Its been awhile....

Its been so long since I've even signed into my blog that I almost forgot my username and password. It has been almost a month since my last entry because things have just been so nuts lately. It seems like so much is happening that I would rather just ignore it than try to think about it all at once.

Over February break I found out that my friend Rebecca from Germany is engaged so I'm going to be planning a trip to Europe next year. We used to joke all of the time about her coming here so that she could learn English and me going there so I could learn German and visit her. I promised that if she were to get married, I would come. Now I have to make good on that promise. Although she has promised to have a translater there for me at the wedding so that I know what it going on, I would like to learn some German so I can at least find my way around and introduce myself to people. Add that to my list of things to do in the next year. Also, I have to try to figure out who I want to take with me. Since I am hopefully going to be spending a week or two in Germany when I go I would really like to have someone with me. First of all, its good to have someone you know with you when you are in a strange place. And plus, its just way more fun that way.

This week and the last have been just crazy, but at the same time awesome things are happening. I have been hanging out with a girl that I met in one of my classes. We sit by each other and are in the same project group. We decided to meet the night before our midterm to go for supper and discuss some of the material. We ended up not really talking about class material at all. We just had a good chat about our personalities, pet peeves, etc. It was so weird because I felt totally comfortable opening up to her. After my night class that same day we met again to "study". We did get some studying done but on one of our off-topic chats we started talking about Bible college and Christianity. She had been raised in a home with a Protestant mother and Catholic father so they were allowed to make their own choices as children. She had really been burned by some of her friends from high school that had gone onto Bible college. They told her she could not be their friend because she did not have the same beliefs as them. She's very bitter about this still and asked me if Bible college was just a place where you learn to talk the talk but not to walk the walk. I ended up sharing with her how my faith did not really become my own until at age 16 I started counselling at camp. That was when I really had to start thinking about what I believed and why because the kids at camp had questions. She asked if they were legitimate questions and I said yes. She then made the comment "boy do I have questions for you" because she just likes to discuss and debate with people. Just a few days ago she was psycholanalyzing me and asked me to try to psychoanalyze her. Of course that brings up some pretty deep personality stuff. We started talking about dating and I tried to explain how I could never date a non-Christian guy because even if he did respect my beliefs, we would not be working towards a common goal as a couple. To clarify I used the extreme example of a drug user dating someone who does not do or approve of doing drugs. She said that made sense to her. We went out to get something to eat and we continued to talk about relationships. (Becca, this made me think of you because a lot of stuff that we discussed for our book came up and I felt prepared because I had thought it through). She said I really made her think about relationships and the one that she is currently in. Its just so amazing that I can open up to her and feel that it is God speaking, not me. I just hope I, the shy and lazy introvert that I am, can maintain the relationship after class ends because she seems really curious about Christianity and I feel totally comfortable opening up to her because she doesn't really judge me.

One bummer thing about this past week is that I feel like I am losing a part of my identity. It all stemmed from the news that Mom and Dad are seriously pursuing moving off of the farm in the next few years. Before it was all hypothetical, but now they have actually taken action. I just feel like I can no longer call myself a farm girl then and I claim that as a huge part of my identity. If Mom and Dad move, it means I will no longer have a stable, quiet place to retreat to when the city gets too crazy. My parents and I will no longer be a part of the community that I grew up in. Our neighbours will no longer be our neighbours. They will be someone else's neighbours. I can no longer have farm girl fun when I go home. I will never be able to go "back to the farm" to visit. It will just be a transfer of cities. I can only say that I grew up on a farm. In a way, I'm not really attached to the farm because it has only been in the family for one generation but in another way I am really attached to it because that is where I lived and grew up my entire life before I left for college and university. I'm not sure what Mom and Dad would be doing with the farm, but if they sell it, I don't know what to do. I don't really have the money to buy it off of them and I'm not sure if I am ready to go live there right away. I do want to live on a farm someday but on my own terms and in my own time. However, I don't want to let our farm or community go. I think it was really stressing me out because the girl that I mentioned before from my class said I looked really stressed and sad the other day. She kept asking if I was mad at her.