Crazy for Swayze!

Patrick Swayze. I must have thought he was immortal or something. I seem to forget movie stars are just as human as we are and can die from cancer just as easily; I guess no amount of stardom and money can cure something if it’s your time.

Swayze’s obituary in Los Angeles Times basically only mentions his work. It doesn’t mention anything about Swayze or his character, but the movies he’s played in and how wonderful of a dancer he is. It speaks of how his mother taught him to dance at a young age and the different company’s he danced with until an old knee injury flared during his run with the Eliot Feld Ballet Company ending his dance career in 1976. It goes on to speak of the many, some unheard of, movies he was cast in, such as “Dirty Dancing”, “Ghost”, “Point Break”, “City of Joy”, “Next of Kin”, “Road House”, and many other cult films. The article quotes Swayze for saying “he was fed up with that Hollywood blockbuster mentality.” He didn’t want to be the leading man, which explains why he turned down $7 million to start in a “Dirty Dancing” sequel. But these cult films supplied him with the career he wanted for over 30 years. Although not a direct statement about his personal character, the obituary mentions how he continued working even after learning of his diagnosis with a deadly form of pancreatic cancer. It does show the readers and fans that he was very dedicated to his work.

Ain't no rest for the wicked..

After this crazy week, I was exhausted. Actually, after this month, not just this week. I usually make up for the sleep I’ve lacked during the week on the weekends. But since I moved back to Wilmington, everything has been so crazy. I’ve had different things going on every weekend: I had to drive all the way home for 5 hours for a wedding the first weekend, then my brother came to visit so I had to entertain him. The weekend after that was my birthday weekend and a few friends came to visit so of course that weekend was crazy! And this past weekend I went on the Fall Getaway retreat with Cru; needless to say, I didn’t get much rest that weekend either. So basically, I am exhausted. It doesn’t help that the past 2 weeks I’ve had exams and quizzes to study for, papers to write, etc.. I don’t get much sleep during the week, and I haven’t been able to catch up on my sleep during the weekends.

So this weekend, I finally got a break. Friday night was a very relaxing, but still fun, much needed night with my roommates. However, I can’t stay in all weekend, it just drives me crazy. Last night was my friend Angela’s twenty-first birthday! Needless to say, it was one interesting night! I actually don’t drink, but most of my friends do, especially since most of the people there were already 21. Even though I woke up early this morning, I feel so much more rested than I have in the past month. And it feels good.

I think I’m allowed to write about anything on here, so here goes…

I spend quite a bit of my free time doing things with Campus Crusade for Christ. This past weekend I went on a Fall Getaway retreat with Cru.

Before I get to my main point, let me just say that I’ve always been passionate about helping others, especially those who can’t afford to help themselves. I never used to want to actually do the physical labor to help others though; I always thought I would just get rich and help by donating money—nice how I just assume I’ll get rich, right? Too bad it never really works out the way I plan it. I kind of just assumed I would have money because I knew I would do something in the medical field—hence the wanting to help others. But now, I’ve realized I think I may want to actually take mission trips and use my nursing skills, once I graduate from nursing school of course, to help those who can’t afford trips to the doctor in other countries rather than just sending money to random charities—not that donating money is any less important. Without the funds, how would the charities do their great work?

So, back to the point: this past weekend I realized that I would like to take my first overseas mission trip to East Asia(maybe) this summer. It’s through Cru so it would be with people I know and it’s for about 6 weeks. I’ve done mission trips in the States before, but never overseas and I think it will be an amazing experience. I’m so excited and simply cannot wait!

Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. - Matthew 28:19

It's a Southern Thing..

In “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan she explains how she grew up in a home where her mother spoke “limited” English. She stated that most people couldn’t understand her mother at all when she talked sometimes to the point where they thought she was speaking in Chinese, even though Tan had no problem understanding her. It seemed very clear and natural to her. I can’t really relate to this story because I grew up in a home where everyone spoke just plain English. None of my immediate family is immigrants so everyone speaks in a very clear, understandable fashion. But I can say that my father’s side of the family speaks a completely different style of English than my mother’s side. My father’s family is a little more “country” than my mother’s so the words may vary. They may say things like “well I reckon,” or “you-ins,” “’mater” instead of tomato, or “’tater” rather than potato, “ain’t cha,” and other words or phrases similar to those. Now, by no means does my mother’s family speak perfect English with every sentence grammatically correct, but it’s nowhere near as "incorrect" as my father’s family. To an extent, I can relate to Amy Tan’s experience with her mother’s “broken” English because my family speaks two different styles but at least other people outside of my family can understand them.

Just dance.

Well I’m not much for blogging when there isn’t an assigned topic but I’ll give it a shot and see how it goes….

I grew up with two older brothers, so when I was younger I hung out with them and their guy friends. Sometime around age 6, my mother decided that I was too much of a tomboy. Her answer to this problem was to enroll me in dance classes at a nearby studio. She was shuttling me from soccer practice to dance class and a few times I had to leave soccer early; so of course, I didn’t like it at first. I just wanted to play soccer. I had no interest in wearing tights and little pink shoes with those leotards which I used to think looked stupid.

However, eventually, just like my mom had hoped, my mind was transformed. I was able to find the balance between my sports loving, soccer playing self with my little girl ballerina self. I ended up loving dance just as much as soccer. Throughout high school, I made the choice to skip some dance practices because of soccer games and tournaments. But by senior year, dance had become very important to me, I really excelled at it and I loved to do it; rhythm and flexibility came naturally to me. I’m not much with words so dance was how I expressed myself. If I’d had a bad day, I would go to the studio and dance it out. I ended up choosing to only play on one soccer team rather than the usual two I played on so that I could be more serious about dance and attend more classes; I was taking 7 hours a week. Still to this day, I think I made the right choice; as much as I love being active and playing soccer, dancing gives me the best feeling in the world.

“Thousands of emotions well up inside me throughout the day. They are released when I dance.”—Abraham Lincony

Wise Guy Nation

It's been about three weeks and we’ve finally been assigned our first essay; we’ll be evaluating the effectiveness of an argument in a written text. It’s taken me a while but I’ve finally decided to analyze “Hip Unchecked” by Steve Rushin. This is an article from a 1999 issue of Sports Illustrated in which he argues that American conversation has become satirical. He claims we’ve exchanged sincerity and compassion for sarcasm and cynicism. Rushin’s argument is an example of an epideictic argument in that he is trying to convince his readers that America is currently sarcastic; he doesn’t mention the past or what will happen in the future.

Rushin provides quite a bit of evidence throughout the rather short article; however, something seems to be missing. All of his evidence is of the male population even though he is trying to prove that both men and women have become increasingly sarcastic. There are ways that Rushin could have made his argument more effective providing not more but better evidence and I intend to explore those ideas in my essay.

Whose fault is it anyway?

We’ve started out this year with a few readings about people being overweight, whether it was Fijian women or an American author. In each story, there was a different person to blame. In Ellen Goodman’s article, she wrote that as the Western culture expanded to the island, it changed the traditional Fijian way of thinking. Before 1995, essentially before television had come to the island, the people of Fiji thought women with curves were beautiful. “Big was beautiful and bigger was more beautiful—and people really did flatter one another with exclamations about weight gain.” Ellen Goodman and Anne Becker both blame the American media for this change in Fijian culture. Although the media definitely doesn’t help the situation, ultimately it is the woman’s choice what extreme measures she takes to make herself feel and look good according to her own standards. America definitely has it’s messed up standards for what looks good; however, we did not force it on the Fijians. They made the choice and the American culture should not be blamed for it.

Judith Moore’s book gives us a completely different outlook on this topic with her take no prisoner's attitude. She is mad at the many people who made fun of her and took advantage of her and she doesn’t mind voicing it. It’s not quite what most readers would’ve expected to read; I was expecting to hear a sob story telling me why I should feel sorry for her for being overweight. I was waiting for Jane Stern to say that it was a story of her excuses for why she was overweight as a child and why it continued into her adulthood. But that’s not what I received. There are real reasons as to why she gained weight as a child and she accepts them and has tried to lose weight but just can’t. There were factors that played into her weight gain; however, she did not try to blame it on someone else.