I'm not really one to make New Year's Resolutions. It's not that I have something against making them. I think it can be helpful to reflect on your life once in a while and see what needs to be changed. On the other hand, if you're making a change for the sake of changing, I think that more often than not, it's not going to stick.
While I'm joining the many people across the world writing a blog on New Year's, it's not because I'm making a New Year's resolution to begin blogging regularly. In fact, I know I won't be blogging with any kind of regularity this year. 2011 marks a year where I already know that I'm going to be going through some huge changes in my life. Most of those changes will begin in May, when I will graduate from Texas A&M with a bachelor's degree in Accounting (and a minor in Communication), and a Master's degree in Management Information Systems. I'll be spending half of my summer at Sky Ranch Christian Camps in Van, TX working as a lifeguard and will spend the remainder of my summer getting ready for Impact, a Christ-centered retreat for incoming freshmen at A&M in August. After Impact, I'll get settled in my new home (apartment?) in Dallas and begin working as a consultant in the Enterprise Risk Services practice (or maybe it's called Advisory now? I can't keep up) of Deloitte & Touche sometime in mid-September.
See? I told you a lot is changing in 2011.
On top of all of that, I'm about to begin what I anticipate to be some of the busiest months of my life. Today I begin studying for the CPA exam so that, Lord-willing, by May I'll have fulfilled all of the requirements to be a Certified Public Accountant (you also have to have 1 year of work experience so I won't be officially certified until next summer). The exam is actually a series of 4 individuals tests that I will have to pass, and I will study for each test for 3-5 weeks (up to ~40 hrs/week) so really, this is going to consume my entire semester. In addition to the CPA exam, I'm taking 6 hours of classes to finish my degrees, I am the Media Exec for Impact (www.impactretreat.com), and I am the Production Coordinator as well as helping with the accounting/money stuff for a conference called Masterpiece that is coming up in March (www.masterpiececonference.com). Not to mention being involved in my church, FBC Bryan, by being on the worship team and involved in the college ministry. Oh, and I have a job, too.
I didn't need to write that all out to realize that I have a lot going on, and it definitely creeps into my mind that I may have bitten off more than I can chew.
Thinking about all of that, and the consequences of neglecting any one of those responsibilities honestly scares me to death. The comfort I have is that I know the Lord has specifically called me to each one of these things, and even though sometimes I don't see how I can do all of them at once, I'm trusting that He will sustain me and am looking forward to seeing what He'll teach me through it all.
"Now may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely, and may your whole spirit and soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful; he will surely do it." -- 1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 ESV
Monday, January 3, 2011
Saturday, June 5, 2010
Istanbul!
Tara and I left on a bus Tuesday and headed to Istanbul for 3 days! We planned on taking an overnight train, but when we went to buy the tickets we were told that the train wasn't running because of some "big problem with the line". After some internet research, we found out that there had been some flooding that damaged the tracks and the line would be closed for at least a month. We checked into alternatives and found out there was an overnight bus that also ran to Istanbul. We were a little concerned, though, because right around that time, Greece experienced a frog plague that closed the highway for a little while and then slowed traffic once it reopened. Some people were claiming that the frogs were forewarning a massive earthquake. You can't make this stuff up, folks.
We ended up taking the overnight bus (which was quite nice, by the way) and arrived in Istanbul safe and sound. I'll spare you the continuous details of our trip, but we basically did all of the normal tourist things in the city. We visited the Blue Mosque as well as Ayasofya (Hagia Sofia), saw the Basilica Cistern, shopped at the Grand Bazaar, went to the top of Galata Tower, walked around the Taksim district, and took a ferry out Büyükada, which is one of the Prince's Islands. Most of the restaurants and bars around town had waterpipes (or hookah as we usually call it in the US) so both evenings that we were there we hung out and smoked some hookah to wind down our evening. Don't tell my mom.
All in all, it was a great trip. In my opinion we were there for the perfect amount of time. We didn't run out of things to do, but I did just about everything I wanted to do and was tired and ready to come back to Greece.
Tara has about 2 more weeks here and I have about 3 and a half so we still have a little more time to enjoy Europe. We are considering taking another trip to either Berlin and Prague or London and have also talked to my parents about taking a trip to Lefkáda, which is an island (but it's connected by a bridge) on the Ioanian/Italy side of Greece. We are also planning on spending a day or two in Halkidiki, which is a set of 3 gorgeous peninsulas with some awesome beaches on the other side of Thessaloniki. I'm also enjoying just spending time with my parents and am already dreading saying goodbye again in a few weeks!
Oh, and if you know my brother, Andy, you should tell him Happy Birthday because he's turning 25 today. What an old man! He's also about to be a dad (and therefore I'm about to be an aunt) so maybe I'll have something to blog about when I'm back in Texas. We'll see!
We ended up taking the overnight bus (which was quite nice, by the way) and arrived in Istanbul safe and sound. I'll spare you the continuous details of our trip, but we basically did all of the normal tourist things in the city. We visited the Blue Mosque as well as Ayasofya (Hagia Sofia), saw the Basilica Cistern, shopped at the Grand Bazaar, went to the top of Galata Tower, walked around the Taksim district, and took a ferry out Büyükada, which is one of the Prince's Islands. Most of the restaurants and bars around town had waterpipes (or hookah as we usually call it in the US) so both evenings that we were there we hung out and smoked some hookah to wind down our evening. Don't tell my mom.
All in all, it was a great trip. In my opinion we were there for the perfect amount of time. We didn't run out of things to do, but I did just about everything I wanted to do and was tired and ready to come back to Greece.
Tara has about 2 more weeks here and I have about 3 and a half so we still have a little more time to enjoy Europe. We are considering taking another trip to either Berlin and Prague or London and have also talked to my parents about taking a trip to Lefkáda, which is an island (but it's connected by a bridge) on the Ioanian/Italy side of Greece. We are also planning on spending a day or two in Halkidiki, which is a set of 3 gorgeous peninsulas with some awesome beaches on the other side of Thessaloniki. I'm also enjoying just spending time with my parents and am already dreading saying goodbye again in a few weeks!
Oh, and if you know my brother, Andy, you should tell him Happy Birthday because he's turning 25 today. What an old man! He's also about to be a dad (and therefore I'm about to be an aunt) so maybe I'll have something to blog about when I'm back in Texas. We'll see!
Monday, May 31, 2010
the rest of the story...
Although I think the videos mostly speak for themselves, I promised the full story so here it is (sorry for the length, brevity is not a gift that I have):
Tara and I left Texas on Monday, May 17th. As we got closer and closer to our departure date, it started looking less and less likely that we would actually make it to Greece when we were supposed to. Our original plan was to arrive in Athens about 3 hours apart on Tuesday afternoon (Tara first, then me), stay for 2 days in Athens, and then take a train to Katerini on Thursday. About a week before, my parents heard about a 24-hour public and private sector strike coming up. On Thursday. Awesome.
So, with all of Greece more or less shutting down on Thursday, my parents went to the train station and bought tickets for us for the last train out on Wednesday night. That way we still get a day and a half in Athens and make it home before the strike. Crisis averted.
If you remember back to April, the volcano with the ridiculous name that erupted in Iceland caused all kinds of trouble for air travel in Europe, particularly in London. I knew that I had a layover at Heathrow, but that was a full month before, so I assumed it wouldn't be a problem. But then it erupted again. The reports coming in that weekend said that many airports in the UK were already closed and the London airports would likely be closing....oh, on Monday or Tuesday. My flight arrived Tuesday morning. Awesome.
Then I went to church on Sunday. I was telling some of my friends after the service about the strikes in Greece and the volcano and how I was concerned I may not make it. Then it came up that I was flying on British Airways. One of my friends tells me "Oh, I know someone else that is flying British Airways through London, but their flight is canceled because of the strike on Tuesday." Another strike. Fantastic.
So I get online and find out that there is, in fact, a British Airways strike beginning the day of my flight, but they only canceled half of the flights and my flight was not one of them. Ok, crisis #2 averted. As long as the ash cloud holds off and Greece doesn't randomly strike on Tuesday I'll be good to go.
So I get on my flight and turns out that the London airport was closed for a few hours but it wasn't too major and everything was up and running again by the time I got there. I made it to Athens right on time (actually about 10 minutes ahead of schedule, surprisingly enough). So I walk out of the baggage claims/customs area and see my mom, but Tara wasn't with her like we planned. Turns out there was some mechanical problem with Tara's flight out of Newark and she was delayed. For 12 hours.
Here we were all worried that I wouldn't make it for the multitude of reasons mentioned above and it was actually Tara that didn't make it. Irony. Love it.
So Tara's delay actually put her at the airport around 2:30am, but the Metro that we needed to take to get to the airport closes at midnight. After figuring out all our options, we decide to take the Metro from our hotel to Syntagma (the parliament building area) before midnight, and then there was a bus to the airport that takes about 70 min. and runs late at night. So we do that, pick up Tara, take the bus back to Syntagma, and then we had to take a taxi back to the hotel (and my mom got to use her new-found hardcore negotiating skills to force the driver to knock 5 euros off his price. it was awesome).
Ok, so we made it back to our hotel at like 4am, and woke up a few hours later so we could spend the day in Athens before our train leaves at 8:30pm. We went to the Acropolis, the Plaka, Monastiraki, all the normal Athens places, and it was great, but we were super tired and very ready for our train ride home. So we get to the train station with all our bags about a half-hour before our train and my mom went inside to find out which platform to wait on since the signs didn't say anything.
Surprise! They decided to move up the strike. Wow. No trains out the rest of the night. For some unknown reason, even though the strike was still happening on Thursday, they decided to have one train to Thessaloniki. Thankfully, we got on it. We had to find a hotel for the night, which was more craziness, but we ended up back at the same hotel we had been at the night before, right across from the train station.
So after lots of ridiculousness, we finally made it back to Katerini on Thursday afternoon. And just to add a little more random into the mix, my dad (who can strike up a conversation with a brick wall) had made friends with some Greek tobacco farmers earlier in the week and wanted to take us out to meet them. We drove out near their village and found then working in the field so we stopped and "helped" them for awhile and then they invited us back to their house for coffee.
It was a great little re-introduction to Greek life and actually helped me remember the few Greek words that I had picked up from my previous trips.
Tara and I are leaving tomorrow evening and taking a bus to Istanbul (we wanted to take the train, but that's a whole other story that involves flooding and a frog plague. Don't worry about it). I will try to blog about that as soon as we get back. But I'm hoping that this trip won't be quite as "eventful".
Until then, you should check out my dad's blog at tracyandmary.wordpress.com. I promise his posts are much shorter than mine. And he has pictures. And some of them are of me ;-)
Tara and I left Texas on Monday, May 17th. As we got closer and closer to our departure date, it started looking less and less likely that we would actually make it to Greece when we were supposed to. Our original plan was to arrive in Athens about 3 hours apart on Tuesday afternoon (Tara first, then me), stay for 2 days in Athens, and then take a train to Katerini on Thursday. About a week before, my parents heard about a 24-hour public and private sector strike coming up. On Thursday. Awesome.
So, with all of Greece more or less shutting down on Thursday, my parents went to the train station and bought tickets for us for the last train out on Wednesday night. That way we still get a day and a half in Athens and make it home before the strike. Crisis averted.
If you remember back to April, the volcano with the ridiculous name that erupted in Iceland caused all kinds of trouble for air travel in Europe, particularly in London. I knew that I had a layover at Heathrow, but that was a full month before, so I assumed it wouldn't be a problem. But then it erupted again. The reports coming in that weekend said that many airports in the UK were already closed and the London airports would likely be closing....oh, on Monday or Tuesday. My flight arrived Tuesday morning. Awesome.
Then I went to church on Sunday. I was telling some of my friends after the service about the strikes in Greece and the volcano and how I was concerned I may not make it. Then it came up that I was flying on British Airways. One of my friends tells me "Oh, I know someone else that is flying British Airways through London, but their flight is canceled because of the strike on Tuesday." Another strike. Fantastic.
So I get online and find out that there is, in fact, a British Airways strike beginning the day of my flight, but they only canceled half of the flights and my flight was not one of them. Ok, crisis #2 averted. As long as the ash cloud holds off and Greece doesn't randomly strike on Tuesday I'll be good to go.
So I get on my flight and turns out that the London airport was closed for a few hours but it wasn't too major and everything was up and running again by the time I got there. I made it to Athens right on time (actually about 10 minutes ahead of schedule, surprisingly enough). So I walk out of the baggage claims/customs area and see my mom, but Tara wasn't with her like we planned. Turns out there was some mechanical problem with Tara's flight out of Newark and she was delayed. For 12 hours.
Here we were all worried that I wouldn't make it for the multitude of reasons mentioned above and it was actually Tara that didn't make it. Irony. Love it.
So Tara's delay actually put her at the airport around 2:30am, but the Metro that we needed to take to get to the airport closes at midnight. After figuring out all our options, we decide to take the Metro from our hotel to Syntagma (the parliament building area) before midnight, and then there was a bus to the airport that takes about 70 min. and runs late at night. So we do that, pick up Tara, take the bus back to Syntagma, and then we had to take a taxi back to the hotel (and my mom got to use her new-found hardcore negotiating skills to force the driver to knock 5 euros off his price. it was awesome).
Ok, so we made it back to our hotel at like 4am, and woke up a few hours later so we could spend the day in Athens before our train leaves at 8:30pm. We went to the Acropolis, the Plaka, Monastiraki, all the normal Athens places, and it was great, but we were super tired and very ready for our train ride home. So we get to the train station with all our bags about a half-hour before our train and my mom went inside to find out which platform to wait on since the signs didn't say anything.
Surprise! They decided to move up the strike. Wow. No trains out the rest of the night. For some unknown reason, even though the strike was still happening on Thursday, they decided to have one train to Thessaloniki. Thankfully, we got on it. We had to find a hotel for the night, which was more craziness, but we ended up back at the same hotel we had been at the night before, right across from the train station.
So after lots of ridiculousness, we finally made it back to Katerini on Thursday afternoon. And just to add a little more random into the mix, my dad (who can strike up a conversation with a brick wall) had made friends with some Greek tobacco farmers earlier in the week and wanted to take us out to meet them. We drove out near their village and found then working in the field so we stopped and "helped" them for awhile and then they invited us back to their house for coffee.
It was a great little re-introduction to Greek life and actually helped me remember the few Greek words that I had picked up from my previous trips.
Tara and I are leaving tomorrow evening and taking a bus to Istanbul (we wanted to take the train, but that's a whole other story that involves flooding and a frog plague. Don't worry about it). I will try to blog about that as soon as we get back. But I'm hoping that this trip won't be quite as "eventful".
Until then, you should check out my dad's blog at tracyandmary.wordpress.com. I promise his posts are much shorter than mine. And he has pictures. And some of them are of me ;-)
Saturday, May 29, 2010
Episode 3!
I totally forgot to put up Episode 3! I put it on Facebook but forgot to throw it up here, so here you go!
Sunday, May 23, 2010
I'm back!!
I know it's been a full year since I've posted on this blog, but since I am currently back in Greece, I thought I would start back up again for a little while. I know hardly anyone read this blog to start with, but if you added it to your Google Reader (which I highly recommend, by the way) or whatever you use and forgot about it, hopefully you'll enjoy seeing a few posts from me this summer.
This year I am staying for about 6 weeks before I have to go back to College Station to take one session (6 hours) of summer school. My friend, future roommate, and fellow accounting/MIS student, Tara, came with me this year (although she took a different flight) and will leave about a week and a half before I do. I'll post the full story and some more videos later, but here is the first video describing some of the problems we encountered in trying to get to Greece.
This year I am staying for about 6 weeks before I have to go back to College Station to take one session (6 hours) of summer school. My friend, future roommate, and fellow accounting/MIS student, Tara, came with me this year (although she took a different flight) and will leave about a week and a half before I do. I'll post the full story and some more videos later, but here is the first video describing some of the problems we encountered in trying to get to Greece.
Sunday, May 10, 2009
Finals Time
Well it's almost the end of the semester and I'm in full-fledged final-studying mode. Or, at least I have lots of time devoted to studying...I'm sure how productive I'm being. Exhibit A: I'm sitting with my tax book in front of me but instead of working problems about the taxation of partnerships, I'm typing this blog entry.
Dead week/finals week can be both my favorite and least favorite time of the semester. Usually during dead week I don't study much. So basically, it's just college without the class. It doesn't get much better than that. This semester, though, my grades going in to my finals aren't quite what I'd like them to be so I've been more proactive with my study schedule. Don't get me wrong, my grades aren't bad. But I'm definitely not going to be getting a 4.0 this semester. I don't always achieve it, but an A is always my goal in each class and I'm always a little disappointed when I don't get it.
I took a Management final yesterday and in order to get an A in the class I needed to get a 97 on the final. Yeah, that didn't happen. I have a final in Accounting Information Systems (sounds fun, doesn't it?) on Monday that shouldn't be too bad but then on Tuesday I have a final in Tax (not TAKS, although 99% of the time that's what people think I'm saying when I talk about my tax class). I really am hoping to get an A in tax because that grade will go into my accounting GPA, which in some ways I care more about than my overall GPA. Without a curve, I need to get a 107 on my final. Yes, that's out of 100 points. I'm just hoping that if I study really hard I can get a high A and he will curve it enough to bump me up. I know it's not likely, but I just can't bring myself to give up and settle for a B.
After finals are over on Tuesday I have 2 and a half weeks to kill before summer school starts up again. I will mostly be going back and forth between College Station and Dallas with maybe a visit to Austin or somewhere else in there. I have 3 office visits in Dallas but have things to do in CS between them so unfortunately I can't just stay up there. I'm looking forward to the break and being able to relax a little bit before going straight back into full-time school. I've never done summer school before (besides an online ACC class in'07 and my "study abroad" last year that mostly consisted of me hanging out with my parents) so this will definitely be a new experience for me. I'm looking forward to it. I think I will be equally as busy but just in a different way. School will be faster paced so I'll need to work to keep up but I also won't have nearly as many evening activities as I do during the school year so I will have plenty of time to just hang out with people and have fun in addition to my school work.
Well I've procrastinated enough and it's time to get back to my date with my tax book...
Dead week/finals week can be both my favorite and least favorite time of the semester. Usually during dead week I don't study much. So basically, it's just college without the class. It doesn't get much better than that. This semester, though, my grades going in to my finals aren't quite what I'd like them to be so I've been more proactive with my study schedule. Don't get me wrong, my grades aren't bad. But I'm definitely not going to be getting a 4.0 this semester. I don't always achieve it, but an A is always my goal in each class and I'm always a little disappointed when I don't get it.
I took a Management final yesterday and in order to get an A in the class I needed to get a 97 on the final. Yeah, that didn't happen. I have a final in Accounting Information Systems (sounds fun, doesn't it?) on Monday that shouldn't be too bad but then on Tuesday I have a final in Tax (not TAKS, although 99% of the time that's what people think I'm saying when I talk about my tax class). I really am hoping to get an A in tax because that grade will go into my accounting GPA, which in some ways I care more about than my overall GPA. Without a curve, I need to get a 107 on my final. Yes, that's out of 100 points. I'm just hoping that if I study really hard I can get a high A and he will curve it enough to bump me up. I know it's not likely, but I just can't bring myself to give up and settle for a B.
After finals are over on Tuesday I have 2 and a half weeks to kill before summer school starts up again. I will mostly be going back and forth between College Station and Dallas with maybe a visit to Austin or somewhere else in there. I have 3 office visits in Dallas but have things to do in CS between them so unfortunately I can't just stay up there. I'm looking forward to the break and being able to relax a little bit before going straight back into full-time school. I've never done summer school before (besides an online ACC class in'07 and my "study abroad" last year that mostly consisted of me hanging out with my parents) so this will definitely be a new experience for me. I'm looking forward to it. I think I will be equally as busy but just in a different way. School will be faster paced so I'll need to work to keep up but I also won't have nearly as many evening activities as I do during the school year so I will have plenty of time to just hang out with people and have fun in addition to my school work.
Well I've procrastinated enough and it's time to get back to my date with my tax book...
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