Bleh

I am still quite the pitiful blogger.

Well, I have been doing pretty well with NaNo. I have around 26,000 words right now, and I need to get to 30,000 by the end of the day to catch up. I was doing so well! And then the website messed up and my graph was off, and I've been busy and tired. But I'm more than halfway there! That's exciting, at least.

Let's see, in other news...
I have been bouldering at the Loft this week and last. Fun stuff. I love it. Mainly I love getting to work my arm and back muscles a lot, since I don't do that a lot with ballet. But I've seen improvement after the three days I've gone. Yesterday, I did one route that started as a slight incline, and ended up on the ceiling. I did it twice before my arms got too tired and my brain dysfunctional enough to do it a third. I'll do it again on Monday, if I can get up there after handbells before it closes.

Thanksgiving break is almost here (Praise the Lord!). Leaving Tuesday afternoon. SO glad to be going home to rest (ha ha, probably not). There's always so much going on, but I'm happy to be going back. I do miss my family.

On Sunday, the Outdoors Club is taking a group of us to the YMCA to work on kayak techniques. Namely, ROLLING! Yay! It's been a couple of months since I rolled, so I hope I can still do it. It's so much fun if you can do it, but it is exhausting, and rather scary as well. You are underwater, depending on the strength of your arms and hips to get your kayak right-side-up. And if you are on the river, then you are also worried about smacking your head on a rock that you can't see because your eyes are closed in the frigid water.

Donations and the Exhaustion Later

Yesterday was a pretty big step for me on several levels. First of all, I had my first college exam in Chemical Science. Second, I had my first lab practical for Anatomy and Physiology. But the most important (probably) is that I donated blood for the first time. This is pretty big since in the past I haven't done too well with things like... shots. Oops. But yesterday I did okay. I felt a little lightheaded for a minute or so, but the nurse put my feet up and gave me some Pepsi to sip. That helped a bunch. And I lay there for a while, even after they were done collecting, just to make sure I was stable enough to stand and not collapse in a heap on the floor. That didn't happen, so I was free to go, collect my XL T-shirt (yes, I now have a new sleep shirt >_> ), grab a doughnut hole, and be on my way.

Unfortunately, "being on my way" meant many things in the evening. I had an SI (supplemental instruction) for A&P to study for the exam that was this morning (it helped a lot) at 7:00. I lost track of time, so I only had a sandwich for dinner en route to SI. SI went until 8:00. The first class for Ballet I started at 7:30, but I dashed from SI to ballet, praying that the teacher was nice enough to be okay with it since it was for school (she was). And then did bar work and other dancing things until 9, when I hurriedly changed and ran off to my job in the kitchen. We were done within an hour.

It wasn't until I stepped into the room that I realized how exhausted I was. I had no energy to do anything but sit on the floor against the bed. I didn't even feel like climbing up into my own bed, for I'm on the top bunk. Then I realized I had not thought through the day very clearly. I should have taken it easy after giving a pint of blood, and eaten a "hearty meal" (so the pamphet says) that day. I had a sandwich, and I was running for three hours. Fantastic. Good job, Sarah.

Even though I realize I was not thinking clearly yesterday, I did enjoy dance. It's been at least seven, maybe eight years, since I last took ballet, and three of those years have been spent learning Hebraic dance. It's very different. But surprisingly, once I stretched out and relaxed into the atmosphere of ballet again, I felt great. There are definitely a lot of things that Israeli dance is much more slack on, but I have confidence that at the end of the year, I will be able to improve my Israeli dancing style, too, and be more graceful, fluid, and also improve my lines. :D

So! Despite my stupidity on my first day of dance, I'm rather excited about the upcoming year and dance. Oh, speaking of which, I need to share a neat story from the past few weeks.

A few days before I left for college, my friend Aaron from dance told me about a girl named Ashley who was going to Messiah, and that she loved to dance. With that tidbit of information (along with her last name, which I won't post here due to the nature of the internet), I set out for school hoping to run into this girl. I looked her up on Facebook, and the first girl to come up was in the network of the school I had gone to. Strange, I thought. That couldn't possibly be her, I would have remembered her. Then her name started to pop out. We were both honors students. Outdoors club. So on and so forth.

I finally sent a friend request. It was with joy several days later that I received a note from her. We met for lunch, and have been friends since. With that, we're hoping to host a dance workshop to teach people Israeli dance. It is my hopes to start a class through the dance ministry for it next year or beyond. But this is a good start. :)

Now to see what God would have me do with all of this. :) Shalom!