Summer vacation? Montreal!

It's been awhile since I've updated anything here. The lack of writing is mostly due to the fact that summer started, and life, believe it or not, got crazier. I guess in a sense it just got different, but the amount of time I spend in my room has significantly decreased, thanks to the 6-day-per-week work schedule that organizes my time. It looks like this: physical plant work on Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 7:30 am until 3:30 pm; babysitting Monday and Tuesday from 10 until 3, babysitting Thursday from 9:30 until 5, and church on Sunday. I guess that means I don't have too much time for a Sabbath rest, but Sunday afternoon can count for that, most likely. The rest of my time should be spent practicing, but I have yet to figure out how to work that in as the music building closes a full five or six hours earlier than it does during the school year. Inconvenient. Luckily, I should be able to practice tomorrow morning from 7:45 until 9-ish, which should help my embouchure get back in shape.

Since the last time I wrote anything, I journeyed to Montreal! It was lots of fun. We visited several churches including one with the second largest copper dome in the world (St. Joseph's Oratory), saw the Bodies Exhibit (I would strongly recommend it for anyone who is not squeamish about the human body), and ate lunch at a very good restaurant next to the underground city. Getting to St. Joseph's turned out to be more of an adventure than we planned - including a uphill 15-minute hike - but the views, the church, and the organ (!) were totally worth the sweat and inhalers involved in the arrival. It was gorgeous:

And the organ was magnificent!

We got a bit lost on the way back to Vermont, but the GPS saved us and we got back in time to see the sunset over Lake Champlain in Burlington.

Overall, a most excellent day trip.

In addition

I realized that every time I write something and finish it, I think of about a hundred more things I want to say. All of these things of course slip my mind as soon as I go to write them down, but I thought that if I perhaps started right away, I wouldn't forget.

I had the most wonderful evening last night! It started with dinner at Chipotle with some of the world's greatest people. I had never had Chipotle before, so it was a new and excitingly different experience. We lingered for a long time after we'd finished eating, discussing our college ensembles, music technique, the role of women in orchestras, study abroad programs to Salzburg, portraits, etc. We then decided to watch Star Trek VIII: First Contact, which was a whole lot of fun as well as a culturing experience. On the way back home, while laughing over the fact that I, thanks to the laryngitis, sounded like the Nazgul from Lord of the Rings, things took an interesting turn when we witnessed a car accident. That part of the evening wasn't so wonderful, but it was somewhat thought provoking. It's so easy to forget how incredibly fleeting life is. We think of death as being a long way off, something we don't need to think about until we're old and "ready" to leave the world, but it doesn't always work like that. If that car or our car had been in a slightly different place a few seconds earlier, we could have been involved in the accident as well. That being the case, why should I be complaining about simple things like a cold or too much work or a particular circumstance that didn't quite go exactly as planned?

In chapel this morning some members of the senior class expounded upon their lives while at Gordon. They talked about what they wanted to do with their lives, and how Gordon had changed who they were. It made me think about what I wanted my life "signature" to be, and how I should live in relation to that signature. I came to the conclusion that I want my life to be a reflection of who God is, and his love for his precious creation. "What is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you care for him?" So here I stand: let my life be solely for the glory of my God and for the edification of his people.

FINALS WEEK.

I have a long to-do list. It goes like this:

-Finalize summer job plans

-Study for two finals

-Figure out when I have to take those two finals

-Finish two final projects

-Take the MTEL pre-tests on Saturday at some ungodly early hour (drive for an hour first)

-Jury for my semester grade in oboe

-Practice

-Sleep?

-Get rid my nasty cold and laryngitis (observation: I've been sick in some form for an entire quad)

-Go out to tea! (YAY!)

-Finish the last few days of classes

-Figure out life after college. This can maybe wait for a few weeks, but grad school research needs to start now

-Several rehearsals

-End-of-year music major get-together

-Church

-Pack up all my stuff and move to another building on campus

I'm sure there's more to add to this list, but that's all I can think of right now. All of that stuff needs to happen within the next 12 days, and so I'm hoping that life will be a little less hectic by day 13. In the mean time, I will be praying a whole lot, listening to a bucketload of both classical and non-classical music, and drinking several hundred mugs of tea.