dumb movies, cats, and basketball

Well, it's nearly eleven o'clock and I'm exhausted. But someone either next door (A.C.) or downstairs is watching an action movie, and it's really loud. People keep screaming, and there are lots of explosions, howls, screams, etc. Also plenty of raunchy laughter.

Last week was fairly good, actually. Perhaps that was just because I got to go off campus a couple of times, and that's always a big treat. On Wednesday night, the girls in my Bible study went over to the house of two brothers, Matt and Andrew, who are also in RUF. The mother of these brothers lives in a nice neighborhood in an older, nicer part of Tulsa-- elegant houses, like Victorian women in satin ball dresses. The brothers are leaders of the freshman boys' Bible study, and the two studies (freshman girls' and freshman boys') combined to do supper together. The boys cooked supper, and the girls brought dessert. Matt and Andrew and their mother have three cats: a medium-sized, elderly black-and-white cat; a fat brown-and-white cat with sides as shiny as polished tortoise shell (he was frightened of all the people), and a little, fuzzy grey cat who draped herself over the luxurious sofa in the front room and purred appreciatively whenever anyone rubbed her stomach or her ears.

Thursday night, I was up until two o'clock discussing the Gospel with A.C. By the end I was swaying with weariness. I showed her the parable of Dives and Lazarus in Luke 16, and she read carefully for quite awhile. This was at the end of our discussion, and she finally handed the Bible back to me, saying that she needed to go to bed, thus ending our talk. Syneva told me when I described the occasion to her, "The Word of God is like a lion: you let it out into the room, and it can take care of itself." Thursday afternoon, I spent a couple of hours at Syneva's apartment, just talking. She loves J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis, too, so we discussed those. The discussion was earnest, but not argumentative. She also likes Rosemary Sutcliff (yes!!), and, of course, music. At one point, one of the girls who shares her apartment, Amanda, came in and asked us a question about the definition of cruelty, which was the topic of a paper she was working on, so the philosophy added some spice to our conversation.

This week was the last week of Tuesday/Thursday classes. I'll miss Major British Writers and Honors, a little--though they were challenging, they were also very interesting. Honors provoked so many good discussions. On Thursday, Rachel and I could hardly stop talking after class, so deep were we in conversation about love (we finished Honors with Plato's "Symposium), literary criticism (how much can you infer from the order in which Plato placed the speeches in the "Symposium"?), and methods of presenting the Gospel, using Paul's speech on Mars hill as an example of a presentation that both preserves the Gospel intact while connecting with the audience.

Friday night, twelve girls from RUF drove an hour and a half to another city, Syneva's hometown, for the RUF girls' retreat. Syneva's family hosted the retreat. They have an enormous house on seven levels--the house is like a child's lego construction, with funny little rooms thrown out here and there. Syneva's family has a big, fuzzy dog and two cats. They also have a music room containing a grand piano, a synthesizer, an organ, two flutes, a violin, a trumpet, a clarinet, a saxophone, a harp, and a hammered dulcimer. The dulcimer and the harp were both fascinating to me (the flutes were both low-end brands). The dulcimer had a brittle, elaborate, crisp sound, but the harp was goldenly resonant--a sound that, if it were to be made into sight, would look like a lion's mane.

After supper Friday night, we had a Bible study on the topic of romance. *hem* Not my specialty, exactly, but most of the RUF girls think about boys a lot. It was a bit uncomfortable for me. However, we also discussed "self-image" and behavior in a large group, which was slightly more helpful. When our study was over, everyone crowded into the kitchen to eat chocolate cake. I joined the conversation for awhile, chuckling with the gales of laughter as we shared funny stories, but then my scanty five-and-a-half hours of sleep from the night before began to wear thin. While they stood around and laughed, I slipped out and curled up on the sofa with the cats to drowse for a little bit.

We stayed up late watching "Miss Congeniality 2", a very dumb movie about a woman who's an FBI agent and a beauty queen. The plot would've been palatable had not there been some rather objectionable humor (nothing too dreadful, just unpleasant).

After the movie, everyone trailed off to their sleeping places. There were beds or cots/air mattresses for everyone. Syneva, Alisha, and I were to sleep in Syneva's room, Syneva on the floor and Alisha and I in Syneva's double bed. While Alisha (she's a quiet, Elvish sort of girl who plays violin) was out getting ready for bed, Jenny bounced into the room. Jenny flopped down on the bed and I stretched out beside her, while Syneva collapsed onto her mattress on the floor (she, too, was exhausted). Jenny was high-strung and hyper from the late night. Her loud, contagious laughter filled the little room. Jenny H. came in. (Jenny H. is a lithe Japanese girl with slender hands and dark, glossy hair--she reminds me of a kitten.) "Jenny," Syneva moaned to Jenny H. from the floor, "your job is to grab Jenny by the ankle and drag her out of here." So Jenny H., giggling, grabbed Jenny's tanned, muscular ankle and yanked. Jenny just lay still and laughed even louder. Even Syneva smiled at Jenny H.'s ineffectual attempt.

At last both Jennys bounced out of the room, and everything was quiet. But I lay awake for a long while, holding myself stiff for fear of disturbing Alisha, and sniffling uncomfortably from my cold and allergies. Alisha slept deeply--though, I must admit, she did make the weird clicking noises that Violin sometimes makes in her sleep. (Alisha confessed in the morning that she grinds her teeth in her sleep, too, so that her dentist had to make a special mouthpiece for her to keep her teeth from being worn down.) As I lay awake, I could hear Esther and Jenny whispering and giggling in the next room. I could also hear Syneva sighing and shifting restlessly on her pallet.

My mother came for me at noon on Saturday and drove me home. I spent most of the afternoon working on an Honors paper, though I also watched Brother2's basketball team, which his team won--partly thanks to a "sweet" layup that he scored in overtime. My mother, Brother2, and I ate supper with my grandmother at a Chinese restaurant since my father, Brother1, and Daisy were in another city at a basketball tournament for Brother1's and Daisy's teams. When they returned home, we discovered that both teams had taken second place in the tournament.

I was so tired that I nearly fell asleep during family devotions!