Birthdays, Half Marathons, Banquets, and Frisbee! Oh my!

The past few weeks have been quite eventful for me. I marked a quarter century of life back in March. The day was full of sunshine and good friends. I think it was the warmest and sunniest birthday yet. I got to wear a nice sun dress and play frisbee with friends. The best part of that was one of my friends' dads was visiting and he pulled out a guitar and serenaded us while we played. It was so pleasant. The night was topped off with good pizza, beer, and cake. It was a great birthday for being on a Monday.

The weekend after my birthday, I traveled to New York with a few friends to participate in the Allstate Insurance 1/2 Marathon in Queens, NY. It was a lot of fun. I had been training for it since mid-January, which didn't seem like enough time when I got that started. It was great to have so many other friends also running the race so that I did not have to train or run alone. We went up the night before and adventured through NYC to find our hotel, which ended up being right next LaGuardia Airport and nowhere near food. We walked a couple miles through sketchy neighborhoods (note to self, check maps to see where hotel is in relation to subway stations), but it was well worth it. We had nice accommodations and ordered in some pizza to get carb loaded prior to the race. I have never been more nervous for an athletic event in my life, I don't think. The day of I was a bundle of nerves and anxiety. Never before had I run that far and I wasn't entirely sure I was going to make it. Thankfully, I had a good friend I had been training with to run the race with. Sarah and I kept pace with one another for half of the race and at that point I realized I could make it. It was also at that point that I realized that I could actually get a decent time for a first time runner. Two days before the race, my boss had challenged me to break the two hour mark in the race. I laughed at him and told him that I didn't think it was possible. However, when I had reached the halfway mark, I realized that I was on pace to come in at under two hours. It was then that Sarah and I split up. I ran the last half by myself, but it was a great experience.

I crossed the line first of all my friends who were running the race with a time of 1:55:49. It was the best feeling in the world to cross that line and see my time. I am so glad I allowed myself to be talked into signing up for the race. I think it may have just made a long-distance runner out of me.

With the marathon behind me, it was time to start looking toward the end of my seminary career. On Wednesday, the senior class celebrated the end of seminary with a class photo, banquet, and worship service. It was a great time to reminisce about the past three years and to look forward to the future. It was a beautiful night with friends. I am going to miss so many of these people once I leave. While seminary has not always been the easiest experience and community life has thrown some curve balls at me, I have made some very good friends here over the years and it was bittersweet to celebrate those friendships and memories while also marking the end of this time of our lives.

Thursday was my final day of classes and I still can't believe that it is over. Well, not completely over. I still have final papers to write, but most of the work is behind me and I don't have to attend another seminary class for the foreseeable future. Three years went by so fast. I can't believe it. It really does seem like yesterday that I was moving in and getting settled for my first year. But the end has come and in a month, I will shake hands with President Torrance in the University Chapel and receive my diploma (assuming I don't epically fail these final papers).

To mark the end of seminary and kick off finals week, I went with 22 other seminarians to a frisbee tournament at Union Seminary in Richmond, VA. This is probably one of the highlights of my seminary career. It was so much fun to be able to play with my classmates. I love frisbee and I have missed playing in tournaments. It was a great time of fun, fellowship, and frisbee. My team won three of our four games and came in second in the tournament. It was awesome. I loved the people on my team and really enjoyed getting to play an awesome sport with them.

The other teams were great to play for the most part. There were some moments when emotions ran high, but that is to be expected in competitive sports. Nothing got out of hand so that was good. I had been to many tournaments during my college years, but this one will stand out. As it was a seminary tournament, we opened with devotions and prayer and worshiped in chapel together. Each team was asked to send one representative to assist with chapel and I ended up being the person from Princeton to help. It was really cool to worship alongside other seminarians and to serve them communion. I felt like such a theological fan girl when I got to serve communion to Brian Blount (President of Union, former professor of New Testament at Princeton, and author of a great commentary on Revelation). All in all, it was a great weekend. Now I just wish I was a bit younger. My body didn't bounce back as easily from four games of frisbee in a day as it did in college. Oh man, am I sore! Well worth it though.

Now I am just trying to keep calm and get my finals done so I can enjoy the next few weeks before graduation. I think it will be a great month to hang out and celebrate with friends. We have some exciting (and ridiculous) plans made for things we will do during "senior month." I am really looking forward to it, but am also getting sad about it all coming to an end. I am looking forward to getting my plans for next year nailed down. I have an interview tomorrow afternoon for the Tanzania program. It's looking like East Africa is where I'll be for at least the next year. It's exciting and terrifying all at the same time. I think graduation will be more exciting once I get this all nailed down.