The Azusa Pacific Blog

A couple of friends from High Sierra and I got to get outside today and take advantage of this beautiful, 80-degree weather we’re having and do a little rock climbing! 

The spot: “Big Rock” at Perris Lake near Riverside, CA (about an hour from main campus).

After all the training and experience we received last semester and some extra time in the gym and reading up on some climbing books, we were ready to head out and do a little climbing on our own. We left at about 8:30 AM, were climbing by 9:30, and had a good 5 hours on the rock. It was a great spot for learners. There were all different types of routes and difficulties, and it gave us quite a few challenges that were fun to work out. 

We’re planning on heading back soon as it’s so close to campus! It definitely beats climbing in the gym…

Now I know not everyone takes away the same lessons and experiences from High Sierra. My reasons for going were far different than many other people on my semester. But that’s the beauty of the program. It has something for everyone. My interests reside in the outdoors – rock climbing, cycling, hiking, etc. Others’ reside in art, in relationships, in music, or a number of different areas. The great thing about High Sierra was that not only did I get to dive in deep into a world where I was able to feed my passions on a daily basis, but I was able to acquire a complete circle of other experiences. 

Coming away from Bass Lake, I was able to take a new passion of mine – rock climbing – and learn so much about it. Now I have the experience needed to continue that passion here in LA with some friends on the weekend. But the great thing is: rock climbing is just one of the dozens of experiences that made my semester what it was.

And I think everyone who’s been to High Sierra could say the same: you go in expecting one thing, and take away something completely different.

Big Rock (about 23 routes all together)

Dan setting up his brand new rope

Kenton checking out his cut finger

Justin stretching out the lat's

Myself moving up a 5.9

After a month off, spent almost entirely relaxing at home with my family, girlfriend, and friends, I’m back in Azusa – and let me tell you, it is so good to be back.

Christmas break was exactly what I needed. When High Sierra had finished, I needed time to decompress and get used to being back in the busy world again. The month off helped allowed me to get the rest I needed, see some of my favorite people, spend a huge amount of time with my family and girlfriend, visit some extended family up in Chicago and Minnesota, and see a bunch of great movies.

Oh, and allow me to tell you about the weather I experienced in Illinois…

I woke up one morning in early January to a -20 degree temperature reading on our thermometer…and that wasn’t the only day.

I believe the final count of extreme weather was around 3 power-outage-inducing, tree-down’ing, drive-more-carefully-than-you’ve-ever-driven-before ice storms ( One of which I was caught in on a 2 and 1/2 hour drive to Indianapolis at about 10:00 at night to pick up my girlfriend from the airport. The drive took 4 and 1/2 hours and I nearly died spinning off the road into the graveyard of cars already frozen in the ditch after having less luck on the ice than I did).

Needless to say, finally stepping off the plane in Ontario, CA was the welcomed culmination of a month spent in bone-shivering cold weather.

Since being back, the transition has gone amazingly well. There was a moment of hesitation, however, before I arrived on campus. As my roommate Aaron drove me back to campus from the airport, I was slightly worried about the new semester. I was worried that so much had changed since I left. I was worried that my friends might not call me when they got together simply because I slipped out of their minds. Being back in a class of 30+ people sounded intimidating. Would the constant events in my day to day life seem overwhelming and paralyze me from being productive?

I woke up the next morning – the first day of classes – and to my surprise, I felt energized for a semester of new classes, excited to be back in Azusa with my old friends, and ready to take on a new semester. Worry, stress, and the overwhelming feeling of being in a big city again have all taken a back seat these first two weeks. Seeing my friends again was like I had never left. They welcomed me back and I immediately felt at home again. The new classes are certainly bigger than my classes at High Sierra, but the knowledge and skills I picked up last semester have made me feel so much more comfortable in a big-class setting, allowing me to speak up more and share my opinions and answers with the class.

“Busy” is a word relative to how you see it. For years the word “busy” scared me. It brought with it connotations of stress, endless hours of work, and no sign of relaxation or fun. But since coming back from High Sierra, I’ve realized that there are two different ways to look at this word. I can be “busy” with dozens of things that have to get done, chopping away at homework like I would a big tree with an axe – waiting for it to come crashing to the floor so I can be finished and move onto the next thing, making “appointments” with different friends at the coffee shop just to catch up with them for a brief 15 minutes, checking them off the list and moving on to the next friend. Or, I can see my days as being “busy” with things that I get to do each day – enjoying the time I spend in the library and savoring my studies, getting on the bike and riding up Glendora Mountain Road in the morning before class – even if it means getting up at 6:30 AM, and hanging out with friends and appreciating each one of them and reconnecting with them, even if it takes time to get around to everyone.

I used to get so overwhelmed with the amount of things that needed to be done. My schedule could look pretty intimidating, and I found myself getting so stressed everyday, waiting for the weekend to come. But now I look at my days as opportunities. Meetings become time to connect with people. Classes become enjoyable and something I thoroughly look forward to.

Hopefully this optimistic mindset is something that I can hold onto this entire semester. If I know one thing, it’s that High Sierra has taught me to slow down and relish each moment, every person, and every opportunity.

In other news, I’m so pumped to be riding Glendora Mountain Road again. The riding at Bass Lake was definitely beautiful, but I really came to love my ride into the San Gabriel Foothills last year, and I’ve been getting up early most mornings to ride my favorite route. I took an early morning ride this weekend and met another fellow rider who keeps a blog on the route, and I actually made it onto her website! (http://glendoramtnroad.blogspot.com/).

And also, as some of you may have heard, the Oscar nominations just came out. I’m pleasantly surprised by some nominations, happy with others, and furious with a few. I recently have been catching up on a lot of nominated films, such as The Wrestler, Revolutionary Road, The Reader, Man On Wire, and Gran Torino. It’s going to be a tough match this year for a lot of the categories – there’s been so many great films in the last quarter of 2008.

Are any of you following the Oscar race? Has anybody seen some great films lately?

Also, you guys can feel free to ask my any other questions about anything APU related! I’d love to answer them!

Hope everyone is well as they’re heading back to school after break. I’ll talk to you soon!

My friends and I took a trip up to San Luis Obispo last weekend and caught this beautiful view of Santa Barbara and the Channel Islands on the way home.

So the High Sierra promo video I told you all about a while back is finally finished and up on the APU website! My good friend Anders put a TON of hard work into it and the final product is absolutely fantastic. 

In case you didn’t get a chance to read my earlier post about it, the video is a product of APU’s University Relations department and was shot and directed by a good friend of mine who graduated from APU’s Cinema Broadcast Arts program last year. He came up to the High Sierra campus back in October to spend a weekend with us shooting lots of interviews and footage of us studying, playing, and living life up in the mountains.

He’s been working super hard on the video for the past couple months and it’s so amazing to see the fruits of his labor. I feel so blessed to have been up there while this video was shot: now I have an incredible, vivid reminder of my experience at High Sierra for the rest of my life.

The video is up on APU’s home page, but here it is for all of you guys to check out!

Enjoy!

http://vimeo.com/2752339

Well it’s now only been a couple weeks since I left Bass Lake and transitioned back into life at home in Illinois, and oddly enough, it feels like I never left. The places I go and the things I experience have started to blur together and I’m having difficulty remembering where I am and what’s next.

Transitioning from place to place is an activity I have gotten used to over the past three years. The sounds and smells that accompany airports have become engrained in my memory. Even the smell of jet fuel has now associated itself with the though of coming home. Suitcases have become dresser drawers, sometimes never getting unpacked simply because I know I’ll just be packing them again soon. 

It’s hard to not really have a place to call home. It’s not easy saying goodbye to my family, my girlfriend, and my friends over and over again. 

As I’ve been relaxing at home the last couple weeks with friends and family, however, I’ve had some very good conversations about this very topic.

It could have been so easy for me to not take a risk and stay at home. I could have gone to a Big 10 school 30 minutes down the road. I would see my family multiple times each semester. They would come up and visit and come to football and basketball games with me. My friends from high school would have become my college friends. My life would have been much more predictable and stable – I would have had my whole life laid out before me in a easy-to-read instruction manual.

But as I talked to my friends and observed their lives, I realized how lucky I am. How lucky I am that I took the risk to go to a school 2,000 miles away in a place I’d only been once before where I would know not a single student. How lucky I am that I have been able to experience the sense of adventure of going to a new place by myself, meeting new people, and pushing myself to see how much I could grow. How lucky I am that I’m at an incredible Christian university where I am gaining not only a top-notch education, but also investing in the eternal – in my life as Christian and everything that entails. 

So many things wouldn’t have happened if I wouldn’t have come to APU. I would never have met so many amazing people that play such a huge role in my life. I would never have had the opportunity to experience the outdoors like I have and gain the love for them that I have today. I would never have met Kelly, my amazing girlfriend. I would never have had the opportunity to travel so much and see so many wonderful things in the western United States. And I would never had the opportunity to experience something like High Sierra.

With the ability to look back with some clear hindsight, I can now positively say that High Sierra was easily my best semester at Azusa Pacific. I gained so much from my time there and I am not the same person today as I was when I first stepped onto that campus in September. There were definitely some hard spots – being away from some very important people in my life – but those relationships are all the stronger now for having gone through that.

I love the fact that I’ve been able to blog about my experience up in the mountains this past semester. Going back over my old posts and remembering all the fantastic times I had up there is something that will never get old. In fact, my dad printed out one of my posts and framed it for me for Christmas so that I’ll always remember what I took away from High Sierra. 

I hope that through blogging about my experience at High Sierra, I was able to incite in you an interest in this amazing program that APU has to offer. I hope that what I shared with you described to you a little bit about the absolutely amazing staff and faculty that played such huge roles in my life who I know call friends. I hope that I showed you how many life-changing experiences I had that shaped me in new ways and helped me to grow both as a student and a Christian. 

And I hope you’ll e-mail me if you have any more questions about High Sierra because I would love nothing more than to talk to you about it and give you more insight into the semester!

I’m now getting ready for another transition – my next semester back down on main campus. As I am preparing to head back out to the Golden State, a lot of people are telling me it will be very difficult transitioning from High Sierra back to life in Azusa. 

Leaving High Sierra was a very hard thing to do. To say goodbye to the life I had known for the past three and a half months was difficult to say the least. But shed tears I did not. 

As my roommate Dan and I drove away from Bass Lake a few weeks ago, I had a smile on my face – not because I was glad to be leaving, but because I knew what awaited me. I had just spent the last three and a half months being filled to the brim spiritually, academically, and experientially by the faculty and staff of High Sierra. I am astounded at the efforts and time spent on us students by these amazing people. They created this semester to be one that inspires and causes growth in these areas, and through their wonderful efforts they succeeded in that. High Sierra was very hard work, but leaving that campus I knew what awaited me – the opportunity to take all that I learned and bring it back into life at main campus, life at home, and life in the future. 

And I think that is exactly what the semester was set up to be – a time for filling the students up so that they might return to their lives in the “real world” as better scholars and stronger Christians.

Transition used to scare me. It symbolized instability and starting over. But today – transition gets me excited. I’m ready to take on the next chapter in my career as a student and I’m ready to take everything I learned at High Sierra and apply it. 

You’ll hear from me again as soon as I get back to APU for the Spring semester. My pictures may not be as exciting as before (can you really beat Yosemite?), but I hope you keep reading as I discuss my transition back to “real life”.

I hope you all had a great Christmas and New Years! Watch a lot of movies, spend a lot of time with your family, and take a lot of naps! See you in a few weeks!

Hello again!

It’s been a while…and a busy past few weeks! I’ve managed to squeeze in quite a few activities since I last posted (a multi-pitch rock climbing trip, Trek 2, a lot of homework/papers/projects, and a trip down to main campus for Thanksgiving).

I’m back now from Thanksgiving break and things are beginning to wind down up here at High Sierra. We only have nine days left in the mountains, and they’re going fast.

Allow me to update you on some recent occurrences.

Three weeks ago we loaded up our packs with sleeping bags, rain jackets, fleece layers, headlamps, and the rest of the gear, threw on our hiking boots, and loaded up the vans for a 4-day trip to Yosemite Valley for our second Trek.

Just like the first Trek, we split up into our teams of about 10-12 people and drove up in separate vans. Now, from here, I’m not allowed to give away a lot of secret details from the trip for those of you who might be considering High Sierra, but I can tell you that we hiked all over Yosemite Valley, saw three waterfalls, a couple of bears, and saw the valley floor from a number of different vantage points. The pictures I post should help explain a little more, but I can’t ruin the surprise for those who might be coming to High Sierra ;-)

It’s tough for me to decide which Trek I enjoyed more, since both were such remarkable experiences, but second Trek was definitely a time where we were able to grow and deepen our relationships with the people on our teams. After almost two weeks together in the wilderness, you get to know each other pretty well.

In other news, I recently finished my final project for my camping class, which was a blast to complete. The project entailed designing an all-encompassing plan for a 4+ day backpacking trip. I decided to plan my trip for Glacier National Park in Northern Montana. I’ve never been there before, but I’ve seen pictures and heard stories of the beautiful, glacier-carved mountains that fill the landscape of the “backbone of the continent”. My trip came out to be seven days and 55-miles – a slightly ambitious project. The project required us to plan every square inch of the trip and is now sitting in a folder completed waiting for me to go do it!

The last nine days here are going to be hectic, but the faculty, staff, and RA’s are working hard to make sure we have plenty of breaks and fun distractions to keep us motivated. Art journals, final papers, and tests are filling up our days, but it’s been so great to watch our collective attitude towards these assignments change from duty to privilege over the course of the semester. My final papers have now become a great learning experience where I get to sit down in a quiet room and actively reflect on what I’ve learned this semester. The fear of writing a fifteen-page philosophy paper has subsided to joy and I’m actually excited to write it! Now I just need to get started…

I’ll be checking back in later this week or early next week with some more final words on my High Sierra experience. But for now…it’s time to write those papers.

Good luck to all of you with your finals as you approach them and remember to think of them as another learning opportunity – they become much less daunting that way!

Clouds over campus

More clouds creeping in before a big rainstorm

Our view of the valley from atop Eagle Peak

A spot along a creek where I had my solo time

El Capitan Meadow where we reunited on the last day of Trek

A view of Half Dome on the way down from Yosemite Falls

Being that the semester is almost to a close, I’ve come up with a top ten list of the things I’ll miss most about High Sierra in no specific order:

1.) The Community. 34 people living together, eating together, studying together, working together, hiking together, and helping each other become the best students and people we can become. Living in this environment produced so many amazing friendships that will absolutely continue into the rest of our college careers.

2.) My bike rides around the lake. Being an avid cyclist, I obviously brought my road bike up to campus expecting to stay in shape. What I didn’t expect was the absolutely beautiful rides I would have while living up here. About three to four times a week I was able get out on the bike for a ride around Bass Lake. My favorite rides were the ones right before dinner, as the sun was setting, and the shadows of the trees along the road were long, and the sunlight had turned golden.

3.) The classes and the professors. These professors care about you and your education. They spend their days, and often their meals, with you, getting to know you, building friendships, discussing topics from class, going on Trek, and truly playing a paramount role in your semester up here. These professors and their classes opened up my world scholastically, teaching me so many new things and giving me a new, enormous appreciation for learning and reading. My last year and a half at school will be ten times more fruitful and productive because of them.

4.) The faculty and staff. Rob, Katie, Meredith, and Colleen, along with the camp staff who keep this place running are absolutely one of the reasons this semester has been so amazing. God gave these people a passion for higher education and they have poured out a lot of who they are for our benefit here. They make this place what it is, and APU is so fortunate to have them as faculty. Make sure, if you come to High Sierra, you get to know these people – they have a lot to offer.

5.) Yosemite. The third most-visited national park in the United States was my backyard for four months – how cool is that?! I was able to make it up to the park about five times this semester (and about ten times too few), and saw so many incredible sights. We saw views of the valley from Sentinel Dome, Half Dome, Eagle Peak, the Devil’s Bathtub, and the top of Yosemite Falls, and accumulated about 50 miles of hiking in the park. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the opportunity to spend so much time here again in my life, but I do know that having this epic landscape fourteen miles up the road was one of the most incredible parts of the semester, and the things I’ve seen there will forever remain in my memory.

6.) The food. I ate a lot this semester. A lot. And I couldn’t help it. The food is just that good. With a magnificent, home cooked meal to look forward to each night, including a fantastic desert afterward, my mouth was watering every time I walked into the dining hall. Breakfast each morning, a great smorgasbord of options for lunch, and a bottomless cereal bar were some of the reasons I just couldn’t stop eating!

7.) The campus. Being that I was born in Illinois, living on the border of the Sierra National Forest in Northern California was something I never thought I’d have the opportunity to do, and will probably never have the chance to do again. Waking up in the morning and hearing birds and smelling the crisp, pine-scented air is an event that never got old after three months. Coming from the loud, smoggy, busy environment of Southern California to quiet, clean, cool, green Bass Lake was fantastic, and I’ll miss the heck out of this place.

8.) The deer. A family of deer resides somewhere here near campus, and each morning and evening they make their way onto our grounds to graze. After living here for several years now, they’ve grown accustom to being close to people, so I’ve been able to stand on the porch ten feet above them and just watch them feed for fifteen minutes at a time. And just the other day, I saw the buck for the first time – a beautiful eight-pointer. Slowing down and stopping what I’m doing to watch those deer everyday just makes me feel even more removed from quick-paced society and appreciate the place that I’m in all the more.

9.) The lake. Bass Lake is one of the most beautiful places I’ve been to in this country, and all semester it was my playground. We wakeboarded, swam, kayaked, and camped along the banks. I biked around it and ran along the trails that wind through the surrounding forests. Some people would kill to rent a home here for the summer. I had the opportunity to live here for three months…I count myself as pretty lucky.

10.) Sleeping on “Star Rock”. Looking up at night and seeing more stars than you thought existed is something that never gets old. Sleeping under them is even better. I’ll always remember my nights on the rock, sitting around an enormous, glowing bonfire talking with friends, then sleeping under the dark sky and bright stars on a cool night in my sleeping bag.

- I’ve also compiled a list of things you all can look forward to from me next semester as I will still be blogging after I return to main campus:

1.) More blogging (obviously)

2.) More pictures

3.) Being that I am the “Study Abroad Liaison Blogger”, I’ll keep up with the up and up on APU’s Study Abroad program, interviewing students who have been to other study abroad’s and providing you with some insights into your options as an APU student.

4.) Some in-depth Oscar coverage (no, I will not be discussing the evening’s celebrity fashion choices).

5.) A view into the life of a returning study-abroader to main campus and how the transition happens.

- And since I love lists so much, here’s a list of my top five movies from 2008 (so far)*

1.) Rachel Getting Married

2.) Young at Heart

3.) The Dark Knight

4.) Wall-E

5.) In Bruges

*Unfortunately, this is an incomplete list, as there are many movies I haven’t seen this year, and a great deal of fantastic films still to be released before January 1. I’ll update this list again after the beginning of the year closer to Oscar season.

- In my next blog I’ll have a report from Trek II including some pictures.

Talk to you all soon!