The Briefest of Summaries of the Past Year

I have a wedding dress. I have a florist and a caterer, a venue and an officiant. I have a photographer and a DJ. I am all ready for my wedding, now less than 2 months away. I haven't updated my blog, because not much has changed in the last year. I'm still an electrical engineering student at Calvin College. I still live in my same apartment in Grand Rapids, and am still engaged to Cody.

At LDAC last summer, I learned to call cadences effortlessly and to march on beat without missing a step. I learned to make a cocoon from a sleeping mat and a poncho, and to thoroughly clean an M-16. I slept in canvas tents and beneath the stars, and made new friends. I secured my place in the Army, and look forward to commissioning on May 22 as a Signal Corps officer.

My fiance and I no longer have to worry about spending our first few months of marriage in two different states; Cody will be moving up to Grand Rapids for our final semester of school, commuting to Chicago once a week.

I am building an amphibious robot equipped with a metal detector in my final semester of college. My senior design project, Amphibot, will be ready to present on Senior Design night in May. My teammates and I make up the first group of all women, at least in years if not ever, in Calvin's engineering history.

It's a good life I lead. I'm a lucky woman.

An Update on Why Life is Good

Junior year is more than half over already, and I'm getting old. Five semesters out of eight, over already. I'm only a week away from being finished with my third and final interim course. I've learned a lot in the last three years.

ROTC is becoming increasingly important in my day, as this summer, I'll be attending LDAC- "summer camp" to test and assess my grasp of basic cadet skills and knowledge. And when it's over... hopefully I'll be learning my Army future. The goal: active duty service as a Signal Corps 2nd Lieutenant. Stationed overseas, if I can get it. Germany, if possible.

But no matter what I get, no matter where I go, at least Cody will be going with me :) Over the past five months, we've begun planning for our wedding. Thirteen months from now, on February 21, 2015, Cody and I will marry here in Grand Rapids. We'll have a few more months to finish up school before we can honeymoon, move in together, and start our "normal" married life. But that's nothing, because he's worth it. Worth the planning, worth the time and money, worth the effort, the emotions, and the struggles. He's worth the smiles when we're together, and the sniffles when we say goodbye.

I've just three more semesters of college. I love my electrical engineering classes so far! I got straight A's this last semester, and enjoyed every class I took. I have an apartment that feels like home. I have a beautiful cat named Juniper, who snuggles with me every night. I see my brother every week, I talk to my parents every few days. I saw my brothers at Christmas time, and they had both grown so much! After this summer, my family will be back in the States, dreaded LDAC will be over, and the preparations for my future can begin in earnest. Good thing I've got some good classes to keep me busy these next few months! I've a lot to learn before May 2015!

Future Mrs. Limback

There's a ring on my finger that gleams in the sun and sparkles out of the corner of my eye, reminding me of the wonderful fact that when I graduate college, I'll be getting married!

My wonderful, wonderful boyfriend has now become my wonderful, wonderful fiance. He proposed on a summer evening, August 21st. I'll never forget his sheepish, happy grin as he knelt before me bearing a black box in which was nestled the shiny diamond that now adorns my left hand. We met Thanksgiving my freshman year of college and we've worked hard ever since to stay in contact in spite of the hundreds of miles between our respective colleges, our various busy schedules, my frequent trips outside of the country, away from America's cell service and easy wifi. It hasn't been the easiest relationship yet, but it just makes me all the more sure of him, of our future, and of how happy he makes me.

While we got to spend a wonderful summer together, we're back in our busy school schedules and hours apart once again. But it's easier to be apart now that I have a concept of a whole life together. Two years doesn't seem too long at all, before we can start a life together, become our own little family. And I am so excited for that future. Whatever the future has in store, I know that I'll have someone to share it with.

I love you, Cody :) And I can't wait to share my life with you.

Halfway Done with College- Halfway an Adult?

Halfway done with college and I hardly even recognize myself sometimes. I look in the mirror and see an adult, a young woman I'm still getting to know. She hasn't grown in years, but it hasn't stopped her face, her body, from maturing into new lines, new curves, new angles. She wears more makeup now, sophisticated amounts of eyeliner and mascara, even carefully applied eyeshadows in muted colors that blend from lids to eyebrows more expertly each day. She's learning to be as at home in her business casual work clothes as she always has been in Tshirts and jeans. She's learning to walk in heels for hours each day without winces of pain. She wants so desperately to look the part of the adult she's become.

I have bills to pay now: Rent, gas, electric, credit card. I get paychecks. I make lists to take with me to the grocery store, buying chicken breast in sealed plastic, produce in filmy bags, pasta sauces and loaves of bread, even dishwashing detergent and paper towels. I have to wash each pot after I use it, clean the stove when the water boils over. I have to get up earlier than even ROTC made me to drive to work and sit in my cubicle, typing busily on a company laptop while learning my way around an office. For the first time in years, I carry a lunch box again, making my own lunchmeat sandwiches each morning, or bringing in tupperwares full of last night's leftovers.

I don't get to see my parents, my home on the other side of the world, this summer. My middle and high school age brothers grow taller, grow bigger, get deeper voices every day, without their sister there to watch. I moved my bed, my desk, my sidetables and chests- the furniture that had been mine- from the house in Florida, where it'd been waiting for the day to come when I could move it into it's new home, my own apartment. Furniture that once adorned my bedroom in my parents' house now occupies the ground floor apartment of a wood-paneled complex in Western Michigan, far away.

I finished sophomore year of college as successfully as I started. I adapted easily to the rhythm of college life, adapted easily to the pathway to adulthood. I've learned so much, come so far. And I've only to do it over again, only to go two more years, and my formal education will be over, at least for awhile. Then it will be time to let life be my teacher.

Life has been good to me. My transitions have been smooth and easy, I have people in my life who love me and care for me, who want to see me succeed. Most prominently, of course, my own parents, whose wonderful support and love for me have allowed me to thrive so well on my own now. But bosses, colleagues, friends, mentors, professors, my boyfriend's parents, so many other people also want to see me succeed, it's hard not to feel like everything is all going work out perfectly, regardless of how many questions I still have about the course of my future. I've made such progress, these past two years, in shaping an adult from my girlhood, how could I doubt I'll fail to grow into a successful graduate, post-graduate, and working woman in the next two, four, eight years I have to face? I'm really very blessed.

The Comfort of Familiarity, or How Sophomore Year is Easy

The difference between freshman and sophomore year is the familiarity with which each day passes.  Last year, fall semester was one of the most novel, most empowering and exhilarating experiences I could remember.  Every week of the semester I learned something new, did something different, participated in an event that I'd never done before, or exercised a freedom I'd never before had.  I learned to schedule, to plan, to take charge of each minute of my life, responsible for the manner in which I spent it.  The experience was so novel, so unique, that so often I found myself pouring my overwhelmed thoughts to a blog post, to a journal entry, to my mom, just to be able to synthesize and evaluate it, to take it to heart and to apply it the next time.

This year, on the other hand, is solid and familiar and easy.  Living in a dorm, walking across campus to class, scheduling out homework times, meeting up with groups for projects, studying for tests...  I've done it all before.  It's like reliving freshman year with all the knowledge and experience of having completed it already; only my classes are harder.  There was nothing baffling at ROTC, nothing new in the dorms.  It's been easy and repetitive- little wonder I've had little need to journal!  My life has taken on order and regularity.  I know what I do each day of the week, what I have time to add and what I can afford to miss.  I know which afternoons I'm busy and which afternoons I'm free.

Monday is a busy day.  With hour-long squad meetings at 4 and work at the observatory at 7 until 11, there isn't time for much more than a couple hours of homework.  Tuesdays too are busy- ROTC lab lasting from 2 to 4 and with ROTC class going from 4:30 to 6, the remainder of my evening goes into finishing the Engineering homework due each week on Wednesday morning.  Wednesdays are my sigh of relief day.  At long last I've reached the hump in the week, and I've a day on which my responsiblilites end at noon. I can go to the gym, get ahead on homework, get off-campus chores done, or kick my feet up and relax a bit.  Thursdays are my enigma day- they never feel busy until evening rolls around and I realize I've been busy all day.  With 2 labs, I spend most of the day beneath the fluorescent lights of a classroom, and spend my evenings perfecting the math homework always due bright and early Friday morning.

Unlike last year, however, my weekends now are often filled with activity.  Last year, I worked studiously Saturday, after spending most of the morning in a deep, weekend sleep, on hours' worth of homework saved explicitly for those empty weekend days.  And then Sunday, after church, I'd drive down the street to the wonderful, two-story Barnes and Nobel and indulge in multiple happy hours sitting on the hard floor with my back pressed against the bookshelves and my feet tucked out of the way of the occasional passerby, reading the first few chapters of book after book, creating long mental lists for myself to someday read in their entirety.  This year, however, I don't do homework on the weekends.  This year, a significant portion of my weekends are spent in Chicago, where I get to spend two smiling days with my wonderful boyfriend Cody after a fortnight or so of text messages, phone calls, and stunningly horrible-quality Skype conversations in which often both picture and voice pixellate and distort so as to be unrecognizable.  Instead, we get a special 48 hours or so together, in the flesh, face to face, though not quite eye to eye as his chin can rest on my head.  It's been almost a year since we met, last Thanksgiving, when I spent the holiday far from home at a friend's house in Chicago.  Almost 12 months and countless text messages later, we can finally watch Fight Club together again, the movie which brought us together, henceforth our Thanksgiving tradition.  Yes, I'm very much looking forward to this Thanksgiving.  In the meantime, I've another week and a half of following my schedule, of filling my social life into the patterned skeleton of scheduling I've developed for myself this sophomore year, of PT and lab, of classes and homework, of gyms and laundry, of work and of play.  And afterwards, a mere two weeks until my third round of college finals, my third week of exams, and my second December as a college student.  Yes, sophomore year is not too hard at all.

Four Months Pass Once More

It's August now, and time still passes as indifferently as before.  I still look back and wonder where the time has gone, wonder how I managed to fit so much life into a time that passed in almost the blink of the eye of hindsight.  From December to April I looked back on four quickly passing months of my second semester of college.  And now I look back on four quickly passing months of my first summer break of college.  What have I done in this time?  I've been to three different countries, entertained two sets of friends, and moved once.  And now, with only two weeks until the start of a new school year, I can look back on it as more or less complete.

I didn't know, until two days out, whether I would even be traveling with the Army this summer.  After finding out in June that I would likely NOT be going to Angola as I'd assumed since winter of last year, I spent weeks wondering just what my fate would in fact be.  As it turns out, I was fated to go to Romania.  I spent just under a month living in Romania with twelve other cadets and our two cadre officers.  During the week we stayed at a hotel in a city called Buzau teaching English to Romanian paratroopers and special forces soldiers.  On the weekends, we were able to make ventures beyond the city limits of Buzau, spending a few nights in Bucharest, a night in Brasov near one of the so-called "Dracula's Castles" and a few nights in Constanta, a beach city on the shores of the Black Sea.  The experience was not so kind to me at the time as I had hoped it would be.  I had a crash course on Army travel, and learned a lot about what I don't like about soldiers- the stereotypical crude male.  But, tempered by the soft brush of memory, the experience has become much prettier as the little annoyances fade into oblivion and the better memories of travel and companionship and new experiences take the fore.

I flew back to Florida briefly for a quick stop at the old house, where Galen met me.  Shortly thereafter, the two of us flew out to San Diego to meet up with the rest of the family for our every-so-often Tolsma family reunion.  We spent the weekend in a nice hotel seeing aunts, uncles, and cousins we hadn't seen in months to years.  It would have been a very pleasant experience had it not be for the robbery.  My computer, my mom's computer, and most of the other small electronics in the room, were stolen from my mom's and my hotel room the last night at the resort.  Our wallets, with all our IDs, were stolen with only a day to spare before our flight out to Korea.  It was a bit of a nuisance procuring new military IDs, and the information lost on my computer particularly will never, ever be recovered.  But we've learned to move on, to learn from the experience, and to trust in God's providence to get us through the experience.

Living in Korea is going to be a different experience than anywhere we've ever lived, and this move has proved different from any move this family has ever gone through.  For me in particular, this move is represents the first move in which I am uninvolved, the first move where I don't feel as though the destination is "home."  These few weeks have been a limbo phase for all of us.  Waiting for our household goods, waiting for our car, it's hard for my parents and brothers to make this house home so far.  And waiting for college, it's hard to me to be patient to get back to the life that I'm beginning to make for myself, to friends and classes, dorm rooms and cafeteria food, my wonderful boyfriend and the Army.  Good things and bad, I'm looking forward to it all and am ready to get back to my life again, to unpack my dorm room, to get myself settled, and to drive my loyal PT Cruiser again.  Four months down, I've made it to August.  Where has the time gone?

Leaving Paradise?

Who wants to leave paradise?  This has been a fantastic summer thus far, and I'm so happy with my time since school got out.  I've loved being home with my family, loved having friends and family visit.  I went on my first cruise and toured an underwater cave in Cozumel, Mexico.  I watched my brother graduate high school.  I lay on the beach and soaked up the sun.

On Wednesday, I was finally able to bring Cody home to meet my parents, and to show him where I live and the beautiful South I love so much.  I've enjoyed having him here with me so much, these past few days, it's really made me happy.  Happier than even this awesome summer had already made me.  I'm so glad he was able to come down, so glad to have him here with me, so glad to spend eleven days with him, day after day after day.  Thank you for coming, Cody.

I do wish I had more confidence in the rest of the summer, however.  I've yet to find out from the Army if I'm going anywhere this summer, or when or where that might be, exactly.  And I was supposed to leave in less than 10 days...  The stress of uncertainty is too much, so I've been ignoring it now pretty entirely.  I hope it all works out...  The stress of moving to Korea is less my burden to bear than it is my parents' though.  I'm not really moving, I'm just visiting.  But for their sakes, I pray for a safe move, that all the details fall smoothly into place, and that they like their home in Korea.  And I pray too that Galen find college to be all he'd hoped and more, that he comes to really enjoy his time at Calvin and that he does well.  Gah, the future.... I don't want to think about it when the present is so perfect.

Homecoming

I had a final during the last time slot of the last day of testing.  It was my hardest of the semester, and studying for it proved more difficult than I had anticipated.  Who wants to study when all around you happy students pack to go home with smiles of excitement and relief, celebrating the completion of their first year of college, or the half-way milestone.  I sat in my more-or-less empty room, surrounded by the few things I'd packed into the one suitcase to go home, and read laboriously over pages and pages of engineering notes.  The exam itself was comparable to a lobotomy; my eyes throbbed and my head ached from the glare of the fluorescent lights on white paper and the strain of three hours of testing.  But then it was all over.  My summer could begin.

I spent the first four days of my summer vacation in the Chicago suburbs with my boyfriend and his family.  It was such a relief to relax together, both finished with school and preparing for our various summer adventures.  But for those few days, we had no stress, no commitments, no worries.  It was summer and we were together.

Coming home was also nice, in it's own way.  The joy of family, the comfort of home, the familiarity of an old routine...  Due to a mix of guests, friends and family, the routine was not long lived, but it was comforting while it lasted.

My brother graduated from high school yesterday.  Which marks a year since I did the same.  I'm so proud of him, graduating magna cum laude, and so happy he had friends to celebrate the event with afterwards.  I wish him all the best making such friends next year at Calvin, and I hope he has as good a freshman year there as I did, full of adventure and trial and reward and success and failure and unexpected turns of events that keep him on his toes.  Graduation is an exciting time, and freshman year goes by so quickly.  With all the new experience to learn, all the new things to do, it's over before it really begins.  I hope he's ready for it.

A cog was thrown in my own summer plans when the Army trip to Angola fell through.  With less than a month to go until the big trip was supposed to occur, I got an email saying the trip was a no-go.  Talk is in the air of a trip to Romania instead, but the potential still exists for no trip at all.  And there's nothing I can do but sit and wait and wonder, and twiddle my thumbs aimlessly and hem and haw and do my best to plan one way or another.  If I go, will the dates be changed?  And how will that affect the precise plans my mom has spent hours formulating for the reunion in San Diego and the move to Korea?  If I stay, do I get any compensation for my time and effort?  Where will I go?  Will I need shots?  A visa?  More paperwork?  If I stay, can I make plans for the suddenly open weeks, or will it be too late?  Bah, I hate not knowing the answer, with the time so close.  Lessons in patience, in trust, and in the way the Army works.

The summer is almost 1/3 of the way over, and I don't even know what the next 2/3 will look like.  But no matter what happens in the intervening months, whether perfect or a mess, I look forward at the end of August to returning to Grand Rapids, moving Galen into his dorm room, and reuniting with Cody before my own third semester of college begins.  I can't wait to see what the next few months, and this next year, have in store.

Time Passes Indifferently

Christmas was 4 months ago now.  On Christmas I sat in my Florida paradise and looked forward to the next half of my freshman year.  There was so much more life to be lived, so many more opportunities to explore, experiences to have, at Calvin College in the coming semester.  My first January interim, the trials of a Michigan winter, beginning a new round of classes, with all the work and learning that implied, friends to grow closer to, a room to myself, holidays and work days, spring break and long weeks with no break at all.  April seemed such a long way off, separated from the present by so many hours, so many experiences, so many plans.  And looking back, I am once more struck by the ease with which time passes.  All the things I looked forward to and all the things I dreaded, all have now passed into mere memory.  Some of those memories are pleasant: my first date with my boyfriend, Interim break, the first day of spring classes, spring break in Florida, days off at Easter.  Some of these memories less so: the spring FTX, interim finals, snow storms, long weeks of trudging through classes, early morning PT.  From where I sit now, the end of Freshman year is so close.  The last week of ROTC is next week, classes wrap up in a month, finals are over in just a week more.  I have a summer of fun and adventure.  A cruise, a trip to Angola, a family reunion, moving to Korea.  Friends visiting in May, boyfriend visiting in June.  Weeks in the sun and weeks in uniform.  And then a flight back to Grand Rapids in August with my brother, to start the cycle all over again.  And when August rolls around, in another 4 months, that is, I'm sure I'll be looking back at this very blog post wondering what happened to all that time.  Because those four months will pass just as quickly as these have, and I'll be sitting at the end thinking, "well, it's all over now.  Where has the time gone?"

Merry Christmas!

I woke up to sunshine this Christmas eve, looked out my bedroom window at a diamond ocean glittering in the sun.  After more than a week at home, I've succeeded in studying a bit of Arabic, reading a few pages of a few books, running a few miles, and absorbing some sun.  Which is fine, really.  I'm on break.

I spent the weekend before Finals Week huddled like a recluse in a darkened room, drinking pots of coffee and tea and frantically scribbling notes, organizing papers, and flipping through books for hours upon hours.

I had a test a day Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, each represented by a colored balloon taped to the door frame.  The greatest satisfaction of Finals Week was coming back to the room after each test and violently popping each balloon with whatever sharp object happened to be lying around.  Calculus was the most difficult of them all.  Three solid hours of the most tedious math problems organized on eye-watering colored paper in a stuffy basement room with ancient lecture hall chairs whose fold out desks were almost smaller than the paper itself.  But it was all worth it when Thursday evening I got to come home to my stately room, my wall of bookshelves, my soft brown queen-sized bed, and my ecstatic cat.  And my family.  It was so good to be home, and the weather has been gorgeous.  Sunny and warm, with a few days of wind and clouds, Florida is putting on quite a show for my time back.  It's so nice to be celebrating a warm, sunny Christmas with family.