Christmas break is a wonderful time for college students to be reunited with their lost-in-contact families, especially after finals week. Once every last test, paper and project is completed, students and faculty hit the road and get ready for a month filled with no classes and sleeping in.
Even though for most of the Ouachita student body, this is their ideal Christmas break, there are a few people that have other agendas. For Ashley Sharp, Jacob Moreno, Gail Lange-Smith and Nonsi Nxumalo, Christmas breaks consisted of very little leisure and a whole lot of adventure across the North American continent.
For Ashley Sharp, a freshman Christian studies and psychology double major from Bentonville, Arkansas, her break started off by resting and spending the holidays with family and friends. However, it wasn’t much longer until she and other college-aged students from her church packed onto a bus and headed towards the Philips Arena in Atlanta, Georgia to worship with over 40,000 other college students at this year’s Passion conference.
For Sharp, this was her second year in a row to attend the conference. However, between this year and the year before she recognized growth in her relationship with Christ.
“This year I was hanging onto every last word of each of the speakers. I couldn’t get enough,” Sharp said.
Speakers this year include Christine Caine, John Piper, Ravi Zacharias and many more with a variety of talks about different topics.
Instead of spending the holidays in the United States this year, senior dietetics and nutrition major from Mexico City, Mexico, Jacob Moreno flew south toward warmer weather and the warm familiarity of his family in Mexico City.
During his month-long Christmas break, Moreno participated in classic family traditions as well as made new ones.
“We are very family oriented, especially around holidays. One tradition of ours is we celebrate Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with my dad’s side of the family and this year it was at my house,” Moreno said. “We have a big dinner on the 24th and then on the 25th we relax and spend time with family.”
Even though his family enjoys their annual traditions on Christmas Eve, Moreno and his family always like to participate in something new and exciting on Christmas Day.
“Something new that we did this year on Dec. 25th was that we decided to go and climb the pyramids that are an hour or so outside of Mexico City” Moreno said. “Even though I had done it several times before, it was a lot of fun to do it with my entire family including all of my cousins, uncles and aunts.”
On the west coast of the United States, two Zimbabwean girls were traveling and exploring all over California. Sophomore business major from Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, Nonsi Nxumalo and sophomore dietetics and nutrition major from Harare, Zimbabwe, Gail Lange-Smith decided early on in the semester that they wanted to spend their Christmas break literally on planes, trains, and automobiles.
While in California, Nxumalo and Lange-Smith traveled to Santa Monica, Orange County, Fresno, Pasadena, and San Francisco where they met new friends along the way. Both girls have many memories and stories from their three-week trip, but one story in particular stuck in both of their minds.
“Probably the best story is our bus story,” Nxumalo said. “We decided to go up to Yosemite National Park for a day trip. While we were going down the mountain we got caught up in a snowstorm with around two feet of snow around us, so we proceeded to go up the mountain but the snow got worse and worse and soon we hit a dead end to a road.
“We then had to try and turn around before we got stuck so we started shoveling snow away with trash cans since we didn’t have shovels and then prayed that this bus could turn around. We eventually turned around and finally made it to civilization after hours of not seeing another car let alone another person. We even made a friend that helped us get food through the only food place that was open in the area.”
Even though this memory may not have been the most ideal situation to be apart of, they both agree that their friendship has grown stronger because of all of the memories they made together.
“I think it was great to experience a different side to America because when you come here, you have this idea that America is a certain way but after this trip I feel like I am more appreciative of what I have seen here” Nxumalo said.
“It was very nice to not have to judge what America is like just on Arkadelphia, but through a very different, unique and diverse area like California as well,” Lange-Smith said.
