15 Reasons You Should Date Erika D

Looking for love in all the wrong places?
Want to find a girl who is beautiful, kind, and smart?

Look no further!

Here are 15 reason you should date Erika D, in no particular order:

1. She's adventurous. Now, you may be thinking, “Well, duh... She lives in China. She has to be adventurous.” True. However, her adventurous nature goes way beyond just relocating to a foreign country. She is spontaneously adventurous, which is either crazy or awesome. She is willing to go on a journey with very little notice, and she'll squeeze every drop out of that adventure. This is also true in the seemingly small things. Did I forget to make copies for my class tomorrow, and now it is 11:00pm, and I need to go to the copy shop across campus? Erika will go with me just to go out for a walk and be there for a friend. Opportunity to ride a tandem bicycle? She goes for it. So, she is spontaneously, selflessly, philanthropically, and vehicularly adventurous. What a mouthful.

2. She's athletic. Bowling, basketball, badminton, ping-pong, football, bicycling, running, volleyball, tennis, etc. You get the picture. She can play and excel in any sport she attempts. On the basketball court, she is nigh unstoppable, sinking both 3s and jump shots.

After playing in the rain, our hands were filthy!

Bowling? We went bowling a few days ago, and Erika got five strikes in a row!!! That must be called an ostrich or something. In all honesty, Erika is not perfect, and this happens occasionally when she bowls:

But, she just laughs it off and keeps going

Speaking of sports, Erika is also very talented at filling out sports brackets. She won our team's football bracket, and is in the lead for March Madness. Not a bad skill to have.

3. She's musical. As I type this, I can hear Erika practicing her ukulele through our shared wall. She only purchased it about a month ago, and can already play two whole songs! Aside from this, she has a beautiful singing voice, which she lends to classics such as “The Beard Song” and “Come Home to North Dakota”

4. Speaking of North Dakota, Erika has some serious state pride, even rivaling this here Texan, which is a pretty big feat. She loves North Dakota, LOVES it, from its bitter winters and varied topography, to its fresh rhubarbs and 'special' vowel pronunciation (Ask a North Dakotan to say bag and root.) North Dakota sure does seem like a magical wonderland to me, the way she talks about it. And, because of her love for this rectangular state, I can now wear a NDSU t-shirt while drinking tea from a North Dakota mug, making my mornings quite sublime.

5. She has a grandiose lexicon. Occasionally she may be verbose, but her verbosity comes from a genuine mental storehouse containing multitudinous words for every occasion. How many pulchritudinous and beguiling women do you know of that can employ words like “plethora” and “perambulate” in everyday conversation? Not many, I'm guessing.

6.  She is a writer, and has so much talent for writing. Currently, she is working on her first book. I received the honor of hearing a little piece of it, and it is SO GOOD. This girl is going places. I would not be at all surprised to go into Barnes & Noble in the next five years and purchase one of her books, that is provided Barnes & Noble is still in business. Maybe I'll just read her book on my Kindle.

7. She loves to read. Mark Grist wrote a poem called "A Girl Who Reads" Here is a snippet:

What do you go for in a girl?”
Well, um, I feel quite uncomfortable, the air left the room a long time ago,
all eyes are on me.
“If you must know, I like a girl who...reads.
Yeah, reads.
Who needs the written words
and who uses the added vocabulary
she gleans from novels and poetry
to hold lively conversation
in a range of social situations.
I like a girl who reads,
whose heart bleeds at the words of Graham Greene...or even Heat magazine.
Who ties back her hair when she’s reading Jane Eyre
and who goes cover-to-cover with each Waterstones 3-for-2 offer.
But I want a girl who won’t stop there,
I want a girl who reads,
who feeds her addiction for fiction
with unusual poems and plays that she hunts out in crooked bookshops
for days and days and days.
She’ll sit addicted at breakfast,
soaking up the back of the cornflakes box
and the info she gets from what she reads makes her a total fox.
Because she’s interesting and she’s unique
and her theories make me go weak at the knees.

8. She is a thinker. She likes to stay informed about life. When Erika goes for runs, she listens to Albert Mohler's "Thinking in Public" or a sermon. Me? I usually go for the Rocky soundtrack.

9. She loves people, not things. Erika loves people. She pours out herself for others, inside the classroom and out. She willing to sacrifice for others, so often putting their needs above her own. If the girls basketball team has practice at 7:00am on a Saturday morning, Erika will be there to help out. If a student needs extra help in class, they are free to come to her apartment and have a one-on-one. She is a giver. Along with loving people, she decidedly does not love things. She has a loose grip on her possessions, always trying to think of ways to live more simply.

10. She can cook! We will have meals together sometimes, and she is a great chef. Just the other night, she made a curry squash soup that was delicious. Her other triumphs in the culinary arts include lemon broccoli chicken pasta and waffle cookies. Erika has figured out how to turn the waffle-maker into a versatile kitchen tool: waffle cookies, waffle sandwiches, waffle s'mores, waffle hash-browns, etc.

11. She is easy-going. When life gives her lemons, or spilled pancake batter, she laughs it off. 

12. She is willing to have a random dance party. Now, I'm not saying that she has great dance moves, but she lets go and will dance around my apartment with me to unwind from a day. She has some special talent dancing to the song “Rasputin” by Boney M., but you'll need to ask Emily M for evidence of that.

13.  She is ambitious. I've already mentioned that she is writing a book, but she also just ran a 1/2 marathon a couple of days ago. Looking into the future, she has so many big dreams and goals, and she pursues them. Life is not passing her by; she is truly living it!

14. She is gorgeous. 

She makes date milk look good:

She makes goofy glasses look good:

she makes pomegranates look good (well, those kind of already looked good on their own, but you get my point)

15. She loves the Father. She has a humble heart to know Him more, and that is more beautiful than anything on this list. 

Bonus #16 - She has great goofy facial expressions