I officially reserved our apartment for the fall, so we'll be in room 1101 at The Boulevard next year for anyone who wants to come visit. I'm moving in on August 14th, just 5 weeks from Friday!

Day of Epic

This weekend was pretty fantastic, which is surprising since it was originally supposed to be the most uneventul weekend of the month since I didn't really have anything planned. Richard called me on Friday night and asked if I wanted to do anything or if he could come over, and I then IMed Matt and asked if he wanted to come over as well. Suddenly my boring and uneventful Friday night was turned into a full Rock Band night with Richard on bass, Matt on vocals, Peter on guitar, and me on drums. It was awesome.

Saturday was pretty uneventful, but very restful since I ended up getting almost 12 hours of sleep. Were I still at Rice, I would have freaked out about losing 4 hours of time to sleep that I could have used socializing or studying. But it's summer, and I think sleeping for 12 hours on weekends is what summer is all about.

Sunday was absolutely amazing. I started the day out by helping my old youth group with their car wash fundraiser at culvers. I realized that I've now helped with that car wash for the past 3 years since the tradition started, despite the fact that our first car wash was right after I graduated. And every year I've gotten the same epic sandal tan. Maybe I'll put pictures up on facebook.

I invited Matt, Richard, Geoff, and Steven over for a game of Diplomacy in the afternoon. It was my first Diplomacy victory in a while (Matt and Richard's last turn cheap move doesn't qualify Richard for a win imho). I was playing Germany, and at one point my empire extended from Portugal to St. Petersburg. Granted, it was pretty much just a big straight line, but it was a cool sight to see, and quite epic! I did feel kind of bad about wrecking Geoff, who was new to the game and playing France.

The evening concluded with a showing of, yes, I'm not making this up, Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog and Serenity back to back on the big screen. It was amazing! It was at the Alamo Draft House which means there was also food to be had. One of the waiters was even wearing a complete Dr. Horrible costume. Quite awesome! I liked that there were people in Austin willing to organize this event apparently every year to benefit a charity. They were also auctioning off various comic books and scripts and such signed by actors in Serenity as well as Joss Whedon himself. Being a poor college student I obviously couldn't afford any of these, but it was funny to see the auctioneer selling them up. Her pitch to sell a comic book signed by Joss Whedon was to tell us all that it still "smelled like Joss. Mmmm."

So I spent more time with friends than I have been most of the summer this weekend, which reminded me of something that had been bothering me slightly earlier this month and still a bit recently. Robyn went back to St. Louis and has been hanging out with various friends from her home almost every day. She tells me stories about how amazing Kendall, Patrick, Anne, John, and several of her other friends, of things they did in high school, and how much time they still spend together this summer. I kept wondering to myself why she has such a close friendship with that group of her high school friends, and looking back, I had a lot of friends that I knew only fairly well. It was a mix of a bit of jealousy, and a bit of regret, as if I had missed out on forming a really close group of friends that all got along so well like they did. It didn't help that my main group of high school friends from last summer, everyone from monday night soccer, haven't shown up in 2 weeks and I feel like I'm becoming more and more distanced from them.

I talked to her about whether she was looking forward to coming back to Houston or if she would rather stay in St. Louis for the rest of the summer just out of curiosity, and she said she'd definitely rather be with her friends at home. So why was I so eager to come back to Houston. Did I really not have a strong enough connection with friends from before Rice? Or was it because I now felt a lot closer to my friends at college?

Well, here are the conclusions that I made. First, I'm lying to myself if I say I don't have friends that I haven't known for a while that I am still in contact with and close to. Just out of the friends who came over this past weekend, there were two people that I've known since 9th grade (6 years), one since 6th (9 years) and one thatI've known since 1st grade (14 years!), plus Peter who I've known for basically my whole life and is essentially my closest friend in the world. I also had several other friends come to my birthday party the weekend before, people who obviously care enough about me to give up most of their saturday to spend time with me. And my youth group friends that I've seen every other Tuesday, at Olive Garden, and at the car wash. And finally, yeah, Robyn may be closer to her friends than I am to mine, but that's a reason to celebrate for her (which makes me feel better) instead of just pity myself (and feel depressed).

Work is serious business

My boss returned from his Europe vacation on Monday and the last three days have been by far the most intense days of the summer. Feeling the need for extra workers to get all of the projects done as quickly as possible since we're in some kind of crunch right now, my boss basically decided that it was time for me to stop being just a college-intern-student-worker and start doing the kind of work that all of the drafters do. On one hand it's pretty exciting to be doing serious engineering work, but at the same time I don't feel like I'm ready for it. Everyone else has been doing drafting for anywhere from 5 to 30 years, and I've spent the last 3 days being taught how to do it while submitting real projects to be checked and approved for use by the rest of the lab. Today I actually began creating an assembly drawing from scratch, complete with A JOHANNIGMAN in the "drawn by" box. It was exciting, but once again, I feel like I'm going to mess something up with my lack of experience and knowledge. Part of me also feels like I should be getting paid more if I'm doing the same work as the full time drafters, but then I remind myself that while they are probably getting paid at least twice as much as me, they probably work twice as fast too.

In a more exciting note, I've started emailing my amazing friend Andrea who is in Ecuador about how life has been for her. Since the end of May I've been reading her blog and making occasional comments on her facebook about how exciting it seems. She's on a medical internship sort of thing with Beyond Traditional Borders, and along with another student from Rice, is going around to communities in Ecuador and testing out a series of medical backpack projects that they've been working on in the past year to help out the impoverished areas. It's really interesting and a really awesome use of a summer. She seems to be doing a lot of good in that country by helping to heal the sick and educate the population about healthy habits. If you want excuciating amounts of details, here's the link to her blog. http://ecuador.blogs.rice.edu/

So the reason I mention that is that it was nice to actually hear from her personally about how she was doing and share a bit about how my life was. I consider her one of my best friends at Rice, and not getting to talk to your close friends regularly has been tough this summer. I've already talked way too much about how much I hate only getting to talk to Robyn on the phone or skype every day, and how it's been getting worse and worse the longer I've gone without seeing her (up to almost 5 weeks now). But in reality, that's probably not as bad as it has been to not even talk to many of my other friends. At least I know more or less what Robyn has been doing every day, but with many of my other friends, I don't even know what they are doing this summer.

In some of my prayer and meditation the last few days, I realized that not seeing friends over the summer is a lot like our relationship with God. We can never see him in person, just like how I have literally not seen any of my Rice friends while in Austin (we'll ignore my trips to Houston). But even though we can't see him, it isn't all that hard to keep our relationship if we talk to him regularly. I've talked to Robyn and Ryan almost every day over the summer, but I feel like I've lost connection with many of my other really close friends like Kyle, Andrea, Ian, Gary, Rick, and Autumn, who I have only had a couple conversations with over the summer. Communication is crucial for a relationship with God, just as it is with friends, and I feel like if I spent even half the amount of time talking with God that I do talking with Robyn every night, (and he deserves so much more than that) it would do amazing things for my relationship with him.

My life is amazing

Yesterday was a great day for me. If I were to rank it on a scale of 1-10, it would probably be around a 9, trailing behind memorable "firsts" (9.5) and life changing experiences like getting into Rice, a great spiritual revelation, etc. (10). The day started with actually having interesting and challenging things to do at work. In the afternoon Robyn told me that she had mailed me something and that I couldn't open it until my birthday. While I have no idea what it is yet, just knowing that you mean enough to someone that she is willing to go through the trouble of mailing a birthday present to you is special, and meant a lot to me.

That was then followed by getting to see some of my best friends by going to Olive Garden and then bowling afterward. Looking back, it was nothing spectacular, but there were some friends that I hadn't seen in a very long time that I had thought I might have permanently lost contact with since it's been about two years since I've seen them, like Steph and Michelle, so it was good to have those relationships resurrected. I also noticed how diverse the personalities in my youth group are, and it was interesting to see how many different paths God had taken each of us on. Some of us were at prestigious universities, others at community college and working full time during the year. Some of us were still very strong in our faiths, others were struggling, and others, like me, seem to be somewhere in the middle, but it was encouraging to see that we were all still trying.

I really hope that I can spend more time with that group, perhaps my closest friends from high school, this summer. As more and more of us drift away from Austin, it will be harder and harder each year to get everyone together. I've already noticed this in trying to put together a birthday party to celebrate my 20th birthday this weekend. About 1/3 of the people that I wanted to come have told me that they wish they could, but they are in other cities, or other states for the summer, or for the entire year. As much as my life has begun to revolve around Houston instead of Austin, many of my friends are beginning to establish their lives away from home, making it difficult to stay in touch outside of occassional emails and facebook messages.

I took a class on the science of interpersonal relationships this spring, and one thing that I learned was just how temporary human relationships can be. I look at who my closest friends are now, and only about 1/5 of them are people that I knew even 2 years ago. Robyn, the person I talk to the most aside from my brother, I've only known for about 10 months. Last Saturday, when I thought about who my groomsmen would be if I got married today, only two of the people I was considering were people that I knew more than 2 years ago.

So what is to say that these relationships won't still be around 3 or 4 years from now? I'm half way through college now, and I wonder how many of my friendships I'll be able to keep going as strong as they are now. Already one of my best friends, Kyle, has left Rice. I feel like I'm making a good effort to keep that friendship really strong, but if he wasn't still living in Houston and had instead moved away to another state, I don't know how well I would be able to do that.

Spouses, and the friends who are even more important

Yesterday two of my friends, Russell Schafer and Alison Slowey, got married. Unfortunately since I volunteered to help DJ the reception, I missed the service since Ryan and I were setting up sound equipment. Russell and Alison are a great couple, though I'm sure I could say that about every couple that I've seen get married. Usually bad couples don't make it quite that far. The reception was great, despite the couple times that the RMC sound system completely failed on us and made Ryan and I look like idiots, and everyone seemed to have a great time.

With all of the talk at weddings about how great it is for two people to love each other, it was slightly depressing for Ryan and I since Ryan has been upset about being single for a while, and I've now been to two weddings since the last time I was able to be with Robyn in person. I could spend another post talking about how much I miss her, but I feel like there was something much more important that I got out of this wedding, and that is just how important my guy friends, my brothers in Christ, are to me.

Running sound with Ryan, and hanging out with Bobby for a bit during the reception, made me realize that I have some really awesome friends. The three of us got into a conversation about who our groomsmen are going to be at our weddings, all of which will probably be at least 3 or 4 years down the line at the very minimum. I realized that while I have no idea who I'm going to end up marrying at that point, I've got some very awesome friends that I'm sure will be standing to my left looking just as spiffy as I will when the time comes. Ryan will definitely be one of them, and Bobby might as well, depending on how many groomsmen my wife decides to let me have. I realized that I have at least 6 or 7 very, very close friends that I can talk to about anything, call anytime just to hang out, and who I share a lot of interests with, and that is truly a blessing.

Looking back, I had about as much fun spending most of yesterday with Ryan as I did spending time with Robyn the last time I was in Houston. We talked about all kinds of things, and it's hard to describe in words just how much our friendship truly means and how valuable it is, and will continue to be.

It's great that Russell and Alison love each other so much and will be spending the rest of their lives together, but the friendship between him and his bearded, deep voiced, former MOB drum minor, glasses wearing friend Jake (all characteristics of Ryan as well, aside from him being the current drum minor instead) is probably just as important for him. And those are the kinds of friends who will be with us forever.

Not taking kindly to summer time

Today more than most days, I really really wanted to be back at Rice. Summer isn't going too great for me, which is strange because it seems like I have a lot more to do this summer than I did last summer. Yesterday Robyn and I celebrated being officially together for a month, and I remembered that we haven't really even seen each other for 3/4 of that time, and it will be more than another month before I'll see her in person again. But it's not just that I miss her, I miss everyone at Rice. I miss the guys from 3rd south, I miss Ian and Colin and playing Rock Band in Martel 324, I really miss the MOB and all of my friends from that (Thank God that they'll be the first people I'll see a lot when I get back), I even miss going to classes with Kevin, Ryan, Gary, Nathan, Travis, Mario, and Rodolfo. If I could do anything to make August, or at least July, get here I would.

Robyn talked about how happy she was to be home and spending time with her high school friends because they make her feel more positive, energetic, and enthusiastic than a lot of her Rice friends. I found that the opposite is true for me, and that I feel so much better spending time with my Rice friends, particularly those in MOB, Agape, and CSA, and don't really enjoy spending time with my friends from high school as much, though hanging out with my youth group friends is amazing. There tends to be a theme throughout my life of every Christian or band group that I am a member of being awesome. Perhaps I should take this as a sign and try to spend more time with the people from those areas of my life and not try to diversify my friendships too much among people that don't always put me in as good of a mood or make me feel quite as excited, happy, and optimistic.

On a happier note, watching the Tony Awards tonight made my day, especially the opening number and Neil Patrick Harris's closing number. I decided that at some point in my life I want to take a week long trip to New York and see a different Broadway musical every night. It would get really expensive really fast though. Maybe for my honeymoon or if I ever acquire a vast fortune suddenly.

On another happy note, Russell and Alison are getting married on Saturday, which means I get to see Rice people in Houston again in about 5 days! Excitement! Last summer, Patrick and Gillian's wedding was one of the highlights of the whole summer. Hopefully this will be just as awesome!

How much you mean to me

This past weekend I went to Houston to visit Robyn and spent the better part of three straight days in constant contact with her. It was without a doubt the highlight of the first three weeks of my summer so far, but also came with the mildly unfortunate side effect of reminding me of how much I enjoy spending time with her, which can be a bother when I have to spend summer living in a different city from her.

So ever since then I'm reminded every couple hours of Robyn just whenever my mind starts to wander, and how much I miss her and how much she means to me. Today that reminded me that as amazing as she is, there is someone else that deserves my love and admiration even more who I haven't been thanking and appreciating as much as I should. I wonder why my relationship with God never seems to be as present in my mind as my relationship with Robyn is. It's easy to remind myself of how amazing Robyn is and how much she means to me, so why don't I constantly remind myself how amazing God is and how much He means to me. He's done so much more for me than Robyn or any of my friends could, why don't I spend more time praising and thanking him for it.

I realized this earlier this morning, and then came up with an interesting idea that I've been experimenting with throughout the day. Every time my mind starts wandering into thinking about Robyn, I also remind myself of God's love for me, and how he is even more important in my life. Instead of thinking about how I want to call or text Robyn at that moment just to tell her how much she means to me, I say a quick prayer to God to thank him for making my life so amazing, and for being at my side to help me along even in the times when my life is sucking and I feel like I need his support the most. My relationship with Robyn could last for the rest of my life, or it could end tomorrow, but I'm guaranteed that I'll be able to lean on God forever, which means he should be that much more important in my life.

It's an interesting little association to make in my mind, and it's been helping me throughout today to put my relationship with God back where it needs to be. Thanks Lord for giving me a great way to remind myself constantly of how amazing you are and how much you mean to me.

What in the world just happened?

I've now finished my first three days of my first ever, legit, 40-hour a week, 8-5. engineering job. It's been really fun, yet I feel like I've been thrown into a completely different world and I wasn't quite ready for it. I'm enjoying my work, but there are certain things about college that aren't present here that I miss.

First, I feel pretty alone. Most of the people here are much older than me, and while there are several other students, I can't think of any good way to meet them. We all have our different projects, and I feel like it would be kind of weird for me to go up to them in the morning and ask them when they are taking their lunch break and if I can come along. It seems kind of awkward, yet I feel like if I don't start making friends my own age I'm going to start to go crazy. The fact that I spend the rest of my day at home with my parents and younger siblings makes the lack of interaction with people my age even worse. I think my daily skype conversations with Robyn is helping to keep me sane, and hopefully seeing her, Kyle, Ryan, Heather, Nathan, and whoever else I can find in Houston this weekend will help me with my isolation problems.

I also miss Rice as a place. College campuses are fun and exciting, and there are always people to interact with, things you can do outside, etc. Here I'm in a building that is basically a maze of hallways full of people sitting at their computers, in their machine shops, or at some other kind of work station, busy doing stuff. There were always events that I could look forward to. A MOB rehearsal, theater rehearsal, study break in the commons, going somewhere with third south. Here, every day is basically the same. I go to work, I do what Anthony needs me to do, I go home and deal with my siblings fighting about something, dinner never being ready until really late, and then I talk with Robyn on Skype until I get tired and go to sleep. It's nice, but there's no variety. I need something that makes Tuesday interesting, or something to look forward to on Friday aside from just the weekend. The trip to Houston this weekend helps, but that'll only happen about 4 times this summer. What do I look forward to for the rest of the time?

I also am noticing that I can be very bad about getting some things done. I apparently never nag my mom enough to actually get her to help me get my drivers license, something I've been wanting to get since the summer after my senior year (I didn't care much while I was in high school, which I guess may be why my mom thinks I still don't care.) Even now that I seriously need one for my job in order to operate some of the vehicles, she still just tells me "Oh yeah, we can do that sometime this week," and every time I ask for a specific time she either ends up being busy or forgets about it. Maybe I need to just find a personal friend to take me to the DPS office since my mom never wants to.
I also need to call my bank about some overdraft fees that I shouldn't have gotten a couple weeks ago and to ask them about why the UT website won't let me set up direct deposit. Why do I have such a random fear of talking to people aside from those who are incredibly close to me on the phone?

Is it the weekend yet?

Summer isn't supposed to be stressful

I'm about a week into my summer break, though I've been done with finals for almost 3 weeks now. This has been by far the most stressful start to summer ever for me. Most of it involved summer jobs. Last summer I wasn't able to find employment at all, and somehow this summer I managed to get two job offers and had to pick between the two. There were advantages and disadvantages to both the Mexico internship and the job in Austin, but I eventually decided to stay in Austin and work at the Applied Research Labs at UT for a number of reasons. I figured that both would be great ways to spend my summer, and I need to stop worrying about what would have happened if I'd chosen the other one.

Another thing that's been somewhat stressful and annoying is not being able to see Robyn on a daily, or even weekly basis. I miss her a whole lot, and keep thinking of ways to see her. Something on my list of pros and cons of each internship was that I didn't want to spend two months in another country and not be able to see Robyn at all during that time. I've gotten kinda pathetic, but it's true. Similarly on that note, religion keeps being brought up in regard to the two of us, and apparently it's been happening to Robyn too. My parents have both asked me about her religion and if that's a problem for me since I'm a pretty religious person. Part of me does think it would be a lot more convenient if we had the same religion, but at the same time I'm really enjoying learning about Jewish customs and traditions in ways that I wouldn't be able to just from reading about it. I don't see it being an issue at this point, since, if anything, dating someone of a different religion than mine is helping me learn more about my own beliefs and helping me become stronger in my faith. If it doesn't work out between us in the end, sometime down the road, I will have at least learned a lot about the Jewish faith. And if it does work out and we stay together for a really long time, I'm sure we'll be able to make it work.

Another stressful thing. It seems like all kinds of bad things are happening to my high school friends. Well, mostly just two in particular. James is still having health problems that have been keeping him in and out of the hospital this semester, and will probably prevent him from playing much soccer with us this summer. And last night Cameron's dad passed away, and I can't even imagine how terrible that must be for him. It's hard to imagine someone at my age losing one of his parents. I certainly wouldn't want to have to deal with that kind of stress at this point in my life. If any of my readers could keep James and Cameron's family in their prayers I would appreciate it.

In a related note of things happening to people way too early, I found out yesterday that my first girlfriend back from the summer after my freshman year of high school and my best friend in my boy scout troop are getting married later this month. I was invited and will of course attend, since they are both very good friends of mine, but it seems so weird for people that are my age, a 19 year old and a 20 year old, that I grew up with are already getting married. That fact that I dated one of them for 2 months in high school makes it even weirder. Part of me is ok with it since they've been dating for 4 years now and are definitely right for each other, but at the same time getting married at 19 seems kind of ridiculous. Well, it's their decision and I wish them both the best.

How did I do?

At the beginning of the school year I made some resolutions, a list of things I wanted to get accomplished during my sophomore year. They were originally listed as "new-semester" resolutions, but I'm talking about them at the end of the school year as I am getting ready to leave, so they were kind of new school year resolutions. So for those who don't remember, here's what I wrote and how I did.

"I'm now at home at Rice, safe and sound, and need something to do before rehearsal this afternoon, so here's a list of things I'd like to get accomplished this semester.

1. Be more active. I've established a workout schedule for the semester which I hope will encourage me to run more than I did last year. I'm hoping that by setting specific times (Sunday after mass, Tuesday and Thursday after my 9:25 class) I'll be able to actually convince myself to get it done."

Haha. Well, I'm 0-1 so far. I didn't necessarily work out as much as I would have liked, but I definitely developed some better eating habits which helped me lose some weight which was kind of the original goal anyway. I guess there's always next year to start running the outer loop regularly.

"2. Better grades. My grades second semester sucked, and I don't want to have 3 C+'s at the same time again. I vow to get at least a 3.2 GPA for this fall semester so I can get back above the 3.0 mark. And no C's. I will tolerate a B- at minimum."

I didn't meet the 'No C's' mark because I got one C+ last semester, but my gpa is up to a 3.03 right now. While I haven't gotten all of my grades back for this semester I'm pretty sure that my gpa improved this year from last year, and I learned a lot more than I did last year because I studied harder.

"3. Try to get a good relationship started. Now that I'm totally settled into Rice, I really feel like I should start dating again. I did a little bit last year, but now that I'll have a bit more free time with fewer labs and hopefully fewer plays that I'll be in, I might have the time necessary. My trouble with girls in the past is that I'm very quick to find something wrong with a girl, and usually it's something silly like how she spends too much time studying or isn't quite religious enough, or not as intelligent as I am, or too much smarter than me. All kinds of stupid things that I tell myself mean a relationship won't work, so I don't try. However, I met someone about a year ago at Rice who continues to be more and more amazing each time I talk to her, and I actually haven't been able to tell myself there's anything I don't like about her. Someone who shares a ton of my interests, and who I can hold a conversation with for hours. Really funny, great personality, and I think that's where I should start."

Nothing happened between me and the girl that I mentioned last August because I met someone else during the first week of classes who was just awesome. And the funny thing about the comment about being in less plays this year is that I was in at least twice as much theater this year than last year. But I do now have a very amazing girlfriend, the girl that I mentioned two sentences ago that I met at the beginning of the year. Robyn is fantastic, and though it took us about 8 months to finally start being officially together, it was worth it.
However, my future blog posts about relationships will soon shift directions. The new question is what am I to do about dating someone who doesn't share my religious beliefs? Robyn is very Jewish and I am very Catholic, and while we both love God a lot and share very similar ideas about morals and how to live a good and holy life, I know that this difference will become an issue if we keep dating for a while, which is pretty likely to happen based on how things are going between us right now.

"4. Make 3rd south the greatest floor in the history of the universe. About 70% of my really good friends at Jones have all congregated on one floor, 3rd south, for this school year. I feel like we need to make it even greater than it was last year. We'll do awesome things as a floor, put up some awesome posters like last year, and have a great time."

Triple check. 3rd south this year was amazing. We have our own t-shirts, got campus-wide recognition for pulling a prank on the university, and hung out a lot. I got to know the people on my floor, Aaron, Monica, Gary, Carlos, John, Andrew, Nathan, Joey, Becky, Stephanie, Rick, Reagan, Travis, Rodolfo, and Mario, very well and we're gonna continue being close next year I'm sure.

"5. Meet more people, make more friends. As crazy as last year was with meeting hundreds of people for the first time and making strong friendships with several dozen people, I'd still like to get to know more people. Over a quarter of Rice's student body is new this year between freshmen and transfer students, and I'd like to reach out and make them feel welcome as well as find ways to include them in things I already do with my old friends."

While I didn't meet that many new people, I became very close to many friends that I already had. Mithun's advice at the beginning of the year was very sound, and I've learned that the quality of relationships is much more important than the quantity. I feel like I can talk to Kyle, Gary, Rick, and Ryan about almost anything, and I'll be roommates with two of them next year which will be amazing. Only problem is I'm gonna miss some of the seniors a lot, and I don't want to see them go.

4 out of 5, not bad.

Sometimes God answers prayers a bit too quickly

So, less than 24 hours after I "resolved" my lack of a summer job crisis, my summer internship prospects skyrocketed. To sum it up I'll copy and paste part of a message I just sent Andrea on Facebook.
I talked to Dr. Ajayan again about working in his lab today (I've been hounding him about it for about a month or so) and he said it might be hard for me to get a spot in Houston, but he could probably send me to Mexico to work with one of his research groups there, which accomplishes my goals of
1) Going abroad
2) Improving mi espanol skillz
3) Making lots of cash moneys ($2000/ month for 2-3 months= furniture for my apartment, yayuh!)
4) Improving my resume with an actual engineering related job, with one of the world leaders in nanotechnology research!
5) Not being bored over the summer
6) Spending even more time with my friend Miguel Angel Ibarra
So, hopefully with some prayer, good luck, and some sucking up, I can get to go to Mexico this summer for a few months and spend the extra time in Houston/ Austin.

So from what Dr. Ajayan was saying, it seems like I've got a pretty decent chance of getting to do this since I've been so persistent and enthusiastic about helping him with his research, and it would be amazing. Hopefully God will continue to be amazing. I may even get to use this as a chance to be a witness for Christ while I'm there, since my common Catholic background with a majority of Hispanic populations could be a helpful platform to begin sharing the ways that God has blessed my life. We'll see what he has in store for me, it's definitely far from being set in stone yet.

Still trying

I should be finishing my caam 335 problem set now since it's 2:30 in the morning, but I just had an amazing conversation with my roommate for next year, Rick, basically about how I've been feeling about life the last week or two. Ever since I got my last caam test back a couple weeks ago, I've been having lots of inferiority issues, and feeling like I'm not quite up to being an engineer at Rice or even a successful person in general. I've been getting close to the lowest grades in my class in a couple classes, haven't been able to find any kind of meaningful summer work, and have had a lot of trouble grasping a lot of the concepts in a lot of my classes, and it's only my sophomore year.

So I was telling Rick about this as the two of us were walking back to Jones from Will Fisher's room at Will Rice and how it seems like everyone around me is being successful, has plans for their future, and have things figured out and how I've been trying to catch up and do well and be successful but have been failing at it. He encouraged me by reminding me of all of the things that I do that all of those other people haven't. I've been extensively involved in so many things at Rice, MOB, theater, Catholic Student Association, RSDS, and the list goes on and on, all while taking 20 hours of classes and working part time. I should be proud of what I have accomplished, not get upset about what I haven't. He said that fact that I try so hard and am so determined in everything I do to constantly improve puts me above a lot of other people. Sure I may have stretched myself a bit too thin, but it's a lot better than not stretching myself at all. Not everyone gets cool internships during the summer, and now that I think about it, there aren't even a dozen of my friends who have neat internships lined up, and I don't even know that many people who are doing that much better than me in my classwork. I shouldn't be dwelling on what other people have accomplished (which is really hard with all of the amazing people at Rice that surround me every day), but rather be happy with what I've done, which is more than I like to give myself credit for.

So thanks Rick, I really needed that.

Beer Bike!

Beer Bike was today, and it was a special one. While many people would think that I, as a Jonesian, would absolutely hate any Beer Bike that involved Will Rice sweeping for the first time in 26 years, I actually did have a good time and am really happy for all my friends at Will Rice who are in a state of unnatural bliss right now after their Beer Bike sweep.
First, a shout out to all of the colleges that made my Beer Bike awesome.
Baker: Thanks for being the only college that was still awake last night and partying through the night. Your apathy towards competition rivals that of Sid Rich's and makes us all remember to stop taking ourselves so seriously. It was also really funny to see "Jazz Hands" written on the backs of all the Will Rice jerseys.
Will Rice: Congrats on your win. I realized that you can have a lot more fun congratulating friends on a job well done than you can being upset about not winning as I was last year.
Hanszen: Without you, our jacks this year wouldn't have been anywhere near as great, or taken up half of the jacks section of the Thresher. This was a great year for Beer Bike jacks as a member of Jones, and one that will be remembered for a while. Also, major props on the uniforms of your pit crew, which were hilarious and perfect considering your theme this year, Drunker Mifflin. (They were all wearing uniforms that resembled those worn by the warehouse workers in The Office)
Wiess: West Side Story was amazing, and I've had an awesome time spending so much time with yall these past few weeks. Keep up your crazy awesome traditions, and hopefully I can be hanging out with yall during O-week next year, fingers still crossed since the co-fellow selections haven't been made yet.
Brown: Excellent job in the water balloon fight, but I still think yall care a bit too much about hating Jones and not enough about loving Brown.
Wiess and Brown: Thanks for reminding Jones and Will Rice that this isn't just a race between the two of us. Yall put up a great fight this year and had us both scared senseless at times.
Lovett: Thanks for taking one for the team and having the worst Beer Bike theme this year. Don't worry, we all have to be there at some point, and we at Jones served our time last year.
Sid: Amazing job with the DQ's this year. I'm sure most of the other Rice students were getting tired of the naked biker, and it was awesome to see a unicycler and a rocket propelled bicycle this year. It was a lot of fun. Keep up your Beer Bike traditions, they make the day more enjoyable for everyone.
Martel: Excellent warrior-like attitude in the water balloon fight, particularly with the red capes. Also, congrats on finally having enough people to field a full alumni team. Surely a historic moment in Beer Bike history. I imagine it will take many many years for Duncan and McMurtry to achieve that feat.
Jones: For being by far the greatest college in the history of the universe. For winning again, and getting 2nd place in all of the races we didn't crash in. For an amazing pit crew to work with, awesome bikers and chuggers and fans. Awesome water balloon fillers, jacks coordinators, and all of those people who sacrificed their chance to be in the water balloon fight to serve Jones as security and truck riders. I salute you.
JIBA!!

And the awards for the most obnoxious people of Beer Bike:
Autumn for popping my last water balloon that I was saving for Miguel.
Me for asking Miguel for one of his water balloons and then throwing the balloon that he gave me right back at him.
Allie and Rachel for hitting me with a couple balloons from behind.
Andrea, Robyn, and Marie for hunting me down on multiple occassions with water balloons.
Kyle Schnitzer for being absolutely ruthless during the water balloon fight.
Whoever decided that we could each only have one truck this year in the water balloon fight.
Will Rice for sweeping. No one likes it when that happens, but as I said earlier, congratulating your Will Rice friends makes you feel a lot better than just being upset about it.

Eagle Butte Wrap up!

I'm now back at Rice and...dang that trip was amazing!

Later on Friday night we went to Dairy Queen to talk to the staff and long term volunteers about what we thought went well and what wasn't so great about the week. We voiced our concerns about how we thought the structure of the program and the discipline at The Main could be improved. While Alex (the volunteer coordinator) and the long term volunteers were pretty defensive at first, the dialogue eventually improved (mostly after we returned to our living quarters and talked to them there instead of at DQ) and some agreements were reached. Alex realized that she should have been more clear about how much we were able to discipline the kids, and that the short term volunteers have just as much of a right to send kids home as anyone else, though it still makes it hard to be willing to do that when we've only spent a couple days with them. Hopefully our comments were helpful.

Yesterday was filled with a lot of travel along with visits to Mt Rushmore and Crazy Horse. Liz was really upset about us going to Mt Rushmore and none of us were quite sure why at first. She explained briefly before we got there, and went into more detail after we had left. Apparently the sculpting of Mt Rushmore was a huge slap in the face to the Lakota people for a number of reasons. First, it defiled the Black Hills, which are sacred grounds for the Lakota people and are said to be the birthplace of creation. Not only did the US government desecrate the Black Hills, but they did it by sculpting the faces of US leaders who oppressed Native Americans while they were in power. According to Liz, even Abe Lincoln, right after freeing blacks from slavery, encouraged the elimination of Native Americans. Throughout American history the US government has been doing things to oppress and kill American Indians, and all of the presidents on Mt Rushmore were fine with letting that happen or even encouraging it during their presidency. Absolutely horrible! All four of them were great leaders, don't get me wrong, but they did do some horrible things too.

I think the most imporant thing I got out of the trip is that the Native Americans are a very oppressed people. When people talk about poor minorities and impoverished communities, they usually think of hispanics and blacks in urban areas. They've got it way better than the Native Americans living on the reservations do, or at least the ones in the community that we worked in, which is definitely one of the worst ones in the country, which is why we went there. They need help, and that help isn't going to come from the government, or even from volunteers like us. They need an internal catalyst to start change there to improve their community.
I also realized that a problem I've been having this semester isn't going to be resolved any time soon, and I have no idea what I can really do about it. It's not something I want to discuss a lot on this blog, but I'm going to keep praying about it.

I'm so thankful for the friendships that were formed on the trip. It was an amazing experience for all of us. The food that was prepared by different pairs of people each night was fantastic, the kids were awesome to hang out with, the other volunteers were awesome for the most part, and I really hope the Cheyenne River Youth Project continues its amazing work!

Getting ready for Fashion for Passion

Today The Main and the Teen Center were both closed so that we could spend the entire day preparing for an event called Passion for Fashion (I may have mentioned it in my first post). I didn't think that it would take very long to set up, all we had to do was put out all of the prom dresses, shoes, makeup, etc, but we spent pretty much the whole day decorating and doing all kinds of things that I didn't originally think that we would need to do. Once I put the pictures up on facebook you can get a better picture of what happened then I can explain here, but it was just amazing how many people they are expecting to come. We had hundreds of dresses for them to choose from in the gym and the one girl who came in today before the event which is technically tomorrow was SOOO happy to get her dress. It made me think of how much joy will be in the air tomorrow. It will be insane.
Sorry to cut it short, but it's time to eat!

Eagle Butte Thursday

Today was our last day to be working with the kids, which was pretty sad. Some of the things I discovered today and that our group talked about:
These kids could really use some permanent staff. The after school program is run entirely by volunteers, some of which, like us, who are only there for a week, and others who are here for longer. Discipline is a huge problem, especially with the younger kids. It starts with trouble in their households. Lack of strong parents who raise their kids responsibly, but also lack of discipline at The Main is a problem. The long term volunteers, with the exception of Dave, don't really punish kids for misbehaving and often either ignore the bad behavior or try so hard to be their friends that they don't want to hurt that relationship by upsetting them, and the short term volunteers are here for so little time that we don't really feel like we have a good idea of how the disciplinary procedure even works. It would be really great if the CRYP had more money to hire more staff (they only have 4 full time staff that are usually busy doing the more administrative things instead of working with the kids), or if some local high schoolers could come and volunteer frequently instead of only having volunteers who come from far away and then leave after a week or two, or a few months.
Another thing that bothered me occured when we were working in the kitchen today. We were told to go through the refrigerator and freezer and throw out anything that had expired or looked old. After going through it all and bringing boxes of expired foods out of the kitchen, some of the staff members insisted that we put about 2/3 of it back. Their reasoning was that when you are in such a poor community, you need to save as much food as you can. I didn't think it was right to save food that could possibly be bad for people when they already had plenty of good food in their pantries and refrigerator. AJ even mentioned this evening that the Houston Food Bank always throws out food that is expired, and it is benefitting poor communities just like the CRYP is.

I guess the point that I'm trying to make is that we can't lower our standards just because we are helping poor communities. We can't let discipline slide just because we don't want to hurt feelings or want to be the friends of the kids. We can't let the health of this community's citizens be sacrificed so that we save some money on food. It's unacceptable. I think the CRYP has the right goals and ideals, but I feel like some things should be changed on the administrative side of things to make the mission work the way it is trying to work.

Eagle Butte Wednesday

Today we spent the morning doing actual work in the teen center which involved sorting incoming donations and writting down every last thing that was inside the boxes that we received. We then also filled orders for people who came needing supplies for their families like clothing, toiletries, diapers, etc.

It made me begin to wonder about the purpose of wellfare. Is it good or is it bad? It's hard to think of how giving people things that they need to survive could be a bad thing since it is done out of kindness, selflessness and charity, but it seems like Americans often become dependent on this wellfare and use it an an excuse to not work. I think it is safe to say that we are helping them in the short term for sure, since these families would be in a dire condition indeed if they didn't have food and clothing, but I think in addition to giving them essential tools for surviving in the short term, it is equally important for us to give them tools for surviving in the long term. Perhaps the Cheyenne River Youth Project should also spend time training the adults of the Cheyenne River Reservation so that they can get jobs, teaching the kids the importance of graduating high school and making it to college, and telling them at an incredibly early age about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse.

This is why I really enjoyed our last activity of the evening, college night. We spent about an hour sharing information about college with the teens at the teen center. We talked about Rice and answered a variety of questions about how hard class work is, what kinds of sports we play, if we get to go on trips, and how many roommates we have. These all seemed like pretty standard questions to ask about college, but there were also some that surprised me. One kid asked how many Native Americans there were at Rice. It seemed like a really odd question to ask, but then I realized that these kids have been surrounded only by other American Indians for their entire lives and how scary it would be for them to travel to a different state and be surrounded by people with different skin and hair color that come from a different culture than you. I can't imagine how strange it would be for me to go to a school with no other Catholics, or no other white people. It would be really intimidating. While many of my friends come from different cultures and have different religious views than me, I still think that one needs to have other people like them that they can easily connect with on certain things.

Another tricky question that was asked was one about how often people drink at Rice. The quick and obvious response was yes, and they drink a lot. Rice is a very wet campus and everyone knows about it. Yet we all realized that we couldn't say this to kids in a community that struggles so much with alcohol abuse. I was afraid to answer the question, but David Younger had a great response. He explained that people do drink at college, because many of them are of legal age, but that it is a really foolish thing for them to do and many people aren't able to keep up with their school work when they drink too much. He explained how stupid it was for people to spend a lot of money on a college education and then waste it by getting drunk every night. I don't think I could have explained it better myself.

Actual Eagle Butte Post Number 1

I apologize for the last post. Andrea was being ridiculous. And now I'm talking as I type, and it's pretty weird.

So two days ago, we arrived in Eagle Butte, SD after flying through Denver and Rapid City and then driving from Rapid City to Eagle Butte. Eagle Butte is a Native American (Lakota) reservation in the center of South Dakota that is in one of the poorest counties in the nation.

We started our work Monday morning by sorting a lot of prom dresses and accessories to prepare for the Cheyenne River Youth Project's annual Passion for Fashion event on Saturday after we leave. The event give the native girls a chance to dress up nice and boost their self image. Eagle Butte doesn't have any prom dress stores, and most people don't have enough money to even afford dresses, even if they could make the trip to a bigger city which would be at least an hour drive away.

But this morning we became aware of much more dire problems in the community after talking to a counselor in this area. There were a ton of things that absolutely shocked me about the community here:
1. Something like 80-85% of kids in this community have been sexually abused. The counselor we spoke to said she hadn't talked to anyone on the reservation who hadn't been sexually abused.
2. The unemployment rate is almost as high, somewhere between 70 and 75% from what I recall. The people have no motivation to work and are seriously better off not having a job. If you have a job here, the price of rent goes up based on a percentage of your income, you don't qualify for food stamps, and you are basically worse off. The people who do find jobs often quit them quickly because they seriously can't afford to have jobs, even if they want to, because they can't spend time with family, pay rent, or feed their families.
3. Continuing off of number 2, the government has done so much harm to this community. It's insane. As I mentioned, welfare makes a job not worth having. Also, while they have "free" healthcare, everyone is afraid to use it. In the 70's the Indian Healthcare system the doctors would often sterilize their patients or blackmail them. For example, after a woman would give birth, the doctor might refuse to give the mother her baby unless she consented to being sterilized. In another case that the woman speaking to us today used, one of her relatives was incorrectly diagnosed twce before they correctly identified his leuchemia. The patient even had to travel to a doctor to fix his "kidney stones," only to discover after arriving that he didn't actually have kidney stones after the doctor told him that he had been incorrectly diagnosed.
4. Drug and alcohol abuse is RIDICULOUS. The counselor told us how she got drunk for the first time when she was 11, and some of the kids here smoke pot as early as 7 years old. It's terrible.
5. Gang violence is terrible as well. Most people join gangs because they need a sense of belonging and a family, and usually don't get that at home. Almost half of the kids on the reservation drop out of high school, and of the ones who go to college, only 15% of them stay past their first semester. This is usually due to family pressures and not having any connections at their college compared to the families at home.

Most of what we've been doing while we've been here is playing with the kids either with board games or in the gym playing basketball. They LOVE basketball. It's super fun, but at the same time I feel like we could be doing more to help their situation, like perhaps teaching them. More updates, as well as facebook pictures are sure to come soon.

Andrea speaks before my actual blog post

Gee wiz, I love my life. I am really looking forward to dinner right now. Oh buddy! Oh what great fun I had this day.What? *giggle* ummm...yes yes. I'm just gonna put that out there. Like while we're chewing, yeah. This is going to be a very interesting entry. I love zebras and everything about them. Have you heard of romney, wait, don't type this. Yeah, Romney from Martel. Have you seen his facebook. They took his password and it's so awful. They're always together though. Ahahahaha,. that is so sad. *giggle* awww. I think they did that a lot. I know Michael Eastwood because he was my screw your roommate date, and Duffy. That would be, yeah. Hehe. That's uh...Dang. Which, you mean suitemate? Aww. Haha, I love zebras and everything about them. I really love that line. I want a transcript of everything I say more often. It's so good. Let's have a conversation Kurt.
You were in the same group for. Well, let me tell you for the sake of overhearers. It was eventful. I actually liked putting away the stuff from the rummage sale. And jumping on the stuff in the dumpster. And basketball I had a lot of fun playing basketball. The two guys who were friends? Oh, that was Wolf and ...uh, RJ. Oh, Coda, yeah. *looks at Alex's blog* You know what's going on right? The table looks so good guys! Mucha comida. I like speaking bad spanish. My social security number is...*long pause* I'm super super hungry.

And the semester begins

Once again I've found myself committing the common Alex crime of trying to do too much stuff. I'm very thankful that my classwork hasn't gotten too difficult yet, but the next 3 weeks until Wyrd Sisters opens will probably be ridiculous as I balance friendships, 3 plays, schoolwork, OwlCon organizing, MOB, CSA, and Agape responsibilities. I think I'll be able to handle it, but it will very closely resemble the first week of February last year which was pretty painful. I know I complain about it more than I should, but I do actually enjoy being really busy and having something to do almost every hour of the day.

This past week featured many things, including the start of my "G3" group with Kyle and Gary where we meet once a week to pray, discuss things God has been putting on our minds, and catch up on each others lives a bit. It should be pretty awesome. Other notable events of this week were
the Original Star Wars Marathon
Agape soccer match (where I promised Gary I'd score 3 goals on him and somehow managed to actually deliver)
the Houston Marathon complete with a MOB performance (and 3 basketball games this weekend too)
starting my 3rd LPAP at the request of some friends who said they needed more guys in the foxtrot and waltz class, and subsequent struggles with the registrar as I tried to sign up for 22 hours
beginning of Pirates and West Side Story rehearsals

Yeah. It's pretty awesome. Now I need to get back to work. No time to waste.

Starting off the semester in a very, very good spot

The last week of Christmas Break was absolutely amazing. I got to spend a few days with MOBsters preparing for the shows at the Texas Bowl, and then we ended up creaming WMU 38-14 which was amazing to watch. The first Rice bowl game victory in memorable history. We played a lot of mafia in the hotel rooms, I took lots of pictures, and I got to grow closer to old friends as well as new ones.

Then I had a brief break for New Years Eve where I went out to lunch with Andrea and hung out with her for about 3 hours, which was one of the highlights of the break. Then I went to a basketball game against A&M which we were acually winning in for parts of it. And I celebrated my first New Year away from my family, which was interesting. I feel like I'm starting to grow up a bit more and move on to my own life away from them, but at the same time I'm still pretty close to them.

The rest of this entry will be mostly focused on the Winter Conference, which was amazing. I learned a lot of things at that conference and set some goals for this semester and beyond. Some of the things that were talked about were how we need to have strong relationships with not just God but also with each other. The vertical and horizontal motions that the main speaker used will be stuck with me for a while. Loving others is just as important as loving God, and I need to remember that love is the central mission that we as Christians should have.

Greed is an ugly, nasty thing. I'm really hoping that once I actually have money I'll be able to get myself to give as much of it as possible. I've noticed that poorer, simpler people tend to be much more happier than wealthy and famous people. If I can give money, I can both bring myself closer to that happy, just as much as I need to live comfortably, economic level and help others who need more money to reach that point as well. Everyone will win. I really hope I can remember this in 3 years when I have money to give and am not constantly asking others like my parents to support me financially.

I also thought about how important relationships with other Christians can be. In the last workshop I went to, one of the girls at my table said that the problem that the three sample struggling Christians that were portrayed in one of the speaker's examples had was that they were all trying to do it on their own. I realized that that may have been my biggest problem this past semester. Last year I was much more involved with Cru socials and met with Mithun for discipleship every week so I was constantly surrounding myself with other believers who were struggling with the same things that I was who I could discuss things with. This semester, on the other hand, I haven't been in a discipleship relationship with anyone and have been unable to go to almost every social, as well as most of the Agape meetings. My two plans for this were to ask Kyle about discipling me and then also forming a group of Jones guys to meet with every week to talk about what God was teaching us and to pray for each other. Then Pat said that we were going to switch the structure of Agape this semester to make small groups like the one I was envisioning, which was perfect.

There were several other things that I was thinking and praying about, but it's late right now and I can't remember them. I'll update this as I remember more of my thoughts.