Hello Summer

After two weeks of finals and semester-end papers, packing up my friends' rooms, taking multiple trips to storage units, packing up my own nightmare of a room and saying goodbye to my roommate , I am home in Dallas to begin my adventurous and interesting summer. My aunt is expected to deliver her 3rd baby this Friday, my mother and I will be going to Commerce, Texas to look at our future home, and next week I plan on scouting out various restaurants for a part-time job. My aunt, uncle, and cousins are also coming into town from Colorado next Friday, and I couldn't be more excited to see them.

June 14th I begin my service fellowship at the Stewpot in downtown Dallas, and I have no idea what to expect. I will be teaching a character building class to 1st through 5th graders for eight weeks. At the beginning of August I will be moving my room to the parsonage in Commerce, before beginning my junior year of college. Here we go!

In the meantime, two of my best friends will be leaving for Italy in the next couple of days to begin a summer theater program, and another friend will be studying in Italy during the month of July.

Summer is a funny time in college. Suddenly, the people I surround myself with at meals, classes, study sessions, late-night food runs, parties, and extracurricular activities are scattered in different directions, back to their respective homes, flying across the world to study abroad, working at summer camps, or starting internships. I find that the first two or or three days at home feel so strange. But I am comforted by my friends' calls and text messages as I update myself on how everyone is doing and what everyone is up to. I suppose I am more self-sufficient than I realize.

I have completed two years of college, and I cannot believe it. Being two years closer to post-college service work or graduate school brings with it both excitement and fear. Also, being two years closer to my post-college life means being two years closer to saying goodbye to Hendrix and to the best friends I have ever made. Hendrix has been my refuge and place of growth, my true home away from home. Even when acknowledging this, however, what pushes me forward is knowing that just as I have been blessed beyond what I imagined for myself in college, so too will I be blessed in the future.

So here is to summer, even one away from my best friends at school. May it be filled with memories of family, friendship, children's laughter, new places, picture-taking, and the love that has sustained me through all of my life's experiences thus far.