Posts Tagged ‘High Sierra’

APU Dictionary

Megan Wednesday, March 9th, 2011

Alpha: A group you will be placed in the day you move in that includes a sophomore (sometimes a junior) alpha leader and about 8-12 other freshmen. You will all be in the same beginnings class (its a 350 person class that usually just has people speak about current issues) and you will meet one other time during the week to get to know each other and have fun. Its a great way to meet people and as awkward as it may feel as first everyone really does end up loving the program.

Biola: ……..

Communiversity: Community + Diversity, a program that plans events and makes the school fun (simply said).

Cookie Mill: One of our popular off-campus food options. They have amazing ice cream sandwiches with your choice of ice cream and cookies for cheap. It is right by the Mods (next to Stater Brothers), so it is in easy walking distance.

Crazy 8: A team of 8 extremely school spirited students that hype up the crowd and the athletes at sporting events.

Donut Man: A donut shop down the street (a car ride away, not really walk-able distance) that has the GREATEST donuts on the planet. It is basically legendary here at APU. Its open 24/7 and usually anytime you go there you will see other APU students.

D-Group “Discipleship Group:” A group that you can choose to be placed in that meets one time per week for 1-2 hours and talks about life. Some have Bible studies, some just hang out, some read a book together, it all depends on the group. Usually its 4-6ish people and they always have an upperclassman as a leader. It’s always same-sex groups. I am in one currently (I just started it this semester) and it is an amazing way to feel connected to the community here and feel as if you always have people to go to if you need anything. I always look forward to hanging out with my girls.

“Freddy” Cougar: The lovely school mascot!

GYRAD: “Get your roommate a date.” Self explanatory?

High Sierra: A “study abroad” opportunity in Yosemite for all majors that is mainly done by freshmen and sophomores (but juniors still do it sometimes!). It creates a very tight knit family and provides so many opportunities to do anything and everything in nature you could ever desire! I have many friends that have done it or are there now and they ALL claim it to be one of the greatest experiences of their lives.

Intermurals: Sports teams set up by us students! Currently, a lot of the girls on my hall are on a soccer team together and they love it.

Kaleo: A Wednesday night option for Chapel that is LOVED on this campus. It is a more intimate setting, less people, and the sermons usually relate and build off each other. I would highly recommend going when you start attending APU because if not when you do end up going to Kaleo you will wish you went from the very beginning (my roommate made that mistake haha).

Liturgical: Another Chapel option some Thursday nights that provides a service similar to Mass (lots of hymns) where it is very personal. I have never been, but many of my friends go and LOVE it.

Mods: A (mainly) sophomore living area that looks like little houses all around the area behind Trinity and Engstrom and the Baseball field.

My Tie: Often done in Freshmen living areas, all the guys will put a tie in a hat and the girls will pick one. Whatever tie you pick is your date for the night.

Resident Advisor: An upperclassman that lives on each hall (and mod or apartment complex) and regulates all their residents and plans events to bond the living communities. They also have a roommate (the RAR, Resident Advisor Roommate).

APU Track and Field Retreat

Staphon Wednesday, January 19th, 2011

This past weekend, our APU track team went up to Yosemite for a retreat. This is my 5th year going and… you know what, here is a video blog about the whole trip!

YouTube Preview Image

This was my first time doing a video blog, sorry about the quality, I’ll get it right on the next run for sure! But I think you got the general idea of what happened.

Aside from the hike, we had a lot of team bonding experiences, including a worship session around a bon fire on Star Rock under a full moon and a bajillion and two stars up above us. It will definitely be another great memory added to my chapter covering the last 4 years being on the APU Track Team.

halloween and homework.

Ellie Kipps Monday, November 2nd, 2009

So today is Halloween, and I’m writing a paper. I’ve never been super into Halloween after about age 10, but it’s been great to see carved pumpkins and some ridiculous antics around campus. Last night a few of my friends dressed up like old people and there were trick-or-treaters in the Mods (a sophomore living area), so I thought that was funny.

Right now, I’m trying to gear back up for another challenging week ahead. Sometimes it is hard staying focused with all these events around, but it has taught me a lot about self-control. Though, right now, I’m really distracted by quite a few things, including my plans to study abroad next year, starting at High Sierra, and then possibly on to Australia. Unfortunately I don’t think I’ll be able to go to Israel this summer, but I’m so excited about studying in High Sierra… it’s ridiculous. Hah. I’m also distracted, in a good way, by thinking about the things I learned this week.

This past week was Global Vision week, and basically it is a week where there all these events around campus that are Mission-minded, and are designed to make APU students think about the world as a whole, when sometimes we can get trapped in the bubble of southern california or america. All the chapels are internationally minded, and on wednesday, we had a chapel speaker who brought me to tears and created a standing ovation (which I’ve never seen) for at least 3 minutes after he finished. He was an exile from Libya, and was the most amazing christian I’ve ever met. I can’t honestly describe what he said, or why it affected the whole audience the way it did, but it was life-altering. I actually got the opportunity to talk to him for a few hours after chapel, being a part of the student organization here called MESO (Middle Eastern Student Organization), which is a group that strives to have open conversation about profiles and prejudices of the Middle Eastern nations, and delight in the different cultures that are predominately Muslim.

Anyway, I’ve got to get working on this paper, but I’ll post later on how halloween went. Hopefully I can get pictures of wacky costumes tonight. One of my friends is dressing up as a Scot, complete with a real kilt from Scotland. I’m a little scared. But he and I are going to go to HOLLAH-WEEN, an event in my living area that is designed to keep students on campus for Halloween, and thus keep them safe.

pumpkins and papers.

Ellie Kipps Monday, October 26th, 2009

My favorite season is fall, or at least it was in NorCal (where I’m from). I love when the leaves turn red and flutter down to the ground, and I love the crisp rain that speaks of hot cocoa and fireplaces and good books, but most of all, I love pumpkins: pumpkin soup, pumpkin bread, pumpkin ice cream, and most of all: pumpkin pie. This morning I woke up missing that fall feeling from home, and decided to make pumpkin bread with real pumpkin and a special blend of spices that my family uses. Now my apartment is filled with the smell of baking bread, and I’m feeling pretty homesick.

It is a weird thing to feel homesick as a sophomore in college, but I’m sure I’m not the only one, especially of those here at APU where there home isn’t close. I only can go home on the bigger breaks: thanksgiving, christmas, and easter break, whereas my roommates live under an hour away from campus. I love being away from home, college is a time to get away and learn about new people and new places, but there are days when I miss my northern california roots and my northern california seasons (if you are wondering what the weather is like here, Azusa has one perpetual season: warm, though, don’t worry, you can still get snow like half an hour away [don't ask me how that works, it just does]).

Last weekend, I got the chance to return to my beloved northern california and visit a place I’ve never been before: APU’s High Sierra Campus. Tucked away in the mountains, in the middle of the Ansel Adams Wilderness, seconds away from Bass Lake is this sprawling campus that is a Christian kids’ camp during the summer and one of the satellite campuses APU has during the year. I honestly felt like I had been transported to Narnia (the kid’s camp has a Narnia themed disc golf course), and I was just waiting for Aslan to come out of the forest. It was beautiful.

The reason I went up there was to check out the campus for a preview weekend (like potential students do at main campus), and make sure it was where I should be next year. It is. My plan now is to spend my entire junior year up at High Sierra. Another one of the bloggers, JP, is a student up there right now, and it was pretty rad to get to meet him in person, after reading his blogs. He’s a great guy, and I see God working on him through being up at High Sierra, and that is a beautiful thing to see. It was good for me to be up there, to hike and shoot archery and read Karl Barth sitting on the porch overlooking the forest.

Here is a little movie I put together about my time at High Sierra, it’s silly and not well filmed, but oh well. And I also am including two other videos about High Sierra, one where our University’s President Jon Wallace (or J-Dub) talks about it, and also another one that the Study Abroad office put together. Have fun watching!

YouTube Preview Image YouTube Preview Image YouTube Preview Image

Alright, well, I have papers to write, so I’ll try to keep you updated as the semester continues to provide quite the challenge in the academic front!

Preview weekend at High Sierra!

JP Park Monday, October 19th, 2009

Hey there, J.P here again! Last night, 4 vans full of preview students who wanted to get a taste of the High Sierra Semester came up and are staying here for a couple of days. I had a chance to meet Elli, one of the bloggers on here, and she is amazing, and highly intellectual and down to Earth.

Me and the other High Sierra students mingled with the preview students and we had a Bon Fire on Star Rock. Star Rock is not too far from my cabin. It’s basically a large strip of flat land that is made of solid rock. We had smores and then went back to the Dining hall and played board games, more particularly, Apples to apples. If you haven’t played Apples to Apples, I suggest you go out and buy it because it’s an awesome ice breaker game. For those of you who do play it, like my friend Ashley Darrow says, “Helen Keller is the trump card of Apples to Apples”. I concur

Right now, the preview students are going on a tour around the campus. The High Sierra Semester campus here is basically a summer camp. During the summer, it’s a camp, but during the school year, they transform it into a college campus, or a satellite campus to be more exact. We still get wi-fi internet service, but cell phone service is pretty hard to get, but the service is always great up on Star Rock.

Later on during the day, the preview students and High Sierra Semester students are going to go on a hike, and then we’re going to do a lot of fun activities High Sierra provides every day like archery, kayaking, and mountain boarding. It’s refreshing to see some new faces after I’ve been seeing the same 21 faces everyday since I’ve been here.

Tonight, we’re going to eat dinner and play a game called “Murder Mystery”. I have no idea how to play it, but I heard it’s kind of like Clue or Sherlock Holmes. I can’t wait to play it tonight and I will tell you all about it on my next blog. My cameras broken at the moment, but I think my other friends have cameras to take pictures.

Two days ago, me and my High Sierra friends played sardines on the campus here. Here’s a picture of all of us:

High Sierra students about to play sardines!

High Sierra students about to play sardines!

Playing Sardines at High Sierra!

God’s got this…

Ellie Kipps Friday, October 16th, 2009

Many of the other bloggers have been talking about just how busy they are, and I 100% agree. As someone who love being academically challenged, I thrive in the demanding pace of my honors classes and my upper divisions. However… there is definitely a point reached (that probably has something to do with learning an extremely difficult language, not sleeping, and drowning in theology along with other life stuff) that you just want to say: I give up, Enough is enough.

I reached this point earlier this week but a blessed blessed thing occured: Study Day, which is a essentially a day off from classes to… well.. study. A lot of students used their ‘Study’ day to pontificate upon and studiously participate in the magical world of Disney (haha…) and some use it for… SHOCKER: Studying. I however used my study day as a much needed sabbath, a time to breathe and reflect and realize that I’m not surrendering the stress of school over to the God who holds All things in His hand. Right now, I’ve been personally going through Foster’s Celebration of Discipline and the coupled book of Spiritual Classics as well as daily devos with Buechner (my favorite theologian), so I spent time in those as well on Study Day. I say all this not in a spirit of flaunting or anything, but more as a reminder that despite the business of life there is first and foremost the priority to God and the priority of honoring Him with rejoicing in the day He has given. And sometimes that means taking a day off (weekends or study day), or if you really can’t manage a whole day, then at least a few hours of intentionally relishing in His goodness and His Word and surrendering over stress.

So life can get (and most likely already is) extremely busy and overwhelming. It is important to remember that, as my youth pastor used to say to me, “God’s got this, you can let go now…”

Peace be with you!

I’ll post a more spunky post soon (I’m going up to High Sierra campus this weekend to check it out as I’m planning on going up there in the Fall of 2010), so I’ll post pictures and stuff from that when I get home!