Almost Done!

Only six more days left of school!!!!!
So last night I was extremely nervous(hence the picture)! I had to present my capstone (senior thesis) in front of about thirty people which included professors, classmates, and friends. I was extremely nervous. It went really well!! I stayed within my time limit! Everyone seemed really interested and they asked lots of questions. The best feeling was when my advisor kept nodding his head when he liked my answers! I am so glad this is over! Only six more days left of this semester and then I student teach!! WOO HOO!

When I went home for Thanksgiving we had a Family PhotoShoot. It was so fun and crazy with four children, but they did a great job! Here are a few of my favorites...
Brandy Foshe did a great job (www.foshefotos.blogspot.com)

This picture is adorable! It is my absolute favorite. Z is putting is finger in his mouth, but it looks like he is saying Shhh! So cute!


This is baby Pepper! She is so precious!


The Family
Thanksgiving was fun, but I had to write four papers in four days and I ended up with a migraine for 9 days! YUCK! Thankfully I won't have to write any papers over Christmas!

The Wedding

The Wedding!! Joel ( Titus's brother) and Courtney( a friend of mine from school) got married in May!! Here are some pictures from their wedding. Enjoy




This is at Courtney's bridal lunch the day of the wedding.

She was crying during the ceremony. Joel is so sweet to wipe her tears!

This is a picture of the Fern boys. They are goofy!

The groosmen.

This is courtney with her new family! She is now a Fern
Rosalie, the flower girl was very entertaining! A group of us were dancing with her at the reception. We were penguins!


The beautiful wedding cake! It was so delicious.

Courtney was pointing at me and threw the bouquet directly to me... and then I was knocked on to the floor! haha Oh well, someone else got the bouquet. There is always next time! It was pretty funny though!

Adventures in Dino World

Sorry these are out of order- I always forget to put the pictures in backwards. Here are pictures from my trip to Nashville to visit my roomate Alex who is interning at the state capital. My other pictures are with friends to a road trip to Indiana for an education department conference. We decided to stop at dinosaur world on the way back!!

Spring Break

Barefoots Joe

This is our new and improved student lounge! It is amazing. It is a coffee shop on our campus which we call Barefoots Joe! This is where I sit every morning sipping tea and studying. We have concerts in here aswell! The alums and administration at Union wanted to give us all a place to hangout since the commons were destroyed along with our dorm rooms and so they gave us this amazing new coffee shop!

New Dorms

First of al thank you for your prayers and support! It has been such a blessing to see how people from around the United States have been praying, donating clothes, supporting through finances, and mailing us cards and letting us know that they care! THANK YOU ALL!

Here is an update on whats new at Union:

Union broke ground on NEW DORMS on Friday, February 22. Here is a news clip from http://www.uu.edu/ which tells about Unions rebuilding process.

A 10-year plan for new student housing at Union University has become a 10-month plan, as the university broke ground today on a new residence life complex that will be finished no later than the spring 2009 semester.The facility will consist of 14 buildings that will house more than 700 students when it is fully completed. Initial plans call for half of the facility to be complete by Sept. 1, providing plenty of campus housing for new students enrolling at Union in the fall.“Today in what seems almost beyond comprehension, two weeks and three days after a tornado destroyed large portions of this campus, we gather together to give thanks to God for a new beginning and the opportunity to build again,” Union President David S. Dockery said in a chapel service preceding the groundbreaking ceremony.

The plans for the new dorms is incredible!!! There will be a washer in dryer inside the norm dorms, with the bathroom in each bottom floor dorm reinforced to be a safe room, and the dorms are being built to withstand extreme winds.

The Wedding

Rehearsal Dinner

Me in my bridemaid's dress

Rach and me

I was in a wedding last weekend. My friend Rachel Hunt got from high school became Mrs.Weinke on February 9th. Here are some pictures from her wedding. It was so fun. This was the first nonfamily wedding I have been in! It is so weird that my friends and I are old enough to get married!

The Aftermath

This is the back of my dorm complex.

This is the back of my dorm! There is my kitchen! You can see my two roomates rooms on the left and right. One of my roomies bed is gone!

Here is the debris on the side of my dorm!

This is the back of my dorm!

Here is the front of good 'ole Dodd! My room is the one on the second floor, by the right stairs. I have lived here for almost three years.

This is my living room- It is destroyed!

Here is a random door blown from its building wedged into the sidewalk



This is the all girls complex-hurt. This complex is across from mine(seperated by a parking lot)

This is another view of Hurt, it was destroyed, to say the least


Creepy!!!

Here is Wingo, it is a dorm in Hurt Complex! The girls who lived here were trapped in the building for a little while after the tornado. Thankfully they were able to get out of the building, but they had to climb over and through the debri.

This is a small glimpse of what my campus looks like now after the tornado hit! Please keep us in your prayers! It was a devestating and traumatic event, but we are all glad to be alive!
I am soo blessed! I thought that I had lost everything in the tornado, but I had an amazing surprise when I came home. I had forgotten to pack some clothes and so I have things! God blessed me with what I needed! He is definitely a provider!! I am just amazed by how much He has been faithful over the last few days. It is very comforting how much the little things can make a person's day!

Please be praying for...

1. Students who live overseas and don't have a place to stay or a passport to get home.

2. Students who lost everything(majority of them)

3. That we will be able to return to campus by the 18th and have school

4. That God will provide housing for the students

5. For peace and comfort among the Jackson Community, students, faculty/staff, and families

Thanks I appreciate your prayers!!

DISASTER

WOW! God is so amazing. Is all powerful and I definitely experienced His protected hand tonight. A tornado touched down on my college campus tonight!!! My roommates and I were in our room about to do homework. It was a normal night. Until the sirens went off and so my roommates and I ran down stairs and stayed in the room of the girls underneath us. None of us thought the tornado would actually touched down so we were talking and doing homework. When the lights flickered and then went out. We ran to the bathroom as hail hit the building. Then the windows blew out. We shut the door of the bathroom just in time. There were about sixteen girls crammed into the tiny bathroom. We crouched down to the floor and the mirror shattered into several pieces. We listened as the room shook. Immediately we reached for our phones to make sure friends were okay. Then we prayed to God and sang praise songs. We were so thankful that we were safe. The night just progressed into a foggy nightmare. Our school is destroyed and eight boys were trapped in the rubble of a building. Thankfully around 12 the students were all rescued from the building. I ask for your prayer for Union University and Jackson, TN. As well as the cities that the 45 other tornadoes caused damage too! Please pray for our school and that all the students are okay. I ask that you pray for a quick recovery of our school. Tonight God showed me how protective he is. Looking at my school people should have died, but no one did. God is so faithful and I am just so amazed and blessed to be one of his children. I am blessed that God spared not only me but my friends and fellow students.
I would really appreciate your prayer!! This definitely puts the verse, " ... do not store up treasures on earth for rust and moth destroy..." into perspective, because the 3,000 plus students at Union do not have anything except the clothes they were wearing. So I pray for the students that God will give us a peace and trust that we will be taken care of. God is incredible and amazing!!!

Back to School!

I had the best time being home with my family for a month. I rarely get to see them and it was so much fun hanging out with my sisters and my mom. I am also glad to be back at school! I have missed it.
I have been volunteering at a local church with their Adult ESL program. Last night we had around ten students in the beginning class. Last semester we only had two. I am so excited that the class is growing. If you could pray for the classes to grow and expand that would be much appreciated. This is a really neat ministry. Next week I start teaching the beginning class. I am extremely nervous about teaching adults twice my age! I am sure it will be fine.
Well it is time for work, I will post more later!

Influential Music

Yesterday, I was cleaning my room and listening to my ipod. I was listening to a band named Nickleback. When the words to one of my favorite songs caught my attention. For the first time I truly understood the lyrics and I didn't like what I heard. I was naive enough to believe that the song was about love when in reality it was about lust. This got me thinking how influential music is on teenagers and college students. Music is a big part of our lives and we listen to it when we drive in the car, study, hang out with friends etc. Kids make excuses for their music saying that the words aren't that important they just listen to the beat. I beg to differ the words are important and they do impact us. Listening to this Nickleback song made me realize that I have to be careful what I listen to. I am a vessel of Christ and it is important for me to listen to music which is uplifting and pure as well as to think pure and uplifting thoughts.
I really challege you to be careful what you listen to, because the words do matter!

I got a hair cut today!

The last two to three weeks I have been sick. I went from having a mysterious rash on my face which made my lips swell up( I looked like I had a bad botox job and rolled around in poison ivy). Then I got a virus in which I had a fever for two days and then I had a sinus cold. I am not trying to complain. I am just letting you know how my last three weeks have been spent. So today I felt amazing when I went to Shiloh to work as a secretary and then got a haircut afterwards. I felt like a girl and I was so glad not to be stuck in my house. YEAH! FREEDOM!!

Check out my Slide Show!

I am Officially a Blogger!

After months of watching my sister blog I have decided to conform to the wide world of blogging. Why the name hitchhiker you ask? After the termination of my car back in June of 2005, I have become very creative in my ways of getting to and fro from here to there. So I think Hitchhiker Travels is only fitting. I hope you enjoy my new blog!