An Update from College

Since the #1 conversation Dave, Delia and I have with people lately is "How Ella is Doing", thought I'd write a post with some of the pictures she sends me so you all could see how she is thriving and living her best life!  First, this is not a surprise.  We've always known that Ella was built for college.  She does her best work when challenged.  She's always been good at making new friends.  And we weren't too worried about her being homesick, since she was away from home with a busy schedule for much of her high school years.  One thing we have all found and love is that absence from her family does seem to have made her heart grow fonder.  We text every day.  We FaceTime on Sundays.  She usually talks to Dave on the phone (he likes that ;) once a week.  She's been very good at sending pictures of her new friends and fun activities, so we feel very in the loop.  This weekend we had a text thread so hilarious, I laughed so hard I cried!  This new phase of our relationship with Ella has had such a neat intentionality to it, we've been really enjoying it!  We'll get to see her at the end of October for Family Weekend (Delia will even stay in the dorm with Ella and her friends!), and we're so excited to see her in person!

Ella's schedule is major.  She's taking maximum credit hours.  One of her classes is 7:30 am three times a week.  One is a night class.  Two of her classes, chemistry and biology, each come with 4 hour labs every week.  She does spend a lot of time studying.  But she's keeping A's in almost all her classes!  She's finding chemistry to be her hardest, but most interesting.  She's more average in that class, which is something new, and that makes her question if she's on the right career path.  She may want something medical that's not necessarily pre-med, something with all the anatomy/physiology she loves, but less chemistry.  

We find this so delightful.  One of Ella's new best friends is Ava, HER APPARENT TWIN!! These two have been having lots of fun confusing everyone in their dorm this first month.  They say they plan to swap outfits and go to each other's classes and see if anyone will notice!  Haha!  (Mask because Ella's roommate tested positive for Covid in the first week and she had to mask up for a few days.)  Ella's roommate has been someone she can live with comfortably and compatibly.  They do cute things like make dinner together one night a week.  But, the roommate is local and goes home every Thursday to Sunday, leaving Ella the room to herself, and forcing Ella to find her people in other places. 

Which she has had no trouble doing!  One of my favorite new memories was a night we were Face Timing Ella and her new crowd of friends came into her room, popping in our call to say, "Hi Mr. and Mrs VM!! We LOVE your daughter!!!" Above is a picture from Nation Ball night.  At my college, we had Chaos Day, and this is Ella's version of that-- an epic night of dorm competition.  Her dorm is coed for the first time in its history, so it was the first year they did not get creamed! ;)  They actually came in second place and Ella said the night was so fun.   Her current favorite thing about life is the Swing Dance Club she and her friends joined and do every Friday night!

Above and below is another one of Ella's new best friends, Tori.  They spent a Saturday serving the church they have been attending.  This made us laugh.  Their church is a Baptist church and the job they were assigned was to scrub out the dusty baptismal tank!  Ella was like, "You know this job would be so much easier if you just used a bowl!"  LA's weather gives them a cool marine layer each morning, so Ella loves being not so hot and busting out all the fun fall sweaters well before we usually wear them.  I guess she and Tori looked cute one morning, so their RA made them pose.

Ella is already dreaming about her exciting future and how her gifts will be best used in summer's valuable free time.  She's exploring going to 6 week EMT school, or being a counselor at Mount Hermon, or this-- the internship at JPL that our tour guide sold so hard!  Her research seemed to indicate that the NASA application might have been made for her.  We'll see where the Lord leads!

And one last picture of one of our many fun Face Times!  We so look forward to this weekly time to catch up and laugh together about the week's random things like emotional support cats, quinoa hate, Dave accidentally sending his exegetical commentary Amazon orders to Ella, stump removal, moldy rug adventures, cute boys in the dorm, and skeleton unboxing.  We miss her, of course, but we know how settled and happy she is in this perfect-for-her new home and that makes us all say, "We're doing great!" when we get daily asked how we're surviving.