Whew! Today ends the third week of school. This past week has flown by! It was a great one! Here are some of the blessings I've had so far:
- My roomie, Sarah. We've had some fun conversations. It's nice to be able to have serious conversations and still be able to make each other laugh. One thing that's been hard is that we don't see each other as much this semester as we did last year, especially last semester. But looking back, we still make the most of the time we do have.
- My math test on Monday was really easy and I did well.
- Wednesday night dinner with my new friend Abby. We talked for hours and she is such an encouragement.
- Membership class at PBC started on Sunday and I know that I will get to know some awesome people.
- Signed up for Outreach Week and it sounds like it will be a great time serving the Lord...I'm so excited!
- Against my wishes, my friends are in the midst of planning a birthday celebration of some sort for me for tonight (I turn twenty on Sunday). Though I did not really want to celebrate, I am so grateful for my friends who care enough to ignore me :)
- This morning my department chapel was cancelled. Lindsay and I went to Starbucks during that time with the goal of doing homework. Two other girls in my dorm were also there, and for a while the four of us talked. It was nice to just sit and chat, even though we didn't get much work done.
- Despite my lack of studying (like I was planning to do at Starbucks), I got 100 on my biology quiz (which was super easy).
- My biology class is turning out to be way better than I hoped. I've mostly always had science from a Christian worldview, so that isn't new. But it is still really nice and I really appreciate it. My professor is really interested in the subject and it gets us all interested. We study different animals each day and they are all so unique. Through the animals we study each day and the videos we sometimes watch, I have seen so much of God's creativity in this world, and it is awe-inspiring. 
- Though I was sick this week, I felt so taken care of! So many people blessed me with their kindness, and it was nice to see how much people care even about the little things like colds.
- My devotions  have been in Psalm and I am studying the character of God. There are things that are mentioned repeatedly. It is really enforcing the ideas into my head. It's nice to read over and over again that God loves righteous men and that He is a refuge, and other things like that.
- My RA from last year, Lynsi, who graduated in May, came to visit last night. It was so exciting to see her again. She is continually an encouragement to me. It was so good to just see her and hug her and laugh with her again. I never realized how much I would miss her this year, so it was good to see her.

Those are just some of the things that have gone on in the last week to really encourage me.
 

Last weekend some of my friends and I went camping in Carpenteria. My friend Courtney's family and some of their other family friends went camping all last week, and they invited some of us to go with them for the weekend. The families had been staying in their trailers for the week, and had a couple tents to spare. It was a great time, even though it was kind of short. Some of us (including myself) left Friday in the early afternoon. We got there and set up the tents and went swimming in the ocean. It was beautiful and so nice!! Not too cold at all! Then a little bit later the rest of the friends came up and soon after we ate dinner. It was so exciting to sit on the beach with some people you really love and eat dinner while watching a gorgeous sunset.

That night, we sat around the campfire and talked for a while. It included my friends from school, several of Courtney's brothers and sisters, and some of their other friends who had been their for the week. It was a really fun time and there was lots of laughing. That night we slept in tents on the beach right by Courtney's family's campsite. In case you were wondering, that was a lifelong dream fulfilled. I've always wanted to camp on the beach. It was great!

The next morning when Lindsay and I woke up to an empty tent, we went outside to see where everyone was. We found them closer to the water, and grabbed some blankets and our Bibles and headed out there. Let me tell you, there is nothing like reading your Bible on the beach in the midst of some of your closest friends. Later that day we went into the little town-Carpenteria is so quaint and so interesting! I picked up something for Holly's birthday in a few weeks. But one of the coolest parts was the antique shops. I fell in love! There is just so much history in those places. It was so cool to see what people used to have.

I liked looking at the clothes, home decorations, and dishes. There were some cool signs and books and...well I could go on. But it was pretty much all cool! I never knew that I would like looking through those shops! That was a cool thing to learn. These are two of the pictures I took. The quality may not be best because I took them with my phone, but they still capture the really cool items we found. The whole town was cool, but this was the day I started feeling sick so I went back to the campsite with some of the girls. That night we at dinner and talked with everyone for a while and then just came back. It was a great way to spend the weekend! Well that's about it for now :) Have a great day!