You may need to block out the next 30 minutes to read this post.

Don't believe the timestamp- That's when I started writing this! It's actually 9:55.

Tuesday, I woke up with a sore throat and my nose draining like a faucet that had been left on. I had nothing to do during the day because I had already done my homework, and I don't have classes on Tuesdays. Mom had been after me to go see the nurse about my ear (it too was draining), so I went to the nurse in the morning. She took my temperature, looked in my ear, and referred me to the doctor. I called the doctor's office and scheduled an appointment for 2:40 the same day. After I did that, I went to the coffee shop, where I was scheduled to volunteer and sat there by myself. Three people came in while I was in there, but none of them wanted any coffee. It's probably because people don't want coffee at 11 in the morning.

I didn't do anything except try to rest in my room until about 2:00 so that I could figure out just where the medical clinic was and fill out paperwork when I got there. It ended up that I had to do 4 forms and then wait until they were ready to see me. The clinic was very efficient. I got in, they took my weight (117.6 lbs, Mom), my height (5 foot 5 with tennies on), and my temperature (97.7). Then the nurse led me back to this tiny room, about 10ftx10ft and she took my blood pressure (can't remember, she said it was good though) and my pulse. I was sort of surprised she could even feel my pulse, but she said it was good too. I told her what was wrong with me and then she left.

The doctor, an average-sized brown-haired young guy, came in, shook my hand and asked what I was there for. His medical student, a tallish blond guy stood off to one side. I told the doc what was wrong with me, he looked in my ear, said I had otitis externa (read: swimmer's ear, basically), and then asked if the med student could look in my ear. I said, "Sure, I don't mind." So the med student looked in my ear. And looked in my ear. It felt like ages that he was looking and he finally stopped looking right before I was about to giggle. I felt silly because he was looking in my ear for so long... Anyway, the doctor gave me a paper with my prescription on it, and told me I could go to Medicap to get the prescription filled. He left and I went to the receptionist and made another appointment for 9:50 this coming Tuesday.

I walked approximately two blocks to get to the Medicap, where I handed the woman my prescription, my insurance card, and my ID so she could fill the prescription. I waited for a while, and they had the prescription filled. They called my name and I went up to the register to get the medicine. The manager told me that the insurance company has my birthday wrong, so I have to get that straightened out. She then proceeded to ring me up, and it turned out to be $100 for one little bottle of ear drops! She looked in the records and found that she could give me a different (non-generic) bottle of drops for only $30. She had to call the doctor's office and get the proper approval for me to have the medicine, and it finally worked out. I paid my $30 and then left.

When I got back to campus it was about 4:30 so I decided to hang out with my girlfriends until 5:30, when I had Food for the Soul in the chapel lounge. The speakers were from Shalom Zone in Des Moines, and they told us about what they do and how they help kids have someplace safe to go to after school. It sounded like a good ministry. Free food was provided and it was walking tacos with fresh crunchy veggies as a side. It was nice to have fresh veggies- Pfeiffer usually has steamed, but not often fresh (I'm spoiled by Mom's garden!). After Food for the Soul I went back to my girlfriends' room and we watched some Monty Python sketches (Spanish Inquisition and Dead Parrot) on Youtube. The Spanish Club was having game night at 7:00, so I went to that around 7:20, and I had a hard time hearing, so I left again.

Next was Cornerstone youth group in the chapel lounge at 9:00. Cornerstone is for freshmen and it is led by some of the upperclassmen. One of the guys from my LAS class is in it, so that is a comfort. We introduced ourselves and ate leftover brownies from Food for the Soul. The RLC has a Question Ball, a beach ball with questions written on it in permanent marker. Wherever you catch the ball, you have to answer that question. It was fun to hear people's answers to the questions. After everyone had a chance to answer a question, we brainstormed things that we want to do as a group. Among the ideas were trapshooting, night sledding, and Thirty Hour Famine. Once the ideas died down, we went around the circle one more time, saying our name and why we love Jesus. My reason is pretty simple: He loved me first. :D

So that was Tuesday. Wednesday was a class day, so I got up, packed my backpack with lots of kleenex, and traipsed off to my LAS class. This class is a philosophy class. I have been in the habit of sitting front and center in the curved rows of desks, so I tend to be right in front of the professor. I don't actually contribute very much to the conversations, but rather just listen. This particular class was about why and how we argue, a continuation of last Friday's class.

I know I need to learn how to argue well, because I don't like how the professor attacks religion. He has said some things against faith that have made me uncomfortable. However, the boy I mentioned earlier is much more verbal than I am, and he defends faith. It's hard to defend my faith without using the Bible, and the professor has attacked the veracity of the Bible. He insinuates that it is not very intelligent to believe in intelligent design, saying things like "It'd be silly to believe that the earth was made in 7 days" and then giving reasons based on scientific evidence. But he has also been somewhat of an apologist, because he thinks that there is not necessarily a VERSUS kind of debate. He asked, "What if we could put together evolution and intelligent design? Each has its strong points." The main thing for me is, what do I do with this kind of thinking? If I believe that the Bible is my framework for life (and I do), am I allowed to pick and choose what I believe from the Bible (ie believe that God created the world, but not that the world was made in 7 days)? I don't think so. The question remains: How do I defend my faith without being made to look like a fool for it? And so I remain silent when we discuss God.

Next class is Psychology, and we discussed research methods and how correlation works. The lectures are fairly simple, with consistent examples and writing on the board involved. I have the opportunity to participate in a research study for extra credit, so Friday the 25th I have a 30 minute survey to fill out. It should be interesting, and it never hurts to have extra credit.

Spanish was bewildering. We tried to watch a video that the professor had downloaded onto her computer, and the voices and lips were NOT synced at ALL. To add to the confusion, it was in Spanish, about immigration, and some of the speakers didn't seem to breathe while speaking. Also, the voices and video were so off at certain points that a man's voice was matched to a woman's face! Confusing! However, the professor played it again, actually from the internet, and the sync was much better. I understood about 3% of the whole thing, but the professor knows it is difficult to understand at first. The rest of class felt a bit... ineffective? The word escapes me. But we just got several unnecessary papers and not much for actual Spanish speaking or activity. I think this was an isolated incident, though.

I had lunch with one of my girlfriends and we found out that a mutual friend's father had a stroke. Her father has since passed away. Please pray for her and her family. Please also pray for my girlfriend's father- he was the doctor on call when the stroke happened. Thank you.

Next was English class, which I enjoyed. The professor wrote this on the board: "She is playing." She told us to write what the picture was that popped into our heads and gave us about 5 minutes to do so. Then, she had some of us read what we thought, and she made the point that we didn't imagine the same thing. As a class, we played with language and expanded the sentence quite a bit so that it was almost ridiculous. Next, she divided us up into groups and gave us five more sentences. The room was full of laughter and playful words as we expanded the sentences. One of the sentences was "We went to the mall." EVERY group expanded "the mall" as "Jordan Creek Mall". I thought that was humorous. Once each group had read their first four sentences, the professor decided that the room was too hot, and we were released ten minutes early. She has told us not to get used to getting out early, but so far we have gotten out early during EVERY class. I agree with her that the room was fairly miserable, but my reason is different. The air conditioner clanks something dreadful sometimes. Right now my hearing is limited because I am not wearing both of my hearing aids (Thanks, otitis externa!) and the air conditioners on campus just make class a little harder to hear. (No Mom, I am not having trouble hearing the professors- the FM works just fine. It's just that I realized what I was missing when I got the second hearing aid and now I have temporarily lost what I was missing.)

After classes were over I did homework. You'd think it would be boring, but it's really not. I love my Psychology textbook! I really do enjoy it (twas the most expensive of my textbooks but it is a fun read).

I had supper in the Grill with my girlfriends. At 7:00, our section of the floor decorated tee shirts in the classroom in the basement. Mine says "I Heart Simpson Storm" and has a cloud and tornado on it. It's actually semi-decent for a puffy-painted shirt that I have decorated. My one regret is that the shirt was actually wider than I am when it was laid out flat, so my design does not exactly fit my front. That's okay because I won't be wearing it anyway.

I left tee shirt decorating to go to Revelation Singers in the basement of the chapel. There were seven of us girls there and we sang old-school praise songs like "All in All" and "The Heart of Worship". Let me correct that: They sang. I croaked and sniffled and blew my nose. They had a concert planned for tonight (Thursday) for the Village, which is the old folks' home here, and I told them that I wasn't sure if I would come because I felt like I was losing my voice. After singing we went upstairs to campus worship in the chapel.

Campus worship is really cool. It's good to know that there are other Christians on campus, and to see some of them get all fired up about God is inspiring. There's a guy who is super-involved, he's a football player, he squirted everyone's hands with hand sanitizer at the beginning of the service, and I think he is a junior or senior. He was literally on his knees with his arms raised during the music that was playing for communion. Wow. I am not that expressive, but he was inspiring and he made me tear up a little bit. Anyway, worship was awesome. I had communion and I was served by the same pastor who served it to me on Sunday, which I found amusing. My only complaint about the worship is the music- our chapel is one of those great big cathedral-types, and the music bounces around so very much. I have a hard time hearing the voices and end up lip-reading to keep up, but that isn't a bad thing, because I don't think anybody else is having it any easier than me! haha.

Today I woke up with no nose drainage! I was thrilled. I ate breakfast with one of my girlfriends, went to the BSC to check my mail because I had a package notice last night, opened said package and was slightly let down by the fact that it was simply an extension cord for the vibrating part of my alarm clock, and came back to my dorm room. I got onto Skype and the internet and debated with my boyfriend about an article I read on the internet called "John Rock's Error". The article is about John Rock, the inventor of The Pill, as well as effects of The Pill- the whole thing is rather involved- and you can read it here: http://gladwell.com/2000/2000_03_10_a_rock.htm I really recommend it, even if you don't believe in The Pill. It is a fascinating look at Rock and his reasons for inventing The Pill the way he did. Did you know he was Catholic? He truly believed that he was not going against the Catholic church's dictate about using 'natural' birth control only. This discussion took up a lot of my morning.

I went to lunch at 12:30 for class at 1:00. This is my LAS discussion time, where we discuss Cormac McCarthy's "The Road". Today's main topic of discussion was: Why don't the man and boy commit suicide? Is suicide, in this circumstance, an "easy way out" or a "logical, rational choice"? We talked about Hope and we tried to find out the essence of why the people in the book either were strong and didn't eat others, or why they ate other people. I really enjoyed it today. There was no discussion of religion, and the professor was making jokes. He seemed a little bit more human today, because he had to leave class early to go pick up his mother in Des Moines and take her to the doctor. He also couldn't find his cell phone. The teaching assistant took over when he left, so we didn't get gypped out of class time.

After class I went to the poster sale in front of the BSC. I bought three posters: a Star Wars one for my boyfriend, a "What is Love?" one, and an "E-cow-nomics" one which explained economics using cows. I put the second two posters up in my room. It took some effort because masking tape doesn't want to stick to my ceiling. I finally had to just move that poster onto the wall. I really wanted the "What is Love?" poster to be on my ceiling above my bed so I could be reminded to love when I got up, but it wouldn't stay. Alas.

After all this finagling, I went to the BSC again to meet the Revelation Singers for the concert tonight. We went and ate supper with the old people, and then we sang for them. There was another act there, a Simpson boy who played guitar and harmonica as well as sang. We traded off songs. When we got done singing, the hot air balloon people started to blow up their balloon, which was no surprise considering this is Indianola and it is famous for hot air balloons. We left. I came back here and started blogging about the past three days. Now I'm going to shower and go to bed.