Koinonia

There were a couple of times I had intended to post stuff this week, but circumstances defeated me. First of all, sometime last weekend while I was gone the webserver’s mySQL database got majorly messed up, Josh couldn’t figure out what went wrong. Not that I exactly know what that means, but what it essentially meant for me was that on Sunday night I had to re-upload all the data from my posts from html backups that Josh had managed to salvage, which was very tedious. But at least all my pictures and other data was able to be saved, so I didn’t have to go through the exceedingly tedious task of re-uploading every picture from all my posts for a second time. But it’s all good now, and everything’s just about back to how it was before this weekend. Lol, at this rate I don’t know if I’ll ever get my website or my photo album collection fully updated.
Anyways, last weekend was the senior-freshman Curriculum II retreat at Koinonia, a retreat center about half an hour south of Saint Cloud near Kimball. The turnout for the retreat was actually the best ever for CII, about 15 seniors and 25 freshman went on it, it was fantastic. It was a very enjoyable weekend as well, and lots of fun was had by all. On Friday evening we seniors cloistered ourselves away in our dorm building for a few hours to begin planning our presentation that we were to give to the freshmen on Sunday morning. What was supposed to be a planning session became more of a reminiscing session, with heaps of laughter as we all recalled funny events and professors’ quirks from our CII classes in the last three and a half years. After three hours we did manage to get a skeleton outline of what we were gonna do though, we settled on doing a skit called, “60 Minutes: Cults in America: Gustavus Curriculum II Sequence 17, from Recruitment to Graduation” (we seniors are the 17th sequence of CII, the current freshmen are the 20th), in which Sara & I were the anchors, Betsy was the field reporter, and everyone else acted out various little skits/scenes. After getting that rough outline put together, several of us went to play games like ping pong, pool or foosball, while others relaxed in the sauna. Carl was bragging that for a little while he was the only guy in there with 18 girls, haha! On Saturday morning we had a lecture from philosophy prof Doug Huff (who is, hands down, the best prof on campus) on Kirkegaard, and then another lecture from religion prof Mark Dennis on Buddhism and meditation (wasn’t so much a fan of that lecture, it wasn’t even well done). We had time for some homework in the afternoon, another practice session for our presentation, and then after some evening games the seniors led with the freshmen, Sara & I went off on our own and pretty much wrote the entire script. Well, at least our parts, which were kinda necessary to be solid, since they contained all the cues for what everyone else was supposed to be doing. Meanwhile Carl had lots of fun doing the “intermission” … badly photoshopping our heads into various classical paintings that we studied in our CII Visual Experience class. It was hilarious! So then Sunday morning it was time for the presentation, and it rocked hard core! Everyone loved it, and the profs were laughing their heads off, even as we were roasting them pretty good. 🙂 They said it was the best, funniest and most elaborate presentation that they’d ever seen put on at the retreat, which made us feel awesome. During the panel afterwards, at which the freshmen asked us various questions about CII and whatnot, Carl, John & I tried to teach everyone a physics dance we’ve (mostly Carl, actually) invented called the “Electromagnetic Jive.” Yeah, we’re nerds. 🙂 After a couple crazy games of spoons and yet another fabulous meal, it was time for the two-hour drive back to Gustavus. I’m so glad I went on this retreat, it was so great to get to hang out with everyone again, it had been well over a year since I’d hung out with several of them (since the fall 2003 Blue Cloud Abbey retreat, actually), and it was just overall a very fun and enjoyable weekend. Somehow I question whether visiting the University of Oklahoma instead would’ve been anywhere near as enjoyable. 🙂
Monday I didn’t accomplish too much apart from watching another fantastic new episode of “24” and being part of a pretty good discussion at MCF. Tuesday evening a very nice Proclaim service was bookended by studying for Wednesday’s Astrophysics test, which I actually think went pretty well for me. You’ve gotta love it when two of the nine problems on the test are one-liners, it kinda helps ya to finish on time. 🙂 After class and work on Wednesday I donated the blood at the semesterly blood drive. I can’t remember if this was the fifth, sixth or seventh time I’ve donated, maybe I should call the Red Cross sometime to find out. Wednesday evening we voted on a design for this year’s GAC physics t-shirt, went up on top of Olin for an hour and a half in the freezing cold to get the telescopes set up and finally do some observing for astrophysics lab (this has been a crappy semester for observing so far, it’s always been cloudy), and write another paper for Senior Sem. Hooray.
Tonight was the NCAA Division III Tournament First Round game, #13 Lawrence at #17 Gustavus. This is the ninth year in the last ten that the Gusties have qualified for the NCAA tourney, and this year they got to the NCAA’s by beating St Thomas 68-58 in the MIAC title game back on Saturday night. Gustavus is widely regarded in Division III basketball as one of the toughest places in the country for an opposing team to play in, with our annually great basketball teams and large and incredibly boisterous crowds. Tonight didn’t go so well for the Gusties, however. After several ties and lead changes in the early going, Lawrence showed some mettle in going on a 15-4 run to close out the first half with a 34-22 lead over the Gusties. The Vikings held the lead up around 14-16 points for almost the entire 2nd half, each time the Gusties would get a bucket or two, Lawrence would counter with a huge basket or two of their own. Not even two thundering Doug Espenson dunks could rally the Gusties past Lawrence’s tenacious defense and the absolutely atrocious officiating. But yes, even though the refs were horrible (a Lawrence player did a WWF take-down of one of our players and it wasn’t called, that’s how bad the refs were), Lawrence was still the better team. Final score: Lawrence 70, Gustavus 56. It was the first-ever loss at home for the Gusties in the first round of the NCAA tourney, we’re now 6-1 in first round games in Lund Center. So alas, this was my last time ever donning the black and gold facepaint for a Golden Gustie basketball game. 🙁 Sigh. For the d3hoops.com photo gallery from the game, click here.
So my sectionmates and I are starting to plan out a spring break road trip to the East Coast: Baltimore, Washington DC, Penn State University (so I can do my grad school visit for a day), Philadelphia, New York City, Boston, Niagara Falls, and Toronto, before returning to GAC just in time for classes to resume. The awesome part is that we know people in two or three of those cities, so we won’t have to pay for hotels every night, and Penn State would very likely pay for at least a good chunk of the gas to drive out there. It should actually be a relatively cheap road trip, for all the places we’re seeing.
Well, that’s all for now. I think I’m gonna go sleep off my disappointment from the loss tonight. That and I’m tired from exerting so much energy cheering so loud and hard all game long.