College Impressions

Greetings, Loved Ones!

I have attended Wheaton College for two weeks now, and wanted to share some first impressions with you.

Community living is the same as it was when I did it for the first time at 15. Everyone is young, loud, and rarely takes out the trash.

The food is stunningly better than I expected, even from the top ranked college cafeteria in the States. Yesterday there was freshly caught salmon...for lunch.

Almost all the first year students dress up for class. They wake up roughly two hours before their class and shower, put on the perfect outfit, do their makeup. They look so good. All of them. I wake up 20 minutes before I have to leave. 10 of those are spent adjusting my eyes to the light of the windows...My earliest classes start at 11:15 a.m.

The cobblestones. They look good. They feel terrible on an ankle in rehab.

No one remembers your name except those people who you forget the names of. (Cringe.)

My roommate is a 5'1" flute major and couldn't be a more fantastic fit with me. She turned to me during the first few days of living here and said "What are all these people doing? Ugh. I did NOT come here for the social interactions."

It's hard. Contentment is hard. My heart is hurting, my body wants to be traveling, my mouth wants to be speaking of Jesus to the people who have never heard His name.

There are cliques. Last week I went up to the football-team table and took the Sriracha sauce they had taken from the buffet line with a "Can I borrow this? Thanks." They all looked at me as if I had four heads. But, know this: my friend's rice was not dry that day.

Random fact of the post:

My dorm room faces west, so we get to watch stunning sunsets. Yesterday, due to large amounts of smoke, the sun went blood red, and promptly disappeared behind a hazy gray sky while still high above the horizon. Breathtaking.

Leg update: my leg has digressed quite a bit. I've had to take up the moonboot again, as I have to walk over a mile and some each day for all my classes, and cannot do that over cobblestones while only wearing a lace up ankle brace. My pain has at least tripled, but if I stop walking on it, my tolerance will digress further, and I'll be back to square 1. So- pray! I can't see a practical outcome here, so I'm trusting Jesus to take up the fight for me.

Thank you all for praying, as always! You are dear to me in an irreplaceable way.

Lord bless.
Anna