Happy October 1st!

Hello, friend!

HAPPY FIRST DAY OF OCTOBER!! Today I went apple and pumpkin picking with some friends from church, crossing off two things from my fall bucket list! I will be making pies with the apples that I picked probably this Thursday, so you can expect another blog post soon about that.

It was a perfect day today to go apple picking, the sun was out, and there were still many apples left for us to pick! It was also my very first time apple picking, and I definitely enjoyed it. Apples are more rewarding to pick because you get much more fruit than when you pick cherries or raspberries, which takes hours for less fruit. We went to this place called, "Eplegaarden," which is a super cute Norwegian-themed apple garden. My mom was really excited about the Norwegian part, too.

Me, Tatum, and Abby! <3

We found this cute apple heart thing and decided to sit in it for cute pics. Also, we kept on finding the TINIEST little apples, and they were actually still very delish!

I found the most perfect pumpkin which I took home, and it is now sitting on the table as a little centerpiece! I just discovered that pumpkin stems are SO spiky, and therefore not fun to pick up by the stem. It was worth it though, to bring our pumpkins home! We also picked literally SO many apples, I am going to have to eat more than just, "an apple a day," before they go bad! I am looking forward to continuing my fall bucket list, and will be updating you guys as I continue to cross things off of it.

Right now, I'm very busy with school so I haven't had much time to write blog posts. I have so many projects that I'm doing, and I'm just praying that I can get them done and still get to bed at a reasonable time each night! This was such a fun way to kick off October though, and I'm so excited for many more fun events to come.

Have a great week!

Joy :)

My First Week of College

Hello, friend!

School is back in full force and I've had half a week of classes and a lot of fun so far at UW-Madison. Luckily, I've made it early to all of my classes so I've gotten good seats and made some new friends. It's so easy to just meet the person next to you, and it's interesting seeing how everyone really is quite friendly the first year of college.

One of the things that I especially love about our campus is that we are right by two spectacular lakes. It's so amazing how you can just stop and set up a hammock right next to the water and enjoy the view. My friend Allie and I just did that a couple of days ago, and I just ordered a compact hammock to bring with me to campus as well. It's coming tomorrow(thx too Amazon student prime), and I hope to get a lot of use out of it before it gets too cold. Maybe I'll do homework in it. I've probably spent a good five or six hours doing homework so far, which isn't that bad, considering that I have four classes and one guitar class.

love Wisco

College is so strange because you really have a different schedule from all of your friends. So even if you do have free time, you might not have time to get with the people you want to get with because they might be in classes. Also, since I'm commuting every day to school, it's a tad bit more difficult to hang out with people later because I don't want to be on the bus super late. Shoutout to my parents, though, who help drive me places because paying for parking is expensive!! Speaking of modes of transportation, at UW-Madison's campus there are bikes everywhere that are put there by the brand, "BCycle." Funny story- I used a bike ONCE for like, an hour, and was charged $54 dollars for it because the system didn't register that I put the bike back, even though the light blinked three times and the box beeped three times. Luckily, I got my $$ back!! I learned that you should receive an email approximately 30 seconds after you put the bike back confirming that it's been returned.

There are many little things here and there like that^, that you learn by just being on campus. For example, when you're wandering around a building that is unfamiliar to you and you ask a staff member if this door leads to a way out and he replies with, "Yes, but I don't know where it leads to," DON'T GO OUT THAT DOOR. You may find yourself trapped in a courtyard but then realize that there is a way out (the opposite way) after five minutes.

Another random tangent- I've discovered probably the coolest bathrooms at UW. They're located inside the Ecology building. You walk in and the dark blue ceiling is covered in twinkling lights like the stars in the sky and there are chirping noises and the bathroom stalls are decorated like phone booths from London. Say whaaaaat?? There are so many random fun and free things to do at UW too, like painting at the Terrace! It was the perfect weather for us to paint and relax the night before school started.

There was also an event called, "The W Project," where someone took a picture of us students on the field at Camp Randall making a "living W." It started to rain while we were standing in the bleachers, waiting to take the picture. About 15 minutes after the rain though, there was the most AMAZING double rainbow. It was worth standing in the rain for + the free t shirt.

Oh, and the fooootball games. They're reeeeally fun and reeeaally exhausting. You're standing for three hours straight and yelling and jumping around until your legs are stiff, but I definitely 10/10 WOULD RECOMMEND getting football tickets freshman year if you're at a university with a good football team! These are pictures from the first game.

Bucky!!!

Learning all of the cheers and when to clap at the right times and yell, "rah rah," is all apart of the "freshman experience," and it's super cheesy but I think that it's best to accept it and just go with the flow.  I can literally already feel myself learning so much academic-wise, too, and I'm excited to see what the next four+ years bring.

Have a great week!
Joy :)

My Autumn Bucket List

Hello, friend!

It is ALMOST that time of year again, yup my favorite time of year! Happy September 1st!

Fall is just around the corner and I am OH SO READY. :) I have so many plans for this fall, and I can't wait to see how many things I can accomplish this season. Last year, I didn't make a bucket list but my friend Jessica did, and I decided that I want to make a bucket list this year for fun and then do a couple blog posts later about how I'm going about finishing them all.

Okay, let's get into it:

1. Go apple picking

2. Bake an apple pie from the apples that were picked

3. Go to a corn maze

4. Go hiking

5. Buy some pumpkins!! & carve them

6. Drink apple cider & eat apple cider donuts!

7. Make pumpkin bread with mom

8. Maybe go to a haunted house?

9. Watch Hocus Pocus

10. Go to the farmer's market in the Fall

11. Watch Harry Potter movies

12. Get cozy by the fire and read

13. Go to many football games!!

14. Take foggy early morning walks with Po

15. Watch the Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Halloween special

16. Buy fall and apple scented things and candles, etc

17. Eat a caramel apple (heart eyes) + caramel apple lollipops

18. Go to a Halloween party!

And that's my list so far!

Hope you enjoyed and got a bit inspired and excited for Fall. Text me if you want to do any of these with me!! 

Happy Friday!

Joy :)

Joy's Words #1!

Hello, friend!

I'm going to start a tag in my blog called "Joy's Words" because making new words is a fun hobby of mine, and this is a fantastic place where I can share them with the world!

Recently, I was on Twitter and decided that there simply wasn't an accurate word to describe the feeling I had when scrolling through endless amounts of hilarious and horrifying (at the same time) videos and picture/caption tweets.

The result was my created word: Hilorrifying.

Hilorrifying(hill-or-if-eyeing): When you feel like laughing but also know that you should be feeling shocked and/or slightly to extremely concerned.

Now on what occasion, may you ask, should it be appropriate to use this word? Here's one example:

This tweet is slightly concerning because you definitely don't want anyone to be hitting anyone with cars, but the actual meaning is all-too relatable as a student. I know a lot of us sometimes feel miserable at school, and/or already dead because of all the work we have to do.

Another example is Danielle here, otherwise known as the

girl. While she was a meme for wayyy too long because of how she talked(if you didn't know). She also had(and still has?) a very very concerning background with illegal activities, and is really ... out of control, if you watch the whole video of her interview with Dr. Phil and her mom, you'll see that this is the perfect instance to use the word, "hilorrifying". 

 Or here's a real life example of when to use the word, "hilorrifying"- 

My Grandma just visited my family about a week ago, and she told me that instead of going to the theaters to watch, "Lord of the Rings," she and her other 70-year old friend saw the supernatural psychological horror film, "The Ring." I didn't know whether to laugh or be horrified that she had to experience that, but she told me that they stayed for the rest of the movie because when you pay $$ for a movie, you might as well watch it. I definitely agree with that mentality, but I don't think I would be able to sit and watch a horror movie without being extremely just plain horrified.....

Anyways, I hope that this made your day a little bit brighter as you learned a new word of mine.

Happy Sunday!

Joy :)

Hi, Me Again!

Hello, friend!

Whoops. It has been actually MORE than a month since my last blog post(there goes my goal of trying to post once every week)! I think that I have been lost on what to write about and that's why I haven't been writing anything at all. I've just been trying to live in the moment with everything that I've been doing this summer, whether its camp counseling, hanging out with my friends and family, or driving 13+ hours to Asheville, North Carolina for a campus conference(ICMC) with 1500 other campus disciples.

Here is a lil' recap of everything that I've been up to:

1. I saw the most beautiful sunrise through the trees while in Asheville, North Carolina. 

A pretty random group of us college students woke up at 5:50 in the morning to go hiking and see the sunrise over this lookout which was okaaaay, but not the WOW thing we were looking for. About 10 minutes after the sun had risen, we were walking back down the trail and saw the sun shining like the color of fire through the trees. It was breathtaking, and well worth the early wakeup!

Some of the group that went hiking. 

2. I discovered one of my favorite songs while at ICMC.

At one of the main sessions at the conference, there was a worship song called, "Hills and Valleys." It's about how God is with us through the highs and lows of life(our mountains and valleys), and how no matter what we look to God when we're in either situation. It has a great message and Tauren Wells is so passionate in this song that you'll want to jam out to it. You can listen to it here-

3. I've fallen more in love with Wisconsin!

My mom and I just visited the sunflowers in Verona(a little bit next to Madison) and it was BEAUTIFUL-I LOVE SUNFLOWERS. They're so bright and colorful and you just can't be sad around them.

We both look kind of blind because of the sun. Welp.

Then on Monday, my family and I went to Devil's Lake which is like a 45 minute drive from Madison, and it was also really pretty there. It was at first a little chilly, but after hiking for an hour or so we warmed up and the sun came out which was a total blessing! It was so great being surrounded by nature. Ah, summer. We brought Po with us too, and he had a good time. He napped for a very long time after our hike.

Po, or Simba.

I feel like this summer has been a summer with fantastic weather, lots of time getting to know Madison better and the people in it, and some great memories. School starts September 6th for me, and I'm looking forward to it but also getting a little nervous about being at such a big campus and the transition from high school to college! I'll keep the blog more updated now(hopefully) as the summer wraps up.

Thanks for reading!!

Joy :)

A Weekend in Chicago

Hello, friend!

I just got back from spending a wonderful weekend in Chicago with my friend Gwen, and we suuure did a LOT in a very short amount of time! When I arrived Thursday, Gwen picked me up from the Megabus at Union Station downtown and we just caught up. The next day we woke up and made our way down to Six Flags Great America(which is a rollercoaster theme park)! Gwen unfortunately got her wallet stollen(we think out of her car), which was really sad. We all had a great time at Six Flags though, and I admired Gwen's ability to have fun even though she had quite a big deal of $$ stollen, and right before she leaves for Haiti on a mission trip(Gwen is such a trooper <3!).  I didn't end up taking any photos at Six Flags, which is kind of strange for me, but it was fun just enjoying our time there. Our group initially went to ride the Viper, but I felt really nauseuous inside the place where you stand in line right before you get on(I think that I still haven't gotten back to equilibrium since the plane ride home from China), and decided not to go on it. Gwen decided to come with me too, so we walked over to one of the western-themed restaurants I bought a chicken sandwich and fries. When the other part of the group came back, we decided to go to Hurricane Harbor. Hurricane Harbor is the water park that is apart of Six Flags Great America, and we spent a good couple of hours there and then we decided to ride the American Eagle and go home.

Gwen and I then drove to my super long-time friend Lexi's house and we spent the night there. She was having some girls over from the Metro region of the Chicago church, and it was really fun talking with them! We played Guesstures and then talked until 1:30 am and then I had to call it a night because I was so tired from earlier!

Lexi's lil' treehouse

Gwen's mom had planned a mother-daughter prayer walk at the beach Saturday morning, so we woke up at 8-ish and we drove to Lake Shore Drive and prayed along the beach! It was perfect weather out.

After hanging out there for a little bit, Gwen and I decided to go home and get dressed up in cuter clothes because we wanted to visit this cafe called the 3 Arts Club Cafe downtown. We took the train and then walked a couple blocks to it and it was GORGEOUS. It's inside of a place called Restoration Hardware(RH), and there are so many beautiful expensive pieces of furniture inside! It has like 5 or 6 levels, and is like IKEA on steroids(as Gwen put it perfectly).

"did somebody say bougie"

Let's just say that I had the best $16 truffle grilled cheese sandwich and fries in my entire life there. This is such a must-see in Chicago! You can make it into a pretty cool event, you can get dressed up and just go and have a fun day out with friends! :) Gwen and I also got the chai latte's and they were DELISH + reasonably priced($4).

After visiting that beautiful place, we spent the rest of the evening walking around downtown and shopping. Sunday morning was church, and it was so encouraging and refreshing seeing a lot of old friends from Chicago and chit-chatting with them. I left pretty much right after church and took the megabus back home. I'm so grateful to Gwen for such an amazing weeekend! :D <3 Thanks for reading.

I hope that you have a fantastic week!
Joy :)