friends

This past weekend I went home and I realized that my life has changed so much in this past year. See a lot of my friends are still in high school, because when I was in my youth group in high school a lot of the kids just happened to be younger than me. I still have my college friends but as everyone knows not everyone is going to be home the same weekend you are going to be home. But last weekend one of my college friends from my youth group was home so I hung out with her for most of the weekend and we were talking about how we are almost done with our freshman year of college and how it was crazy that we were so scared of it during the summer. It was so nice because we went through almost eh exact same experience because we were the only ones from our youth group going to public universities in Illinois, and that scared us a lot because we really didn’t know a ton of people, but we made it through. After I hung out with her she had to leave to go back to school, because she was on spring break, I hung out with some of my younger friends and that just really showed how much different high school is than college. High school is filled with drama and gossip and I just felt that I was over it and I didn’t care about whatever was going on. But I think that it’s so weird because two of my best friends are in high school and it just seems so different. I love them to death but I think that it’s weird that we are so close because we are in two different worlds. I mean they will soon be in the “world” I’m in and it really won’t make a difference a couple years can make. I think that people who say that you are too old to hang out with a person are wrong, no matter how much the age difference is it is about how well the person gets you and is willing to try to understand you and listens to you and vice versa.

Koinonia!

This past year I have attended many events that are worthwhile here at ISU. Some have been on campus and some have been off campus, most of the activities that I have participated in have been good, but one really changed my life and that was when I went on a retreat with the Newman Center, it was an off campus activity. It was the retreat was called Koinonia. The retreat was an entire weekend in the fall and it was amazing. I met so many more people at Newman and I am so glad that I decided to go on it. The retreat was filled with talks and team bonding and it was probably one of the best weekends of my life. I can’t really go into detail about it because I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who wants to go on the trip, but what I can say is that it was lead by college students who had been on the retreat before and they gave talks about their life experiences that and also on topics that others may have questions on. The whole retreat wasn’t just talks though we have a lot of free time in which we could pretty much do whatever we wanted to do: play football, go in and explore the corn field, go in the chapel, hang in the gym, and much more. Also another thing that I really enjoyed was the fact that you really didn’t have to worry or the distractions of the “outside” world. You did not have to keep track of the time or worry about being late to anything because everything we did was at the place we were staying at. I know a lot of people say that they have amazing retreats and that may be true, all retreats are good in their own way, but I honestly think that, that weekend was the best retreat that I have participated in. I cannot wait to be able to help lead the retreat so it can be a great retreat for others just like it was for me.

Spring Break 2009!!!

This past spring break I traveled to Oklahoma. Why Oklahoma, you may ask. I went on Alternative Spring Break, or ASB, with people from Illinois State University. ASB is an organization in which college students go places where they believe that people may need help. This is an organization that takes place around colleges across the country. At ISU we have 180 college students and some faculty staff travel to Boston, Florida, Mississippi, and Oklahoma. Each location that we travel to has a different issue: Mississippi dealt with Hurricane relief, Boston dealt with hunger and homelessness, Florida dealt with environment issues, and Oklahoma dealt with Native American issues.
In Oklahoma my team got to go to a program called Head Start. Here we help children the youngest being 4 months old and the oldest probably being around 5 years old. In the classroom we help the teachers with whatever they may need to get done, but we also got to play with the children and we hung out with them. I was in a room that was full of infants, the youngest being 4 months and the oldest being 8 months. They were adorable children and even though they could not talk we still made a strong connection with all of them. They were so cute, just like most infants are. But I did not just make connections with them, but the people that I went to Oklahoma with. I was the site facilitator, so that kind of meant that I was in charge of a group. I did have a co leader as well and I think that we clicked so well and got along very well. I went with a bunch of people that I did not know at all in the beginning of the trip, but at the end I can call them my friends and I know that when I see them on the quad I can just go up to any of them and have a random conversation with them. This spring break was one I will never forget. I had so much fun with everything that we did and I will most definitely do it again, no doubt.

What would I do....

I love to travel. So I think if I was given the amount of money for the four years of college, I would do a lot of traveling. I would grab a bunch of my friends together and we would go wherever but I know the places that I want to go and I will list a couple for you. I think the first place I would go to would be New Orleans, because I traveled there this past summer and I fell in love with everything there, the people, the city itself, everything. I would also travel to Disneyworld, because I want to go back so bad and love Disney things it makes me feel like a little kid again. The next place I would want to go would be New York, and see a couple of Broadway plays. Then I would probably travel overseas to Ireland because I am Irish and I would love to see where my relatives came from. Then I would go and travel to Poland because I am also Polish and I think it would be very interesting what it would be like to live there. Then I think that I would travel to Greece, specifically Santorini, because it is absolutely gorgeous there and I fell in love. I would also take a cruise throughout the Mediterranean Sea. The water is so blue and gorgeous. Probably after I was done with all of my site seeing and buying a bunch of things for my friends and family I would go somewhere where the money is absolutely needed and go there and help and offer anything I could so that I could make their lives easier in any way possible. I always feel bad about having things that other people do not have.
Throughout this adventure I think I would have great times and tons of new stories to tell. I also think that you have to travel with people so you can share those experiences with everyone you can. I hope that I will be able to do this someday but that’s a shot in the dark.