More New York Pics....

New York!

Central Park Emily and her hot dog
Good Morning America!
The famed "Naked" Cowboy
Emily's 21st birthday "party" on the airplane!

New York City

Rosie Thomas once said, "New York is lovely in the winter time."

I couldn't agree with her more. About a week ago my friend Brittany and I decided that we were going to take a weekend trip up to Mt. Hood to ski. One thing led to another and the next thing I knew we'd canceled our ski trip and had bought 3 CHEAP tickets to New York City.

The anticipation killed us last week as Emily, Brittany and I waited for our incredible weekend adventure. However, before our trip could begin we had to first drive to Seattle to catch the flight. So, at 3 a.m. our trip began.

From the very first moment of trip everything was quite bizarre, which made for one interesting adventure. When we first got to the airport and to the security gate, Brittany discovered that she had left her wallet in her car that Sarah, a friend was now driving back to Kent, WA for us. We called our Sarah and she turned around and drove back to the airport to give us the wallet.

After making it through security with Brittany's wallet and ID, we were off to find our departure gate. This is when we met a new friend. An Asian woman stopped us to ask where to go. Well, I think that's what she said. She didn't speak one word of English. As we looked at her ticket we discovered that we shared the same destination, so we motioned her to follow us. While walking to the gate she insisted on caring Brittany's bag that was almost twice the size of this petite woman. We tried to figure out her name, but were unsuccessful. She followed every inch of our shadow. She was quite the woman. She waited for us to sit down on the plane, helped us put our bags in the overhead compartment, took our bags down from the compartment after we'd landed, waited for us to get off the plane, and once again insisted on caring Brittany's bag. After walking through JFK airport, we made it to the baggage claim and parted ways with our friend. Then it was time to greet New York City.



We met Brittany's Uncle Sal, who we'd be staying with, and whom Emily and I believe to be in the mafia. The first night we were there he took us all over the city and then treated us to dinner at his favorite Italian restaurant. Over dinner, we sat next to a woman who'd grown up in New York City and she presumed to tell us about her entire life. It was quite interesting, but by the end of our conversation I was convinced that she might be insane. However, it did make for a fun dinner conversation.

After dinner we continued to venture around the city until we were too tired to stand. We then made it back to Uncle Sal's house and crashed there. The next morning Uncle Sal dropped us off in the city (he lived in Queens) and we began the day's adventure. I would tell you detail by detail of the day, but that would take far too long and it's one of those things, "You just had to be there", to fully understand what went on. We covered miles of the city and enjoyed every minute of it. For dinner that night Uncle Sal met and treated us to dinner again at his friend's Greek restaurant. The food here was amazing and I think I still dream about it at night. By the end of the day we were pooped; we'd been going non stop for the past 15 hours.

The next morning we decided to take the subway into the city early enough to make it to the filming of "Good Morning America." We were running pretty late and were a little concerned that we wouldn't make it on time. We were right, we didn't make it on time. However, when we got there the woman said that she wanted us to come from the back of the crowd to the front because we were young. She also chose our friend Emily to cut onions on the cooking segment. It was quite an experience. After the show we proceeded to run around the city until we had to catch our flight home.

If I had the time I would share with you every minute of our trip, but words are simply not enough to describe the extent of our stay in New York City. I have so many beautiful memories that will stay with me forever. This was one of the most amazing adventures that I have been on and I hope that you too will have your New York City adventure someday.

**More pics to follow!**

Thoedore.

We have this amazing couch in our dorm that I love to take naps on. It’s one of the ugliest couches that I’ve seen, but at the same time it has this marshmallow quality about it that makes nap time a dream come true. For some reason I’ve been immensely tired this weekend and have found myself in the comfort of my marshmallow couch all weekend. I’ve watched movies, taken naps, studied, and many more lazy things that I’m ashamed to admit.

This evening I was the only one in the house so took advantage of this quiet opportunity and finished up some reading for a few classes. I had just finished To Kill A Mockingbird when I heard what sounded like coffee brewing. I thought it was odd that no one was in the house, but the coffee was on. I stopped what I was doing and focused on the “coffee” for a little bit. As I was getting up to see what was going on in the kitchen I saw my two roommates at the window. They were about to come in and I motioned to them to be very quiet. When they came inside I filled them in on our quietness, “I think we have a mouse.” Brittany, one of my roommates, said that she had been hearing funny sounds lately as well and assumed the same. Danelle, who was also coming in the door with Brittany, ran to the back in fear of the little critter.

Britt and I, being the brave souls that we are, explored the situation. We pinpointed the sound to the corner. We opened up the bottom cool-corner-spinning cabinet and gave it a whirl. No luck; no mouse, no poop. Using my previous mouse experience I assume that he is living in the wall. I assured my roommates that he would most likely be dead within the week and will be able to confirm this with an abominable smell that will last a week or so. They weren’t too thrilled to hear this. We decided that it would be best to ask for a second opinion from maintenance. We also decided that if there is a little mouse living amongst us it would be best and polite if we named him. We found Theodore to be fitting.

Updates to follow.





**THEODORE. –Who could have a clear conscience after murdering this little fella?

Christmas Throw Up

I've never been fond of coloring contests. I don't like the idea that in order to win it's suggested that you stay inside the lines. I've never followed this rule, which accounts for why I detest these contests in the first place. Never winning is also a reason I detest these coloring contests so. Apparently the judges have never heard of a little thing we call "abstract art".

Within this idea you can create and run with whatever vision is in your head. This is exactly what my friend Karlee and I did when we heard about the school's Christmas door-decorating contest.

It was announced in chapel that this contest was going to take place and that the winner would receive a special prize. Immediately after this announcement Karlee and I knew that we must collaborate our ideas so that we could win. I'm not gonna lie, we scoped out the competition and thought that we stood a pretty good chance of winning.

After hearing each other's genious ideas we decided that there was no way to decide on just one. Instead, we decided to throw all of the ideas together to create some type of Christmas chaos on our porch (by this point we'd moved the competition from the door to the porch).

We went to Wal-Mart and bought $12.00 worth of your traditional Christmas decorations; tinsel, candy canes, wrapping paper, etc. We combined this with our already collected gigantic stocking, 12 strands of lights, garlands and some other tacky things and were then inspired to theme our porch, "Christmas Throw-Up." Wonderful huh? Our friend Emily, a fellow teammate, also collaborated her creativity with ours and made dozens of snowflakes, a chimney (made from our door), a 3-foot gingerbread house and a nativity scene. She clearly did more work than Karlee and I combined.

On the eve of the judging we began duck taping all of the lights from the ceiling to the concrete along the porch and then around the railing. We tinseled up the place and then added all of the other stuff to the porch. After we finished with the decorations we were very pleased with the results. It looked utterly ridiculous; Christmas chaos. On one side of the porch there was a nativity scene taped to the window and on the other side you had a ginigerbread house. Tinsel fell from the ceiling and the lights blinded your eyes. We also played Christmas music; "A Hanson Christmas", in the background. We moved my TV to the the porch so that the judges could also enjoy a classic Santa cartoon as they strolled through "Christmas Throw-Up."



Karlee and I were never serious about the competition from the beginning, we actually got more laughs out of it than anyone. As it turned out, we ended up winning. Our special prize was a hilarious baseball trophy that had been transformed into an elf. If you want to see this piece of art, it is being displayed on our porch along with the decorations we forgot to take down before we left for winter break.