// thoughts

Wo hO o O! I'm broke again because I didn't get my card yet, still waiting. So I have a whopping $3! I was soooo hungry but I just found a great budget meal that fills you and tastes good at the same time.

I went back to the place where I bought the chinese buffalo wings from and this time I got one eggroll and wonton soup. Each were $1 so it came out to $2.

Everytime I go there I ask them for dumpling sauce, so what I did was pour the dumpling sauce into the soup and instead of just regular wonton soup it now became hot and sour wonton soup! Yes I'm berry innobatib!

Good stuff and fills you right up...I think I'll be getting this meal daily now, it'll cut my food costs in half!

Wo o ho o ! O-some! $2 meals each day, hot and sour wonton soup and one eggroll. Good to G-O!

+ mon

edit : ok now my stomach hurts, but i don't think it was because of the food, I think I ate too fast!

Just something that I have observed in the past week - the spiritual high off the retreat is slowly wearing off. I don't know if it's for everyone but for me, I'm slowly feeling it calming down a bit. Calm is good, but sometimes we lose the entire "high" because when things calm down a bit, we get sidetracked, we get distracted by other things around us.

Maybe you guys are feeling it to? It's not a bad thing that it's going down, it's one of the nature things that happens here in the BNP - we have a big event, a retreat, an event in Cali and then after a little while, it starts to subside and we go back to our "normal" routine. The only time that it's bad is that you forget what you have experienced, you forget that special feeling you felt during the retreat, during the activity, during that part of your life and you go back to your old life as nothing ever happened.

For example - we go to the retreat, and during the retreat we experience something "life changing." Now we go home and are so "high" with grace that we say all these little "promises" to God or just to yourself that you won't do drugs anymore, drink or get drunk anymore. You're doing great, but after a while you start to level out and that initial "high" isn't as far up there as it once was, and you don't know how to get it back there. Then you turn to your old ways and start drinking, doing drugs again and forget that whole weekend, forget that whole "life changing" event.

Even if you fall, even if you feel that grace decrease, you can always get back up! No matter how hard you fall, there will be people to pick you up now - the servers, your fellow graduates, and most of all God. Don't go beating yourself up about whatever sin you have commited, or something that didn't want to go back to, get back up and show your strength, show your perseverance, show your love for God.

Whatever you guys are going through, trials, test, or anything that might bring you down - pray, fight it, and go back to that weekend you spent with God. Go back to that time when you made those promises to Him, go back to the moment when you felt Him so strongly in your heart, go back to Him.

That "spiritual high" will come back, if you have any suggestions on how to keep it or get it back, feel free to tell us! We're here for you guys, both old and new grad alike! Remember that even if that "high" is not as high anymore, you still have that grace within you.

Grace is the constant state of being in love. If you fall get right back up and keep fighting. Fire it up!

+ mon

Hmmm something was seriously wrong yesterday at the Christmas party!? Let me tell you how we did it back in the day...

When there was a BNP Party and we DJ'd or whomever DJ'd put on some reggae or hip-hop/r&b we would all get up and dance! Then we'd get in trouble by the adults for either putting the music on in the first place (we DJ'd) or we'd get in trouble because we were getting our freak on! We'd stop but then if that kinda music played again we would dance (no more freakin' but just straight dance!).

Yesterday at the Christmas Party?! WTF was going on!? We rocked the line dancing and the old people disco music and everyone dance, including the youth. But when we rocked the reggae, hip-hop/r&b you guys just sat in your chairs and bobbed your heads! People would come up to us and request some hip-hop or reggae, but then you guys wouldn't dance to it! But when we threw line dance up there, you got down and dirty! Holy cow! 43 is a buncha line dancers?! No hip-hop dancers or people who can swing with the reggae?!

That just totally weirded me out and was my whole focus during the party! Would anyone like to comment on that? I just want to know why you guys request certain music and then you don't dance to it, or we put up music we know you like and have danced to (at the retreat) but didn't dance to it at the Christmas party? Blows my mind!

+ mon