Sunday, April 26, 2009

Fun Weekend :)

Christina my friend from back home and APU came to visit me for the weekend.  We had a blast.  Saturday night we went to the beach and had a bonfire, roasted marsh-mellows, talked about guys, friends, family, and life in general.  Then today we went to Rock Harbor and then Newport Beach.  We had so much fun there. Here are some fun pictures.

Wrote this for you guys :) It was a perfect day for the beach.


I made Christina touch a Sea Urchin.  She was convinced that it would sting her so I showed her how to do it and finally she relented. 
There was this interesting man with parrots at the beach. And sure enough...
He gave Christina one to hold...
and me! I look silly because the parrot had just kissed me and I was a little surprised! Those claws hurt!

Thursday, April 23, 2009

5 More Weeks

So I am really missing my family! We had a great spring break celebrating Paige's 17th birthday and going on adventures to the San Diego Zoo and Body Works at the Balboa Museum. 
Today I started observations at a local public school.  It was really different but I enjoyed it a lot.  I am observing a 2nd grade class and the teacher is Mr. Craddock.  He is a little gruff but really funny.  Today we worked in the computer lab and one little boy raised his hand all upset about something, and said, "Miss Taylor, Taylor I need help! All of my "L's" are 1 when I type them out!"  So I walked over to help him and it was really cute because he was so concerned about it.  He just wasn't used the lower case "l" when typing. So I showed him the difference between a "1" and an "l".  I had a fun time.
I only have about 5 more weeks of school! But I will be up to my neck in work until then. Miss you guys and I hope that everything is going well.
Here are some fun pics of spring break:

Dad and the girls doing a Marilyn Monroe pose (I'm not sure if i spelled that right)

The San Diego State: The Polar Bear was our favorite, he was a riot! 


For some reason the monkey's didn't like looking at us humans :(






The girls were singing the Pooh song













We had Paige's Birthday dinner at the Charter House.






Some cool beach shots I took






Sunday, April 5, 2009

Hide and Seek

The other night I got back from hanging out with a friend and was walking down the hall to my room when I heard my friend Megan's voice call me from her room. She asked, "Tay, what are you doing right now?" I said, "Nothing." She wanted to go and do something.  I laughed and said, "Sure as long as its free." So we grabbed our ids and she told me she had a plan.  We went with Lizzie to the library and went straight down to the bottom floor.  We went to the back by the books that no one really reads and she said, "Okay tay, count to 55," and they took off.  I know it sounds dumb but it was so much fun! I had butterflies in my stomach and when I was finally done counting, quietly tip-toed to find them.  I heard a noise from behind a corner and thought to myself, "Well that was easy!" Then I jumped from behind the corner and said, "Found you!" But what I really found was myself staring at a half terrified Korean man who was studying! I found the girls shortly after that and we headed back to the room to study.  
I know my parents will read this and think great we send her to this expensive school and she is playing hide and seek in the library! But I promise we only played for about 10 minutes and no one got too mad at us, they thought it was funny.
The interesting thing about it was how much my week has been like a hide and seek week. Its been that way with friends, myself, and especially God. In my heart I feel as though God is hiding, and I am  doing my very best to seek.  I know this isn't true, I know that God really is here with me through everything, there are just sometimes where I will be alone close my eyes, and pray or try to listen to see what God wants me to do or be and all I hear is silence. Last night made me feel like this all the more at our "Does God Exist" debate.  The coolest part for me was getting to see Hugh Hweitt who I have listened to since I was little.  I tried to meet him afterwards, but he had already left.  But the debate was just sad to me.  It was really interesting and I learned a lot of new ideas about things, I guess it was just difficult to watch the Athiest debate his side and say, "I have tried too find God or the Holy Spirit, and it just doesn't work for me." He had a lot of post modernistic views about things, which is expected, it just made me think about God in general. 
Don't get me wrong, life has been great, and is great, I feel though that I am playing this hide and seek game with life, and right now I just can't seem to find it. I have no doubt that I will find it, and I am excited to be at this stage because I don't know what is going to happen, but it is an uncomfortable and lonely place to be as well. 

On a totally different note, here are pictures from Valley Christian, the private school that I went to observe for my class. I am on to the public school next week. I took these on the last day and it was kind of sad, I'd spent 6 weeks with these guys, I am going to miss them.