The Joys and Wonders of Easter Break

I know I've left my dear readers hanging for the past week and a half. And some of you (a.k.a. The Sojourner and the Cobbler), probably have no clue what I've been up to. So I am writing this post to let you in on some of the adventures I've experienced since Wednesday night. It might be rather long (I'm not infamous for writing short posts as you probably all know.)

On the Wednesday of Holy Week, finals finished, for better or for worse, my roommate and two others decided it would be an excellent plan to go to the beach and chill for a few hours.



I decided to tag along and within a half hour we packed into Daniel's car equipped with a jar of p.b. and four spoons, sliced apples, and some rather amazing bread (the last two provided by Miss Tasha). It was a rather lovely night. Good discussion, much walking, lots of pictures (just me), and myself and Tasha acted like little kids in the playground (what fun). We concluded the night by walking along the shore while praying the Rosary and Divine Mercy Chaplet. All the while avoiding giant piles of goo (which I later learned were jellyfish).

The next day was Thursday, and being that I had decided to spend an extra day at the apartments enjoying the company of my friends without the worry of homework, I made the decision that my day would be best spent at Miramar Lake. It's quite large, about five miles all the way around, with an excellent walking path and various hillside trails. Once again, we (Lisa, Tasha, Daniel, and I) all piled into Daniel's car (he's such a sweet guy) and drove to the lake where we managed to have more good discussion while walking the entire five miles around the lake with some detours (not necessarily short cuts) on the hiking trails.




One one of the trails Daniel found a miniature boulder weighing about thirty-forty lbs and decided that it was really quite amazing. He carried it all the way down the hill on his shoulder and the rest of the way around the lake. (You see, the reason it was so amazing was how sturdy it was, unbreakable and "practically perfect in every way".) At one point, he decided to drop it on the asphalt to see what would happen. Nothing really, except it made a large mark on the pavement. The rock now had a name. It was henceforth dubbed "Rocky" and the poor unfortunate pavement was dubbed "Mark".



We managed to make it back in time for seven o'clock Mass which lasted until about 9:15. It was quite nice and very packed. Good Shepherd is the largest parish in San Diego. I got there with my roommate about ten minutes early and had a hard enough time finding a seat.

That concludes my adventures while staying at the apartment. I left on Good Friday and unfortunately got back with all my stuff only to unpack it and then repack for our trip up north the following day. During the three hours, we watched "Jesus of Nazareth" and my sister picked up her Bible and Summa Theologica. She and I prayed the Chaplet of Divine Mercy at 3:00.

In case you don't know, every year my family makes a trip to Redwood City (halfway between San Jose and San Francisco). The entire extended family lives there. I lived there until a couple months before my eighth b-day. We usually drive, but this time we flew. As I hadn't been on a plane in about four years, the whole thing was rather exciting for me. I am going to make this explanation as short as possible, mainly because I think a whole account of the trip would bore you, but mostly it would take up a lot of time and a lot of room.

I managed to spend a good deal of time with cousins (mainly those on my mother's side). There's two of them: ages three and seventeen months. The youngest also happens to be my godson.



My grandparents have a rather large hill in their backyard which was covered with a green and gold blanket of poppies.



The entire yard is dotted with fruit trees which were all in blossom; all pink and white. Onions were growing at the bottom of the hill. I spent much of my time back there, chasing and tickling little ones on the deck, and watching as they delightfully picked poppies off the hillside and ran down the hill. Perhaps the cutest thing I witnessed during the week was the "monkey see, monkey do" act, performed by the three year old and her brother. Everything she did, he had imitate (rather unfortunately in some cases). On our last night there, Clara had started to cry over something. Benjamin simply looked at her, looked around at all of us, and started to cry to0. He would stop, smile, and then let out a wailing noise, imitating her with all he could muster.

Another large part of my trip was spent taking long walks around my grandparents neighborhood. It's really quite gorgeous. Large trees (and houses), colorful flowers blossoming in purple, pink, yellow, and white, the occasional cat curled up in the sun or carefully treading through the long grass, stopping to stare with large green eyes.

On the other side of the family (my dad's side), I have several cousins. My dad is one of five and all except one are married and, interestingly enough, each have three children. I saw five of them over the past week. On Monday night, after an excellent dinner and my grandma's homemade cake, my grandmother was playing cards with me and my siblings. Two of my cousins were watching and my dad was talking with his brother (their dad). At one point, my dad was trying to get my direct family's attention. So he calls out, "Hey, Lynches?" and we all look at him. You see, we're all Lynches. I speak up and say, "Which ones?" We all had a good laugh.

My dad has one sister and she happens to have three little girls. Very cute, very blonde, and very sociable, always wanting to play. We ate lunch outside, and while my mom and sister played with the youngest who were walking about watering the roses with a giant watering can, my grandmother, six-year-old cousin, and I discussed the shapes of the clouds. At one point, I said, "They really are quite lovely, aren't they. Like tufts of cotton." My cousin goes, "That is what they are." Oh, loveliness. After lunch, we had a wonderful time playing hide'n'seek, which I seemingly had a difficult time with. I (the hider) literally walked in on my seekers. :)

Cousins!


That would be my break in a nutshell. Since we got back on Thursday, I have been hurriedly getting ready to return to school on Monday. :) Organizing books, downloading software, buying more books, getting school supplies, putting away old notes from last quarter. I need to finish everything today, as I am going to a Baptism tomorrow. The joys of welcoming a new life into the Church! I hope that I haven't bored you all with this post. Hopefully, I don't wait too long before I post again. :) Have a wonderful Easter season and may Christ bestow his blessings upon you all!

On With the Discussion

For those of you who don't know and for those of you who do, about five or sixish of the students at JP Catholic have been discussing what it is to be a true gentleman or a true lady. How each of us should carry ourselves and present ourselves, and how gentlemen should respect women. So, you can imagine how interested I was when I read a post on The Sojourner's blog yesterday, and I wasted no time asking her if I could put it on my blog for all of you to see.

So, without further ado, here is the post:

"Last semester, I knew a guy--we'll call him Ben--who liked to fetch chairs. He wasn't really one of my friends, but I had a class with him and one of my good friends was likewise one of his good friends, so we saw each other pretty often. It sometimes happened that I would be looking for a seat in the Caf, notice my friend sitting with her little group, and go to sit with them. Sometimes it would happen that there wouldn't be a free chair. When that happened, everybody would start moving their chairs a bit to make room, and Ben would get up and get me a chair. Every time. It didn't matter if he was in the middle of his dinner or if the nearest free chair was quite out of his way, he got up and got me a chair. I let him. It seemed to make him happy and it didn't hurt me any--in fact I rather liked it. It's not that I'm not perfectly capable of getting my own chair, because I am and I have done so on numerous occasions, but if a gentleman wants to get up and get me a chair I'm not going to be offended. I find it rather charming, in fact.

Ben has since transferred, but there are still plenty of gentlemen running around here. Franciscan is full of them. A good example would be my friend and fellow blogger Scott. Scott makes a point of holding open doors. On second thought, perhaps that is a bad choice of words. He doesn't make a point of it in the sense of, "Hey, look at me, I'm being chivalrous!" He just puts special effort into being the first one to get to the door when we're walking together. I let him. In fact, I give Scott more room to be chivalrous than I do most guys. You know what I mean when I talk about there being two sets of doors leading out of a building? There's one set, and then a little anteroom, and then another set. How it works is this: Scott opens the first one. I go through and then pause. Scott opens the second one. I go through and we continue on our merry way. The pause is the part that's unique to interacting with Scott. Usually when I'm going through two sets of doors and somebody holds open the first one I thank them and then keep going. Every now and then a guy will be quick on his feet and manage to open both, and if he does I thank him again, but I don't stand around waiting for him.

Another thing Scott does that I only just figured out: When we are walking along and happen to cross a street, he will make a little half-stop. At first this confused me and I would stop too. Finally I figured out that whenever Scott stops, he resumes walking on the other side. That is, if we are walking with me on the left and him on the right, and we cross a street, Scott arranges it so that he will then be walking on the left and me on the right. Why? Because gentlemen walk on the street side of the sidewalk, and ladies let them.

I want to reemphasize that second point. Men have really hard time being gentlemen unless women cooperate by being ladies. In all of the above examples, I could have gotten offended and refused to have my chair fetched/ have the door held open/walk on the inside of the sidewalk. I hear that some women do that. I personally don't understand that. When a man acts like a gentleman it doesn't make me feel condescended to (as if I can't do the things they're doing for me); it makes me feel special. When I know my companion is going to treat me like a lady, I'm more disposed to act like one.

Here I would like to make a little side note, concerning the distinction between courtesy and chivalry. Courtesy is a very good thing, I don't want to downplay it at all, but there is a difference. Courtesy is when I hold open the door for the people behind me because nobody wants to have the door slammed in their face. Men can be courteous towards women--and I am quite thankful for the men who have considered my feelings and not let the door slam in my face. Men can, however, also be chivalrous. Chivalry is a bit more gratuitous than courtesy--when a man's being chivalrous, he's not holding the door open because I happen to have been walking behind him and I deserve not to have the door slam in my face. He's being chivalrous when he gets to the door first on purpose and holds it open for the simple reason that I'm a lady and he's a gentlemen and that's how it works.

I suppose it's quite possible for a man to act like a gentleman without really being a gentleman--just going through the motions without really caring about the ladies he's being chivalrous towards. I don't think that happens very often nowadays, though. Maybe it would have happened in Emily Post's day when people were expected to do that kind of thing, but in the good old 21st century, if a man acts chivalrously he probably means it, because the prevailing social conventions are, for the most part, anti-chivalry. You can hold the door open for someone who's carrying a heavy box, for instance, but heaven forbid that you should hold the door open for someone simply because she's female. The brave few who do that anyway are probably going to be real gentlemen. How do you tell a real gentleman from an imposter? Simple: you just know. We're women, after all, and we're entitled to our intuition.

I don't want to give the impression, however, that "it's the thought that counts" and chivalrous actions don't really matter. We're an incarnate people. We need symbols, visible and tangible things, to comprehend unseen realities. I am perfectly capable of opening a door, but when one of my guy friends holds it open for me it's a symbolic way of saying that he respects me. The more respectfully men treat me, the more likely I am to respect myself. It works the other way too: The more I respect myself, the more likely men are to respect me.

Which brings me to the second topic of my post: modesty. Modesty is in its essence an interior disposition. There's a story that says Marilyn Monroe could walk down the street in a nun's full habit and still find a way to be immodest, while a nun could walk down the street without a stitch on and still find a way to be modest. That's true, but we're still incarnate and symbols are still important, so in the normal course of things women ought to dress in a way that is befitting their feminine dignity. I'm not one of those people who thinks a woman's being immodest if she wears pants (I happen to be wearing pants today, in fact) but I do think that makes a difference. I feel different in pants than I do when I'm wearing a skirt or a dress. When you're wearing a skirt you have to be more careful about how you carry yourself, how you sit down, etc. There are times when you don't want to have to worry about things like that: horseback riding, carrying firewood, playing Twister--and those are times when I think a woman ought to wear pants. I also think, though, that barring times when a skirt would be a severe hindrance, women should try to wear them as much as possible. How you carry yourself is important, how you present yourself to the world is important. I might be as ladylike as can be on the inside, but if the way I dress and the way I carry myself doesn't indicate that I respect myself, then how can I expect men to respect me?"

I Remember That Show!

If only I could use these to study for my final exams. *Sigh*

You Are Garlic

Of all the spice types, you are the most universally loved. You get long with pretty much everyone, and you leave a lasting impression. You adapt yourself well to situations. You can fit in or stand out, depending on what you're called on to do.

What Spice Are You?