i can read this!

yeah yeah, it says his name underneath, and really who couldn't figure it out even without the english, but but i know what all the characters are! yay! OBAMA 2008!! don't forget to watch the train wreck, i mean vice presidential debate, thursday night!
r

dear republicans,

thank you for reinforcing what we need. to elect candidates for change. and who would that be again? riiiight it would be OBAMA/BIDEN. thanks sarah palin!

Katie Couric: You made a funny comment, you've said you have been listening to Joe Biden's speeches since you were in second grade.

Gov. Palin: It's been since like '72, yah.

Katie Couric: You have a 72-year-old running mate, is that kind of a risky thing to say, insinuating that Joe Biden's been around awhile?

Gov. Palin: Oh no, it's nothing negative at all. He's got a lot of experience and just stating the fact there, that we've been hearing his speeches for all these years. So he's got a tremendous amount of experience and, you know, I'm the new energy, the new face, the new ideas and he's got the experience based on many many years in the Senate and voters are gonna have a choice there of what it is that they want in these next four years.

travel seminars

so one of the cool things about seminary is that we have some international travel seminars available. there are scholarships available to us so that each student can make sure to go on at least one trip. i think if you've got the money you can go on more, but at the very least they want you to be able to go on one of them. the seminars are as follows: middle east, asia, latin america and ghana. now as i have been to the middle east and asia, i'm hoping for ghana. my plan is to take a may course 'history of christianity in africa' and then in jan. of 2010 go on a trip to ghana. i'd be happy to go on the other trips too, i'd love to go back to the middle east, the seminar includes some trips to egypt! any thoughts? it's been a fun day of planning out the next year and a half of classes, the only real question mark is what to do this summer. any thoughts? ideally i need to either do somehting for credit or make as much money as possible, or some combination of the two. ok, i'm off to lunch and history! have a great day everyone!
rach

ready to go home for a few

hello faithful blog readers! i've been a horribly terrible blog writer thus far, i apologize. i guess life is settling into a routine and isn't anything too exciting. i still have an 'a' in hebrew! pretty exciting! i'm absolutely loving learning the language. we only know a letters and a few nouns and adjectives and adverbs at this point. we're increasing our vocabulary quickly and it's pretty exciting! the other day we sang some hebrew in class and that was pretty amazing. it's just such a great experience. i've joined a gym and have been going 5 or 6 days a week. it's a great facility and it's only a few miles from school. i don't have a real job yet so it's nice to be able to go whenever i want. i'm heading home this weekend for a wedding and i can't wait! this past weekend all sorts of exciting things happened that i missed out on and so it's been a tough weekend. i'm excited to be able to see my friends and family. sigh. ok. i need to get back to hebrew flashcards and try and read some of a book.



The pictures are of the 'bedroom' portion of my dorm room on the bottom and the 'living room' i like to call it on the top :O) have a great week everyone!

debate tonight

i know this is last minute, but the debates start tonight! 9pm!!

i can't believe anyone is still looking at my blog. i haven't posted all week! i'll put something up this weekend, i promise!

happy weekend everyone!

check in

Hello faithful blog readers! I hope that this entry finds you well. Things here are going really well. Classes are interesting and challenging, people are nice, I'm learning my way around (at least well enough to get things like groceries and laundry detergent and such). Three of us have joined a gym together and that's been great, it has a pool and lots and lots of cardio equipment and weight machines. So I've gone almost every day (I took Friday off) since we joined. I feel like I have a greater sense of balance in my life since I've moved. So things are good. I miss home and I miss everyone there, but things are good in Richmond. And little signs from home crop up and make me feel comforted. Last week in chapel we sang "How Can I Keep From Singing" and "Come All You People" and the student did a sermon talking about taking kids up and getting them lost in the woods. I've found the church I'll be going to this semester for my paper, and I'm making friends and getting along well with everyone. I hope you're all having a great day!! I will be coming home for a wedding the first weekend in October, so if you're in State College maybe I'll get to see you then! hugs, r

ok

i won't turn this into a crazy political blog, but i am starting to get scared that people are going to vote for mccain/palin, so i have to do my part to support obama/biden.

here's an article about white privilege and 13 ways that mccain/palin have benefited from it. it's a good article. oh i guess if you're inclined to dismiss white privilege before you read it you won't like it, but if you acknowledge that it exists, it's a great article that points out some of the insane double standards that have been going on thus far in the election cycle. here you go

wahoo!

i got 100% on my first hebrew quiz!!! so i have an a+ in hebrew right now :O)

i got a hot tip about a starbucks inside of a target that is hiring, so i might check it out and see what's up. apparently since it's in a target you get the target discount. so that's very very nice. discount laundry detergent is always a good thing! perhaps tomorrow morning before class i'll go check it out. today i'm planning to read some history and then hit up the gym. there's a dinner thing happening tonight, pizza and hanging out with the people we live with (dorms, apartments, off campus). tomorrow i think i'll hit up target then i have class, lunch, probably the gym, another dinner thing(more pizza! and finding out about providing child care) and then a party to celebrate national talk like a pirate day. yes yes. we are super hip and cool here at seminary :O)

hope you're all having a great day!
hugs, r

gym fun!.

so. three of us joined a gym here in richmond and i think i love it. i've always felt intimidated by the gym, but i love this gym. tonight we went and i swam laps and then we hung out in the hot tub. the three of us are going to go together a few times a week and check in about going on the other days. we figure we can keep each other accountable. when we were there tonight we saw a flyer for a countdown to the holidays weight loss challenge where you keep track of your weight and there's a trainer running the program so the three of us are going to sign up for that if we can and then we'll have a good run up to the holidays. i'm super jazzed. i already asked b2, but if anyone else out there has any recomendations for music to put onto my ipod i'm taking any and all suggestions. my ipod is pretty sparse and i want some good workout music to keep me energized. i'd rather listen to the ipod that watch tv when i'm at the gym. ok, i'm off to read some church history before bed. hope you're all having a great week!
hugs, r

so, what would you say you do here at seminary?

hello friends! some of you may be wondering what exactly i do here. i can't blame you, before i showed up i didn't really know either. so here is a quick rundown of seminary life...

i am taking three classes: intro to biblical hebrew (called 'baby hebrew'), history of christianity and teaching ministry of the church. we'll start with the most obvious...

shockingly, i am learning hebrew in biblical hebrew class! we've learned all the consonants, vowels and sounds and will be quizzed on them monday. i was most intimidated by hebrew, and i'm finding that it's not been quite as hard as i thought it would be. one week down 11 more to go!

history of christianity, also fairly self explanatory. for each class we have two meetings a week, for history and teaching ministry the first 2 hour meeitng is a lecture and the second 2 hour meeting is a discussion. in hebrew we just have two 2 hour meetings. we don't know a syllable yet, let alone enough hebrew to have a discussion. soooo we have lecture for history then discussion a few days later. we're reading a backround type history book as well as a bunch of primary sourse stuff. last week was martyrs accounts this week is other stuff that i can't spell without my book and that's all the way on the other side of the room. needless to say it's about christianity :O) we're about mid second century right now. so we'll do readings and discussions and have two take home essay exams in that class. it's really interesting even if it is mucho mucho reading.

teaching ministry of the church. this is the most interactive type class. there is a TON of reading that seems questionably useful and takes forever to slog through, but it's the class that has the most potential to be pretty cool. we have to become participant-observers in a local church. we do some research on the church, talk to people in the congregation, go to as many services and meetings as we can and have to do some sort of presentation that we write up with a lesson plan. at the end of the semester we will turn in a congregation profile as our final paper. i think its like 4-7 pages and we need to write up our congregation and include the lesson plan and self evaluation from when we teach. there's a current student that i'm probably going to hook up with whose church has some different kinds of services and has a youth group. so hopefully i can tag along with her a lot to get myself into their community and i'm hoping to just do some sort of participation with the youth group for my lesson.

this morning i went to a church that reminded me of my home church a lot, it's one that already has a bunch of union-psce people who attend and students who work there so i don't think i'll use it for my class, but i may go back there for services next semester. this morning we worshiped with the govenor of virginia!

everything is going ok. i joined a gym with a few other students this weekend and we're going to try and coordinate our schedules so we go together 3 times a week for hour long classes and then make sure we're going to do cardio type stuff the other days. oh and that we take a day off. i'm really trying hard to incorporate the gym into my life, it's something i want to be doing and that i know i need to do. i think with others to help keep me accountable and to go with me that it will be easier to get into the habit. the gym is only about 2 miles from campus and has great facilities, lots of classes (all included in the monthy fee), a pool and nice employees.

so that's the update. i need to get back to reading about paul and his letters. wahoo! oh and i said my first ya'll's this weekend. didn't even think about it, they just slipped out. guess if you're born in the south it just comes back. it's about 91 out right now, weather.com says it feels about 97. i can't wait for fall!! so i'm staying inside and reading in the air conditioning :O)

have a great week everyone!
hugs, r

back in school

i'd forgotten how much you live in a bubble when you're in school. i had started writing a post about the first week of classes (only one more left!) when i turned the tv on and heard people talking about september 11th. i had to check my computer calendar to be like. oh. that's today. people have said that this is our generations jfk moment. that we will all remember exactly where we were and what we were doing when the trade centers were hit. and i do. i was at school, sleeping and my brother called me and told me to turn the news on. i remember being like e, i'm in shippensburg you're in minneapolis, the same thing is not going to be on the news. and he was like rachel just turn it on. so i was on the phone with him when the second tower got hit and when the pentagon got hit. i remember seeing the cameras shake when the pentagon was hit, they had been doing some sort of press conference about nyc and then the building started to shake. and watching the second plane go into the tower was just unreal. i sat in my room with my door open and called students in as they walked by. those who had been at 8am classes hadn't heard and so they stopped in and watched tv with me. i had one resident whose brother and sister in law both worked at the pentagon and who spent quite a few hours waiting for a phone call. i went to classes that day and my racism prof said he was teaching, because if he didn't then the terrorists won. my english prof had her cell on the table and kind of taught but was anxiously waiting to hear from friends in nyc the whole time. we ended class early. i've never watched so much television in my life. eventually i found some reruns of law and order on. i needed something that wasn't news. i just couldn't see that video again. i didn't know anyone who died on september 11, 2001. for me what is hard about this day is remembering the enormity of death that occured. people were clammoring to give blood because surely with that number of victims we would need tons of blood. there were ambulances ready to take survivors to hospitals. emt's volunteering their time and going to nyc to help out. and then we discovered that most of the victims were dead. it changed from a search and rescue type operation to a body recovery and identification operation. so many people dead, so many people personally affected.

i'll write about classes tomorrow. for today i leave you with this :

A Prayer for Peace
Almighty God, we pray for peace in the world. Help the leaders of all the countries to make good decisions. Help us all to learn to live together and to try to understand each other even though we may seem very different from each other. Remind us when we forget, that we are all your children who share this earthly home. Help us to live in peace and harmony. Amen.

--Prayer written by Rev. Patricia Mitchell

amen

my fantastic friend got me a card that said the following...

"Is willing to accept that she creates her own reality except for some of the parts where she can't help but wonder what the hell she was thinking"

it's a storypeople card and i LOVE storypeople, and i think i might have to buy this print for myself for christmas.

yesterday was the first day of classes and i'm already wondering what the hell i was thinking. i have to read 200 pages by tomorrow for one class, and memorize the hebrew aleph bet for a quiz thursday morning. thankfully i don't have to be able to pronounce the characters, my pronunciation is a little rough. sigh. i'd also like to ride my bike but i need to pump up my tires and apparently that is something i'm incapable of doing. sigh sigh sigh. i can't get discouraged on my second day! it's going to be a long 4 years!!! ok, well i'm going to go back to writing hebrew and reading. i hope you're all having more spectacular days than i am!
miss you all
love and hugs
r

New beginnings

"One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice-though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. 'Mend my life!' each voice cried. But you didn't stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do- determined to save the only life you could save". Mary Oliver

I've referenced this Mary Oliver quote before, it's something that I read and reread as I was discerning which seminary to go to, when to go, and if it truly was what I wanted to do. Now that I'm here and getting ready to start classes (8:30am tomorrow!!) I found it again. As I was getting ready to leave I said that I was ok with leaving because I knew that Richmond was where I was supposed to be. The night before I left and the morning I left were so difficult. As I said goodbye to my family and to my best friends and took off for a city I didn't know the reality really struck me. I was leaving everything familiar, leaving my home town, my loving community, and it was hard. It would have been easy to stay. To find something to do, to keep the momentum going as it was. But I know that if I had done that I would never truly find my voice. My identity at home is so enmeshed with certain things- family, job, church, friends. And while all those things are spectacularly wonderful, I think I depended on them too much. I'm ready to find my own voice, to have a city of my own, to live more independantly, to learn new things and to continue on this journey in the direction God is calling me. Tomorrow we start classes and this journey really begins. New friends, new languages, new theories, new grocery stores and traffic patterns. I want to say thank you to everyone for making this new journey possible. I wouldn't be where I am without each and every one of you. Know that I love you and miss you all a lot, and I look forward to sharing this new adventure with you. I'll try to make this the last super sappy entry for a while :O) I'll finish cleaning and put a few pic's of the room up and I'll let you know how difficult biblical hebrew is tomorrow :O)
Have a great day!
love you all!!! rach

eddie!!

whew

so i'm unloaded from my car! the only things still in it are my bicycle (which is coming into the basement tonight), my pictures and my little shelf thing (which will come in just as soon as i figure out where i want to put them). i ventured out again today and got a tv and antenna, a few other things and then stopped to buy my books. whew. history has 10 books! hebrew 3 and teaching ministry 4. the other class i'm signed up for but i think i'm going to drop has 5 books. the tv is so not a necessity, but i was going crazy with the silence. i'll bring my dvd/vcr back with me then i'll be able to watch movies. right no i'm just excited about the weather alerts that i'm seeing. oh and tennis. jankovic and dementieva is on. so here are the books for the semester...

hebrew- the brown-driver-briggs hebre and english lexicon, introduction to biblical hebrew, and a hebrew bible.

teaching ministry class- mapping christian education, the teaching ministry of congregations, teaching the bible in the church and teaching today's teachers to teach

aaaaaand for history:
the story of christianity volume 1; passion for the truth, compassion for humanity-catherine of siena;christology of the later fathers; bonaventure, the soul's journey into god, the tree of life, the life of st. francis; chronicles of the crusades; early christian fathers; three treatises on the divine images; the rule of saint benedict; theological anthropology and three treatises.

maybe i should start reading tonight :O)

so those are the books! i'm going to spend some more time getting everything unpacked and set up. i'm not sure if it's really sunk in that i'm at school yet. it still seems like i'm on some sort of vacation or something and that i'll have to go home and work at the center again. everyone i've met has been really nice. there are some really neat people here and there are a few of us who are in the same program so we'll be together for the next 4 years. enough rambling, time to finish putting things away!
r

quick update

hey there. i just wanted to say that i put pictures of my room up on facebook. so if you're my friend on facebook you can see them there. i'll try and put some up on the blog, but i'm going to wait until i've fully unpacked for that. i'm going to finish unpacking and getting settled tomorrow and buy my books and then have the weekend to relax before classes start monday! i'll put something of substance up here this weekend, i'm sure you've all gotten bored of reading how tired i am and how much orientation stuff there is :O) happy thursday!
r

you're getting sleepy....

i am exhausted! we had a full day of orientation stuff today and i unpacked some more and ventured out to find a grocery store and met lots of people. i think i'm just introverted enough that it exhausts me when i have to be 'on' for such a long period of time. i'm shooting to be all unpacked by saturday night. i want to be able to put pictures up and stuff like that. be all settled before classes start on monday. i've confirmed that there is no cable access in our rooms (!) which is distressing considering it's football season! however i did meet another student who is a psu fan (and i think an alumni, but i'm not sure) who lives off campus and he's said that he will be watching the big ten games at his place so i'm invited to come over and watch if i want. yawn! i'm so tired. ok. it's only 8:30 and i think i will put a few more things away and then head off to bed. tomorrow is library, student life and chapel orientation in the morning then a theological reading/study skills workshop in the afternoon. as you can see i've not been good with the capital letters. sigh. i promise that soon you will see appropriate capitalization! have a great night! r

hello!!

hello everyone! how are you all doing? i am posting from the desk in my new room in richmond!! my room is much bigger than i thought it would be, it has great potential! right now it's a big mess because i'm trying to figure out where things will go. the only drawback is that it appears there is no outlet for cable. and it's football season! i will find out today if i'm just dumb and can't find the outlet thingy. in the meantime i'm streaming the npr live feed so that i get some sort of news. i got in around 5:15ish last night and have moved in a decent amount of stuff. i want to get all the things i brought up put away before i bring the other things up. we have orientation stuff all day today ending with dinner at the presidents house. should be a long day, but a good day. i'll post pictures once i get my clothes all situated. there are currently some piles of things on the floor, so once i've figured out how to organize a bit i'll take pictures and put them up. oh kim! my carpet is striped, but the most predominant color is orange. you'd love it :O)

ok...time to get dressed and head over to our orientation session! hope you all have a fantastic wednesday!!
love and hugs. r