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My writing professor walked into the classroom, set his paper Allan Brothers coffee cup on his desk, and hung his leather messenger bag over the back of his chair. His eyes swept around the circle of our desks, and came to rest on me. Looking both bewildered and bemused, he said, “can I ask you…

My sister Amy is an English tutor at North Chiang Mai University (NCU) in Thailand. Recently she emailed me about a trip she took with some NCU students, and I was absolutely fascinated by her account. With her permission, I’m re-posting her experience here.  … In January, my new group staff who study with me…

-Finals are done. Now the nail-biting wait for grades begins. (My GPA this term will determine what level of honors I can graduate with, so I’m a bit on edge.) -I wanted to go on another camping trip with Ben over spring break. He decided he was going to camp with his guy friends instead,…

Note: Thanks to the fact that I’m now a writing minor, I have various bits of short fiction lying around my computer. My latest assignment was to write a “weird” story. Woo hoo! My favorite kind. See if you can guess what the inspiration for this one was.  The Flood At first I thought I…

Winter feels like a dripping faucet when you’re trying to fall asleep. Winter feels like an itchy tag that you can’t remove without ripping a hole in your shirt. Winter feels like being a child at a dinner party, waiting and waiting for the boring adult conversation to stop so that you can go play,…

Ashlie and I may no longer be roommates, but we still make time to get together for adventures. This time, Ashlie found a hot springs in the Cascades for us to go to. I’ve wanted to visit a hot springs for years, but unfortunately they’re reputed to be crowded and clothing-optional places. Belknap hot springs,…

“What didja get?” I asked Nick, who sits beside me in French class, when he got his quiz back. “I got a B,” he said. He gave a short, mirthful laugh. “I didn’t even study!” “Émilie,” said the teacher, handing back my quiz. I’d gotten an A. But I’d also studied pretty hard. And somehow…

Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 The Christian Grad Fellowship As September rolled into October, Ben started grad school and I started my senior year of college. We compared schedules. Mondays and Fridays we could carpool, we decided. But then he added a caveat. “I’ll be staying at school a little later this Monday,” he…

Read Part 1 Read Part 2 Summer Every year, the beauty of being outdoors all day in an Oregon summer overwhelms me. The smell of the twilight dust. The wild mint growing in a lavender haze at the edge of the fields. The brilliant sunshine that makes the grain look like gold and the sky…

Read Part 1 Spring 2016 was much more eventful than Winter 2016 was, in both good and tragic ways. On the tragic side of things, my great-uncle James and great-aunt Orpha, who lived just down the road from me, got in a terrible car accident in early spring. James was killed right away. Orpha held…