Sunrise

This morning, as I was driving to work, I noticed something that I do not often notice, and really, do not often see....the sunrise. I only caught a glimpse of the sunrise, I was driving west, into Dallas and I saw it in my rear view mirror. It was a beautiful sunrise, and a lovely, necessary surprise early on a Tuesday morning.

There are not many sunrises I can think of in my life that I have thought, wow, that is a beautiful sunrise, I will remember this forever. There are various reasons for this. The sun rises in the morning, very early in the morning. There have not been very many times in my life, until the past couple months when I was awake, coherent, and looking at the sky when the sun was rising. Even during the past couple months, I am usually too distracted because I'm running late, or too annoyed at the fact that I have to wake up so early to notice the sun rising in my rear view mirror. The rear view mirror is small, and only catches the right part of the sky at certain moments during the drive when it is not being blocked by buildings or cars or trees.

Some nights during my life I have, like many others I'm sure, especially MK's, usually at some kind of conference, stayed up all night long with friends, in hopes of seeing the sunrise. I have never, in any of these situations actually seen a sunrise.

Something that I have seen many times and absolutely love seeing, no matter what....sunsets. I have never seen a bad sunset, I'm not sure that I've ever seen a sunset and thought, wow, I wish I were not awake right now, or missed the sunset because I was too busy. And my theory, one is able to see sunsets more clearly and more often than sunrises.

All of this talk of sunrises and sunsets to say, I was thinking, in my kind of cheesy mind, sunrises are like new experiences, new possibilities, awkward meet and greets, the first day of class, those moments when you don't know what the day has to bring. Sunsets are like closing ceremonies, finales, despedidas after years of friendship, the sense of accomplishment at the end of a productive, good day, or the sense of relief at the end of a not so good day.

Right now, I'm at about 5 o clock in the morning and the sunrise is coming. I'm not sure what the next few months have in store, and especially, what I will be doing in about 3 months. But for some reason, seeing that sunrise this morning, gave me a little bit of peace, a little bit of confidence, its OK if I'm not sure right now, and even though I'm extremely stressed out and exhausted most of the time, this is just the beginning. That might sound bad, but I don't mean, "this is just the beginning" in a bad way. I mean it in a good way, there are good things to come.

The day is young. Getting something started is always harder than keeping it going, or looking back at it after its done. Getting things going when you don't know what is really going on, or what you will be doing exactly is even more difficult, but as I have seen in the past, God works things out, and the day ends with a beautiful, relaxing sunset to celebrate, soak in, and reflect on.

a new semester

It's been quite a while since my last update. I guess, kind of a lot has happened, but kind of not a whole lot at all. And this will be a quick little post because I need to keep studying for my nutrition test.
I think I'm just going to make a list :-) just because

1. I started taking my pre reqs for nursing school in January. I'm taking nutrition, developmental psychology and microbiology.....I am enjoying the classes and I'm learning a lot, but it's definitely different than the poli sci and philosophy classes I took at Baylor. Unfortunately you can't really argue your way through a microbiology test.

2. I'm still working at the Elementary school in Dallas and trying to figure out what I'll be doing next year. It is rarely boring and the kids are always up to something, or have something funny to say or ask. Today one of the forth grade girls quietly passed a piece of gum to me at the end of math class, trying to hide it from the substitute teacher. I just said thanks and took it, and then thought to myself, wait, kids can't have gum at school. and then thought, was my breath that bad that she had to risk getting in trouble to offer me a piece of gum? Oh, well I really had wanted a piece of gum all morning.

3. I've moved back in with my parents in Kaufman. I've been commuting to Dallas everyday. The drive is pretty far but at least I'm sleeping at night and not being woken up by transvestite neighbors tromping around in the middle of the night, or barking dogs early in the morning. I did have a little freak out moment when I went to church with my parents on Sunday and five people in a row exclaimed, you're back in Kaufman! Are you back for good? And I didn't know how to respond, yes...no....I feel like I should answer, "I work in Dallas, hang out in Dallas, have an apartment in Dallas, study in Dallas, occasionally in Terrell, I spend between 2-5 waking hours a day in Kaufman, I'm not sure where I live." I've spend my whole life not knowing where my "home" was, and now I cant even figure out were I live.

4. Lets see....exciting news....it snowed on Thursday! Proper snow!(as the Scots would say) We had about a foot of snow on the ground, I guess for people reading this, that isn't news, because apparently it snowed in every state except Hawaii, so what is that, snow in like 57 states? ;-)
I made a snowman with my mom and dad. I had never made a life size, proper snowman before. We used a carrot for his mouth and everything. My dad even got out the ruler and smoothed it all out and made sure it was smooth and round.

5. Other news.....Since my last post I've been pulled over once and had one little fender bender, which I still believe was not my fault. My poor car.

6. One thing that I always appreciate: bathroom stalls with places to hang or place your belongings, best combination ever: a restroom stall with a place to hang your purse and a ledge to place books or other belongings on.

7. Something that slightly bothers me: when you go to weather.com to the location search box it says, "Enter ZIP, city or place(e.g. Disney World)." Every time I see that I wonder, how many people actually need to know the weather at Disney world. It seems kind of like a mean little trick to me, why don't they just put (e.g. Fiji or St. Barts)?

8. I have done my procrastination for the evening, now it's back to studying. Oh, one more exciting piece of news, Molly is coming on Friday. I really only get to see her for a day, but I'm so excited! And I think we're going to have an adventure, I'm sure I'll blog about it!