divine irony strikes again.

while sitting during noon mass today, Ash Wednesday, a strange thing occurred. i turned to Tim and tapped him on the shoulder.

"dude. what is that strange glow emanating from the window?"

as quickly as the church had lit up, so did our minds. the sun! it's the sun! that long forgotten ball of heat that our ancestors worshipped in hopes of greater fertility! or something like that.

ok, all kidding aside, i was really, really pumped to see the sun come out today. it had literally been around 11-12 days since the last sighting of light. and it figures that it chooses Ash Wednesday, one of only TWO required fasting days in the Church calendar, to poke it's head out.

furthermore, it fit in rather will with Father Ron's homily today. about how 'Lent' comes from the Old English word meaning "springtime". and how Lent is a gift to us from God, etc.

Divine allegory is found in abundance today. praise God.

40 days and 40 nights.

"snow and adolescence are the only problem that disappear

if you ignore them long enough"

-- Earl Wilson

It won't stop snowing.

i believe today is the 8th straight day of snow here, not counting the 3 days of snow we experienced in Poland. I've seen websites estimating that Gaming has received a total of around 4 feet of snow.

madness.

a-m-d-g a-m-d-g!

Last night was the "Tandem Tango" dance party here at the Kartause.

I had the privilege of going with my friend erin wilson (stella mariae), and we went as AMDG and Stella Mariae. I borrowed erin fitzpatrick's plaid skirt to be my kilt, used one of Tim's plaid scarfs as my sash, made an AMDG tshirt, and found a wooden spoon to complete my get-up. It was glorious. At one point during the evening, Elliot lifted me up in the air and everyone started chanting A-M-D-G A-M-D-G! I never thought i would know what that felt like. now i do.

Elliot went with Kristen Dupre as "Eggs and Bacon" -- be sure to creep around on facebook this coming week to see pics of elliot's costume. it was perfect. Tim and Erin Fitz went as a Jaeger bomb -- tim had a huge cardboard cut-out of a Jaegermeister bottle and Fitzy had one of a Red Bull can.

The first place prize, however, went to Alex Freas and his partner, Meghan. They went as Tom Hanks and Wilson from Cast Away. Alex, who looks uncannily like Tom Hanks, had a torn up t-shirt, black face paint smeared across his face (like burn marks), and a fed-ex bag in his hand. Meghan had a shirt stuffed with pillows and the face of Wilson drawn on it, as well as that plant thingy on top of her head. It was a well-deserved victory.

Now, all of the students here are hit with hte realization that midterms are but days away, and most of us have ignored studying so we could instead create our outfits for last night. Sigh.

halfway there.

believe it or not, the semester here is about halfway done.

the upside is that our traveling is certainly nowhere near halfway completed. with Rome and Assissi (ten days) right around the corner, our ten-day break and then our 5-day easter break to follow, most of our travel time is yet to come.

this weekend is another off weekend -- we had classes today since we had monday off, making this weekend just a 2-day weekend. midterms are this coming week, so most students are hanging back and studying.

more thoughts coming soon...i promise :-).

oh yea, i have a blog

sorry for the lack of updates.

things have been rather busy since our arrival home from poland. i don't plan on writing all that much about the trip -- it was super powerful and i learned a ton, but none of it is particularly appropriate for a blog. i may or may not post some sort of reflection Auschwitz eventually, we will see.

Poland. Preface.

The last week has been an interesting one.

My spirituality, which has been slowly improving ever since arriving here, exploded with new life this week. A powerful time at the FOP on tuesday night, mangnified by an in increase in chapel time has sparked a sort of revolution in my interior life.

And that's been a huge blessing, considering my classwork has been revolting against me all week. I had this huge assignment due for Minto on wednesday, which took me around 5 hours to complete, and then an exam today, which i just got out of, that took me around 8-10 hours to study for on tuesday and wednesday. but. it's over.

We leave at 7:30 tonight for Poland. This should be one of the more powerful/inspirational trips we take. The journey will bring us through the extremes of humanity: from Auschwitz to the Shrine of the Divine Mercy. I'm more excited than anything else, though i'm fearing the extensive/boring bus drive.

See you all monday.

this gets me every time.

"A good measuring stick to judge how prideful you are is to see how mad you get when someone else is being prideful."

-- C.S. Lewis