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.

Not the person I used to be

It's almost the end of the semester. I have 5 more days of my mwf classes and only 3 more t/th classes, and my lab is already completely over. Looking back, this semester has been an interesting one, but not necessarily in a good way.

This weekend has done a lot of things to make me realize how much I want to, and how much I need to return to how I was and not continue in the direction I'm going. It began on Friday at Agape with a talk given by Rice Sociology professor Michael Lindsay. The point that he made before I had to leave that really struck me was this.

That sin, at it's very core, can be reduced to one single act. Idolatry. Making things that aren't God into God.

I've been doing this way too much this year. It began as popularity. I tried to get as many freshmen as I could to like me, while trying to also keep us with friendships that I had made last year. I went around Rice meeting people, trying to make myself known. I let me ego take a hold of me and turn me into someone who thinks everyone wants to get to know who I am because I'm just that interesting of a person. I've learned that I need to put my pride aside and strive for humility as I did during my senior year of high school. There was also a point this year where I tried to tell myself that the best way for me to become friends with others and be more social was to go and party. Usually there wasn't alcohol involved, but on some occasions there was and it only made things worse.

I tried my best to please everyone that I could. I kept trying to make myself fit into every group of people that I associated with. To my friends at Agape and CSA I took on the form of a devout believer, the type of person that I actually want to be. To those on 3rd south at Jones, I was a person who liked doing crazy, stupid things because they were fun, and would say that I thought my friends on 4th south were childish and lame, yet when I went to hang out with people on 4th south where I lived last year, I would enjoy their more civil company and talk about how it was a mistake for me to move and how obnoxious some of the people on my floor were, the same people that I had been hanging out with the night before. To those who liked to go out and drink and party, I would go and drink and party, yet for those who enjoyed different forms of entertainment, that would be all I wanted to do as well.

My idolatry also began placing girls in the place of God. I spent a lot of September and October putting most of my thought into how I could get a relationship with a certain girl to work out. I wanted nothing more than to just spend time with her, and as it progressed, that time took more and more out of the time that I should have been spending with God. My desire to build a relationship with her quickly surpassed my desire to build a relationship with God. Then it all ended about a month ago, leaving me with a feeling of emptiness, as if I had wasted all of that time for nothing. Even after that didn't work out, it took me only a day before I had found another girl that I convinced myself I needed to spend time with and start a relationship with. And then my suspicions were confirmed this weekend and I realized that didn't work out as well. It took until this weekend for me to realize that while humans will disappoint us, God never will.

So now I'm struggling to find a happy medium, where I can still be friends with those I care about, yet not ever contradict myself. I'm trying to get rid of the things that distracted me from giving God the proper place in my life. It will be difficult, but I'd much rather turn around now than continue on the road I've been travelling on. I'd appreciate your prayers.

End of the Trial

Today marked the end of Trial By Jury, my first show of my sophomore year and the 5th show I've been in at Rice so far. One more and I'll have already hit the total number of theater shows for my entire high school career. This show wasn't particularly amazing in the way JCS was last year, nor as hilarious and clever as Hello Hamlet, but I would say that I somehow bonded with the cast members in this show in a way that I haven't in a while. We only practiced for the show for a month, and only ran the show for 5 days, but it seemed like a lot longer than that.

One of the things I love most about theater is the way you are able to meet new people. Theater at Rice is so much more amazing than theater at Brentwood because for almost every show there is a new set of people you're working with. In high school it seemed like the same group of 20-30 people did every single show, with some people taking short breaks for a few months to sit a show out every now and then. At Rice, I've met easily 60-80 different people through the shows that I've been in. Going out to eat after virtually every show I've been in helps the process of meeting people a lot too, though it also unfortunately helps the process of lightening your wallet quite a bit too.

The unofficial cast party tonight was also amazing. Watching drunk people play the Wii is something everyone needs to do before they die.

Random bits of my life that may need to be mentioned as well:
-Sophomore classes >>> Freshmen classes
-I made a really cool MechE scepter in machine shop out of steel and aluminum. It feels awesome to make something of that quality with your own hands. I'll be keeping it for a while. Welding lab starts in 2 weeks.
-Complicated relationships are almost as cool as real relationships once you actually understand what makes them so complicated. Many things were made clear last weekend. On a related note, Hard Rock Cafe is expensive, but amazing.
-I'm really looking forward to having lots of football games that we're playing in coming up. Only two more weeks with no games from now until the end of November. This has been such a slow season with so many away games at the beginning of the year. The Tulane trip is going to be fantastic.
-I have free time now. What am I going to do with it?
-Ian, Collin and I are going to attempt the Endless Song Marathon on Rock Band 2 on Tuesday. It has 84 songs and should take about 7 hours. It's going to be sweet if we are alive at the end of it.
-Just finished the 1st season of Lost which involved staying up in Robyn's room until 3:30 or so last night. It was amazing and really frustrating at the same time. I don't know whether I love her or hate her for introducing me to it. Probably the former.
-Due to Monica spending more time in my room than I do, I've decided that I actually do have 2 roommates now. She's a very interesting person, and it's kind of cool to have another person to talk to late at night in my room aside from just Aaron. She also has a wonderful side effect of making Aaron say interesting and witty things. It's pretty cool.

Answered Prayers and good things

It seems like near the end of last year I did a lot of praying about God blessing Jones with more Christian guys. Before Gary and I showed up, it was said that there were really no Christian men at Jones involved in Cru at all, much less in leadership.

Today I realized just how well God answers prayers. One of the freshmen living across the hall from me, John, organized a night-time prayer and worship get-together in his room tonight with all the Christian guys he could get a hold of from the north colleges, mostly freshmen. It was amazing to see how God has inspired him to make changes here at Rice and how enthusiastic he is about serving the Lord to transform the Rice campus. He is certainly not alone, as his roommate Andrew also had some kind of part to this and is also a Christian. It seems like the short end of of 3rd south has become the Jones Men's Bible Belt of sorts, and its awesome. I'm pretty sure most of the floor within a few doors could hear all of us singing and praising the Lord tonight, especially because of John's really enthusiastic and loud prayers and all of the guitar playing.

There were two other things about today that made it exceptional. The first involved me waking up at 6:30 am to go and serve the community by cleaning up debris from Ike at Hermann Park along with several other MOBsters. It was a great opportunity to serve and make Hermann Park as beautiful as it was before Ike hit, and it was also a great opportunity to meet lots of the new MOBsters and continue to strengthen relationships that already exist.

I also have really, really been enjoying the time I've been able to spend with Robyn lately. There's something about her that just makes you always in a good mood, makes me feel totally comfortable, and she's really fun to just talk to for hours and hours. Tonight we went to Thai Village, walked all the way to Ben and Jerry's before realizing it was still out of power, went back to Baskin Robbins instead, and then spent another couple hours just talking and playing cards in her room at Wiess. It was pretty much amazing. I wish I didn't have so many problem sets due on Monday that I have to work on tomorrow.

Hurricane Ike

Just a few days ago, a category 2 hurricane known only by it's three letter name, Ike, flew threw Houston, thrashing all in its path. I am fine, and I don't know of any Rice students who were injured by the hurricane in any way, but it definitely has had an impact on life at Rice for the past few days.

Friday night, each college was hunkered down in a safe location to take shelter from the storm. Jones was sent to our commons, right next to Martel in the north servery. It was a really fun time, but I'm not sure I'd really want to do it for longer than just one night. We watched movies, played board games, and hooked up a projector on a white bed sheet so we could play Brawl. I also played a bit of Rock Band in the Martel section of the servery, and one person said that he'd never seen someone play drums on expert before. Made me feel pretty awesome. Apparently my obsessive playing with the rest of The Festering Pheasants (a band made of myself, and several Martelians which usually include Ian Jones, Bobby Anderson, and Collin Hansen, but occassionally has substitutes) has paid off since I've progressed from medium to expert in less than a month.

The next morning we woke up to find debris covering a majority of the Rice campus. Although we still weren't allowed to leave the building at this time, I later ventured out to discover several downed trees in the south college area as well as the academic quad. The north colleges didn't lose any trees outright, but Brown lost quite a few bricks from the top of their tower. Later that night I went to Wiess to watch the first two Star Wars movies (New Hope and Empire Strikes Back), and it was pretty awesome.

While we never lost power, we did have to deal with a loss of water pressure, so we weren't able to shower for a couple days, and even after we got the water pressure back, it wasn't until yesterday that we got warm water. Ike did a great job of showing how well we as Rice students are able to deal with adverse conditions and still persevere. That fact that there isn't any homework due this week did make it a bit easier though.

In slightly more exciting news (at least for Mithun), my relationship status is very much complicated right now. To the point where I now realize why there is a "It's Complicated" choice on facebook. If you want more information you are welcome to call or email me, but you might get a bit confused.

Rice 56- SMU 27!

Last night was our first football game of the year, and it was an amazing one. As you can tell from the blog title, Rice smashed SMU, despite being down 13-0 for a decent piece of the first quarter. The 2nd and 3rd quarters were absolutely fantastic.

Though what I think is even more impressive than the score is the amount of support shown by the Rice student body at the game last night. The student section was easily 3 times the size of the biggest turn-out from last season, with us completely filling the section right next to the MOB where students usually sit (and usually only fill about 2/3 of the way full) as well as the entire next section over. Their cheers were unified, they were loud, and they really wanted to see a Rice victory. We even got a cheer of "MOB! MOB! MOB!" as we were heading down to do the halftime show. It seems the Tulsa game from last year has gotten us back on the good side of a vast majority of the student body, or at least the part of it that goes to football games.

Speaking of the MOB, I love my freshmen. There are 5 freshmen clarinets this year, bringing our total number of clarinets up to 12 this year (15 if you count the DM's and Marjorie who SA's during halftime). They are really fun to be around and have a lot of energy and great senses of humor. Kyle is afraid that I'm trying to take over our section by winning over all the freshmen to my side (well, this is true), but I feel he still has a lot more respect among the older clarinets, and since the freshmen make up about half of our section, we've pretty much got it split 50/50. I hope that at the BBQ on Monday I can meet some more freshmen from other sections like the percussionists and SA's who I don't get to see very often.

Hurray for 3 day weekends that could potentially be 4 day weekends if the hurricane hits Houston.