My life excitement overwhelms me

While I'm still writing about the subject of dancing, I found the other day that girls aren't the only ones that like to dance. As a matter of fact, I was helping clear the tables after dinner at the Main House when very suddenly I heard this blaring music of classical sorts blasting from the parlor! In my natural alarm I rushed to the dining room to peek in and see who it was, and low and behold were the bibleschool guys dancing. Hopping about in the dim interior of the parlor, I thought there was some sort of pattern at first, but then I saw that there wasn't. They would dance in a circle and then one of them would break off to do some spontaneous action of their own. It was a rather amusing sight to watch, but hey, who can blame them?

After this occurrence I was on my way home in the drizzly, chilly evening when I spotted Michael and Gabriel by the grape vine. When I greeted them, Gabriel pointed to the sky and said with a mixture of being excited and informative, "I just saw a leaf blowing down away from a tree and at first I thought it was Jesus coming down from the sky!" Quite a touching declaration, really.

So after this I soon went to sports and after that I went to observe the fascinating spectacle of fellowship meeting. This night was the festive activity of pumpkin carving and painting, and without too much ado they set to work in teams to dig out the slurping pumpkin pulp and scratch pictures in the face of the pumpkin. Of course the students were told that these were harvest pumpkins, not Halloween pumpkins, which meant you couldn't do any thing that implied evil things such as witches, ghosts, spiders, bats, or the New York Yankees. No, they didn't say the New York Yankees, but I still thought it was rather disobedient of Bethany to go ahead and paint the evil symbol on her pumpkin anyway.:D

Therefore the students came out with all sorts of ideas, from castles (taking away the bats removed their spookiness) to funny faces, from a cross to a man with a runaway dog, from scrolly designs to a happy fellow in a sailboat with the motto "Life is good" (the source of Elizabeth's designing inspiration was actually my shirt I which I was wearing from sports), they produced enjoyable carvings in all their orange glowing-ness. The pumpkin painters had fun too, as well as the modern art pumpkin person who had especial delight in pretending their fixture was bacon or some other such nonsense.

Yesterday I had my first art class, which I was very much looking forward to. We gathered at a homeschool mom's house, I met new people, and also got my first go at blind contour drawing, which I discovered I am terrible at. However, it's okay to be terrible at it because it's like drawing with your eyes closed so you're not expected to do super well, just learn how to awaken your right, creative side of mind. Then she set us to work to sketch some still life (a pottery pot and a couple pears, actually) and then a classical guitar. This was not so much as to teach us but to see what level our skills are at. We're probably going to critique each other's art next week. I finished last, but we then ended with choosing a picture of an animal that we'd like to draw next week. I'm not too partial to animal drawing, the fur not being my cup of tea, but I chose a frog that looked kind of fun and left feeling flushed and satisfied. My first real art training has begun.

Today I went on town trip. I was especially pleased to have all of my school done before I left, so I didn't have to worry about it when I got back. Anyway we went to WalMart and while we were waiting outside to be picked up the guys kept on laughing at something. A squeaking noise was emanating from one of their jackets, and it was soon discovered to be a bat inside that they had procured and were intending to keep. However our wait was a long one (twenty-five minutes over the pick up time) and eventually the tiny bat flew away, which is probably to the all around good of all, except the happiness of one particular lad, who kept grumbling how if they hadn't taken so long he could have kept his precious pet. In the meantime I got bored of just standing around, so I walked over to one of the curb islands in the parking lot and took a stroll on it. I ambled around and around and around, then switched directions and went the other way around. I tried to see how few steps I could take around, succeeding in about nineteen, then I would walk with one boot on the pavement. Next I walked in zigzags, then paced the length military fashion, then jogged the length. Pretty soon I got bored, even when one of the older men coming out of the store gestured that he wondered why I wasn't doing it more, and another older Walmart employee began to talk seriously to me about the weather, which was random. So I decided to be normal like everybody else and wait on the curb, and after a few more minutes the van finally came to our rescue. Phew! My life excitement overwhelms me.