Graduation!

I am now officially a college graduate! Here are some photos my lovely siblings took from the weekend.

 Me receiving my diploma from the dean of the School of Philosophy, Dr. McCarthy.

 Me receiving my University Scholar award from President Garvey.

 Our awesome university mace bearer, Dr. Druart, who was also my academic adviser for two years.

 Me in the procession in.

 My father in the procession in. See the hat? We gave it to him for his birthday.

 Me and J.

 Me and my friend Annie.

 Me and Kevin.

Almost all the soon-to-be graduates of the School of Philosophy, waiting to process in. This picture was taken by the university photographer, not by siblings.

The weather was lovely, and it was a great day. Terrible traffic on the Beltway meant that we didn't get into South Bend until 2:30 in the morning, but we persevered through it all. I will post the pictures from Teresa's graduation in a separate post.

March for Life

That was a cold day. My goodness.

 This year, I marched with the Dominicans instead of with CUA, as their schedule worked better for me. I traveled to the Mall with the friars and priests, but wound up marching with the Nashville sisters, in order to march alongside my dear friend who joined last year.

 We were closer to the stage than I have ever been before. Knowing OPs has its perks, let me tell you.

 Crowds, crowds, crowds. Apparently the crowd was quite small this year, which is hardly surprising. I honestly don't know if I've ever been as cold as I was today.

 Many buses got canceled because of snowy conditions. The roads around DC were a total mess Tuesday night.

Some people, of course, see in the low turnout a sign that the pro-life movement is waning. I do not think that is the case. The crowd is younger every year, and our spirits were high despite the cold.

 There was singing, dancing, chanting, and praying as we marched along.

 The counter protesters were not willing to brave the weather. My sister said she saw only two. I didn't see any.

 Fulton Sheen in Dutch! There were a lot of groups from other countries, including the Netherlands, Italy, Canada, Scotland, and Argentina.

 The crowd coming up the hill.

 His flag says, "Appeal to Heaven!"

A CUA sign! The worst part of not marching with CUA was not getting to carry one of their signs.

This March made me feel more hopeful about our chances of ending abortion than any March yet. We were happy and cheerful despite the cold. We are determined. We will not give up!

As I posted on Twitter this morning: Pain is a constant reminder you're still alive, but 1/3 of my generation isn't. #whywemarch

Just a quick update

We moved. Mostly. We have more stuff than we thought we did, and so some of it has been left in the old house for the time being. We also had some repairs we didn't realize existed, such as no working phone jacks.

We're sort of in control of life again, but school has restarted, so we're also very busy. Posts may be light for a while.

The wedding planning is only sort of progressing, but that's ok. We're trying to keep things low-key and not stress about them.

I have not been feeling well lately. My energy levels have been low, and I haven't been sleeping very restfully. Hopefully it will pass soon, as tackling this (last, and very challenging) semester feeling this way doesn't sound fun. However, I did start out the semester in class rather than in the ER, so that's already a leg up on last semester!

7 QT, volume 20: Christmas!

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It's Christmas! Christmas is my favorite holiday. I realize, of course, the theological reasons in favor of Easter, but let's be realistic here. Spring dresses, or velvet? Eggs or presents?

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Presents does tend to be a sore spot with me, though. I am good at giving them, but not at wrapping them. Presents I wrap tend to turn out crumpled, bumpy, and occasionally torn. While the rest of my family makes nice neat corners and artistic little tags, I do things like this:

I actually can write, I just blurred our the recipient's name!

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That present actually has a leg up on a few of the others, though. At some point I ran out of clear packing tape and switched to green reindeer packing tape.

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As soon as I have my own family, I am making reusable drawstring bags out of cloth. These will be used instead of wrapping. They will be labeled by having tags attached to them, probably with safety pins. These tags will also be reusable.

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Here is our Christmas tree in all its sentimental glory. Over the years, we have accumulated some ornaments which are not really ornaments. They're things we could not bear to throw away, but didn't really want to look at all year, such as a coloring page of the empty tomb. Also, we have real candles.

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In the interests of an accurate depiction of our family life, I did not straighten the tree skirt. Actually, that's completely made up. I took this photo to test light conditions in the living room.

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As you can see, they weren't very good. Nevertheless, we did eventually get a reasonably good family photo. I don't want it going out into the free unrestricted internet, so here's a Christmas tree ornament which is actually an ornament.

Merry Christmas, from my whole family to yours!

For more Quick Takes, visit Conversion Diary!

A productive day!

I had such a productive day Tuesday! Here's what I did:
-Packed three boxes of books
-Packed a box of fish tank supplies
-Freecycled a box of fish tank supplies
-Wrote a description of the fish tank we're selling
-Finished J's Christmas present and wrapped it
-Wrote my friend in the convent a Christmas card and packaged up her present
-Wrapped Teresa's fiance's Christmas present and wrote him a card
-Started and finished M's Christmas present, and wrapped it
-Finished Kevin's grad school check list (since he had more final papers due than I did, I pulled together a list of everything he needed to apply for grad school)

Yesterday was less productive, as we had two Christmas parties to go to. But I did manage to do 2.5 hours of work for my grandfather, get the oil changed, and cut out one Christmas present.

Let's see if I can keep up the high productivity!

I'm engaged!

I got engaged last Wednesday!

Everyone always wants to hear the story, so here it is.

We went to Mass. We left, and on the way to the car, under a beautiful oak tree (which we couldn't see because the sun had set already), Kevin asked, "Will you marry me?" Of course I said yes!

My ring is silver with an amethyst. I'm not really a diamond person, but my favorite color is purple, so Kevin decided to get a purple ring instead. (I don't wear gold.) And no, I'm not sure why my skin looks like an elephant's ankles.

Inside, it says "friendship which has been set on fire" in ancient Greek.

We're hoping to be able to pull off a double wedding with my twin sister next summer.

7 QT, Volume 17

I'm just popping in to say 7 quick things...about moving!

1. We made an offer on a new house, and it got accepted. The closing is scheduled for right before Christmas, so we'll probably move after Christmas.

2. The pros of this house are as follows: it's in a better parish, it's closer to Papa's work, there's an intellectual Catholic community there, and it's prettier than our current house.

3. The cons are as follows: it's smaller, the yard is smaller, and it requires leaving the house we've owned for fourteen years.

4. The older people think that, on balance, this will be good for our family. The younger people, who can only see what they would lose and not what they would gain, are rather distraught.

5. Prayers for them would be appreciated!

6. Since the house is smaller, we'll have to do some purging. That's definitely not a bad thing. We could use it.

7. Lastly, lest I leave you on a depressing note, here's a little beauty for you.

I am so organized!

It's not even Advent yet, and I already have all but one Christmas present planned. I don't know who of my family reads my blog, so I won't say what they are, but I am quite pleased with myself anyway. A lot of them are hand made, so they will probably be slow in the making, but my goal is to get all the bought ones bought by the time Advent begins.

However, all is not sunshine and roses over here. I am halfway done a paper due tomorrow, which I had really hoped would be done by now. Also, yesterday I got a paper back. I misspelled my professor's name all the way through. How humiliating. I guess this is God's way of keeping me humble!

Just about four or five more weeks of balancing schoolwork with regular life, and hopefully next semester will be a little bit less crazy. Hopefully.

Making jam

We are watching my little cousins for a few days, so I am taking the opportunity to pass of the joy of jam making to the younger generation, or rather, the younger half of my generation. We are currently suffering the "problem" of too many tomatoes at my house, so we are making lots of relish and tomato jam. With the little girls, though, I made jalapeno jam. The recipe calls it jelly, but it isn't jelly, it's jam.

They were such a joy to work with. They chopped everything themselves, without any complaining about how long it took. The only negative part was when J squirted herself in the eye with jalapeno juice, but I would cry too, and I'm not nine years old. I rinsed her out with the sprayer in the kitchen sink and she kept on going.

Here are a few pictures. Since neither girl is mine, I won't post pictures where you can really see their faces. If you know me in person, you can see the rest on my facebook page.

 They wanted to see the sugar soak up the vinegar, so they waited to stir until it was all absorbed.

 I had the idea that soaking a paper towel in milk would help J's eye. I don't think it did, but it did bring some amusement to an otherwise bad scenario.

This is our yield, minus the half-pint jar that C took home. We didn't sterilize enough jars, so we had to use a pint jar that didn't get used for relish.

7 quick takes, volume 13

This week, if you forgot, will be 7 things I like better about the US or Bowie than about Freiburg.

1. The personality of Americans. If I have to wait in a long boring line, I would rather complain with the stranger next to me about how long the line is than stare at the ground. And although we already discussed how Freiburg public transportation works better, it is certainly more charming to hear the train driver announce "This is the last station-stop in the District Washington of Columbia, our nation's capital!"

2. Courses at CUA. I am open to the possibility that I just picked all my courses wrong, but not a single course I took last semester was challenging. At CUA, even if every course isn't a winner, I generally know how to pick courses that will be challenging but manageable. At the Uni Freiburg, I apparently don't.

3. My neighbors. They wear shoes. And shower. And they would never consider a parade at 1am to be appropriate behavior for suburbia.

4. The library. Ok, I know this isn't fair, because the Freiburg library was getting renovated. But it's so nice to be able to walk into the stacks and find the book you are looking for.

5. Having to buy textbooks. I would much rather pay $15 for a book and have it in bound format than have to print out several hundred pages and keep them all together and not lose them.

6. Not living with strangers. Need I say more?

7. And, of course, last but not least, my family!

For other people's takes, head over to Conversion Diary.

7 quick takes, volume 12

Yes, I'm a day late. I was too busy doing nothing yesterday to write a blog post. Today I have to work on my paper, go to a party/get together, and spend a long time on the metro. So of course I have time to write a blog post. IES sent my parents an email warning them that after returning to the USA, I would go through a honeymoon period and then a judgmental period as part of my re-entry adjustment and reverse culture shock. To me, this sounds plausible but also sort of bonkers, since Germany and the US are not really that different, so I am going to defy expectations. This week's 7 quick takes will be things I like better about Freiburg. Next week's will be things I like better about the US, or Bowie specifically.

1. Reliability and cost of public transportation. Public transportation in Freiburg is heavily subsidized, and even more so for students. (A six-month student pass is 79E.) During rush hour, street cars come every five to six minutes. They rarely break and they almost always run on time.

2. Low alcohol taxes. You can get a good bottle of wine for 4E in Freiburg. For a student budget, this is a blessing for Sunday dinners.

3. Availability of foods for special diets. The regular grocery store had a large shelf full of lactose-free dairy products, and there is a house brand of gluten-free food and ingredients. I don't know if it was just our neighborhood, but alternative diets seem to be more of a thing in Europe than here.

4. Architecture. I mean, really, a city that dates from the early twelfth century beats a suburb that was planned and then built in the 1960s. That's not even a contest.

5. Closeness to other countries. I could (and did) take a day trip to France or Switzerland.

6. Lack of work. I had more or less nothing to do, so I got to spend a lot of time sightseeing and relaxing. It was a nice break semester, and I'm sure I will miss it as I head into my difficult senior year!

7. Closeness to extended family. I have two sets of family members, one in Berlin and one in Dusseldorf, which I rarely get to see. It was nice to get to see both sets twice, once near the beginning and once near the end.

To see the other posts, head over to Conversion Diary!