(no subject)
i just had one of the best weekends! for the first time, i was not glad to be back in chapel hill. thursday, jenny, chris w-j, crister, and i drove up to warren wilson for some contra dancing (we got there really late but made up for it with waffle house) which ended up in some skinny dipping under the full moon. i got to see my brother! if only for a little while, it was definitely superb. too bad he saw me naked. (ew!) we all spent the night at jenny's and had a chill time of bonding.
friday the four of us met up with the rest of the OC group at whirley's cave in tennessee, where we commenced an adventure under the surface of the earth. i was worried about my claustrophobia flaring up (which it did), but with the support of lots of really amazing friends, i was able to overcome my the panic pawing at my brain and thoroughly enjoy the cave. it was wild too, man, how dark it was under there and how beautiful some of the formations were. it was so cool and clean and utterly quiet and black. we saw bats and albino crawdads and walls that looked like a fairy had sneezed all over them.
on the way home from the cave we stopped by to surprise parker's parents at their lake house. imagine twenty-some people just showing up on your doorstep at 9 at night... she reacted by making us all sandwiches. most of us went skinny dipping in the frigid waters - sense a theme? the night was absolutely beautiful and the many full moons were quite luminous! that night we stayed at parker's real house, which has a stupifyingly beautiful view of the surrounding mountains. it was a fun night, with cards and beer and brownies and relaxing on the roof. spaghetti dinner at midnight. crister and i slept on the porch outside, waking up to see the sun rise glorious magenta.
saturday was a climbing day. we headed over to blowing rock boulders where i eventually wore off all the skin on my fingers trying to cling to these rocks. challenging, strengthening, and inspiring. though i'm not much of a boulderer yet, watching chris, nate, jim, hans, etc. cling to seemingly smooth rocks demonstrated just how much of a god you can be out there. i'm really glad chris is going to be around this summer, so we can make trips out and he can put up with me being sucky for a while.
we got lost looking for another lake to go swimming in, so just headed to lp's, where her parents were fixing a magnificent feast for us! frisbee, guys being entertaining, shrimp and grits, a walk into town for ice cream in full costume (fully sober), hot tubbing, pool table ridiculing, and some really trippy and creepy brave little toaster all made up the evening. oooh and the beds were deliciousness for the skin...
all in all, everything was fabulous. there was nothing about the weekend that i would change, except maybe being able to climber better and longer. i realized this weekend just how many close friends i've made this year. i hate how that happens.. you can't sense the depth and truth of a friendship until you know it's about time to say goodbye. not forever, of course, but the summer seems interminably long when i think about how i won't be seeing these amazing people for that amount of time. i think a lot of mountain trips is in order. i also realized this weekend how much i am still learning about myself, how much more there is to know and discover and stretch. that's very exciting to me.
i had a few moments this weekend where i could feel the future in front of me. probably just possibilities of the future, but i felt it happening, saw it in my mind's eye before i even had time to think about it. other moments yielded the complete opposite, where no matter how hard i tried i just couldn't see myself a few years down the line. i think about how i'm a freshman, and many of these people i'm around are juniors and seniors. what were they like when they were my age? what happened to make them who they are? will that happen to me? i can see the kind of person i would like to be, but there's no telling if my passions will indeed develop, or if my expertise will indeed expand. it's easy to imagine that i'll be in this limbo state for forever, but also to see myself following what i love to its very end. the possibilities drown me!
here's a question. two passions - one purely for entertainment and personal fun, the other more of a cause and less of an adventure but more rewarding to the world as a whole.
if you had to choose, what would you spend your time pursuing?
friday the four of us met up with the rest of the OC group at whirley's cave in tennessee, where we commenced an adventure under the surface of the earth. i was worried about my claustrophobia flaring up (which it did), but with the support of lots of really amazing friends, i was able to overcome my the panic pawing at my brain and thoroughly enjoy the cave. it was wild too, man, how dark it was under there and how beautiful some of the formations were. it was so cool and clean and utterly quiet and black. we saw bats and albino crawdads and walls that looked like a fairy had sneezed all over them.
on the way home from the cave we stopped by to surprise parker's parents at their lake house. imagine twenty-some people just showing up on your doorstep at 9 at night... she reacted by making us all sandwiches. most of us went skinny dipping in the frigid waters - sense a theme? the night was absolutely beautiful and the many full moons were quite luminous! that night we stayed at parker's real house, which has a stupifyingly beautiful view of the surrounding mountains. it was a fun night, with cards and beer and brownies and relaxing on the roof. spaghetti dinner at midnight. crister and i slept on the porch outside, waking up to see the sun rise glorious magenta.
saturday was a climbing day. we headed over to blowing rock boulders where i eventually wore off all the skin on my fingers trying to cling to these rocks. challenging, strengthening, and inspiring. though i'm not much of a boulderer yet, watching chris, nate, jim, hans, etc. cling to seemingly smooth rocks demonstrated just how much of a god you can be out there. i'm really glad chris is going to be around this summer, so we can make trips out and he can put up with me being sucky for a while.
we got lost looking for another lake to go swimming in, so just headed to lp's, where her parents were fixing a magnificent feast for us! frisbee, guys being entertaining, shrimp and grits, a walk into town for ice cream in full costume (fully sober), hot tubbing, pool table ridiculing, and some really trippy and creepy brave little toaster all made up the evening. oooh and the beds were deliciousness for the skin...
all in all, everything was fabulous. there was nothing about the weekend that i would change, except maybe being able to climber better and longer. i realized this weekend just how many close friends i've made this year. i hate how that happens.. you can't sense the depth and truth of a friendship until you know it's about time to say goodbye. not forever, of course, but the summer seems interminably long when i think about how i won't be seeing these amazing people for that amount of time. i think a lot of mountain trips is in order. i also realized this weekend how much i am still learning about myself, how much more there is to know and discover and stretch. that's very exciting to me.
i had a few moments this weekend where i could feel the future in front of me. probably just possibilities of the future, but i felt it happening, saw it in my mind's eye before i even had time to think about it. other moments yielded the complete opposite, where no matter how hard i tried i just couldn't see myself a few years down the line. i think about how i'm a freshman, and many of these people i'm around are juniors and seniors. what were they like when they were my age? what happened to make them who they are? will that happen to me? i can see the kind of person i would like to be, but there's no telling if my passions will indeed develop, or if my expertise will indeed expand. it's easy to imagine that i'll be in this limbo state for forever, but also to see myself following what i love to its very end. the possibilities drown me!
here's a question. two passions - one purely for entertainment and personal fun, the other more of a cause and less of an adventure but more rewarding to the world as a whole.
if you had to choose, what would you spend your time pursuing?