I am currently sitting in the Chicago O’Hare airport waiting for my flight home to North Carolina for fall break. It’s hard to believe that I’m already done with a quarter of my freshman year—the weeks go by so fast! I am officially done with A-Quad and my first two classes- Intro to Music and Intro to Spiritual Formation. Next Quad, I will continue with Biology and Chemistry, as well as Bible and Theology (BITH) and Wellness. In the past eight weeks I have:
· Gone to Chicago twice
· Hosted a friend from Costa Rica
· Gone to a friend’s house for the weekend 
· Been raided by our brother floor
· Raided our brother and sister floors
I first went to Chicago with my Big Sib group- a group of 7 freshmen led by two sophomores during orientation. We went to Millennium Park, saw the Bean, and went to Pizano's pizza for deep dish pizza--delicious! When we got off the train back in Wheaton, upperclassmen were waiting with water balloons. Luckily, I was able to make it back to my room with minor water damage.
A few weeks later, Megan and I went with Matthew and a few of his friends to the Chicago Jazz Festival in Millennium Park. The music was awesome, and I was able to review it for a music assignment at the same time!
Morgan Sharpe, a friend from Costa Rica who now lives in Nicaragua, is a junior in high school and was checking out Wheaton in September. Megan and I hosted her in our dorm room for the night, showed her around a bit, and basically told her why she needed to come to Wheaton. Unfortunately, I didn't get a picture with Morgan, but here is a picture of my room.
Jesse, one of the girls in my Passage group, invited me and another 
girl in our group to come to her house for the weekend a couple weeks ago. She only lives about an hour away, so we took the train to Chicago, and then another train into Lake Forest, where she lives. It was so nice to get off campus and be in a home again, even though her parents weren’t there. We made cookies ( although we liked the dough better!), watched movies, and Jesse showed us around her little town. It was a lot like Matthews, NC only bigger—so cute!
A raid is an event that each floor is required to do at least once a semester. There are two types of raids: silent and loud. A silent raid is performed by sneaking into your brother/sister floor, and decorating it while everybody is asleep. A loud raid is one in which you develop a theme and go all out in dressing up and decorating. Between 12 and 12:30
in the morning, the whole floor that is raiding runs screaming down the halls and banging on the doors of the brother and/or sister floor(s) that are being raided. Ideally, you have no idea you’re being raided, but sometimes people tell which is no fun. Our brother floor (4 East) loud raided us first three weeks ago. Their theme was church history, which was a lot funnier than it sounds, trust me. Our theme was Veggie Tales! We dressed up as little kids or VeggieTales characters, and decorated the large gathering room with scribbled Veggie Tales coloring pages. Because Big Idea and Veggie Tales were recently sold to another company, our whole theme was based on a made-up organization called S.T.A.R.V.E.—Students Take Action Regarding Vegetable Endangerment. We had everything from VeggieTales trivia to Silly Songs with Larry interpretive dancing. It was a lot of fun, and I think our brother and sister floor really enjoyed it! 
