Murder Mystery

Yesterday after dinner we had a contest to come up for names for a campus Azusa is thinking of starting in San Diego which will be much like High Sierra, only warmer. It will be a small community of students doing outdoor activities like surfing and rockclimbing and, well, things like that. Today after chapel they announced the winner. One of my suggestions, Destination Diego, won. Woo! I feel like I never win things, haha, so that was pretty exciting. I won a package of oreos. They're gone now. I had some, then I put them out in the lobby, and five minutes later they were history.

After chapel I went up on Star Rock, a hill behind the dorms where cell phone reception isn't 100% obsolete. There's this side of Star Rock that's kinda closed off from the main part by bushes, and that's where the girls go to read and tan. I finished Erasmus and Luther's Discourse on Free Will today and made a dent in Three Cups of Tea--all while getting a tan! That's one of the things I was pleasantly surprised with about High Sierra: it's actually warm here. Like, you can wear shorts and T-shirts during the day and be fine. At night it gets chilly and there's usually frost in the morning, but in the afternoon during the winter you can tan. Isn't that crazy?! I love it. I also love how it's so beautiful here, but at the same time snow is around. I went for a four-mile trail run with some girls today, and some parts we had to run through snow. It's weird because it's there, but it's not really cold out...

Tonight after dinner we had a "murder mystery." I've never done one of those before, and actually had no idea what it was. For the version we did of it, we were all supposed to get dressed up ("glamorous" was the category), and then we wore headlamps and went around searching in the dark for clues (slips of paper that were hidden around camp). Unfortunately, I was murdered pretty soon after the game started--the unknown murderers sprayed people with water to kill them. I never even suspected the murderers, haha. But two of the people from our team solved the mystery before the murderers killed everyone, so it was all good.

Kenny and I Lookin Glamorous. Well...Kenny's wearing a fake bloodied trenchcoat. But I'm looking glamorous?

The group

Finishing up my Friday night by watching 27 Dresses...it was a successful day, Sparky.

Brew pong

Today was national flannel day. In honor of this momentous day, almost everyone here (including me) wore flannel. It was great.

There is a concoction we have in a big glass jar on top of the fridge that is simply called, "The Brew." The Brew is a mixture of terrible things like garlic, onions, peppers (disclaimer: these are not terrible of themselves, but mixed together in the brew = AWFUL), and some other nasties in a vinegar base. It is the worst stuff you can possibly imagine ever drinking. Even worse than Kumbucha tea. After you drink it, the taste is in your mouth for the rest of the day, and no matter what you do you can't stop burping it up. Revolting, I know.

Now, why would High Sierra even have this? The reason behind The Brew is that this is the concoction some monks drank during the black plague that kept them from getting sick. High Sierra students sometimes drink The Brew when they are feeling peakish or afraid they might get sick. Supposedly it works.

Tonight, four valiant souls decided to try a match of brew pong: just like beer pong, but with the brew, ten times worse.

The whole camp gathered to watch the match: Note the flannel

And don't worry, there's no alcohol in the brew.

The team on the left side won

It was a riveting game.

On a completely new note, I've decided to give my blog a more relevant name. I would like to thank my dear mother for her ideas and contributions. It is probably irrelevant to note the name change, as you've no doubt noticed it by now, but instead of, "Right Under Your Nose," welcome to, "Dear Mom, College is Boring..." (please note the sarcasm =) )

Cogito Ergo Sum

I feel like anything I write after my last post will be anticlimactic. But life moves on.

For the days leading up to Valentine's Day, my hall (aka all the girls here, lol) is doing a different Valentines-y event every day for our secret valentine (we drew names in a hat). Today we made a card and snuck it into their room or put it in their mailbox. I put my valentine's under her pillow, and when I was reading Hume I heard her find it, and she was trying to figure out who it belonged to. She was adamantly insisting to her roommates that she knew exactly whose it was--someone other than me, lol. It was so funny. I had to leave to go study somewhere else though, because they were being so loud trying to guess who all their valentines were. Tomorrow we're supposed to give a red/pink gift, Friday is sneak a hug day, and Saturday is give a verse day.

Speaking of studying, currently I'm reading David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. I really don't like this as much as Descartes. For those of you who don't know, basically Descartes discusses knowledge as a priori, innate within us. He begins his reasoning by doubting everything--the world he lives in could all be false, like something in "The Island" or "The Matrix." After he left everything that he could possibly doubt as false, he tries to build it back up starting with what is absolutely true. He is thinking about things, therefore he knows without a doubt that he exists, because if he didn't exist then he couldn't think. "Cogito ergo sum:" Next, he reasons that, because he has innate knowledge of a perfect being (to paraphrase), and because no cause is greater than its effect, he (the effect) must have had a creator (the cause). This is his first argument for God. Then he goes to describe how God, because he is perfect, cannot be a deceiver because to deceive is to have a fault. Thus God is not deceiving him and the world around him is real. But where does error come from, then? He argues that error comes because God gave man a will that is both fallible and infinite and reason that is infallible and finite. If we, as humans, really reasoned things out, we would not err. But the will often wins over reason (we are hasty), thus we err.

Hume, on the other hand, says that all knowledge comes through the senses and experiences: posteriori. I really don't care for his argument as well as Descartes. His argument against God is that we don't understand the power between our mind and body, thus how can we understand a power greater than us: the power of a supreme being? Thus a supreme being must not exist.
As for the world around us, it is discovered  in two ways: through the senses as experiences, and then through reason: combining these experiences (thus we take our experience of gold and our experience of mountains to invent a gold mountain). The three ways we combine knowledge is: contiguity, cause and effect, and resemblance.

I'm still reading Hume, so I can't give a definite opinion yet, but that's what his argument appears to me so far.

An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

Horizontal Bouldering

So this morning, after going for a two-mile run, I went bouldering with some of my friends. Bouldering, as mentioned in a previous post, is basically climbing boulders. It's like rock climbing, but not as high and without the protective equipment like helmets and harnesses.

We drove to a nearby park area, and the first place we decided to go bouldering was in a cave! This was so cool--I had no idea people could do something like this! We were horizontal, basically crawling across the cave's ceiling!! I wasn't very good and couldn't get very far (not too many in our group could), but one of the guys, Ro, who works at camp, could basically crawl across the whole roof of the cave like a spider; it was crazy amazing!

The entrance to the cave

James bouldering in the cave

my amazing roommate Alex beasting it up!

My attempt

Hardcore Nature-core!

After we had all attempted the cave bouldering multiple times, we decided to try a more vertical approach. 

Attempting to summit the boulder

pre-fall pic

So usually when we boulder we have spotters and only go over crash pads...but the crash pad that was below me had slid a few feet down the hill, and no one was spotting me. As I reached up with my right hand, I ended up falling--hard. I landed right on my side and shoulder. It really hurt lol. But tonight at dinner I got the sabertooth necklace of courage. This is given to people who endure a lot of pain. The last recipient was Kenny, who got the necklace for going on trek with a sprained ankle. Now it is my turn to watch for someone endure pain so I can hand off the necklace to them lol.

Ro flying right up the rock

Later on today, Alex and I were having fun with her camera--which can take pictures underwater!

We were out in the woods reading, and it was really warm and we were falling asleep, so we decided to take a "wake-up break" and head down to the creek and put our heads in the water. We tried to take pictures of our faces underwater, but they didn't turn out the greatest....

Whipping our hair back and forth!

Now that I'm at High Sierra, I no longer hate Mondays since they're not the start of the school week...

99 Red Balloons...

 First off, that facebook thing didn't work as well as I'd hoped. I'll keep trying.

Secondly, the Taylor Lautner thing was actually kinda a hit. Instead of signing my name on the picture, I signed it "Taylor Launter," so now the joke is that Taylor Lautner's actually a student at High Sierra. And my art prof wasn't mad at all--he, and the other students here, was actually quite impressed with it (!). Now I have a request to do a "self-portrait" of Miley Cyrus lol.

My attempt at Taylor Lautner

I mean...I didn't draw this, Taylor Lautner did.

Disclaimer: I am not obsessed with Taylor Lautner. Puh-leeese. I just thought it would be funny to draw his picture. Okay, now that that's been said...

So I hung it with all the others

Ta-da!

 On a completely new note, today I decided I wanted to bike to the nearest town, Oakhurst, which is eleven miles from camp. I convinced Bo to go with me, poor guy, and off we went, little expecting the challenge that lay before us.

I am from flatlands. Bo is from Texas, which is the epitome of flatlands. Here it is mountainous. I never realized before, but the entire drive to Oakhurst is uphill, then downhill, then uphill, then downhill for like five miles straight. Seriously, we FLEW to Oakhurst. I think at one point we must have been going at least 25 mph without pedaling. It took us a little over an hour to bike (or should I say, coast) to Oakhurst. Going back? That was ridiculous. It took us two hours and was so hard. Like, so hard lol. When we came back and told people at camp that we had biked to Oakhurst--and back--their jaws dropped. Altogether, it was a nice 22-mile bike ride, but I am personally a fan of biking on flatland.

When we were in Oakhurst, though, Bo and I stopped to grab lunch at Jamba Juice--it was the first time for both of us! I like how Jamba Juice has healthy options. Of course, instead of choosing something healthy I had to get something off the "secret menu" and got some chocolate-peanut butter-banana smoothie thing that reminded me of one of my mom's "healthy" carob banana smoothies, but it actually tasted pretty good. (love you, mom =) )

My first-ever Jamba Juice Experience!

While Bo and I were eating, we saw all these red balloons released in the distance begin floating towards the sky--it was so cool! It was like something you'd see in a movie. I tried to capture the moment, but the picture really doesn't do it justice.

"99 red balloons floating in the summer sky..""

Finally, tonight after dinner we had crazy hat bingo. To participate, you needed to wear a crazy hat. I wore a crazy hat (a crown I made myself), but I did not win a prize =(. It was really fun, though, because the two number callers, Katie and Ben the RD and Assistant RD talked with southern drawls and we had fun events interspersed between rounds of bingo, like finger jousting, push-up contests, hat judging, and lip syncing =)

 

Some Crazy hats!

Tomorrow we have church in Oakhurst. I think I'm going to bike there....

and get a car ride back, lol.

Around the World

Since we only have classes Tuesday-Thursday, today was basically my Friday. So after class was over at 4:15, I've been doing weekend-y activities. This weekend is family/friends weekend, so High Sierra's planning certain events in expectation of the oncoming family/friends. For our art class we had to draw self portraits. Tonight, I thought it would be funny to draw one of Taylor Lautner and add it to the bunch, just for the heck of it. Well see how that goes over...=P.

I also played my first-ever "Around the World" Ping Pong. For those of you who don't know (like me), this is where a bunch of people stand around the ping pong table, hit the ball once, then pass the paddle on to the next person. Everyone keeps circling the table, hitting the ball across, then passing off their paddle. It's really fun! For one of the rounds, the punishment for going out was that we had to crawl under the ping pong table. By the end of the game we had over ten people crammed in there--it was crazy!

I also played a rowdy few rounds of Bananagrams, then Quelf. I guess it was a big night for gamers, lol

Not a very adventurous post, I know, but it was a pretty relaxing day. Although I definitely recommend playing around the world ping pong, especially with the punishment of going under the ping pong table. =)

She's the Man

For some reason I just couldn't seem to get into the swing of things today. I'm still getting over a cold I got on Trek, so maybe that's why. The only class I had today was aesthetics--and man, was it fun! We did printmaking today. Here are some of the class's works:

A sample of the class's prints

A quick drawing I did with the edge of a roller. I dedicated it to Alex, lol. The dimensions are actually like 2x1.5 ft

Other than that, my day was rather uneventful. I did some homework, wrote a paper, slacklined, worked on art journal...all that fun stuff.
Sometimes for dinner we dress up. Last night some of the girls stole at least one shirt from all the guys--they did an amazing job. One of them would go into the guy's room and talk to him, while the other stole the clothes--and the guys didn't even notice! Then, we each picked a guy to dress up as, and we wore his clothes and dressed up and acted like him. It was so funny! I dressed up like Kel:

Kel's the guy in the middle, obviously. I guess you'd have to know him, but he does this weird dance thing we're trying to do. And he wears hats like that and all. My outfit was actually quite Kelish.

So I keep finding myself spending too much time on facebook. I want to delete my account, but then I'm afraid I won't be able to keep up with people and share pics, etc. But tonight my friend Kenny gave me another option! I'm actually trying it out right now. It's the add-on on firefox called leechblock that can block sites for you, or it can limit the time you spend on sites. Now I have it set to allow me only fifteen minutes on facebook a day. Let's hope this works!

Until again,
Abbi