Edduficayshun...

Interesting Lessons I am learning whilst in Washingon, of both the Profound and Less Profound sort:

1. Mature sentiment and by-the-seat-of-your-pants passion/emotion are such funny creatures, in the sense that we seem mix them up a very lot. (Maybe we even long for mature sentiment and think we feel it so many times that when we truly achieve it we don't notice it for a while...)
2. It actually does get hot in Washington. Right now, it's 83 degrees INSIDE the house...:P
3. Choosing a college is a harder decision than I thought. Darn.
4. I am slowly learning where everything goes in the kitchen. Pots on the lazy susan, potatoes in the pantry...(We never even had a pantry in California! O, woe for lack of culinary education...)
5. God is quite in control of things, and I believe He finds well-warranted amusement and joy in showing us exactly how true that is.
6. Switchfoot is beyond cool. (In the good way, of course. :)
7. Perhaps the most difficult thing about moving to Washington is, as one gets to know new and very nice people, remembering to keep in touch with the equally wonderful comrades back home. (Please forgive me if you are in the oft-uncontacted; I would love to hear from you and it would help me greatly if you reminded me that I should email/call!)

Last, but definitely not least:
8. Never attempt the Bottle Dance from Fiddler on the Roof in barefeet, and especially not on carpet in barefeet. Unless you are particularly fond of rugburns.

Much love,
Danielle

Adventures in the Sunshine State

Here is a summary of my trip thus far!

Favorite Food Eaten:
Definitely strawberries, which are much less expensive here than in Washington.

Most Interesting Experiences:
Getting Sun Rash. (It's like an itchy sunburn. *scratch scratch*. Curse you, extremely white origins!). Oh yeah, and having a middle-aged surfer dude ask me where Mayport Beach was, and being later surprised to find that I was not, in fact, 20 years old.

Favorite Place Visited:
St. Augustine! :D :D :D It is a beautiful little town by the beach that has tons of interesting and varied shops. How can you go wrong with a city named after such a cool person?

Least Favorite Place Visited:
Texas. On our layover. (To be fair, it WAS only the airport, so I didn't actually see any of non-overpopulated-disgusting-building-with-loud-planes Texas.)

Favorite Quote:
"It's like ballroom dancing for your mouth!"
-Mr. Pizza Advertiser Man on the glories of his wares.

Favorite Souvenir:
A book of Aesop's Fables, Grimm's and Andersen's fairy tales.

Words of Wisdom:
-The evolution of women's swimwear is unfallible evidence of global warming.
-Wear sunscreen. Especially if the closest thing you can get to a tan is a faded sunburn.
-If you don't like airplane lavatories, politely decline their "complimentary beverage".
-Pools are for swimming in, not tanning by. (I HATE when people just sit by the pool and tan without swimming!!! IT'S SO ANNOYING!!! But then, maybe it's because I just can't tan...)
-Go to Washington, then go to Florida and feel how different 47 degrees is from 92! :D

I miss you all and hope you are well! Don't forget to lather on that sunscreen, my lovely friends of Dutch, Norwegian, English and generally White origin! :)

Summer Reading List 2008!

Yay for lots of books! Here we go...

"Grant me, O Lord, to know and understand which should come first, prayer or praise; or, indeed, whether knowledge should precede prayer. For how can one pray to you unless one knows you? If one does not know you, one may pray not to you you, but to something else. Or is it rather the case that we should pray to you in order that we may come to know you?" -The Confessions of St. Augustine,by Augustine, in a vivid contemporary translation by Rex Warner!

(Curiousity may have killed the cat, but it seems to have taken Augustine on quite the adventure! Everybody should listen to the Switchfoot song about Augustine, by the way...can't remember what it's called right now...)

"The day was now departing; the dark air released the living beings of the earth from work and weariness; and I myself alone prepared to undergo the battle both of the journeying and of the pity, which memory, mistaking not, shall show."
-Inferno, by Dante Alighieri, in a verse translation by Allen Mandelbaum!

(In intense agreement with Mr. Choo, who inspired the reading of this particular book, all I can say is: Dante Rocks!. You can tell how eloquent I've become since moving away from Torrey, eh?)

"Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman...with the infant at her bosom...an object to remind him of the image of Divine Maternity [and] only by contrast, of that sacred image of sinless motherhood, whose infant was to redeem the world. Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant she had borne."-The Scarlet Letter, by Nathaniel Hawthorne.

(Oh, sad, sad book...Hawthorne has a way of describing things so vividly that it sends veritable pangs through one's heart.)

"[Raoul] was now twenty-one and looked eighteen. He had a little blond mustache, attractive blue eyes, and a girlish [personality, I mean] complexion." -The Phantom of the Opera, by Gaston Leroux.

(Yup, that about sums it up.)

I'll probably be able to finish all of these on our two-week trip to Florida. Which starts tomorrow morning. At three. In the morning. Which is the problem with living in a small town, because the nearest commercial airport is 100 miles away in Seattle. Oh well. Anyways, yay for good and interesting books! What are your summer plans/books, friends?