Water for Life.: December 2011

Hello,

Woah. It has been a very long time since I last blogged. To be honest I kind of forgot about blogging, and I am not sure why that happened. As I have stated before, blogging is a great place to get out my frustration, happiness, joy, sadness, or whatever is on my mind. There is something about blogging that is so soothing to blog and it always makes me think about things that are going on in my life and how I truly feel about them. I also believe that it helps be more of an open person (even though I sometimes think that no one will read it - when it is actually open to the entire world to read).

Well since it has been so long since I last posted I am not really sure where to start or what I should share for this blog. I have some exciting news - I will be traveling to Panama for 7 days on an Global Environmental Brigade. I have had mixed feelings about this trip for a while, but it seems to be all coming together now. At first it seemed way too disorganized and as most of you know I like to know what I will be doing, when I will be doing it, how it will be done, how I am getting to Panama... all that kind of information, but I was not giving this information for the longest time - well at least it seemed liked it. Anyways everything for the trip is coming together now. Here is a little about the trip:

The trip will be January 8th to 15th, 2012. We will be working with rural families and community leaders near Panama City, Panama, to improve the environmental sustainability and the livelihood of the community. Some of the activities that we will partake in are the planting of native trees to help restore biodiversity, creating and utilizing organic fertilizers and natural pesticides to improve soil nutrients while minimizing erosion, and educating community members on the hazards of waste burning and the benefits of composting and other waste-diversion methods.

School wise this semester is coming to an end. We have five more days of real classes and then a study day and then finals start... oh snap!! Finals are that soon, I better get myself in gear and start studying - like now. Actually my finals schedule isn't that bad, but I do still have to put in a decent amount of work to do as well as I would like to in my classes. I have three real finals - Soils, Chemistry, and Statistics. However, I have a 8-12 page paper for my theology class that I am struggling with a little bit and then a project for my stats class that is coming along very nicely, which I am happy about. I have enjoyed this semester for the most part regarding classes, but I haven't found all of my classes that interesting. I enjoyed theology, even though it wasn't the best class I just really like learning about the New Testament - the theme of my course. For the paper I am trying to defend that "Pilate was simply fulfilling his roles as the governor of Judea and cannot be blamed for the death of Jesus despite having what some scholars consider a weak character." I thought there would be a greater deal of information on Pilate, but there doesn't seem to be the information I need/want, but I will work through it and hopefully I find what I want eventually.

This year socially was been great. Yet I still miss my friends that are studying abroad in Spain right now - pretty jealous of their life. They are in Italy this week exploring one of my favorite cities - Rome. I have hung out with different people this semester and have made some really great new friends. AHHH it is snowing outside!! I am soooo exicted!! It looks so pretty - sorry ADD moment!!! Anyways, I really don't have all that much to say right now. I am just thinking about all the stuff I have to get done before finals and how excited I am to go home for a while, but I will miss SLU for those 2.5 weeks. I am going to think of some creative blog topics or things that have been on my mind this semester and go from there. Right now I am at a writers block or I just don't feel like sharing - sorry guys.

To end I will leave you with a couple pictures from the semester: