Hurricane WILMA? They've got to be kidding me...

Who named that hurricane? That person should lose their hurricane-naming job. Ok, so maybe I'm a little bitter... But if my house is going to be taken out by a hurricane, the storm should not sound like a frail old woman.

Right now (Thursday morning) the storm is at about the same latitude as Ambergris Caye. We're hoping that it turns North because that causes the least amount of damage to the front of the island (and the reef). With hurricanes, the wind rotates counterclockwise and inwards toward the eye. So when they turn South of the island, we get the most damage in the front.

This is the second major hurricane scare of the year. My dad was just there to oversee construction on our house. The weather was perfect, but he left the island two days ago due to a tropical storm warning. He flew out of Belize yesterday, at which time a mandatory evacuation was issued for Ambergris Caye. Today, however, no planes or boats can leave the island because of the storm surge, so most people are stuck there. In the two major hurricanes that occured while I was in high school, San Pedro accumulated tons of horror stories. It's scary to think about the people - friends of my family - who are stuck there now.

But I know that God will work everything out for good. When Jesus calmed the storm, his disciples said, "Who is this? Even the wind and waves obey him!"

~Libz

Song of the day: "I Know Who You Are" - Ginny Owens

Ελλάδα και Αθήυα according to Libby...

Today I was reading through some of my emails from Athens. I journaled on my computer and sent everything to a few close friends and my parents. Here are some bits and pieces of my big fat Greek semester:

January 26th: "Call me crazy, but I am enjoying the language barrier so far. Today I went to a grocery store to buy some deli turkey (we don’t have very many groceries yet). I can't speak any Greek, so I pointed to a hunk of meat, put my thumbs in my armpits, and wagged my elbows up and down. The turkey wasn't great, but I sure had fun purchasing it!"

February 3rd: "I am in love with Coke Light. Addicted. All three of my apartment-mates have - on separate occasions - told me that I have a problem. I wonder if they have a 'Coke Light Anonymous' (CLA) group in Athens. My name is Libby, and I have a problem. Today I was talking to Kara as I sipped my Nalgene-full of Coke Light. I told her that I can’t imagine life without Coke Light and concluded that I will probably die of cancer. They are bound to discover that aspartame and Splenda, like all other calorie-free sweeteners, are indeed too good to be true and cause cancer in laboratory rats. Of course, they give those rats ridiculous amounts of artificial sweeteners before any problem develops. However, I consume ridiculous amounts daily, so I’m going down with the rats. Then we were talking about Nalgene bottles. Both of us have heard that Nalgene bottles can cause cancer, especially in women, when they are scratched. There’s no escaping my fate: Nalgene + Coke Light = cancer. Oh well, I'll be with Jesus when I die."

March 15th (Crete): "On Monday we headed to the bus station early and hopped on the first bus to Irakleio. (I’m not sure if the spelling is right on that, but in Greece it seems like there’s 80 different English spellings for everything, so I’m all about guessing instead of looking it up.) The drive was 1.5 hours. When we first got on, I sat down and put my book bag on the seat next to me. I was in one of those 'I need my personal space' kind of moods. Much to my chagrin, a girl who got on two stops later needed my extra seat. When I scooted over (in my mind, it was a very reluctant move) and shoved my (very full) book bag under the seat, one of my little FIF emo pins flew off and nailed me in the forehead. Then the girl whipped out her cell phone and started talking very loudly (as all Greeks do). I’m not gonna lie…at that point, I was getting really irritated. So I curled up against the window, taking up a lot less of the seat in order to avoid being touched by this girl's flailing elbows. I also put on my headphones (praise mix again) in an attempt to drown out her cell phone yelling. Then she got off the phone and started having a yelling conversation with her guy friend who was sitting 3 rows ahead of us. I turned up the volume. At that point, she heard my music and proceeded to lean up against me in order to hear it better. I'm not even exaggerating…she was leaning on me. By this point I had been listening to my music long enough and was relaxed enough to be alright with the situation, but experiences like that make me miss home. Americans respect personal space a lot more that Greeks do. This perfectly normal Greek woman in her early-mid 20's had no qualms about taking up more than her allotted space and leaning on a complete stranger. I felt really selfish for being frustrated with her, but I just wanted to be separated from my new siamese twin."

April 20th: "I called Marms (a.k.a. my mom), and it was great to talk to her. I didn’t tell Mom this while we were talking, but a dog pooped in the bushes near me. At first, the smell wasn’t noticeable, but then it came… For most of our convo I was standing in a cloud of poop molecules. Stupid dog.
[...]
Traffic in Greece is quite a chaotic experience. But now that I’m used to it, it’s just entertaining. Because they have no parking lots, everyone parks on the side of the road and the sidewalk. On many streets people can’t walk on the sidewalks because the cars are so close to the buildings. Instead, you walk in the street to get around them. So funny. And then there’s the motorcycles… Don’t even get me started on the motorcycles. They are obnoxiously noisy, and there are TONS of them. Motorcycles pretty much ignore traffic laws. Cars aren’t completely law-abiding either (akin to Greeks’ inability to wait in line), but motorcycles don’t drive in lanes. They either drive on the road lines (in between lanes) or on the sidewalks. Watch out pedestrians!
[...]
Oh man, when I was almost home, an old Greek man (who was driving by in a car) scolded me as I blatantly jaywalked. That’s right, pick on the American. Greek people could care less about jaywalking, laws, lines, or anything that imposes order on their chaotic society. Whatever dude! I’m partaking of the jaywalkage."

May 4th: "Ten days is probably the average amount of time that people come here to vacation, so now I can just pretend to be one of the tourists, with the minor inconvenience of two finals in the middle of my vacation. No thanks… I’m not into the tourist thing. My dad has always been anti-tourist-ish, and now I understand his reasoning. Tourists run around for the week they are here, take their pictures in front of the big monuments, and then hustle to the next site… They spend money unnecessarily b/c 'that’s what you do.' But in the short time they are here, they gain only a superficial understanding of the culture. And considering the fact that most of them stay in the touristy area of town, 'superficial understanding' is a generous term."


So there's a little bit of Greek culture according to Libby. Leave a comment.

~ Leebee

Song of the day: "Believe it ot Not" - Seinfeld (George's answering machine message)

Discussion question:

If you were in the Netherlands, where marijuana is legal, would you smoke pot?

Leave a comment...

Post-concert adrenaline rush

After a day of insanity, I should have so much to write about, but my mind is currently a jumbled mess of inexpressible feelings and thoughts. Does anyone else ever feel like that? When people ask how I'm doing, I often have to stop and think about it, and even then I'm not quite sure. I should just say "I don't know" in order to avoid abandoning my [seemingly more important] train of thought.

It's silly to constantly keep tabs on your emotional state. Emotions fluxuate quickly, and thinking about how you feel only prolongs the current emotion and disrupts your natural flow of thoughts, feelings, and actions. The affect itself becomes the focus, preventing a change of emotion in response to environmental and cognitive alterations. (Does that make any sense?)

My venting just turned into a psychology lecture. I love my major. :) Before studying abroad, I wasn't as thrilled with psychology, but last semester I didn't have any psych classes and I really missed them. The plethera of history classes made me want to vomit (ok, it wasn't THAT bad), but all the Classics majors around me were totally stoked to be learning about rocks and dead languages. What put me to sleep amazed them. I realized a simple concept through those Classics weirdos...psychology isn't interesting to everyone, and history is intriguing to some people. (I know it's obvious, but it helped me to realize that psychology actually is a good fit for me.) But in all seriousness, I'm not sure about the sanity of those Classics majors...they are a weird bunch. They admit it, too.

I prefer to study revelent concepts, and as a human being, psychology is an extremely relevent discipline. Even when it comes to math, statistics is probably my favorite area of study. Unlike calculus, it's relevent. (Disclaimer: Calculus is probably relevent in engineering.) Speaking of irrelevance... This semester I am cursed with two history classes (Church History and Modern Civilization). I hate them. I absolutely hate them. There are much better things I can do with my time than memorize names and dates.

Man, sometimes I surprise myself in these blog entries. I'm gonna stop now, before I say something I'll regret. Thanks for reading. Adios.

~Libby the Stone(bridge)r

Song of the day: "My Offering" - Nichole Nordeman

Facebook Stalkers Anonymous

Procrastination... It starts when I dread doing work. I welcome any and every distraction, and even while I study, my mind wanders until I get up and do something else. Somehow, every minor distraction seems worthwhile. That was the case yesterday, as I tried to read for my Church History class. Name and dates, nothing too interesting, and then..."Ooo, I should look up Bedford High School's facebook class of '02!" (I attended Bedford schools through third grade, after which my family moved to Bainbridge.)

I scrolled through "Beford '02" and vaguely recognized a few names, but I wasn't certain that I knew them. Then I came across my kindergarten crush, a name that I definitely remembered...

So I wrote:
"Hey, I know this is totally random, but I was looking through the Bedford class of 2002 because I went to Bedford through 3rd grade. Your name was the only one I recognized...probably because I used to chase you on the playground or something. Anywho, I hope you're having a nice life! Later, Libby"

And he responded:
"I can't believe you found me and I remember you distinctly. That's crazy. Kindergarten right? I guess you already know I am going to school right now. I live in Kent. I am engaged to a girl who I met at Akron. I am getting married January 7th! What about you?"

First of all, why are so many people getting married? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for my friends who are engaged. But when I think about the sheer number of people my age who are soon-to-be husbands and wives, it weirds me out. I can't be this old. I don't want to be. But anywho...

I was so bold in kindergarten. I chased this kid on the playground a lot, and one time on the bus I blocked the aisle and told him he had to sit with me! He was actually in my class for a few years. If my memory serves me right, he was always the fastest kid in the class, and I came in second. I think that inspired the playground chasing. I was one of those girls, the type that mothers shield their sons from for as long as possible... A playground chaser.

Well, thanks for tuning in. Leave a comment.

~Libster

Song of the day: "Worlds Apart" - Jars of Clay
Come to the Jars of Clay show on campus this Friday night!!!

The Superior Sport

This year my brother Brian is a freshman at GCC, and I've really enjoyed having him here! In the past three years, I had only played catch on campus a handful of times. I didn't know any girls at Grove City who would've been interested in playing catch, and I didn't want to ask guys. But now that my little brother's here, I can play catch all the time!!
(Playing catch is merely one of many benefits of having Brian here)

I love baseball. In my mind, it's in a league of it's own: no other sport can compare. While baseball can be boring to watch, this sport is so fun to play. Baseball involves a variety of skills. Throwing, catching, and batting barely scratch the surface... Smart base-running and fielding depend upon instantaneous judgments that require a deep understanding of what is going on in the game, and there's still so much more. Team sports in general should be distinguished from individual sports. Sure, a swim team is a team, but each swimmer's performance doesn't directly relate to and depend on his teammates'. Team sports involve an interdependence and comradery that individual sports do not. And from my experience, baseball is the best of the team sports. My brother Joe, on the other hand, asserts that football is just as great as baseball; he even goes so far as to say that it might be better. I can see how that might be true, but - being a girl - I've never played on a (real) football team, so I'm not in a position to make that judgment. Whatever the case may be, I'm loyal to the great American pastime.

What do you think?

~Libbz

Song of the day: "Stars" - Switchfoot

Yes, my friends, things have changed on Monkey Slippers! I miss the orangey-ness, but at least people can post comments now.

 

 

Mean Joe Greene. Yup, that's my baby brother. I guess he's not really a baby anymore, but he's still a cutie. I'm a permanent member of the Joe fan club.