We're here! Where's the party?

"Lay 'Em Down" by Needtobreathe. This is the closest I could get to a video with a clean sound.

To be completely honest, it didn't take Kristina and I very long to realize that Washington is a very different state from Wisconsin, but it took a week or so of hearing others refer to the University of Washington as "U-Dub" before my ears stopped perking up, immediately filling my thoughts with cheese head wearing beer guzzling university students.

My family and I had about a week to suck in as much of the area as we could before my semester began at Northwest University and we zipped around to as many places as we could. We picked up a few items at the Pike Place market in Seattle, ate some seafood off the coast, visited as many local coffee shops as we could find which lead us to visit as many local restrooms as we could find as well. Frankly the local markets in this area are nothing short of phenomenal. I've never seen such a variety and selection of fresh foods, and being a guy who loves food, I find this quite exciting.

When it came time to start school, the one thing that took me by surprise was that Northwest University has a five day orientation for first year and transfer students. It runs from Wednesday to Sunday with some of the events being optional, leading into the first day of classes that Monday. This blew my mind. The orientation I suffered through at UWWC (University of Wisconsin - Washington County) was a few hours of mind numbing insignificant lecture. Even when I saw the agenda for the five day spread at NU I was a little... cautious... going into the first day.

What I found was one of the most enjoyable events of my post high school education career thus far. The next few days was filled with an obviously premeditated and well planned process for making sure all new students were fully prepared to enter their time in NU but it was also a great opportunity to learn about the culture of the area, the students you were going to be attending school with, and how much Northwest cares about their student body. The time, effort, and money that this University invests into their students is really impressive. On Monday, as I stepped into my first class, I was already excited to be a Northwest University student. I don't think I've really ever experienced that outside of Christianity before.

This doesn't mean I'm not working my butt off though. Beyond being excited about school itself, the second most exciting thing about my first day was after I spoke to my Professors and realized I didn't need to bring the large majority of my 30 lbs of 17+ books to school with me. Northwest is also a lot more involved per class than any school I've attended before this, but it doesn't really bother me so much, even with all the time I spend on preparing for classes.

Here's an example of a random days worth of reading I have for a class, Ill just flip through my assignment planner I filled out on my first week of class and pick whatever day comes and list it here.

Book 1 - 12 Pages
Book 2 - 16 Pages
6 Pages worth of Term definitions in a dictionary
The entire book of John in the New Testament (21 Chapters)
Textbook 1 - 22 Pages
The entire book of 1 Chronicles in the Old Testament (29 Chapters)
The entire book of 2 Chronicles in the Old Testament (36 Chapters)
Text book 2 - 10 Pages
Prepare for a section exam

That equals out to 28 book pages, 20 vocabulary/dictionary words, 32 textbook pages, three lengthy books of the bible, and studying to prepare for an exam the next morning.

This is assigned for one night's worth of reading. I assure you that I would spread the reading out over a few days but the reading on the days surrounding them aren't that much better. This doesn't mean that every night is this crowded, but there are some nights that are even busier than this.

The funny thing throughout all of this though, is that I love what I'm learning, and I'm truly learning so much. I'm taking a moderately heavy credit load. 17 credits, so I expected to work my tail off, but as long as I'm learning and I can apply what I'm learning towards God's plan for my life, all of this is worth it.

I haven't really talked about this much before this but I'm also running for student senate to represent fellow commuting students. I want to find ways to help students that don't live on campus to integrate themselves into the university's community and events. The voting is taking place next week and we should know the results from that soon afterwards. This is my first year at NU so I'm not really expecting much, but it would be great to have the opportunity to serve the community.

Surrounding all of this school stuff is the fact that Kristina and I are still looking for a local church to call home. As long as it isn't like this church, I think we'll be ok...

But that's a story for another time...

-Jace