November 1

       Soon after I woke up today, I felt super sick. You know how your body hurts so much sometimes that it tenses up and you have to purposely take even breaths to try to calm it down? That was me for about 20 minutes this morning (stupid cramps) until God's grace stepped in and took my pain away. It's crazy how soon we forget how fragile our bodies are. Just the slightest thing can cause us so much pain, and a majority of people's deepest concerns are health-related. The whole issue makes the resurrection, Jesus' and ours, more attractive. We get new bodies, believers! I can't remember the name of the song, but the choir at my high school sang it one year, and these lyrics have stuck with me ever since. It's a spiritual and it says, "All my trials, Lord, soon be over." It rolls around in my head lots of times when things get rough. But our pain is just temporary - we have a real hope!
       After my momentary spell of sickness, I put myself together and headed off to warm up for my voice lesson. It's weird to be learning from a different teacher from mine back home, but it is still so fantastic to be having voice lessons! I really love the whole concept, and my teacher here is very good. I spent the afternoon listening through parts of the the intensely complicated and LONG "Messiah," doing other homework, social networking, singing in the kitchen, and making pizza! It was a veggie pizza on ciabatta this time, and it was bomb. This evening, my friend Alayna had her first live radio show, The Evening Dish! She, Emily, Holly, (my neighbors) and I all went in together, and it was epic! We had some nasty technical problems, and the show was quite awkward in parts, but it was really fun altogether. While listening to the recording afterwards, we pointed out improvement possibilities. It was so cute to hear how all the girls' parents/ family members/ boyfriends were listening in and were being so supportive! Dad, thanks for your emails! I got them both, but I couldn't figure out how to email you back from the studio computer. Now that we've got the ball rolling with the radio, I'm really excited that I got involved. It's something that I would never have done on my own, but I'm enjoying it. What an experience!
       I just have to say that I feel like I've made a small breakthrough with a portion of my class content. I was looking through some links and tutorials online today, and they were actually making sense which is a great improvement. Thank you for your prayers! I have e-music class in the morning, which is the class that has caused me the most grief, so we'll see how long this spell of relief lasts. At least for now, I feel like I made some progress today.

Prayer Request of the Day: That I would manage my time wisely without stressing.