My Birthday: The magical Weekend

In Torrey we have very few written assignments. Most of our work is in notes, class discussion, and pull questions. however, there is one little thing called THE TORREY PAPER. It’s a 2,100 to 3,000 word paper for freshmen (it gets longer over the years) where we can use up to two texts (no Bible or Plato allowed). It really isn’t the most difficult thing, but it requires alot of thought and careful planning. When something is worth 1/3ish of your grade, you put alot of time, and emotion, into it. The night before it was due, upper class men in Torrey helped us format our papers. I stayed until 4am, but didn’t finish.
If you were on campus on Friday, you would have noticed a trickle of students walking to Sutherland with a thick stack of papers and big grin on their face (maybe even a tear or two). After going to Chapel and a Frisbee game, I managed to edit my paper, with some help from Sara, and turn it in around four, and the paper was due at five. The rest of that day, and the rest of my 19th year, I slept or did things that required little effort.
My mom wrote on my wall saying

You just finished your Torrey paper. What are you going to do now?

And I responded with the famous line, “I’m going to Disney land!”

Yes, for my birthday Sam and I got up early and headed over to that magical place called Disneyland. I got my annual pass and a birthday pin and we were off. We did alot of fun stuff and were able to hit most of the major rides. One of the jokes that we had was that I am going to marry Belle. Let me explain. Belle, who is the best looking of the Disney princesses, reads alot of books, therefore she would be in Torrey and we would get married. The birthday card from my hall even had Belle on the front. Having said that, we tried to visit Belle and the Princess meet and greet area. Unfortunately when we went she wasn’t there. Instead we were greeted by Cinderella and a jealous princess Aurora. She saw my birthday button and the conversation went a little like this:

Aurora- I see you’re celebrating a very special day. Where are your princesses to help you celebrate it?
Sam- The princesses are right here (meaning the Disney princesses, but Aurora thought he was hitting on her)
Me- Well, we were looking for Belle, but she’s not here
Aurora- *angry* Well she’s in the castle in the library still. She’s not here. NOW hold your arms out nice and strong so I can hold onto them

It seemed like she was very jealous of Belle. We should have told her, “Isn’t it a little early for you to be up?”
We went much later that evening, but the line was too long to see Belle.

We managed to go through all of California Adventure and most of Disneyland that day. Almost everywhere we went one of the cast members would say happy birthday to me. It made me feel special. I got to have one of my favorite foods for dinner (a Monte Cristo) and then we saw Fantasmic. It’s this light, water, fireworks, and more show on the river by Tom Sayer Island (if you know where that is). Overall it was a pretty busy time.
When we got back I dropped some stuff off at my room and then went to get some mail. Meanwhile, Sam got the guys in the hall to hide in my room to surprise me when I got back. Well, when I came back I noticed that all the rooms were empty so I came to the conclusion that they were in mine.I listened to the door and I was right, so when I opened the door I said, “surprise!” and confused them.
I opened up my presents and got some cool stuff.

Sunday was pretty busy too. Going to church and reading Genesis was tight, and on top of that it was University day and midnight madness. University day is when students from around the area come and visit Biola to see if they want to come here. Sam and I hosted a kid, but he was low maintenance. Midnight Madness was crazy. It’s like a giant pep-rally. this year they rented out some expensive sound equipment and it sounded really good. It was a night of contests, pep, and dancing. It was pretty awesome.
That’s about it for that weekend. Since then I’ve had a Bible Torrey session and a meeting for Missions Conference to find out how we’re supposed to order rooms and such. Overall I am so blessed by God to be able to go to Biola and do the things that I am doing.