Top secret communique from agent Clark encrypted to the readers of his blog.

That’s right. You knew it was true. All those times that I joked I was a secret agent I was serious! No joke. Why was I in Estonia? Undercover agent, top secret work. All that fun stuff. And now I shocked many by moving to America, and not only moving to America but moving to Houghton, which is 20 miles from the nearest sin for those of you who don’t know, and the nearest sin is in the middle of nowhere. So around here we have…trees. And that’s about it. So why would I be here? I’M A SECRET AGENT! It’s my mission! I’m here at Houghton doing a top secret, secret agent secret mission. It’s all very secret though. Besides walking around with sunglasses on and writing top secret communiqués, my mission is simple. And top secret. Okay, I’ll be seriousish for a minute. What am I really talking about? Did I mention I got a job? Well, I did! It was fun! All us freshmen were going to Letchworth park, which isn’t really the most exciting thing. At least not for me, because I’ve been there before. But it was exciting because when you spend half an hour stuck in a hot school bus with someone you’re bound to make friends. And I did. So I was happy about that. But what made me extremely happy was that on the bus somebody was advertising for the phonathon, trying to find people to work for them. It was perfect, because I’d been looking for a job for the last few days, so it was like a gift from God. Another gift from God was when they told me that to find out about the job I should E-mail Heather, who I actually knew from the TCK transition week. Heather just graduated, and her brother and sister, Stephen and Amy, are seniors at the academy, and all of them are TCKs from Slovakia! Yay! I love my fellow TCKs. And of all the TCKs, they’re some of the ones who I clicked with best, because since we’re both from Europe we actually have a lot in common, culturally and in what we’ve experienced.

So they’re some people I really enjoy. Though, since Heather has graduated (and since I’d feel kind of awkward hanging out with someone older than me) and Stephen and Amy are still in the academy, I don’t see much of them. But anyway, that was really cool. But I still wasn’t convinced that should be my job. The thing that finally convinced me was when I was looking through, “The Scoop”, the weekly online paper, and saw a wanted ad looking for 007s, and secret agents, and saying that this work was potentially dangerous, and some of their agents were missing in action and…it’s the MR6 Phonathon division of the Houghton Fund. It sounded so much more awesome, and now I knew I needed to sign up for the job. So I did. I E-mailed Heather and set up an on the phone interview, which I had to borrow my roommate’s phone for. The interview went well, though I was extremely nervous. But I got the job! I was so excited. And because I really want to prove to you that I’m a secret agent, here’s the message I received upon my acceptance in to the ranks of the MR6 division:

“Dear operative,

It is with greatest solemnity that the MR6 (Phonathon) Division of the Houghton Fund grants you top level security clearance. Furthermore, you have been selected by The Hill as a 007 Agent.
Pending your relocation to MR6 HQ, you will receive your personal operative name and mission. You report for duty on Wednesday, 3 September 2008 at 7pm. The location of this meeting will be transmitted separately at an undisclosed time.
Training will commence in the days thereafter.
Bon Courage,
~The Hill”

I knew I found the best job on campus. Next some of the more exciting stuff, the job training. Our first test: find the training! This was wicked fun. Rather than just telling us where to go we received an encrypted message. A riddle. The meeting was at 7, I started working on the riddle at 6. After walking through Paine Center and not finding it, I checked Luckey Building. There is where I found the hint to go to where I was SUPPOSED to have started, Chamberlain Center. Once I got there it was pretty easy to figure out, and I really enjoyed it. Though it was difficult, and it took me 45 minutes of walking around with my laptop out like some sort of secret agent…Oh yeah, I am a secret agent. But it was funny walking around with my laptop under my arm, trying to figure out this riddle. It turned out I wasn’t the first agent to leave early to leave time for mistakes, and so I got to spend some time meeting my fellow agents. That was fun. One nice surprise was that one of my fellow agents was a girl named Jenny, who turned out to be my friend Anya’s roommate! So that was cool, I love connections. And that was a cool one. I was also happy to see my friend Sarah, who’s from Kenya, was working with me too.

So as I’m sure you’ve guessed I’ve been having loads of fun with it. But let me explain my job, because I’m sure you’re all confused. I’m a secret agent? How is that possible? I’m a secret agent and just like in every spy movie I’m working with beautiful women? How is this not too good to be true? Well, I don’t know. It really is too good to be true. My job is an amazingly awesome job. We are the lucky few, we stand alone, invisible to all. No one knows what we do, we are the secret agents of the Houghton Fund. It is our job to call Alumni and friends of the college and ask for donations. It’s an excellent job. I got my first pledge last night! 5$! Very exciting. Though I really need to step it up a notch. I need to be able to compete with my fellow agents. And today I received my last piece of confirmation that this is my dream job. This morning I received an encoded message from The Hill with a question. I have been asked if I’d be willing to become a 007 Blogspotter, a dangerous job, but one that HQ thinks I might be good for. Really, who would think that I could write on a blog? Who’s crazy idea was that? I’m hoping my sarcasm is obvious. The idea of being able to do some writing really excites me. I have very little writing from my classes this semester, and every other kind of homework bores me, so I need the writing. I didn’t realize how much I really loved writing until I didn’t have time for it. That’s why I’m writing so much today. I’m just letting it out. I need this. So I’m extremely excited, pretty soon you will be able to read my writings on the Houghton Fund Phonathon blog as well. That will be a treat. But until then, I must go. I have writing to do for my one class that actually involves writing, Initiatives, a PE class! Oh the irony. Why can’t I just write?

This is agent Clark signing off, this message will self-destruct in 10 seconds, taking your computer with it. Have a nice day!

PANIC!!! Panic, panic, panic, panic.....

By the time any of you read this it'll probably be too late. Please pray for me. I'm PANICKING! PANIC! Yes, I know it says don't panic! BUT I AM! I have a Western Civ. test in half an hour. And I'm panicking. I need to find someone to sub for me today for work. And I'm panicking. I'll die. Please pray for me. I don't know what to do. SAVE ME! Please pray for me. I'm really panicky. And now I must go. Cya!

Wow, I could blog all night!

You know how when you put something off it seems to kind of pile up? Well, I’ve been putting off blogging and doing things like, you know, homework. Waste of time stuff like that. But now I’m finally going to blog. But I have so much to blog about. Where should I start? I would start at the beginning, but I don’t remember January 9th, 1990 very well. So instead I’ll just randomly tell you what’s been going on. I’ve had a cold. Lucky for me it hit full force during the weekend. My Saturday was mostly spent lying in bed coughing and blowing my nose while trying to nap. But I’d rather lose a Saturday than miss classes. I’m already barely keeping my head above the water as it is. So anyway, that’s made life pretty interesting. Though it’s showed me some of the things that I love about Houghton. Everybody keeps asking me how I’m feeling, and telling me to get better. On Saturday I was supposed to work, but since my job involves talking on the phone I wouldn’t really do that well. I had kind of lost my voice. So I ran around trying to find a sub, but couldn’t find anyone. Then I ran to work 5 minutes before I was supposed to start and pleaded my case to my supervisor. I was prepared to work if necessary, but I really didn’t want to. When I worked on Thursday I was already starting to lose my voice and I had a coughing fit near the end of one call. I felt really bad. But this is one of the things about Houghton. When I got off that call one of my co-workers just turned to me and said, “drink lots of water”. And when I was begging my supervisor I guess my desperation must have showed through, because she just smiled and said, “Chris, you don’t have to work. Just get better.” I was so grateful. As I left I could practically cry. I was just so overcome by grace.

That was good. And now, even though I said I could blog all night, I’m tired. So I’m going to bed. Goodnight. Please pray for me that I get better soon, because I’m really tired of coughing and I’ve gone through almost a whole box of tissues. Cya.

It's all Greek to me.

Well, I'm feeling pretty good. It's 11 P.M. and half an hour ago I finished my Greek homework, meaning that I'm done for the night. That felt good. I am now prepared for class tomorrow. Or at least as I'm prepared as I'll ever be. I'm not doing too well with Greek, it's hard. And it's so different from learning Estonian. I really learned Estonian mostly from speaking it and hearing it. Now I'm stuck learning I language I'll mostly be reading and can't really speak with anyone. And also I have to learn it from the book. I hate learning languages from books. I think it's a lot harder. But it's the only way I have to learn it. And already Greek is enriching my life. Full Metal Panic is one of my all time favorite animes EVER! And in Full Metal Panic there's the Lambda Driver, which does awesomely cool things. Now I have learned that "Lambda" is a Greek letter. And now I realize why I kept seeing that letter in the anime. Super cool. And also there's the Lambda class shuttle in star Wars. Lambda is now my favorite letter in any language. Λ λ Lambda. It's awesome. So anyway, I'm happy about Greek. It makes me smile. Someday I'll blog in Greek. I'll be all like, Χαιρεν, Χρις ΡΟΚΣ! Okay, so I threw in some English, but it's still cool.

Another cool thing here at college is Ruckus. ruckus.com is an awesome ad supported website where I can download music for free just because I'm a college student. when I was coming to college and thinking about college I already knew the first thing I would download from Ruckus. Bond. The awesome violinists. They are beyond amazing. They've convinced me of something. I want to marry a violinist. I was actually asked recently what I want in a wife, and because I was asked by a girl I avoided the question. But now I've been thinking about it. And besides being a an amazingly strong Christian with a passion for serving God, and having beautiful, long, dark hair and being able to sing and...the list goes on. I want a violinist. Now, I know that I'm probably freaking some of you out. I go to college and meet a whole bunch of girls and suddenly I'm saying I want to marry a dark haired singing violinist? Well, to be honest I've always said that. Not just recently. But just to put you all at ease, so far I've met no violinists, very few dark haired girls, and two singers. But both singers were guys. So no worries there. Anyway, I'm just loving Bond. Seriously. If you've never listened to Bond, do it. Now. GO! Listen to Bond, and you'll understand my love for violinists. Must be off now. I'm tired, and my bed is comfortable and warm, once I move some junk off it...

If I were to be the citizen of any nation, I'd want it to be procrastination!

Just wanted to share that with you. I don't think this works well as a life philosophy, so maybe I should try doing some hard work. Cya!

1. Social Life 2. Good Grades 3. Adequate Sleep. Pick two. (Welcome to College)

Wow, freaky. Two people sent me the same flair on the same day. Thank you Christine and Monica, for giving me a name for this post and also describing college life in simple words. It saves me some time. After sleeping through my alarm on Sunday I felt like an idiot. Now I just feel like a college student. I, of course, have picked my two. Social life and good grades are my two top priorities. Now that doesn’t mean I don’t sleep, it just means that I changed my definition of adequate sleep from 8 hours to 6. I actually would prefer to get back to 8 hours of sleep a night. Or at least 7. But at the moment I’m juggling friends, homework, and sleep. And I’m not doing as much of any of the three as I’d normally like. I’ve kind of learned, after that first week, that I need to make schoolwork my top priority, even though I enjoy friends more. I write that as my open Bib. Lit. book sits next to me waiting to be read. I think blogging is a high priority too, so I’m making time for it. FaceBook is not a priority, so I should be making less time for that. Anyway, I bet you all want to know about what I’ve been up to, so I’ll tell you. I’ve been up to crazy college things. I got a job! I’m working for the Houghton Fund, which will be super fun. One interesting thing that’s been happening here at college is my struggling with authority. No, not against authority. With authority. What to do with it. My boss is a TCK and I’m friends with her brother and sister and want to be friends with her too, but I feel weird because she’s my boss. Can I be friends with someone in authority over me? Same with my R.A., Alex, he’s awesome, and I’d definitely say he’s my friend, but I feel weird being friends with the people in authority. I’d like to be friends with professors too, but once again I feel so awkward. With all these people I feel that if I try to just be friends with them than I’m not showing them the proper respect. So that’s kind of a dilemma.

Anyway, that’s not a huge problem. I mean, I’ve barely even been here a week yet. But it’s been quite an interesting week. I have many different friends, a rather diverse group. So I pretty much always have someone to sit with at meals. Though that’s one other problem I have. I have too many friends. I’m used to hanging out with two or three people at a time, but now a group of like ten will be going around together. And I just can’t really handle that. The only positive to a big group like that is that when I feel too overwhelmed by it, I can slip off and no one will notice. I guess some people would say you can never have many friends, and I kind of agree. But I’d rather have two or three close friends that are like my best friends than have twenty people who I hang out with on and off. I’m going for quality over quantity. I’m weird like that. And though I do have more friends than I can handle, I would say I have a few who are closest, so I’m good. I’ve really been enjoying dorm life. As I said before, my R.A., Alex, is cool. He likes blasting movie soundtracks while he studies, so it gives our whole floor a really cool feel. And we’re all constantly turning to each other and going, “Which movie is this from?” which makes things really fun. I’ve got a whole bunch of really fun guys on my floor. And we all like music. So there’s always something fun playing, so if I leave my room, I don’t walk through the halls, I dance, sing, or air guitar my way through the halls.

So anyway, I’m enjoying myself. It’s hard to adjust to this new environment, but I’m doing it. I had a revelation regarding school work the other day. I went back to my room and saw that I had a half hour of free time until I had to go to dinner. So I went on FaceBook and all that and I still had more time, so I reached in to my drawer and pulled out my CD case, took out the Heroes of Might and Magic III & IV CD, opened my CD drive and…stopped. I realized something. I have half an hour of free time? No I don’t! Any time I have a free minute I can do school work. I put away the games and started on school work. And though that may seem obvious to you, it was a revelation to me. And I Revelation I needed. I hadn’t installed any games yet, but previously when I had a free minute I would waste it on FaceBook or something, because of course I need at least two hours free to able to do homework. Yeah right. I’m now trying to use my time better. And getting quite positive results. So I’m happy with that. And now I must be going. Because I do still have some school work to be done. So until later, Cya!

I am really angry! I am such an idiot! I'm going to smash my head against the wall! Repetitively! AGGHHH!!

I can't believe this. I slept through my alarm this morning. I'm really upset. Like extremely. By sleeping through my alarm I let so many people down. I let down my friend Monica who I was going to let borrow my Greek book. I let down my friend Emily who is president of SASF (Salvation Army Student Fellowship) and who was driving us. I was supposed to be there at 8:30. And then I let down my officers, the Maynors, and the whole rest of my corps, and everyone else in SASF. I'm so angry and upset with myself. I guess this means I can spend some time doing homework, but I'm actually really disapointed in myself. This doesn't normally happen. And now I'm worried. What if this happens tomorrow? What if I miss Greek? I can't screw up again. I never sleep through my alarm. I'm really quite angry with myself. Well, I'm going to start making up for things, one thing at a time. I'm going to meet Monica and give her the Greek book. I sent and E-mail to Emily apologizing. And I don't know what more I can do. I feel horrible. Well, I guess today's another homework day then. Please pray for me. I'm really upset about this. Cya later.

First week...Wow.

I'm sorry I can't think of a better title than that, but it's all I've got. Let me tell you a bit about my first week. I'd love to go in depth. I love to tell you all the little details. I'd love to name a whole bunch of people who are awesome friends. But I don't have time. Dinner is in 10 minutes. So I'll tell you the basics. There's two main reasons why I'm blogging. Failure and victory. This week they've kind of gone hand in hand. All week long I've been failing. Failing in my choices. I've been putting off schoolwork in order to do other things that are about a million times more fun. So last night I realized that I still hadn't finished all my homework for Greek, Biblical Literature and Introduction to Psychology. And all those classes were today. So last night, about 11pm I was almost ready to just break down and cry. I was about to give up. I didn't know what to do. I felt that I'd failed. I felt that I was a helpless little idiot with no hope of ever succeeding in college. I was afraid. Because I knew I couldn't just go to sleep. I wouldn't be able to sleep feeling like that. i had two options. Blog out my feelings and my surrender, or fight. Fighting didn't feel like a real option to me. I was tired. And I couldn't go on.

But I did. I stayed up until almost 2am. Last night I had failed. I felt helpless. I felt stupid. And I felt ready to give up. I had made my choices. I had chosen fun stuff over schoolwork. And now I was paying for it. I bore the responsibility. It was my fault. So I turned and I faced my failure. I looked it straight in it's ugly face. Then I picked up my laptop, and all my books. Having to take two trips. And I set up in the floor lounge. And so last night I taught myself the Greek alphabet and read enough Bib. Lit. and Psych. to get by in those classes. By the end of it I was tired. And I felt stupid. And I felt even more stupid in the morning. This morning I drank the fourth cup of coffee I've drank in the year 2008. I only drink coffee when I'm desperate. And it worked. The first half of Greek my brain was sluggish and I wasn't participating as well as I should have been. I wrote an E-mail to professor Tõniste apologizing for that. But after the coffee kicked in I made it through all my classes pretty well, then came back to the dorm for a half hour nap. That one half hour nap was enough to give me the energy for 2 hours of homework. Thank God. And thank God it's Friday. I need some rest. And I need to reward myself. I feel pretty good over all. I did something stupid. I failed. I made bad choices. But I got over that and came out okay. I'm not going to do it again. I learned a lot from this. And I still feel this was a victory, even though it came at the cost of failure.

So now let me just say one thing. If I get any E-mails from anyone telling me how disapointed thay are, I'm not going to read it. I'm going to delete it, and be violently angry, and most likely hit them next time I see them. I'm being very positive about this. this was a victory. This was a learning experience. Yet I still failed, and I know that. And I feel horrible. Like seriously angry with myself. I'm already yelling at myself for my stupid failure, so if anybody else does it I'm going to be angry. So just don't actually, it would probably be best just not to mention this. Don't E-mail me saying how great it is that I got over me screw up. Just leave it. Thank you. Now I'm off to dinner, and tonight is "Sinatra Under the Stars" with the Lambein girls, who are some of my favorite girls on campus, next to the Gillette girls of course. That is the reward I spoke of. So until next time, when I can blog more, Cya!

Hmmm, flowers and two hundred serenading boys? What is this?

This is Houghton College. You like that picture? I got tired of stealing pictures from girls, so I took this one myself. The morning mist looks pretty cool, so I went out and took this picture. But back to the flowers and serenading boys. Tonight Rothenbuhler, Lambein, Gillette and Shenawana dorms all had their annual hall meetings. I, being a proud Roth guy, was at the Roth meeting. Part way through our beloeved R.A.s ran out with flowers, disapearing mysteriously. We later found out they had given flowers to the Gillette and Lambein girls. Awesome. A very nice romantic gesture. Apparently the girls loved it. So I come back to my dorm and go on FaceBook and was surprised to see almost every girl's FaceBook status having something to do with being serenaded by Shen boys! No mention at all of flowers...Shen, our rival guy dorm, seems to have heard about our flowers and gone out in full force, roughly two hundred boys, serenading the girls. I can take pranks, I can take jokes and thinly veiled insults, but when girls get involved, it's personal. Not only am I extraordinarily jealous, I'm also slightly annoyed. I hate being upstaged. And as I said, I don't mind much of anything else anywhere else, but when it comes to girls...

So now I'm trying to formulate ways to be more romantic than the Shen guys. I know tomorrow I'm going to have some girls who, after reading this or my FaceBook status, will tell me how much they loved the flowers. But if I didn't bring it up they probably wouldn't even remember it. I feel that we Roth men have been outdone. And I don't like it. Hmmm, I'll have my chance. All the girls will see what us Roth men are made of. Just wait for the snow...We have plans. Those Shen boys will see. Tomorrow is a new day, and I'm going to be extra good with the girls tomorrow. They're all going to be like, "Oh, those Roth MEN are awesome! They're so cute and funny and smart and caring and sensitive and manly and romantic and buff and..." and those girls are going to just keep on going. And then I'm going to ask what they think of Shen boys, "Shen? What's that?" And my victory will be complete. Dang, I'm jealous...

Okay, I hope you don't all think I'm too wierd now. You probably do though. But anyway, I must go now. You always used to complain that I'd write too long of posts, now I'm only have time/energy for short, bite-sized ones. So be happy. And someone please tell me how romantic and awesome I am...

P.S. Please note how I always says Roth MEN and Shen BOYS. ;-)

"But if you replace the shrew with a mushroom you get away from the whole point that it's a love story!"

Houghton is, in one word, awesome. Amazing. Wonderful. Beautiful. I'm so happy to be here. One example of why is that I'm always laughing, always smiling. An example of this is yesterday I had just finished a rather long Skype call with my parents back in Estonia and gone outside to find something interesting to do. I decided I would either find someone I knew and hang out with them or I would find a quiet tree and curl up under it with a book. So I ran into my friend Elisa and we played spit next to the quad for a while, which was awesomely fun. And as we were playing some guy walked past talking on the phone, and as he went past he said, "But if you replace the shrew with a mushroom you get away from the whole point that it's a love story!". How randomly awesome is that! It's so funny, and so crazy and just awesome. And it's just one tiny example of why I love this place.

This morning was excellent. I had two classes, Greek and Biblical Literature. The Greek Prof. is Estonian, so I got to speak in Estonian for the first time in almost a month. and then the Bib. Lit. Prof. (Abbrs. r. gd.) kept joking around and talked about The Salvation Army a little bit, which I thanked him for after class. So I'm very happy. and now I'm off to Introduction to Pscyhology (Intro Psych) at 1:00, so I'm happy. I hope to blog more later, but at the moment be happy with what you get. Though I really miss blogging. So I'm going to make a real effort to try to do more. But until later, Cya!

P.S. This wonderful picture was taken by my friend Abi, who I also didn't ask permission of before using this picture. Well, if she gets angry her and Anya can get a mob together and kill me for stealing pictures. Let's hope not...