Tonight I started digging through one of the crates of stuff I brought here: memories of by-gone days in the form of CDs and DVDs full of pictures and videos. Maybe it was a mistake. The first DVD I popped into my laptop was the NWC Symphonic Band Tour to Mexico from 2007. Memories began crashing back, reminding me of the simple joys of my early college days. A few shots of NW's campus covered in snow reminded me of the place and people I will always carry with me.
I was also struck by the simple fact that although I complained every step of the way about long rehearsals and “selling my soul” to the music department, my days in the Symphonic Band were not wasted. I will NEVER forget those days – I loved being a part of that ensemble and will miss it as long as I live.
I'm happy here, but my heart yearns for the people I left behind. I miss my college friends intensely, and wish so badly that thousands of miles did not separate us. Sometimes I look back on my college days and mourn the fact that it's over. Because truly, those were the best days of my life, days I will never get back. I'm not one of those defeatist people who believes that life ends after college. I'm truly enjoying my new life in Washington, and I look forward to the future that God has for me here. But there's something about being a college freshman that is a once in a lifetime opportunity. Suffice it to say that I am slightly jealous of the college freshman I see on campus out here. I want to stop them and tell them to embrace every moment of their first year, because it is something they will never ever get back.
Music really gets me. I should know this by now. It strikes a chord somewhere deep inside me that makes me uncontrollably emotional. Just listening to a song that my college band played several years ago makes me insanely nostalgic for those days. What I wouldn't give to go back to NW for just a week – a week of being with the same people in the same place. A week to embrace every facet of life in NW Iowa. Alas, that shall never be. My last chance to be together with that group of people was probably last month at the Iowa State Fair, and I am so grateful I had that opportunity.
I need to shut this music off before I start hating my life.
In other news, I attended my first Bellingham church service tonight. It was a rather large church to say the least – nothing HUGE but it was huge nonetheless. Four services in a large auditorium dominated by a large stage at the front. If I had to guess I'd say there were 500 people at the service I attended alone. It reminded me of Cornerstone in Ames (the church I attended when working as a counselor at my childhood church camp), but I didn't like it as much as I liked Cornerstone. I didn't have any huge issues with this place, but I didn't feel like the sermon went very deep at all, and didn't leave feeling challenged. They do seem to have a pretty large small group network, so I may attend small groups at that church if I am unable to find other ones elsewhere. :) Or I will attend this church if the other churches are epic failures. Haha.
I was so excited to go church hunting, but I am beginning to understand that although it is really important that I do so, it will not be easy. Going church hunting reminds me so much of home – church was one of the central facets of my life at home, and now I enter these places that are simultaneously so much the same and yet so different from home.
My apartment is so big. It's crazy having an entire apartment to myself, especially an apartment as large as this one...haha... It's big, okay? I'm used to having a hallway filled with my stuff, or at the best sharing a two bedroom apartment with five other girls. Not this...I mean, I have enough stuff to fill it, but it still feels crazy to know that I have like...five rooms that are all mine.
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