Shalom, y'all!

Back in the Have today after a surprisingly efficient 12-hour drive from Chapel Hill to New Haven. Spent the day doing things with Luna (Elise flew to Louisiana yesterday to ride the tour bus back with Nathan for his birthday): washed my bedding, did laundry, ironed, mended some clothes, wrote thank you notes... Tomorrow I've got church and plenty of work to catch up on!

Today, however, I wanted to share with y'all my St. Patrick's Day with Dinorawr, Gwen's childhood stuffed animal. I got to the sorority house Thursday from Greensboro around lunchtime, caught up with some friends, then went to visit my favorite professor, Laurie, in her office. Laurie Maffly-Kipp is a brilliant superwoman. Someday I'll write a blog about her and her awesomeness, but for now know that she's a huge part of what I'm at Yale (she did her doctorate here and her husband has the same degree from YDS that I'm pursuing).

Anyway, when I went up to Gwen's room, I immediately discovered this bright green dinosaur by her bed from her dinosaur, which she so effectively named Dinorawr in her group. I thought, what other day besides today can we celebrate this creature just for being green? The answer is none. St. Patrick's Day in and of itself is amusing to me, and the fact that we embrace its celebration so ferociously here in the US, so this can also be read as a critique, but I thought he was a necessary companion for all the people I planned on seeing that evening.

I took close to 40 pictures of Dinorawr that evening... he was definitely the life of the party. Special thanks goes out to Spanky's Restaurant for letting Dinorawr behind the bar...

Needless to say, it was really fun being back and seeing people I haven't seen since I left Chapel Hill in May, especially those who abroad my last semester, whom I hadn't seen in over a year. Thanks, y'all, for being such wonderful hosts on my visit home--I cannot wait to see you again.

My Great East Coast Tour

Shalom, y'all!

So it's been awhile... let me update you on my goings ons from the past couple weeks.

The theme of this post: how UNC basketball gets you so high and then kicks you in the gut, taking years off your life in the process

First of all, I'm in the middle of the second week of my two week-long Spring Break. I know- crazy. When am I actually in school? Between our week long Reading Week, some added snow days and two weeks off for Spring Break, it might seem a little ridiculous, but trust me--we're still cramming the work in, it's just getting piled into less days...

I started off Spring Break Friday before last singing in chapel. We have Eucharist every Friday morning, and typically a student group organizes the service, this time it was YBS (Yale Black Seminaries). My friend Leonard decided to organize some praise singing, and with my camp background I was more than happy to participate. It was a lot of fun, and the guest preacher that day happened to be one of my former Teaching Fellows from Dean Townes' class, Rev. Dr. Jennifer Leath. She was fantastic. Afterwards I quickly ran home, Elise and I rapid-fire cleaned the house, I ran a quick errand, and then we hit the road to D.C. Elise was going to see her bestest bestie Jackie, who lives in D.C. but goes to grad school at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. They met their first year at Georgetown as roommates and lived together their entire undergraduate experience. Elise and I came out unbelievably lucky, sailing through the Bronx, across the George Washington Bridge, and down the New Jersey turnpike in record time with next to no traffic. We even stopped at a WaWa for a late lunch.... for those of you who don't know what a WaWa is, it's like a Lenny's meets a 7/11.... except better. And with hot, delicious cookies. It's one of those things that the northeast just does better... *GASP*...

Anyway, got Elise dropped off at a friend's house, and I braved some traffic over to Chrissie's, with whom I was spending the weekend. Chrissie is a sorority friend from UNC who now works for Bank of America in DC and lives in Roslyn, right next to the Arlington National Cemetery. She had a DELICIOUS veggie pie in the oven, so we spent the evening eating her home cookin, drinking a bottle of wine, and catching up.

Saturday, I got up on the earlier side and went for a run. I ran past Iwo Jima and the cemetery, then down along the Potomac. It was great--I could see such sights as the Washington Monument and the weather was crisp enough and shady that it made for a delightful excursion. Came back and Chrissie made us some coffee, cheese grits, and croissants for breakfast. We took our sweet time eating (... and chatting...) and finally around noon were cleaned up and headed out to the Smithsonian Museum. I happen to love American history, so we spent a little bit of time in the National American History Museum. I saw the original star-spangled banner, went to see Julie Childs' kitchen in order to make mom jealous, and visited the original Woolworth's counter from the Greensboro sit-ins. I'd written a paper in college about the racial stratification of Greensboro for an AfAm class that I took right around when then opened the Civil Rights' Museum in G-boro, so I found the last exhibit particularly interesting. It was warming up and by the time we finished exploring (and, let's face it, people-watching), we decided we were museum-ed out, and went to Dupont Circle where we found a Starbucks with a latte and blueberry muffin with my name on it. We met up with some of her UNC in D.C. friends (there's this whole crazy network of them) who were doing a St. Patty's Day pub crawl... I know, St. Patty's day is tomorrow, and this was a week and a half ago. Apparently, everyone REALLY likes being Irish... so we crawled a couple pubs with her capital friends, then ended up at this bar called Public where literally a hundred+ UNC fans gather to watch games. Now, in case you'd forgotten, this was the fateful day of the SECOND re-match against Duke. I hate Duke with a fiery passion that burns within the very environs of my soul, and I wanted this one, and knew we were capable of clenching it.

Roy's boys didn't disappoint.

I won't comment on the ebullience and sheer euphoria of being in a bar with a crowd that had swollen to two-hundred fabulous blue-clad creatures. I think your imagination will paint a picture closer to the truth than my words can ever describe. It was epic.

The next day, Chrissie and I were lazy getting ourselves together, chatting ONCE again and drinking coffee. Chrissie made muffins and I probably ate four of them, along with a thing of my beloved greek yogurt. I cleaned up, and after a sad goodbye, was on my way further south. I hit some gross, rainy weather, ate more WaWa, eventually getting to Durham.

Backstory: one of my closest friends from back home in Tennessee is Sean. He grew up in Memphis and went to camp with Elise and me. He graduated last December from the University of Tennessee with a degree in hotel, restaurant and tourism management. He took a job in Durham about a month ago as an assistant manager of a hotel, and he knows absolutely no one. So I went to his new place in Durham, picked him up, and we went and met Kassi, another sorority friends, for pizza at this place called Brixx. We checked out this couple brewery in Durham before dropping Sean off, went and met up with a couple of Kassi's work friends who were playing pool (Kassi is a manager at this restaurant in Chapel Hill named Spanky's were we spent a lot of time in college- I have a t-shirt and glass with the Spanky's logo to prove it), and ended up at some Sunday night dance party. Exhausted, we got a good nights' sleep, and spent a lot of the next day running errands. Kassi, Sean and I had lunch at this new Italian place with Lo. Lo also graduated in May with Kassi and me and now teaches at a public school in Durham. After dinner we went bowling. Let me tell you, you see some interesting folk bowling, no matter where you are. It is a veritable visual cacophony. On top of that, I was bowling pretty average--a 95, a 105, 103... and then I bowled a 149. Sean, on the other hand, bowled a 44. He apparently decided to show Durham what terrible really looks like.

I'm not entirely sure what Kassi and I did with the next day (I know I got my car serviced at Lloyd's and spent some quality time at my old study spot called Foster's.... studying; we also worked out at her sweet gym), but we went to Lo's to watch Glee that night. She also made us tacos-delicious, and vegetarian friendly.

At this time, I would like to share a couple of anecdotes from the conversation:

Our group of church friends from college (which includes Lo and Chrissie) email each other every Tuesday with an update. I'd written this particular Tuesday about going bowling Monday night and what a wonderful time I'd had, and somehow at the end of it, wrote, "Allah Akbar," which, in Arabic means, "God is great." However, Lo is skimming the highs while we're watching Glee and suddenly looks up from her iPhone emailing and goes, "Allah Akbar? I don't remember him being there!" Funny, Lo. That's what you get for having an iPhone.

Also, this happened:

(Pursuant of a conversation in which we attempted to understand Michael Jordan's psychology)

Lo: I guess I understand that... I mean, what do you do if you're Michael Jordan?

Kassi: You Space... Jam.

Me: I totally thought you were just going to stop at space. I mean, yea, if you're Michael Jordan you conquer space--the final frontier.

Kassi: With Bugs Bunny.

That night, I gave up Facebook for Lent. It's amazing how much more productive and focused I am.

I had breakfast the next day at The Weathervane with Tammy, my chaplain from college. I hadn't seen her since last May, so it was great to catch up. True to form, we breakfasted for over two-and-a-half hours. I usually sample their pancakes of the day (one particularly memorable meal I had blueberry and mango pancakes--absolutely fantastic) but this time around I went for the french toast. It did not disappoint. I swung by Spanky's and said bye, then went to Ash Wednesday service at the Chapel of the Cross (one of my two favorite worship spaces in the continental United States) then hit the road to Charlotte.

I arrived at Elizabeth's house in good time. I'm using her name now, because from here on out I will refer to her as I actually call her: E Pfeif. It's a construction of her first and last name, and rather than write her full name here in this blog, I'll leave it at that. Tedder drove down from Winston-Salem as soon as she got off work at the hospital where she's a nurse, and came down to join us for my visit Wednesday night and all day Thursday. We immediately fall back into our usual routine of talking about.... God only knows what. Random stuff.

Another backstory: Spring Break of junior year, Tedder, E Pfeif, Alden, Patrick and I hung out the first weekend of Spring Break in Chapel Hill to go to the Duke/UNC game, then headed to Tedder's grandparents' beach house in Myrtle Beach for the week. We slept, cooked, and watched basketball alllllll week long. The ACC tournament, the Big East tournament, the Pac-10... and on it went. Thus, it seemed only all too appropriate to spend my time in Charlotte watching the first round of the tournament. We didn't actually watch the Tar Heels--just everybody else. We made time to shop at Home Goods for Tedder's new condo and we also went out to see E Pfeif's church and office. E Pfeif moved back home a couple months ago to take a job as a youth minister at St. Elizabeth's Episcopal Church. So for the time being, she lives with her parents. We call them "the roommates." E Pfeif's roommates are awesooooooommmeeee.... they made us dinner both nights and were incredibly gracious. The roommates really know how to cook. Big shout out to them for being the picture of hospitality and for making me feel so welcome! Thank you thank you thank you!

We also had a visitor the two nights I was in Charlotte--my sorority friend Victoria. She teaches ESL in Gaston Co., is working on her master's degree, and also works Sunday at Crate and Barrel. However, because I was in town, she cleared both her Wednesday and Thursday night to hang out with me. It was awesome, and Vivi, I just want you to know how much I appreciate it and loved getting to see your face.

After an early morning goodbye, I hit the road to Nashville, and once again made great time. I had an appointment to get my hair did that afternoon with Miss Trisha, who has done my hair my entire life. We had a great catch time catching up, then I went home to hang out with the parentals.

This is getting long, so I'm going to hit the highlights of Nashville:

- manicures and pedicures with Mama on Saturday

- Nashville Woman's Club Fashion Show at the Hillwood Country Club and seeing Aunt Sissy as a model

- church at St. George's on Sunday and going to dad's Sunday School class

- work, work, work, work, work

- watching Lost with Mama (I got her into the show, and she's slowly working her way along)

- eating good food cooked by dad

- sleeping with Shelby in my bed every night

- skyping with my sister

- running

- sleeping

- honky tonkin with Christy in downtown Nashville (although unwanted male attention that refuses to be deterred is NOT fun)

Things that were not awesome: the ACC Championship game. The entire NCAA configuration. Seriously? You wanna put us in there with Kentucky, Syracuse AND Ohio State?! Oie. I had to take a nap after the championship game just to feel better.

And now we get to today. After saying my goodbyes, I hit the road for Greensboro. Got stuck in some traffic, but made it to Tedder's condo safe and sound. Catherine, Chrissie's sister who lives in Winston-Salem, came over for dinner, and we had a great time catching up. Tomorrow, I'm headed back to Chapel Hill to see Laurie, my favorite professor from undergrad, and some seniors who were on Spring Break when I was there last week. And then Friday it's back to New Haven.

I have seen so, so many wonderful people this break that I feel uncommonly lucky. Thank you to everyone for your hospitality, love, re-arrangement of schedules, and entertaining me on this trip. It's been awesome.

On a final note, I just watched my first episode of Modern Family. It was epic.

My Michael Jordan Birthday

Shalom, y'all!

Last Wednesday, I woke up to no class and a thick coat of ice blanketing New Haven.... and to my Michael Jordan birthday. What is this, you ask? Why, it's my 23rd year, of course, also known as Groundhog Day, 2011. If you don't know why Michael Jordan is important to me, figure it out. Go to Wikipedia or something. Anyway, given that I didn't have class because of the treacherous traveling conditions for the YDS community, after snuggling with Luna for a bit, I made this breakfast:

That's OJ with diet ginger ale (Nathan, Elise's boyfriend, taught me this delicious mixture), French Vanilla coffee, toast, two eggs over easy, and freshly-sliced kiwi. Yummm.... Then I opened a few presents from my parents, including a box of recipes copied from my mother's recipe box. Will come in handy as I continue to explore cooking all my meals at home. While I was making my breakfast, I opened the fridge to retrieve the OJ and the eggs, and I found this:

Just in case you can't read that, it says, "This is nothing that concerns you, Grace Killman. Go away." More on what's in that package later...

I was woefully, lazy, but eventually made it into the shower, and when I was in my room getting dressed for the day, Luna came running in, looking like this:

The note read: "Happy Birthday, Auntie P! I love you!" I'm "Auntie P" to Luna, from Elise and my camp counselor days at Camp Gailor-Maxon when we referred to each other as "the AP." I'm AP 1, She's AP 2. So, naturally, the AP has come to mean "Auntie P." The "P" doesn't mean anything anymore, like the AARP. Anyway, here's the note laid out:

I ended up heading up to school, after accomplishing nothing all day, to go to Contemporary Christian Spirituality. The ice was so slippery that I literally skated to the road from our front porch, being extremely careful. I didn't wipe out then, though I did finally wipe out early yesterday morning cartoon-style, landing flat on my back. After class, I went to the Berkeley eucharist for Candlemas (Berkeley is the Episcopal seminary at YDS) and to see my fellow Episcopalians sign this fancy book that's been around since the early 20th century. I headed over to the Berkeley center to have a glass of wine with some friends, then headed home to meet Elise for dinner after yoga. Cheese pizza is one of my favorite things, and our friend Michelle taught us how to make brussel sprouts in an especially delicious way, so that's what I wanted for dinner. I had been supremely blessed throughout the day with phone calls and text messages, so I sat down to respond to them all while Elise made dinner, then ended up video-chatting with Mama and Daddy. Nancy (our landlady) even stopped by with a gift of energy lotion in honor of my birthday! She's the best... Anyway, while I was chatting with M & D, Elise suddenly came in with my favorite birthday cake, chocolate malt! Sneaky Mama and baked the layers herself and made the icing, then sent them in pieces to Elise, who assembled it in the kitchen. Hence the secrecy of the note in the fridge... if you know Elise, you should congratulate her on successful secret-keeping. The cake looked like this:

Yummm.... delicious. Luna apparently thought so because she got ahold of the icing bag, and we were a little concerned about her health, since chocolate is poisonous to dogs. However, only an excess of noxious fumes resulted... the next couple days were pretty quiet, with the exception of Nathan arriving to visit Elise for the weekend, and Patrick taking the train down from Boston for my birthday party Friday evening.

Anyway, Friday evening rolled around along with my birthday party. For no reason other than fun, I decided to make it a formalwear event, and people really showed up, dusting off cocktail dresses, suits, tails and tuxes. I'm really into themes: my twenty-first birthday party was Seven Deadly Sins-themed, and my twenty-second birthday was Who You Were in High School-themed. This, I guess, was You Stay Classy, New Haven. Here are a few pictures:

Yay for Nathan visiting!

All in all, it was a great night with lots of friends and fun. Special shout out to Mike Brooks for the veggies, Kara Scroggins for the homemade hummus, and Elise Addington for broiling my funfetti cake instead of baking it! On Saturday, Patrick, Matthew, Elise, Nathan and I all went to brunch at the delicious Claire's Cornercopia, where I had huevos rancheros. Nothing can compare to the huevos of Elmo's in Chapel Hill, but it was definitely a must. Patrick and I picked up Amy from the train station that evening, and we went to this delicious taphouse in town called Prime 16. The veggie burger wasn't that great, but the beer was and so were the sweet potato fries. We had one of those epic, multi-hour dinners, picked up some cookie dough at the grocery store, and fell asleep watching The Princess Bride. Side note: did you know they vaporize snow in Manhattan? I know, crazy. Amy told me. We ate Claire's AGAIN the next day, (Lithuanian Coffee cake, a recommendation from my college chaplain who did her MDiv at YDS, was on the menu this time), then took Patrick to the train station. Amy and I spent the afternoon catching up and taking it easy, then after I took her back to the train station I watched the Super Bowl with Elise, Nathan and Matthew. I wrapped up the weekend watching a couple episodes of Dexter... Elise got me hooked.

All things considered, it was a wonderful birthday weekend. I'm so, so thankful for the grace of good friends, both old and new, willing to travel distances to see me and give in to my peculiar whims. Forecast for my Michael Jordan year, if the first few days are any indication, looks good.

A Certain Special Someone Turns Two...

Shalom, y'all!

After a stressful shopping week, Elise and I really wanted to just spend some quality time with our new friends. For those of you unfamiliar with our rhetoric, "shopping" is the first week of every semester where one sits in on various classes in an effort to narrow down what it is one would like to take. Some, like myself, shop six classes. Some *ahem* shop as many as ten (Charlie...). Anyway, even without a snow day right in the middle of the week, the whole process is rather stressful in trying to get books together, visiting classes, getting back into the swing of things, etc.... Fortunately, we had something to celebrate last week: Luna's second birthday, January 11th. So we emailed a few friends, and a potluck formed at our house last Friday night. Below are a few pictures, which I will document in a minute, but mostly I want to state how lucky I am to get to be in divinity school with these people. Being where we are is not always easy--the weather is atrocious, life's purpose is still unclear, we are all juggling many different balls... but the earnestness with which YDS students by and large face each day inspires me. I find myself often caught up in a conversation with someone knew about their accomplishments before they arrived here, their hopes for the future, and their views on how to make this world a better place. I'm still in a process of discerning my own place in that vision, but I find something in each of these people that I lack in some way, and I'm lucky enough to be in the presence of whatever that is, even for a short time. If a sacrament is indeed an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace, then the fellowship I'm apart of daily is sacramental for each of these people enacts upon me a kind of internal change that is, in it's essence, divine. Their truths are graceful.

This is will, he's from South Carolina. We commiserate over being from the South. He's seeking ordination in the Methodist Church.

Allysa (who went to NYU!) is on the left, and Katie (who went to Princeton... Ivy League, much?) is on the right. Katie is one of my swimming buddies.

Megan and Whitney. Megan's an MAR student like Elise, and Whitney is an ordination-seeking Texan in the Disciples of Christ.

These are just hilarious pictures of Leonard and Helen. Elise and I decided we would be friends with Leonard during BTFO when we saw him in the info book because he did his undergraduate degree at Rhodes and an MA at CBU. Helen is my age--she's English and just graduated from Cambridge in May.

Two handsome men: Will again, this time with Alex Peterson. Alex is featured in the previous post as one of the Alexs jumping into the snow in their skivvies...

Liz and Kai, they're both in the Institute of Sacred Music. Liz is into film (she also did her undergraduate degree here at Yale) and Kai has spent the last couple years working on an organic farm out west for people with disabilities.

This is Sabrina- she is A-W-E-S-O-M-E. How awesome? Well, lemme tell you... she's an Ultra Runner. With a sponsor. Seriously. She runs for 24 hours at a time. We're talking 120 miles in a go. She's an athlete. And also really smart.

Megan and Sabrina candid. HOLLA.

Michelle and Kara. Michelle has been a wonderful, wonderful friend since Admitted Students Day--she was Hillary's (for those of you who know who Hillary is) sorority sisters at Wash U! AND Kara is a Tar Heel!

Christian, enjoying a glass of wine. He was my orientation leader during BTFO and is an exchange student from Hiedelberg.

Whitney again!

Creepin on Mike Brooks... but it's ok- we're buds

LEONARD!

Matt, Matt, Elise and Leonard

Silly menfolk

Luna eating her birthday cake, made by Chef Elise

Everyone was a supppppper good sport and sang "Happy Birthday" to Luna!

Charlie, one of my favorite people on this planet, and Helen

Mike, making the cheesy potatoes.... that nobody got to eat.... I'm sure they were delicious?

Just another excellent evening with a few good friends... Elise and I are iced in at the moment (it was a treacherous, treacherous trudge home, I almost wiped out at least twice), but looking at the pictures warms out house... which is a good thing, considering we don't like paying for heat!

Love and Stuff!