i'm gonna be the youth intern at first pres next year! phewwww i can finally talk about it! of course i already slipped and told a bunch of people before i was supposed to, but tonight at the senior goodbye dinner thingie at church for the high schoolers, they announced it and it's official. God is so so so so good, He gets ALL the glory on this one and i am so unbelievably excited, i basically can't describe it. if i could choose ANYTHING in the world to do next year, this would be it!! how amazing is it that i actually get to do it!!! oh my goodness, i love these kids so much and i just can't wait. God is so good!!!!

(ha ha this is the subdued version of me talking about the internship, i've known about it for about two months. you shoulda seen me the day i found out...)

Jesus loves you, but i'm his favorite.

sooooo yeah it may seem as though my pride has about gone off the deep end with that statement. and haha i'm not saying that it's not something i struggle with but for this one little second, that's beside the point. think about that statement for a bit. first of all, i absolutely believe that i'm the Lord's favorite. the thing is, that so are you. all of you. we are ALL Jesus' favorite.  He loves us so much, that anyone who would look at that love, has no choice to say "wow, that person is definitely His favorite. oops, and so is that person! and that person! oh my gosh, Jesus has 6 billion favorites!!" that is the coolness of God. first of all, the rules of grammar don't apply to Him--He can have 6 billion superlatives, no problem. second of all, that's just such a crazy big strong love, it's hard to imagine, but the little statement up there helps me to almost fathom it for a second. oh and by the way, i wish i had thought of all that, but i actually heard it as part of an amazing talk by Darcy Hall at the All Church Conference this past weekend. amazing stuff!

so tonight is my last night in our apartment. i'm really really sad. this year has been incredible, and i love my roommates so much. we all went to the 4:45 together tonight--for the last time!!!--and then Katie left. so it's just me and Lis, and then tomorrow I leave, and tuesday Lis leaves! sniffle! there are so many great things and opportunities coming up, i shouldn't really be sad, but it's just hard for something so very wonderful to come to an end.

paul stahlke--one of my favorite people on earth, one of the most humble people ever and would probably kill me for writing this but he's not a nerd like me spending all his time online so the odds of him reading this are slim to none. i just have to say that his friendship is one of the biggest blessings in the world. an example of his greatness: he was driving katie, lis and me home from dinner in the city friday night, and we (well the girls...) were lamenting the fact that it was probably one of the last times all four of us would be hanging out, and we hadn't even taken a picture together.  paul responded by saying that we could take a picture anytime--the place doesn't matter--we could even take a picture at walgreens, which we happened to be passing. hahaha and with that he swerved into the walgreens parking lot, jumped out of the car and went up to the walgreens security guard to ask if he'd take a picture of all of us, and he did. so of course whenever i look at those pictures from now on, i will have a humongous smile.

praise the Lord for friends!

the whole "love like you'll never be hurt" thing is great. in theory.

(sorry i'm feeling a little melodramatic today and some relationships are giving me a little bit of trouble, well it's probably more like i'm giving them trouble but yay for graduation this past sunday, more about that later.)

honestly, i have nothing significant to say right now, (i'm not implying that i ever have anything significant to say, but right now i'm especially deficient in that area...) it's just that xanga-ing is ever ever ever so much more appealing than 6-8 page sociology paper-ing. although if i had college to do over again, i think that i would double major in soc. and english. the problem with that plan though is that i might have to take more than 13 units some semester, and that would just not work. my brain doesn't learn after 13 units.

i'm starting to feel super super nostalgic about the fact that i will soon not be seeing my dearest berkeley peeps for at least a summer, longer than that for some of them. God is so fun and creative and wonderful in the people that He makes!

i went swimsuit shopping today, thank goodness it was with janelle who is wonderful at making life seem sunny when it's not, because trying on swimsuits is perhaps THE MOST depressing activity in the entire world. why am i going to costa rica again? needless to say, i didn't buy one. well i bought like a workout one for next year--i'm hoping to try the strawberry canyon masters team--but they just don't make cute swimsuits for certain body types, like oh, mine.

a little quote from my dear pondy friend heidi's away message:

"There are harder things to do than finding a good guy.  Like nailing jello to a tree for instance..."

hahahahahah. that made me laugh for a really long time.

all righty back to sociology. i realize this entry is particularly vapid, thanks for suffering through it.

yup it's been a little while.

today was my last day of college classes! oh my goodness. my professor in my soc. class--my last class at cal ever--is so darling, she was totally crying in class today, and it was a really sweet way for my college career to end--totally flying in the face of the cold Cal professor who only cares about research stereotype. she loves her students so much, and just sincerely wants us to put what we've learned into practice. (it was a very very eye-opening class about the subtle ways that racism is institutionalized, and the ways we can fight it.) so yup i've got one more paper to turn in, and then college is over!! so weird.

grad sunday two days ago--our Lord is so beautiful and gracious, totally blessed me with the challenge of talking about some of the scarier ways He has worked in my life--in front of the whole church! He just keeps continually showing me that when things are brought from the darkness into the light, He is faithful and gives us boldness to talk about things that are hard. i'm so thankful for all the encouragement that has come from that night--my friends are incredible--but allllll the glory goes to our heavenly Father. Praise Him for giving us joy!

and it was so fun to sing with Paul!! yay!!

a little excerpt from an ee cummings poem i like very much:

"the great advantage of being alive
(instead of undying) is not so much
that mind no more can disprove than prove
what heart may feel and soul may touch
--the great(my darling)happens to be
that love are in we,that love are in we"

ok so mush mush being in love is great and all but my favorite part of this stanza is where it talks about  being alive vs. "undying." think about the difference between those things! life isn't simply avoiding death--it's living!!

does that make sense?