College visits pt 2

Our most recent trip over President's Day weekend was to South Bend to visit our three older sons. The pretext was Expo Roma, the fourth-year architecture students' version of Junior Parents' Weekend. Other parents were in town for those events, but we primarily spent the weekend with the architecture students and their parents.  The school put on an exhibition of the work that the students did during their year in Rome, and some professors gave talks (my favorite was the architectural history professor who is studying "The Grand Tour" manuscripts from the 17th and 18th centuries - she found photos of the current students that mirrored sketches and paintings of European notables like Goethe and Byron lounging around Roma), parents sat in on reviews, and a few students shared what they learned in a slide show of their year, which offered a glimpse of the life they had lived in Italy without us watching over them. I wanted to cry about le temps perdu watching the slide show; I suspect a few of the students did, too.

In addition to spending time with our grown children, seeing their work, observing them in their native habitat, and revisiting the spots so relevant to our own love story, another highlight was meeting our sons' friends and their parents. I have trouble keeping everyone's names straight, but I loved the quick glimpse into the lives that the boys have created on their own away from home.  Having young adult children is a bittersweet pleasure. I am happy they are learning about things they enjoy. I like being around all the funny and fun-loving young people and hearing about how they are discovering their own traditions and reliving ones we enjoyed at their age. Every parent wants their kids to become responsible for their own lives, but those lives include us less and less.

Of course, I did the same thing - left home to go to college, got married, and never came back. We flew my parents out from Indiana to watch our younger kids while we went to Indiana. We had one whole day to spend together after we returned before they went back. Despite all of the many places, events, and people who have come in and out of our lives, these original family bonds remain strong. There is nothing like hanging out with your parents to make you feel younger.  I like having my mom around to make me coffee and take care of my laundry even though I'm much closer to 50 than 15 (or even 35).

One of the girls who spoke during the presentation on the year in Rome mentioned her skepticism before she went abroad about the platitude everyone told her: "It will change your life."  And yet, now she admitted, she is saying the same thing to the second-year students. Perhaps one of the biggest gifts of the year is the relationships these students forge with each other. And this event memorializing that year cements those relationships in memory -- it was a reminder of how important it is to take the time occasionally to see where we have been in order to help us determine where we are going.

Admiring the garibaldi

Making friends with the skink

blooming cactus

The egret above seems to want to enter the aviary

Happy with the grandparents

I should have framed a picture with the lagoon reflecting the sky. 

Chasing the sun

Temps on our arrival were a bitter 9 degrees

Our son pointed out the little guy to the right - he is
crying as he reads...

Winter colors

An Irish Madonna with our former Irish student

Spending time with son #3 in the renovated cafe once known as Waddicks with warm wooden bench booths, but now with open, airy modern chairs and tables. Not as inviting, but the signage is good.

Ivan Maestrovic Madonna

Relocated Maestrovics - museum/art pieces instead of icons for prayer?

As usual, lit a few candles for special intentions

Friendly squirrel may be difficult to spy

Cardinals around campus can't help but warm spirits

Award-winning project for a villa renovation

Fancy dinner night at Tippecanoe Place

My favorite city skyline

Random other pics to share:

A short hike around Mission Trails regional park, just to get out in the sun.

Fun date night

College Visits

Our fourth child is now in the process of discerning where she wants to go to college. You would think that we would have a really good idea of what the college decision process would be like by now, but since our first three all wanted to go to the same place, making the decision was relatively easy once they were admitted.  Now we're trying to decide between a couple good choices for our daughter. She knew she wanted to stay in California and to go to a smaller Christian school (we ruled out the bigger UC/CSU schools. If she had wanted to study a particular program that was only offered or that was offered by a premier program in the field at the state school, we might have looked into them, but she didn't, and we are not permanent residents of California, so the financial advantage doesn't exist for us.) 

This past month we visited the two schools that our daughter is deciding between. One is Pepperdine, which is a solid school and has a GI Bill program, so academically and financially it is attractive.  I worried a bit about the faith aspect, but our friends' son, who gave us the tour, showed us the Catholic church across the street (where he is getting married in the fall to a girl he met at Pepperdine who since has become Catholic). He also talked about the Catholic Bible study sponsored by one of the professors on campus. (An advantage for professors in these high rent districts like Malibu: The university has faculty housing on campus up the hill removed from the students in an attractive little community.)  

The next weekend we went to visit Westmont College, which is a small (1200 students) nondenominational Christian school outside of Santa Barbara. I fell in love with the campus, as you can tell by all the pictures I took of the flowers, gardens, and hillside views. They have an honors program called the Augustinian Scholars program that features seminars in which the students discuss Augustine, Aquinas, St. Teresa Aquinas, Ignatius Loyola, among others, like Luther and Calvin... I was ready to sign up. 

Every time we do these college visits (granted, we haven't done many), I get excited about the possibilities, the pretty campuses, the new programs.  We are facing our own big decision here soon about where we'll go next.  There isn't one option out of the several that makes me really excited about the possibility, but I do get excited about visiting schools. Maybe I'll just go back to school. 

Main building at Westmont, founded by Ruth Kerr, heiress of the Kerr canning jar company.
The grounds were previously a private estate. 

Magnolias in bloom

One of the delights of the campus are small gardens with lovely statuary.

Chapel at Westmont

View of the Pacific from the highest point on campus

Playing fields at Westmont

We made a quick stop at Mount St Mary's in LA

View from the top of Pepperdine's campus on a cloudy day. 

Every building has an ocean view on clear days. 

The chapel at Pepperdine

Our Lady of Malibu, the church near Pepperdine. A simple sanctuary, but apparently the musicians are really good.