Updates.

Well folks, I have officially been in pharmacy school for 7 weeks! God has been very gracious to me during my time here. Its funny how much growing up can occur when you pick up and move to a whole new place and the cool thing is that God is totally present during the whole process. We aren't alone. 

This last week I turned 22 and I think it's one for the history books. Not because I did anything over the top crazy, but because I realized how truly blessed and loved I really am. I was completely blown away by my friends here and their desire bless me with decorations and gifts! My friends Nina, Emily and Alyssa decorated my dorm room door and snuck into my room and filled it with balloons! And to top it off, the balloons were decorated with my favorite things:

babies

beards

birds

sriracha sauce

oregon

beavers

tim tebow

...

I was very impressed with how well they know me already! In addition to that, friends from Oregon literally lavished me with cards and gifts! I received care packages, cards, flowers, pictures, gift cards, food, magazines, and the list goes on and on! Perhaps one of the most sentimental gifts that I received was a picture of my real life family accompanied with a signed birthday card that came in the mail RIGHT on my birthday! I was so so blessed by that. That, and the fact that I got to facetime with several people at Real Life! That was absolutely wonderful.

It was also a huge blessing that my birthday fell during one of the mellower weeks! Even though I did have an exam on my birthday, it was an easier one and the rest of the day was spent doing a whole lot of NOT STUDYING. Which was real nice. 

On Saturday, my church hosted a chili smackdown competition! It was pretty rad--basically a bunch of people (17 to be exact) brought their best chili and entered it into the competition. Then everyone walked around and tasted the chili and voted for which one had the best name or the most unique taste, or was the best overall. It was very fun. My favorite part was probably the fact that it was very country themed! It was outside (which I hadn't anticipated and thus wore a dress and thus was freezing!) but since it was country themed there was obviously a fire! There was also line dancing (my passion in life). AND a popcorn bar! It was decorated so beautifully that I found myself thinking "a wedding could totally work here!"...just gotta find myself a man first!

Anywho, today was probably the most exhausting day that I have had since I have been here. Mostly because I woke up at 5 and drove into the city with some other people to volunteer at the Monster Dash in the city. The only good thing about being awake that early (in my opinion) is that you get to see the sunrise. PLUS we were in the city. Therefore, it was gorgeous. The race was was a lot of fun (for the first 2 hours...) and it was great to be in the city interacting with the people of Chicago! Plus I met someone from Oregon! She was wearing a ducks shirt but I still went up to her and started talking. I was glad that she was equally excited about meeting someone from Oregon and didn't think that I was a big fat creepo for excitedly going up to her with a ginormous smile on my face. Today was a good reminder that often times, serving isn't for our benefit, but usually it is for the benefit of others. I know that the organization that put on the race was really blessed by us being there even though we were exhausted and hungry.

Today(/this weekend) I had a realization that kind of scared me in a good way: I am starting to like it here. I made all this hooplah about how this move was going to be temporary (and it still could be) and how I was for sure moving back to Oregon once pharmacy school was over...but I realized that there are good things about Chicago as well. Maybe it's the fact that I love the city and Chicago is an incredible one. Maybe it's the fact that I love my church and can see myself doing life with them for some time to come...whatever the case may be, I am thankful to be here; I am 100% sure that this is where God has me for this season. I have no second guesses about the choice I made to come here and I am excited to see what he has in store for the next couple of years. I still love Oregon, and my heart is still there. But I think God is just answering my prayers about being present in the place where he has me in the season of life that he has me in :)