Stop and Smell the Roses...

The other day I took an adventure all by myself. I have realized how quickly I can get sucked into the hum drum of rutine. Now theres not anything particularly bad about that, but sometimes I think God really delights in letting us breath in deep all of the cool things that he has surrounded us with. The picture on the left is one taken at the Huntington Libray, which is one of the coolest tourist stops in Pasadena. It is an old estate of one of the big wigs of the railroad days in California. The owner had, well, lots of cash, and from his passing donated his whole estate to the city. It has since been converted into a historical museam/ botanical garden. Normally, one would pay about 15$ for just an afternoon in the park, but every first Thursday of the month its free! So yeah, as you might guess this picture was taken last week, being that it was free. Anyways, though I had no one to go with me, it was still a lovely day of adventure, of taking in Gods super amazing creativity and the peace of a splotch of grass to do some reading that wasn't within ear shot of zooming cars. My time in California has been full of such abundantly adventurous opportunities. God has kept my life exciting, and though it is tempting to get discouraged by the constant ontorage of homework and school stress, He always surprises me with another way to see another side of him!
I arrived back in California over Christmas on the 3rd of January. As some of you might remember, the Rose bowl was held on the 4th. Yup, you guessed... I couldn't resist the temptation to go check out the action. My friend Hiedi and I took about a half and hour walk and strolled right down to where the action was. We awed at the oodles of football fanatics we saw, long horns and trojans! We weaved our way through the crowds to the entrance gate to watch the few lucky who actually had tickets pass through. I was amazed by all the people who came, even all the way from Texas, who didn't have a ticket. People would walk around with two or one fingers up signifying that they wanted to buy tickets! My friend and I started taking a poll to see what the highest was someone was willing to pay for one... Could you believe 1100$ for just one ticket? I even saw a sighting of my first scalper! It wasn't long after though that the guy was hauled off by the cops... kind of funny. It was an expereience to be around all those people, and to see the fire works, stealth fighters and parachuters come down all for just the pregame! Needless to say we had a cheap fun time.