Uganda

You-gone-Duh!

I-gone-Duh!

Well, this is my last post for awhile probably. I dunno, maybe I'll post while I'm away. I'm really excited to go do service...I've been too selfish sinch I got back from the mish. I'm also really excited about going to New York and Holland. If people email me, I'll email you back. Tot ziens!

The grass is greener, the air is fresher, the flowers are prettier

That's right! Finals are over. Of course they always kick my trash, this year I had three study guides to memorize: they were 56 pages, 33 pages, and 30 pages. So yeah, that killed me, but it's all good now. The last week of last semester I was walking and I heard a guy yell real loud. I asked if he got an A, he said that he didn't care cause he was done forever. When I'm done forever I think I'll do that too. Finals is definitely one of the "three F frustrations of college!"

I got 5 shots today: polio, tetanus, menigitis, typhoid, and yellow fever. I still need to get pills for malaria. The downside is that I could still get those diseases and still have to watch what I eat. My arms are really sore right now and I'm starting to feel a little sick...just like the nurse said. I was supposed to get the yellow fever shot 10 days before I go. The nurse said they might not let me into Uganda for 2 days. That would be kind of cool actually, if they wouldn't let me into their country...I'm like a rebel or something. Maybe I'll get lucky they'll put me in some podunk prison. I wouldn't mind torture either. As long as they give me a cool souvenir so I can prove that I'm a rebel, cause I am.

We're leaving for Council Bluffs tonight. I'm really excited. It's going to be carefree, lots of eating, having fun, burning our school stuff, good relaxing time. Dyads will definitely be strengthened with everyone there (see the Jo for definition of a dyad).

I saw two businessmen on segways today. Wow, that was funny!

I have hardly eaten this week. Pretty crazy. Usually I can't do anything without food, but I haven't had an appetite at all.

I studied Humanities for like 4 hours today and actually I really enjoyed it. It was a good class that made me realize literature, art, and music are just as important to the world as politics. Well, almost as important as politics. One thing that hit me was what Emerson said about art. He said that art is not the creation but the process. And that it is a form of expression. Of course I've heard that art is expression several times but it also said how we all what to be understood- art helps. I don't think anyone can fully understand someone else, and that makes life exciting, but understanding one another helps out so much. Last semester in my political philosophy class my professor said something that disturbed me and has made me think a lot about. He said that if words can't describe what we're thinking, then we're not really thinking. I should look over his argument again but that can't be right. There is so much that I think and feel that cannot be described by words. Of course I try and sometimes make an idiot out of myself in attempting to describe my thoughts and feelings but that doesn't mean that my thoughts aren't thoughts. I've written lots of poetry, some is funny, most was written to export a certain feeling I had. I think that other people's art can explain our thoughts and feelings as well. And sometimes it doesn't, but you just enjoy it.

"You have seen how a man was made a slave; you shall see how a slave was made a man." - Frederick Douglass
"It is not chaos or death- it is form, union, plan – it is eternal life –it is Happiness"
-Walt Whitman
"You can appreciate a single blade of grass for its beauty but it all comes from the same soil."
-Walt Whitman
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." - Thomas Jefferson
"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America." -Founding Fathers

Thomas Cole and Frederic Edwin Church have become two of my favorite artists. My last uploaded pictures didn't really turn out that great, but here are some of my favorites:

Church:
Church:
This paintings are Cole's empire series. They go through the development, pinnacle, and fall of an empire. The unique thing is that nature remains. The mountain is in every single picture:
Savage State:
Pastoral State:
Consummation state:
Destruction state:

Desolotation state:

Cole, two Indians paying respect to the Niagara Falls:
Neither one of these images came out that great
Church:

Church:


Cole, again, notice the little person in the center:
Church:
Church:

I might find some time to write in here before I go to Uganda. I'm not really sure what my email/letter situation will be like in Uganda or Holland. Hopefully I'll be able to get on here once awhile and give an update of my travels and experiences.

I'm going to go play Mario Kart 64...or Risk on Cannon's computer.

Well, I've taken two finals. I think I did pretty well with both of them. I have three left.

Somebody save me!!!!!!

John Adams

I'm writing a paper on John Adams. I haven't written in here in a long time and probably should find some time before I go to Uganda. John Adams was a stud. He's my hero. I think everyone should learn about him so that's why I included all this info about him:

Statesmen, my dear Sir, may plan and speculate for liberty, but it is religion and morality alone, which can establish the principles upon which freedom can securely stand. The only foundation of a free Constitution is pure virtue, and if this cannot be inspired into our People in a greater Measure than they have it now, they may change their rulers and the forms of government, but they will not obtain a lasting liberty.

Be not intimidated... nor suffer yourselves to be wheedled out of your liberties by any pretense of politeness, delicacy, or decency. These, as they are often used, are but three different names for hypocrisy, chicanery and cowardice.

The Revolution was effected before the War commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people; a change in their religious sentiments of their duties and obligations ... This radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people, was the real American Revolution.

“Government is nothing more than the combined force of society, or the united power of the multitude, for the peace, order, safety, good and happiness of the people…Be it remembered, that liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we have not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood. And liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people who have a right from the frame of their nature to knowledge, as their great Creator who does nothing in vain, has given them understanding and a desire to know. But besides this they have a right, an indisputable, unalienable, indefeasible divine right to the most dreaded and envied kind of knowledge, I mean of the characters and conduct of their rulers” (McCullough, 70-71). “Government is a plain, simple, intelligent thing, founded in nature and reason, quite comprehensible by common sense…The true source of our suffering has been our timidity. We have been afraid to think…Let us dare to read, thinking, speak, and write…Let it be known that British liberties are not the grants of princes or parliaments…that many of our rights are inherent and essential, agreed on a maxims and established as preliminaries, even before Parliament existed” (McCullough, 60).

“There is no king or queen bee distinguished from all others, by size or figure or beauty and variety of colors, in the human hive. No man has yet produced any revelation from heaven in his favor, any divine communication to govern his fellow men. Nature throws us all into the world equal and alike….The preservation of liberty depends upon the intellectual and moral character of the people. As long as knowledge and virtue are diffused generally among the body of a nation, it is impossible they should be enslaved….Ambition is one of the more ungovernable passions of the human heart. The love of power is insatiable and uncontrollable….There is danger from all men. The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty” (McCullough, 70-71). A.D. Morse, author of The politics of John Adams elaborates on this view of power that John Adams had and says that they are at the foundation of the politics of John Adams, “The first is that slavery and freedom proceed from one and the same principle in human nature, namely the love of power; later in the Discources on Davila, the more comprehensive phrase, “thirst for distinction” is substituted for “love of power”; but the change does not imply any departure from the orginial idea. A second view of the utmost importance to the comprehension of the system, is that this love of power is an “aspiring, noble principle, founded in benevolence.” From this it follows that the aim of a wise public policy must be not to extirpate “the love of power” in the human heart, but so to direct and regulate its operation that it shall issue in freedom. It is certainly one of the noblest characteristics of John Adams that he felt habitually a profound reverence for human nature, and finds in the primary passions of man the proofs of divine wisdom” (Morse).

At Lithia Dealership, with Chazlyn's nametagThere's Lithia dealership, where the nametag came from.
University of Great Falls, Chazlyn is taking classes from here
Good ole 4-square
Me and my boys
The group that came, Sky and Rebekah were there too.
Talking strategy
Our last bball game. We lost to them by one point!! They went on to win the championship.

Robson Elementary School!

So I'm getting really excited for a lot of things! One of those things is the Council Bluffs trip. But yeah, maybe we should make sure not too many people come. Here's the tentative schedule of events.

We'll leave the night of the last day of finals which is the 25th. People could leave earlier that day if they don't want to drive through the night, but part of the fun will be all of us roadtrippin together. On the way we'll stop at Rusty Cannon Motel in Northern Colorado. We really don't have anything we need to be home to, so we can take our time and see things and stop at places along the way to CB. Thursday will be a chill day. We can just chill at our's and P-dub's homes. We can play pool, fuseball, tetherball, jump on the trampoline, play football, etc. It'd be fun if we play werewolves later and then we have the girls do their thing at P-dub's and the guys will stay at our place and we'll play Risk all night.

We have lots of room in our basement and our grandparent's basement (they live nextdoor), but it'll probably be warm enough so people could camp out in our backyard, or sleep on the trampoline. Friday we can sleep in, and then go to the Winter Quarter's visitor center, the Kanesville Tabernacle, we can drive through the bluffs, go to Dream Park at Lake Manawa, and make our own pizzas at Papa Murphy's. Later we'll go to the wax slides, then walk around and eat at somewhere in the Old Market. We could go to Heartland Park, and then go home, play steal the flag, and then tp the Evans' house.

Saturday we'll go to the Church, play dodgeball, basketball, and nine-square in the parking lot. We could have a water fight at home, and then just chill the rest of the day and do what we want.

Sunday we'll sleep in til 1, go to Church til 4, eat a nice Sunday dinner with P-dub's parents and sister, maybe play more games, and then some of will leave at 6, others can stay if they want.

Anyway, Council Bluffs really isn't that exciting, but it's Council Bluffs people!!!