autumn in the Belfast Royal Botanic Gardens

October 27, 2007: Northern Presbytery Covenanter Youth overnight

Now Playing: Kate Rusby, "Little Lights". Track 1.

(Here's part of a journal entry to go with the pictures posted below....)

Saturday, October 27, 2007.

I woke up this morning staring across the small classroom at a chink of daylight coming through the curtains of one of the narrow windows. It didn't seem light enough outside yet to get up, but about five minutes later, Fiona (who is tall, blond, and a graduate student in education; she's one of the oldest girls at the retreat, so she was one of the ones "in charge") stuck her head in at the door. "It's half-eight, time to get up, girls," she said. There were moans and movements from under the various sleeping bags sprawled on the floor. The room was painfully cold, but I crawled out of my sleeping bag and went down the hall to the bathroom, where I dressed and washed my face. In the kitchen, three women from the Ballyclabber church were preparing breakfast for us. Out in the fellowship hall, the guys, who'd been sleeping on the stage in the hall, were rolling up their sleeping bags. Some of the younger boys were kicking soccer balls around, while the older guys helped to set up tables and chairs so that the women could put out silverware and bowls.

I sat at a table with Emmaline, Catherine and her friend Amy, Lisa, Johnny and his younger (though saner) brother Stephen, and Paul Wright (third cousin to Violet Wright). Lisa is fifteen, outspoken, and full of facts about science, proper grammar and etiquette, etc. Johnny and Stephen are both very tall, blond, and lanky; Johnny, despite the fact that he's older, is much crazier than Stephen. Paul is sturdily built, with dark hair and a ruddy face, loud, outgoing, and even more nuts than Johnny. Between the three of them, Johnny, Paul, and Lisa made our meal quite lively, Johnny and Paul egging Lisa on by using improper grammar or table manners and then laughing at her when she corrected them.

After the meal, Johnny led us in devotions, and then we had a short break while the dishes were washed and the tables cleared away. Emmaline and I helped stack the chairs at the edges of the hall. We were dismissed then for half-an-hour of private devotions. When I had finished mine, I used the short time after to look at the book table set up in the foyer. Mostly books for youth and young Christians: novels, advice on dating and prayer, etc. At about ten-thirty, the morning's activities began in earnest. Robert and Steven McCollum set up the volleyball net across the church hall. Fiona, Pamela, and Robert were in charge of the morning's activities. Robert managed to get everyone into the hall and announce the options for activities: darts in the hallway leading past the classroom; table tennis in the foyer; pool on the pool table on the stage in the hall; volleyball in the hall; soccer outside.

After people had scattered to their activities, Fiona split the people who wanted to play volleyball into three teams of eight. I perched on the edge of the stage in the church hall to watch and keep company whatever team happened not to be playing. It was good fun to watch. Everyone was in a cheerful mood. With the varying degress of skill present, the games were kept from being too competitive. The better players, Andy M., Robert, Steven, etc., gave advice to some of the younger players, Mary, Eleanor, etc. Whenever Steven and Paul (who were on the same team) made a goal, Paul would run up to Steven and thump chests with him, which made everyone laugh. I sat and watched and chatted with whoever happened to be sitting next to me: Stephen, Emma, Emmaline, Johnny, Paul, etc.

At about twelve o'clock, our speaker, Pastor David Fallows, came to give us the second and last lecture of the overnight retreat, on Hell. It was a simple talk, aimed at the younger people in the group, but still with details that I hadn't considered before, which were profitable for further thought. After the talk, we broke into discussion groups. Fiona, Emma, Catherine, Emmaline, and I were in a discussion group together and spent awhile talking about reaching out to those who are in danger of Hell.

At one o'clock we had lunch, sitting at tables in the church hall. I sat with Emmaline, Catherine and her friend Amy, Amy, Pamela, and others. We had soup and sausages in buns, and ice cream with hot fudge (here, fudge isn't chocolate but toffee or caramel) on it for dessert.

When lunch was over, the tables were again cleared away. Everyone hung around for awhile. Emmaline and Lisa lay on the floor in the foyer, being teased by Johnny and Robert. I looked at the book table and listened to them josh each other. After awhile everyone gathered in the hall again. Sharon (who is middle-sized, lively, with blond hair and a quick face) lined all of us up and numbered us off into six teams. I was put on a team with some of the younger girls at the retreat.

Each of the six teams went through six different "stations" or activities. Our first activity was outside. Thankfully, the wind had abated somewhat, and the air was warmer and damper. We were overseen by a middle-aged fellow named Nigel, a small, tough chap built like a boxer, with a short thick neck and buzzed hair. He was in charge of the egg toss. We stood in a circle in the gravelled patch directly behind the church hall, and when Sharon blew the whistle, we started to throw our three brown eggs back and forth. We weren't incredibly successful: at the end of ten minutes all three of our eggs were a gooey, slimy, crackling mess on the gravel. When Sharon blew the whistle again, we went on to the next activity, which was overseen by Robert. Robert gave us a big catapault and a couple of tennis balls. Our objective was to hit the back door of the church hall by shooting the tennis balls out of the catapault. Two girls held the catapault high, while another girl pulled back the sling of the catapault as far as she could before letting go. I hit the tennis ball off the jamb of the door, but that was as close as we got. Most of our shots went wide.

The next activity was kicking soccer goals on one of the college-aged guys. He was so lanky that he occupied most of the goal, but we managed to score 13 goals on him before we had to move on to the next activity, which was inside in the foyer. This one was led by Pamela, who had a list of questions and a stack of newspapers spread out on the floor. We sat on the floor, thankful for the opportunity to warm up and relax, and tried to find the answers to the questions she asked us in the newspapers. Sharon came inside to watch, and gave us hints. After that activity, we went outside and into the basement under the church hall (which can only be accessed by going outside), into "the dungeon". Johnny was sitting down there on a chair with several of the emergency lights used in road construction. The lights were switched on so that they blinked like half-a-dozen winking orange eyes in the dark. The basement was chilly, but out of the wind. Our goal down here was to answer Johnny's riddles (a quasi-Gollum, I suppose). Between us, Emma, Mary, and I answered the riddles quickly. Our last activity was outside again. Amy lined us up and said to us, "In time-honoured tradition, you put the hockey stick on your chin and turn in circles five times. Then you tap the soccer ball between the cones, and hand it off to the next person, and see how many times you can do that." Dizzied by the turning in circles (which was made even more ridiculous by the hockey stick held on the chin--!), we knocked the soccer ball through the obstacle course. After we'd all done it once, we had to spin round six times instead of five, and so on, until Sharon blew the whistle again, and everyone spilled back into the church hall.

We spent about half-an-hour just hanging out, picking up the church, gathering our bags, etc. The younger ones played pool or threw soccer balls around the hall. Robert managed to get everyone standing against the wall for a group photo, and after the group photo, we all sat on the floor in the church hall. Nigel stood up and said thank-yous to the women who had cooked the food, to the people who'd organized the sports, and to the speaker. Then Robert led us in a final time of devotions and Psalm-singing.

At about four-thirty, Emmaline, Erin, Eleanor, and I piled into the McCollums' car and drove back to the McCollums' house. The wind had picked up again, and by the time we were back at the McCollums' house, the evening shadows were beginning to fall. Mrs. McCollum was in the kitchen, baking a party mix concoction in the aga (their stove/oven, which is built into the house and always on). Emmaline and I settled down in the "little room" to watch Little Women on the DVD player. Mrs. McCollum had built up a peat fire on the hearth with "logs" of compacted peat, which burned warmly and smokelessly. Emmaline worked on her laptop, and I wrote up Friday's entry in my journal. The wind whistled in the chimney. The room was quiet, like a tiny glowing box warm against the darkness of the night outside.

Erin popped in and out. She was going to a fancy dress party tonight, and she bounced in to show us her Pippi Longstocking costume, complete with freckles of daubed-on eyeliner. The evening was rather crazy for the McCollums: Mr. McCollum out doing the milking and then having to run Nathaniel and Reuben to junior CY; Mrs. McCollum having to take Erin and her troop of friends to their dress-up party; Emmaline getting ready to drive herself to a birthday party later on in the evening; Eleanor and I waiting for Steven to pick us up and take us to Charly's, where the Ballyclabber/Glenmanus CY was getting together for supper (instead of having a "proper" CY meeting, which would've been too hard to organize so soon after the retreat ended).

After the movie ended, since Steven hadn't come yet, and Emmaline was out wrapping a birthday present, I curled up in the little room alone on the sofa in front of the fire and dozed. The room was very warm, and I nearly fell asleep.

Steven came for Eleanor and me at eight o'clock. We had to stop by his family's farm to pick up his younger brother, Timmy. Then we drove to the restaurant to meet the rest of the CY.

Charly's was billed as an "American-style restaurant", and the entrance to the parking lot was lit up by a small Statue of Liberty holding a lamp. Inside, the restaurant was large and warm, lit by Tiffany lamps--no two alike; each with a different colorful pattern of fruit or flowers or tinted tiles. There were various "vintage Americana" pieces hanging on the walls or from the ceiling, the requisite Route 66 sign, an old wooden rocking horse, an old wooden plane, hoops, etc. It was almost but not quite right: too colorful, lacking the daguerrotypes that would be in a Cracker Barrel or Applebee's, and, most importantly, lacking the American flag. All the same, pleasant, clean, and well-serviced. And the food was very good. I ordered chicken fajitas, which came out smelling and tasting exactly like the fajitas at Mexico Joe's. Quite satisfying.

We all sat at one long table. I could name almost all the people present: Alex, Chris (a young boy about Stephen-my-brother's age, very ruddy, with dark hair); Mr. and Mrs. McCollum, Robert, Amy M., Steven, Lisa, a girl I don't know, Eleanor, Timmy, Amy, Catherine, and myself, fourteen in all. Robert, Amy M., Steven, and I chatted during the meal. It was a good meal, and good to get to know Amy M., Robert, and Steven a bit better.

After the meal, at about ten o'clock, we drove to the McCollums' house (this would not be Norman and Nancy McCollum, Emmaline's parents, but the parents of Robert, Steven, and Timmy). Steven pulled the car round the narrow farmyard between the house and the barns, the headlights sweeping briefly over the startled black-and-white faces of calves in one of the sheds, and a brown-and-white cat weaving around the front door. Rain sparkled in the headlights. "Welcome to our home," Robert said as we stepped inside and he flicked on the lights.

All of us young people went into the living room to sit and chat. We sat around just talking about random things. Someone found a hand-held 20 Questions game, which got passed around. We played "I Never" and "I Have", though here they don't play it by getting up and mixing around but instead by keeping score on fingers, and once you've lost all ten fingers, you're "out". We played either-or, which is a game just "to get to know each other better", as Steven said: each person took turns shouting out two options, "Coke or Pepsi", "football or rugby", and then we went round the circle, each person choosing one of the two. Simple games, not requiring much thought, relaxing. Robert made tea and coffee, and brought the cups out on a tray with biscuits. Steven turned the TV on, and he and Timmy sat and watched soccer matches. Robert brought out his guitar, and the gentle ripple of the plucked strings flickered under the quiet conversation.

We lingered, talking, for about an hour or so. Alex drove Lisa home, and then took Eleanor and me home. It was raining in earnest now. At the McCollums' house, we found Mr. McCollum sitting up, working on tomorrow's Sabbath school lesson. Eleanor and I said good-night to him. I took a shower and then went upstairs to bed in Emmaline's room. I wriggled into bed, and was just drifting off to sleep when Emmaline came in. The rain rattled on the windows, and the wind whistled through a crack under the sill.

NP CY overnight

Now Playing: Vivaldi, "The Four Seasons." Track 7, "Autumn: Allegro".

Here are pictures from this weekend. Also, there are a couple of poems up on Through A Glass Darkly.

October 22, 2007

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 16, "Amon Hen".

This morning when I woke up it was very dark outside. The clouds are low and grey today, and the elms, mostly stripped of their leaves, look bleak and wintery. Emmaline took a shower while I did my devotions. I wrote a postcard to my grandparents since they’d sent me a nice card over the weekend. Emmaline and I went downstairs to have breakfast. We talked about the methods of church government here, some of the workings of which are a bit different from those in the States: apparently, presbytery visits one congregation a year, and at these visitations, people in the congregation are chosen to get up and answer questions. Emmaline doesn’t like it because everyone says what they’re supposed to instead of voicing their true opinions or needs. Andy M. came in, and we talked about our weekends. Andy M. laughed at us as Emmaline and I tried to come up with a shopping list and menu for this week (Emmaline is addicted to potatoes! :o).

After breakfast, Emmaline and I went back to our room. She left for class at ten o’clock. I spent much of the morning writing e-mails, doing homework (i.e., reading 13th and 14th century medieval lyrics and revising my Beowulf paper) and listening to the Chariots of Fire and Phantom of the Operasoundtracks. I also practiced my flute for awhile--I later discovered that the other people in the house had thought it was an alarm or a siren at first, until I got past the chromatic scales...! But it was good to practice again, and delightful to play the Bach sonata that I learned last year. I think I'll just start learning the next one in the book.

For lunch today I walked just down the street at one o'clock to The Oasis, the First Presbyterian Church's cafe. Renwick House is on a row with lots of other church establishments--chaplaincies, church residences, cafes, etc. The early afternoon was chilly and blustery, yellow powdered leaves whirling in the street and a tang of smoke in the air. As I was walking, I met up with Naomi, who was also coming for lunch: our small group leader, Steven, had decided that our group should get together for lunch, just for fun. Naomi and I stood in the entry area of the cafe, comparing notes about classes and homework, until other people started to arrive--Steven, Rachel, Phil, and some others. There was a fairly long line of students waiting to get into the cafe. Once we reached the counter, we ordered our food. Various sweets, candies, and baked items were set out on the counter, but the hot food was all made-to-order in the back. I ordered a chicken tikka panini (whatever that is!) and a bottle of iced fruit juice tea. I was so surprised to see that they had iced tea, but when I got it, I realized that the name is deceptive: it doesn't taste like tea, though it was still really good--sweet and fruity.

We all sat down at a table and waited for our number to be called. The panini turned out to be a sandwich with chicken curry-ish stuff inside. Not too bad. We sat around, eating and talking--there were probably about six of us. It was good fun. I can be a bit more at home with these people. There's no fear of unpleasant words or situations arising; they have some similar interests--someone always brings up "The Lord of the Rings". :o) They're friendly, at least for now, ready to take in the newcomer.

After lunch, I went back to Renwick with Rachel, and we met up with Emmaline. Emmaline hadn't had lunch yet, but after she ate, she, Catherine, and I walked to Tesco to do our week's worth of shopping. The afternoon was low and blustery, an autumn day, full of whirling leaves. In Tesco we went down our list of things to buy, though Emmaline is very good at impulse-buying. While she and Catherine looked for yogurt, I nosed around trying to find ingredients with which to make curry. I wasn't entirely successful and ended up with whole cloves instead of ground cloves because the ground ones were so expensive. I'll just have to find some way to grind them. Curry powder was another issue, too--I'm not exactly sure what I got for that; and they don't have tomato sauce here, but something that comes in glass jars and looks similar but with a different name.We lugged our groceries back to Renwick and stowed everything neatly away in cupboards and the refrigerator.

Emmaline had class at four o'clock. I put on my sweats and walked down to the bookstore to buy the little green textbook I need for Irish class. Then I walked over to the gym to go running. The gardens are always beautiful, and it's a highlight of the day to walk through them. There's one kind of bush that grows in untidy hedges--it has small glossy evergreen leaves rather like a holly's, but it also has inch-long thorns, and it smells vaguely like cinnamon. There's a grove of chestnuts in one part of the garden that are all going deep gold-brown and letting fall their leaves so that the green grass below them is carpeted with golden leaves that seem almost to throw a light back up at the still-golden branches of the trees. The bowling green is surrounded on three sides by oak trees, which are all turning orange and yellow by degrees, and further on, near the rose garden, there's a bonified silver maple tree, which is behaving as my silver maples do--dropping its leaves without turning colors. The grass is covered with drifts of yellow and silver leaves below it, but the tree itself is still green.

I went running in the gym, listening to one of my father's lectures on the sacraments. Then I walked back to Renwick. Late afternoon was more blustery, and there were little pellets of moisture unexpectedly in the air. I showered and then ran downstairs to work on supper at about five-thirty. I'd put the chicken in the refrigerator to defrost, and it had behaved itself for the most part. I cut it up and put it in a saucepan with oil, where it sizzled merrily away, adding its own waters and juices to the oil, and turning proper shades of brown. Emma was cooking vegetables on the same stove, while Ian was cooking vegetables on his stove, Matthew had a frozen pie in the oven, Daphne was cooking burgers in another oven, and Rachel was busy peeling onions and potatoes. Rachel's sister, Lindsey M., showed up for supper, as did Daphne's friend Lizzie, and pretty soon the kitchen was full of the racket of girls talking and laughing. Catherine came down to help me. We put sweet-and-sour sauce with veggies and pineapple in with the chicken and made rice, and when Emmaline had set out our utensils at the other end of the table from the "giggle" of girls, that was our supper. A good meal. We talked quietly about our days today. Catherine had brought apple crumble from home, so we had that for dessert.

After supper, I wrote a letter. Catherine and I went to CU at about seven-thirty or so. We sat together in the sea of people. The teaching tonight was on prayer and fasting: solid, basic teaching from the Sermon on the Mount. After CU, Catherine and I met up with Naomi, and the three of us walked back to Renwick together. Naomi teased Catherine and me about being a bad influence on her and getting her to come to the Renwick Bible study instead of going to her house to do work. We lounged around in our room until people started to trickle in at nine-thirty. All-in-all, we managed to squeeze thirty people into our room tonight. Johnny, one of Emmaline's many cousins, led the Bible study this evening, about Christ's deity. After the study, we spent a time in prayer. Lindsey, Catherine, and I always sit together (Catherine and I sit on my bed and Lindsey on my desk chair), and we were joined by a young freshman tonight named Gareth--he reminded me of the kid in Ratatouille except that he had dark hair and lacked freckles. Before we prayed, Phil urged us to pray for revival. God is stirring up the young people here just as He is stirring them up back in the States: Pray!

After the prayer time, Lindsey, Catherine, and I sat and chatted. They went downstairs to make tea. I helped them and brought some up to Daphne and Naomi. I sat in the common room, drinking very milky tea and nibbling a biscuit. I laughed and listened to Emmaline, Charlotte, and the two Sarahs discussing the sizes of their feet. Emma and I chatted some, too. She's a good, down-to-earth sort of person, quite willing to talk--as long as Deborah isn't around. We talked about our churches, etc. Everyone else was also sitting around the common room, chatting....

At about eleven-thirty, I went upstairs. I logged onto Skype, determined to get in touch with Sarah, and was delighted to see that Melody Spitler was listed as being logged on. So I called the Spitlers and spent about an hour talking with them. Skype kept breaking up, so it wasn't a completely successful conversation. I managed to hear every member of the family, though, at some point: Mrs. Spitler, Hannah, Rebeka, and Susannah all got on to say hello (Susannah wanted to know about the cookies I'd baked last week :o), and Mr. Spitler wanted to know how we'd managed to set up the wireless network. I had longer conversations with Sarah and Rachel, though I could hear the other members of the family chipping in from the background. I talked with them until about twelve forty-five my time, and then spent awhile thinking. I heard someone knock on my door. I waited for a long time before I opened it, but the person knocked again, and I could hear Lindsey and Catherine talking outside, so I went and opened it. Catherine had come to get her belongings. I said good-night to her. Emmaline came in shortly after, and we were in bed by one-fifteen or so.

weekend

Delphi Adventure Centre

Here are pictures from this past weekend. All the study abroad students with IFSA-Butler were hosted at the Delphi Adventure Centre from Friday evening to this morning. Each person could do two activities on Saturday and one this morning. I did hiking and rock climbing/archery on Saturday. I wasn't planning to do anything this morning, but everyone ended up leaving earlier than scheduled this morning and not participating in any activities.

October 18, 2007

Now Playing: Coldplay, "Don't Panic." (Thanks to Philip.)

This morning when I woke up the room was cold and dim. I scrambled into my clothes as Emmaline's cellphone alarm went off. I pulled open the heavy red curtains hanging over the ten-foot windows and looked out. The morning was crisp and clear. Blue sky reflected opaquely in blue frost on the roofs of the chapel across the street. Black bare elm-branches along the road, with a few ragged yellow leaves clinging to them, and flying against the blue sky, a skein of seagulls, their wings caught gold by the rising sun, flying west over the dark chimneypots.

Emmaline was in a rush to get to her nine o'clock seminar, so I fixed buttered toast for her to take before she left. After she left I sat alone in the kitchen and quietly ate a bowl of cereal. I took a cup of Earl Grey tea upstairs with me and spent the hour or so before class studying. The walk to Late Medieval Literature class at ten o'clock was beautiful, a clear sky and sunshine. In LML, two professors team-taught the last lecture on Chaucer. One of them looks creepily like Doc Oc, in my opinion. I'm glad to be over with Chaucer. The professors took care to point out all the ridiculous excesses of the church in the medieval period, and even today, apparently, two years ago, eBay had to ban the selling of body parts because people were selling relics online. (!) After the lecture, I went to the tutorial, and after the tutorial, I went with the tutorial leader to her office to show her a rough draft of the paper that's due next week. Her office is a little chilly cubbyhole hidden in the back bowels of the English department, through a maze of cold corridors. But she was quite friendly and reassured me about the essay, so that was good.

By the time I got out of class, etc., the sky had begun to cloud over. I walked through the Botanic Gardens to the gym, smelling the rich, varied scents of the flowering shrubs along the way, and watching the colorful leaves slide to the ground. I went running in the gym and listened to my father's second Sabbath school lesson on the sacraments. Then I walked back to Renwick, showered, and made lunch for myself. I was eating up in the room and reading The Book of Margery Kempe for LML when Emmaline came in, tired from her long morning of classes. I went downstairs with her to wash my dishes, and who should ring the House phone but Claire. She was in the alley at the back and wanted me to let her in. So I ran out the series of back doors (there's a back kitchen door, then a back "garden" door (though there's nothing garden-ish about it, just a strip of concrete), then another back door, and finally the "car park", which has a big gate on it. I let Claire in. She'd come to use the internet because she had an article due for the Covenanter Witness that she'd only been asked to write the night before.

Rachel and Daphne were cooking in the kitchen and greeted Claire boisterously. Claire, Emmaline, and I went upstairs, and the three of us spent the rest of the afternoon working in the room. Claire sat at my desk and wrote her article, which turned out to be a children's page about Finding Nemo and Gospel themes from that movie. Emmaline and I helped her come up with pictures from the internet and Bible verses. Emmaline sat and tried to do math problems at her desk, and I sprawled on the floor in between, working on a paper for Beowulf class, which was actually pretty fun to write. The afternoon outside dimmed slowly, greyness coming up the street between the elms, people hurrying home from work.

When the article was finished, at about six o'clock, Claire, Emmaline, and I went downstairs. Emmaline disappeared into the kitchen to warm up leftover lasagna for supper. Claire and I went into the common room, where a bunch of people were hanging around. "Hello," I said to Rachel, who was sitting right by the door. She gawked at me for a minute and then laughed, "You sounded Northern Irish! I thought there was someone behind you!" I rolled my eyes at her and said good-bye to Claire.

Emmaline and I had leftover lasagna and applesauce for supper. Catherine, Charlotte, Daphne, and Rachel were eating their meal at the other end of the table. After supper, I went back upstairs to work on my paper and managed to get a rough draft banged out before having to go downstairs to Rachel's room at seven-thirty for CU small group Bible study. Though the English/Drama small group meets on Wednesday nights, I've never been able to go because I've never been able to figure out where they're meeting. So instead I asked Rachel if I could join the Maths/Physics/Computer Science small group, which meets just downstairs in her room. Her room is fairly small, but she had put chairs all around the edges, and Rachel and Naomi ended up sitting on the bed as well. All-in-all there were fourteen people in the small group. They were all quite friendly and funny. When I came in, I chatted with Scott, a ruddy-faced freshman. Other people started to come in. Two guys, Chris and Phil, kept everyone laughing while we waited on the other leader to show up. He finally came, Stephen, a boy built like a running back (see, there's my technical term for this post *cough*), and he and Rachel led the study.

It was a fairly good study, mostly practical application of the Sermon on the Mount. Everyone participated well. The study lasted for about two hours, and then everyone sat around talking for half-an-hour afterwards. I was getting pretty sleepy by the end since the room was warm and I was beginning to be overwhelmed by being surrounded by so many people. Rachel made tea, and I had a cup, so that helped. I sat in a corner and chatted with Naomi about the differences between American and Northern Irish universities (American ones are more expensive, but at least you get scholarships, whereas Northern Irish students usually don't). The other students were all chatting with each other, making jokes, discussing problems from homework assignments, complaining about professors. Someone started a conversation about The Lord of the Rings, which got the whole room listening and arguing and laughing.

Finally, at about eleven o'clock, though they were still going strong, I slipped out and went upstairs, tired and wanting a bit of quiet. I read e-mail, worked a bit more on my paper, and then got on Skype and spent the next hour-and-a-half talking with Logan via phone and webcam. Good to "see: him again, in a manner of speaking. Emmaline came in at about twelve-thirty, and Logan wanted to meet her, so I handed the headset to her and she sat down and talked with him for awhile. I stood looking out the window. In the corner of the left window frame there was a spider making a web: delicate thread-by-thread, walking over the spokes, the streetlight behind it shining through its translucent orange legs and catching flecks of dust already caught on the sticky strands of the web. Its plump grey body moved painstakingly back and forth as it worked. I said good-bye to Logan. Emmaline was sitting at her desk, studying. I did my devotions, changed clothes, and went to bed, though it took me awhile to get to sleep.

more pictures

Now Playing: The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring soundtrack by Howard Shore. Track 11, "A Journey in the Dark".

Here are a few pictures, of people this time, for anyone who wants to see them.

I went to my first Irish language class tonight. I've decided three things: First, I wish the teacher would stick to one dialect instead of giving us all the variations in all the dialects; second, I wish Irish people would not put so many extraneous letters in their words; third, I wish Irish words were spelled the way they sound! The only one that does is "Slan", which means "Good-bye".

2007_10_16

a break from Chaucer

Now Playing: James Galway, "Annie's Song". A CD recorded from one of my parents' old LPs. One of my earliest memories is listening to this LP and deciding that someday I wanted to be able to play the flute, too....

I just heard a familiar sound outside my window. When I looked out into the rainy street, I saw a dapple grey horse going clip-clop down the asphalt.

Hitched to the horse with a leather collar and wooden traces was a wooden cart painted bright red and yellow.

On the cart was a carriage.

And in the carriage was a princess.

The princess had on a yellow dress.

The princess looked out her window through the rain and saw me standing in my window, watching her.

She waved at me, so I opened my window and shouted down, "Hello!"

The footman walking at the horse's head turned round and said, "Who's that? Be quiet!"

But the princess opened her window and said to the footman, "Stop here, please." The footman drew the horse up, and the princess stepped out of her carriage. The street was very wet, so the footman had to carry her across.

A few moments later, I heard the doorbell buzz. There wasn't anyone else in the house, so I went downstairs to open it. "Hello, princess," I said to the princess, who was still being held by the footman so that she wouldn't get her feet wet.

"Hello," she said, "You're not from around here, are you?"

"Nope," I told her.

"That's good. I want an outside opinion. Will you come for a drive in my carriage?"

"Well, I have a paper I ought to be working on...."

"Oh, please?" she asked. She must have been a very young princess because she was still good at making bambi eyes and hadn't yet gotten down the trick of saying, "Off with their head!" when anyone displeased her.

"I suppose I could spare the time," I said finally, and followed her outside into the street. "Sorry I can't carry you both," said the footman. "That's quite alright," I replied, "it's not necessary," and jumped into the carriage. The seats inside were nice and springy, so I bounced up and hit my head on the roof. "Ow," I said. The princess giggled.

The footman jumped up onto the seat at the front of the carriage and cracked his whip over the horse's back, and soon instead of clopping along listlessly we were hurrying through the wet streets. Cars honked at us, and some rude young people walking along the side of the road whistled and made cat-calls when they saw the pretty princess inside the carriage. I pulled nasty faces at them and showed the princess how to pull a fish-face. She thought it was funny.

We turned left up University Street and drove right into the Botanic Gardens. The thick overhanging branches of the spruce and fir trees made deep shadows over the path. The horse cantered quickly along. The princess opened her window, and the spicy smells of the evergreens drifted in, and as we went past the rose garden, all the roses turned round to look at the princess. They had been busy playing chess, but when they saw the princess, they all bowed.

I thought we were soon going to come to the other side of the gardens, but instead, the gardens turned out to be as big as they looked on GoogleEarth (which made them look far more sprawling than they actually are). There seemed to be no end to them: On and on we raced, through groves of fir and spruce, past green lawns surrounded by oak trees turning umber and orange, past thickets of chestnut trees shedding their long yellow and bronze leaves. Silver maple trees shivered as we went past them. "That's my kind of tree from home," I said, pointing them out to the princess.

Pretty soon I started to get bored and wonder if I was ever going to get back to Renwick. "So, what can I do to help you?" I asked the princess at last.

The princess smoothed down her yellow satin dress and pulled hard on one of her brown curls. "Well, I have a problem," she said. "Most people do," I replied. The princess wrinkled her nose at me. "You see," she said, "I own this country, and it's being invaded by something that is making all the trees turn yellow. I simply don't understand it. I've made sure that they're all well-watered, but they're going yellow anyway. I've heard reports of some strange creatures flying in and out of the trees, so I was wondeirng if you have any idea for a way to get rid of these creatures."

"Well, you could pour water on them. It worked in Signs at least," I muttered. "What's that? I've never heard of more than one sign before." "Oh." I coughed delicately. "I guess you already tried watering them, didn't you?" I said in a louder voice. "Yes," she sighed, and fluttered her eyelashes.

"Has this ever happened before?" I asked, beginning to be suspicious. The princess was obviously "dippy", as Anna would say. "Oh, I don't know," she said. "I only started to rule this country last spring, and all my people came with me from my home, so they don't know either." "Ah."

I sat and thought hard for a minute.

"Where are the strange creatures?" I asked finally. The princess peered cautiously out of her window. "There's one of them up there!" she exclaimed. "It's watching us." I looked out the window, too, and saw, perched in the top of an oak tree, a big hawk. It was swivelling its head round and round and fluttering its wings. "Oh, that's just a hawk," I said, "they migrate at this time of year."

"Migrate? What's that?" asked the princess.

And suddenly it all became plain to me.

"Do you know what season it is?" I asked. "Season?" the princess faltered.

"Ahha," I shouted. "I know what your problem is. You've never seen a season before." "What's a season? Can I get my army to destroy it?"

"No, no, no," I said, and started to laugh at her. The princess scowled at me and stamped her foot on the floor of the carriage. "Stop, footman!" she shouted. The footman brought the horse up abruptly. "Out! Get out!" the princess screamed.

"Hold on," I said, "Let me explain." The princess tried to push me out of the carriage, but I braced myself, and anyway, I was bigger than she was. "A season is the time of year when the weather changes and the animals change, too," I said. "This is the season of fall. In the fall, all the trees turn colors and drop their leaves. The birds that were living here gather in big flocks and fly south because after fall comes winter." "What's that?" the princess whispered, terrified. "Winter is when everything gets very cold. The birds all go away because they don't have houses where they can get warm, so they have to move to a country where it's warm." "Oh. Why do the trees go colors?" the princess asked. I groaned. "I can't give you a first-year biology lesson, but they just do. The days get shorter and colder, so the trees let their leaves fall so that when winter comes, their branches won't break with the weight of snow. Instead of catching in their leaves, the snow will just slide off," I explained, fudging a bit.

"So you mean I don't get to throw water at anyone?" the princess asked timidly. "Nope," I said, "unless you'd like to have a waterballoon fight some time. I'm sure my sister would love that." "Where does she live?" "Oh, she lives on the other side of the ocean, down south. Maybe you should move over there so that you don't get too cold during the winter."

"That's a great idea," said the princess. She shouted to her footman, "Pack us up and get ready to go." "Yes, your highness," said the footman.

"Thank you very much," said the princess. "You're quite welcome," I said, "Have a fun trip." I hopped out of the carriage and walked back to Renwick. At least, I tried to walk back to Renwick. I kind of got lost along the way...

... but that's another story for another time.

not hungry anymore

Now Playing: Johann Sebastian Bach, "The Great Flute Concertos" (played by Jean-Pierre Rampal", Track 10, "Concerto for Flute and Orchestra in C Major BWV 1055r, Allegro."

October 11, 2007. This morning Emmaline actually woke up to her alarm clock and was up before I was. I dressed, did my devotions, etc. We ate breakfast together, chatting with Rachel while we did the dishes. The house was absolutely dead and dark except for the three of us talking in the kitchen. Emmaline left for her class at nine o’clock and I worked on this entry. Then I went to Late Medieval Literature at ten o'clock. In both the lecture and the tutorial a lot of talk about gender, and some talk about how Chaucer wants morality to be vague instead of absolute (!). When I got back to Renwick after class, I found three packages waiting for me—one of sheet music from my mother, one from the Wests, and one from IFSA.

I went running in the PEC. I listened to the next-to-last lecture on The Rare Jewel. Then I walked back to Renwick and showered, which felt delicious. After I showered, I sat down briefly to check e-mail—and lo and behold, Loganwas on Skype. So we had a proper chat for about twenty minutes. At about two-thirty I went downstairs to the kitchen, where Emmaline was fixing lunch for the two of us. A delicious lunch, warm and heartening: pea-and-ham soup (rejected by Deborah and Rachel from yesterday’s lunch for being too “weird”; Emmaline and I laughed about how people in Ireland never try anything new or weird) and ham-and-mayonnaise sandwiches. Emmaline had cheese on hers and I had fresh red bell pepper on mine. We washed the dishes and went upstairs.

It was a long, sleepy afternoon. I walked over to Ulster Bank to use the ATM, then to the Student Union shop to buy laundry detergent and milk. I put a load of laundry in, then read The Pardoner’s Tale and The Prioresse’s Tale for Late Medieval Lit., and worked on my paper, scribbling endless notes in the margins of The Reeve’s Prologue. I listened to Mark O’Connor’s fiddle concerto using headphones because Emmaline was trying to study statistics, sprawled on her bed. She eventually went downstairs to see if she could find Rachel to help her, then upstairs to work on planning games for the Glenmanus RPC kids’ club, Kidorama, with Catherine. The afternoon faded through shades of grey into a dull autumn evening.

At about six forty-five, I picked myself up and walked down Elmwood Avenue and then along University Street to Villa Italia for the final study abroad dinner. Villa Italia was yet another fancy shmancy Italian restaurant. The same sort of food as the other ones we’d been to, though this restaurant was more consciously “Italian” and had grapes and vines hanging everywhere and faux Roman statues. We all sat at a long table toward the back. There were ten of us all told.There were, as usual, long rather dull pauses in the conversation at one end of the table, in which the people at the other end were laughing at some rough joke. The food was good, at any rate: for me, fried stuffed mushrooms, followed by chicken wrapped in pastry and surrounded by a deep orange tomato-and-basil sauce, and finished with a tall “sundae”, though it was a milkshake by American standards—vanilla ice cream in a tall thin glass swirled with caramel and nuts. Other people had duck, or steak, or salmon, etc. Fiona made sure that everyone had all their paperwork filled out and got those of us who are going to Dublin to pay our deposits, and then she let us go.

I walked briskly back to Renwick, glad to have that over. Downstairs the common room was full of people: the CU Maths small group, led by Rachel, in which Emmaline was participating. After having eaten so much I had a lot of energy, so I was hungry for something to do. I went down to get my laundry, and spent a little while chatting with Phil and Catherine. I took my laundry upstairs, folded it, put it away, and sat down idly at my computer. I decided to try calling people via Skype. So I rang up Sarah’s cellphone, but of course she wasn’t there—probably working. Then I called Elizabeth’s cellphone, and, delight of delights, she answered. “Hello? Who’s this?” “Hi. This is E--.” “E--!! Hi!” I started to laugh, of course, with gladness to hear her voice. We ended up talking for nearly two hours, according to the chat log on Skype. It was a lovely conversation.

In the middle of the conversation, someone knocked on my door. I asked ECF to hold on for a minute, and hurried to the door to find Claire there. She came in for a minute, briefly, to tell me (in response to a text message I’d sent) that I was more than welcome to come for the weekend. Apparently I have Calvin's approval, which is unusual since Claire gets teased by him about most of her friends. We said good-night, and then I went back to my conversation with Elizabeth.

Towards the end of our talk, Peter, Logan, and P all got online, and Peter started up a group chat, so I was a bit distracted, but I wasn't involved much, especially as Elizabeth and I said our good-byes. We said good-night, about eleven forty-five here. I chatted with the boys for awhile, then called Logan over the phone. But it was good to hear his voice…. We only talked briefly because he had family friends coming over for supper. Then Peter called me, and the two of us tried to set up a conference call with Philip, but my sound was becoming more and more distorted, and when Philip finally did get through, his voice was distorted and garbled. It was midnight anyway, so I said good-bye to them both and signed off.

All this time I could hear voices and laughter downstairs, and I felt a little bit strange for shutting myself up in my room, though I knew that it would only be awkward for me to go down with the house full of strangers. But some of the noise had died down, and when I did go downstairs, I found Rachel, Emmaline, Catherine, and Rosemary standing around in the stairwell, chatting. I was trembling all over from the excitement of the evening, and bubbling with laughter. We sat and joked around for awhile, then moved into the kitchen. Rachel told a ridiculous story about one of the guys in her class who has long “ginger” hair and long purple fingernails and a beard…! Rosemary and Emmaline munched biscuits, and we sat around talking for awhile. At about twelve-thirty, I went upstairs to bed. Emmaline and I went to sleep at about the same time, though after the lights were out I lay in my bed praying for awhile, giving thanks.

pictures

Carrick Castle

Belfast 2

Around Renwick and Queen's

Here are links to albums of my pictures. These are just three of the five or so albums available. If you click on one of these links, you should go to the page where the pictures are. On that page, in the upper left hand corner, there should be the name of the album with a blue link beside it for Evelyn's Public Gallery. Click there and you can see all the albums. They work best if you use Internet Explorer....

celebration

Now Playing: Brahms, "Piano Concerto No. 1 for piano and orchestra in D minor." Track 1, "Maestoso."

Praise God, we got internet in Renwick House today!

I chatted with Peter for about five minutes, and then with my mother for about half-an-hour, though Skype does tend to break up now and then. And I think that I managed to set up the POP server so that the e-mails from Gmail will download to Mozilla Thunderbird instead of me having to use webmail all the time.

And now, some pictures from last weekend. First, another hat to add to my collection:

Next, Claire, eating ice cream in Carrickfergus:




And then the Wilsons' house in County Antrim:

explanation

Now Playing: Bach, 'Passacaille and Fugue'. This is one of my all-time favorite pieces. I love Bach--his music always makes me want to break out into a sonnet.

I realized from The Shadow's comment that I should've given you all a who's-who of the family I stayed with this weekend past, the Wilsons. They live in County Antrim, on the edge of a little village. Mr. Wilson is a mechanic, a tall, older man, with wiry, tightly-curled grey hair. Quiet but friendly. Mrs. Wilson is a schoolteacher at the village primary school. She's smaller than Mr. Wilson, slender, with very short blond hair that she curls on Sabbath mornings. A motherly person, always ready to take care of everyone. Claire is twenty years old. She finished two years of a degree in biology but has now left university in order to work for a year. She's taking highschool-level night classes in theology in preparation for returning to university to do a degree in theology. She's built like her father, fairly tall, full-faced, with thick dark curly hair, and dimples whenever she smiles. We get along very well and have great fun together. Calvin, Claire's younger brother, is about seventeen or eighteen, built more like his mother, tall and lanky, with dark hair. He and Claire interact in a way similar to the way that Philip, my brother, and I interact.

When/if I get internet on my laptop, I'll put up a picture of the Wilsons' house and of Claire....

'I have a good heritage'

October 6, 2007 (continued).

So, Claire and I drove on our way to Carrickfergus, talking about the people we know. Claire told me about her friends, explaining to me some of their quirks, their experiences, their gifts and abilities. She's very close friends with Robert McCollum, Emmaline's cousin, who in many ways is similar to Andy McKelvey in that they both do everything well (think of Avery and Garrett Mann, for those of you who know them...).

We were driving through countryside. Not a long drive. Around the outthrust spur of a tall hill on the top of which was perched a war monument; down through the narrow streets of a little village; past a field of black and white sheep grazing on the green grass. Carrickfergus, to my delight, turned out to be a small, sleepy town perched right on the edge of the sea. Looking south, across the water, we could see the long dark arm of Belfast Loch, with Holywood and Bangor on the slopes of the land, and Belfast away to the southwest. Claire pointed out the two big H&W cranes on the wharf where the Titanic was built. To the east spread the flat shimmering surface of the loch, shimmering away endlessly until it passed out between the two arms of the land and met the horizon. The afternoon was warm, a thin veil of clouds over the blue sky, and darker clouds coming up out of the southwest over Belfast. The sun struck down through the dark clouds, long spear-shafts of white light on the water and on the distant slopes of the Belfast shore.

We pulled up in the parking lot by the castle. Carrick Castle loomed over us, its big squat square Norman tower bulking up against the sky, its thick walls curling around the spur of rock on which it was built. Not a high castle: one had the distinct impression of the castle as a crouching brute, a boar with great muscled shoulders. The castle sat on a small peninsula, a jut of rock. On the east side was a steep drop to a rocky beach; on the west side, the drop was not so steep, and there was a small harbor with fishing boats and sailboats moored at the quays. We went round up the long ramp and through the thick wooden doors. Claire paid for tickets for both of us, and we went inside.

Inside, the castle was quiet, sunshine lingering between the massive stone walls. Claire and I spent about an hour climbing all over the castle. There were plenty of other people about, but not enough to crowd the place. Claire and I found peculiar metal statues, painted bright colors, scattered around the castle, like life-size toy soldiers. On one of the ramparts, looking east, was a gunnery crew decked out in scarlet coats and Revolutionary War-era hats, aiming the big cannons across a stony beach towards the ugly nearby stack of a power plant. Down in a cubbyhole under the walls, in a room with several slitted windows, was Cuthbert the Crossbowman, a statue dressed in brightly-painted hose and tunic, posed with his bow pointed out one of the window-slits, where gulls strutted and stalked over beds of brown kelp washed up on the rocks below. In another room, above the gate, Claire and I found the steward of the castle, posed at a table with a couple of castiron dogs at his feet, painted brown and white. We also found the chapel, which had moss growing on the underside of the ceiling.

We explored upstairs and downstairs, in and out. We found the oubliette, where prisoners were dumped through a hole in the floor and forgotten. We found a random soldier standing posed sleepily against a battlement. We climbed finally from the outer courtyard to the inner courtyard, where the great stone tower of the keep stood watch over the whole castle. We climbed inside the keep, which has been restored and refurbished, outfitted with modern windows and staircases. There was a banquet hall, a Great Hall, a solar, a kitchen, and other rooms, all fitted with mock medieval-era tapestries, furniture, and banners. On the high table on the dais in the small banqueting hall was the big salt cellar, shaped like a ship under full sail. On the big open floor of the Great Hall a couple of big playing mats were set out for children, with three-foot-tall chess pieces. A couple of girls were playing chess with their mother.

Claire and I went outside and walked around on top of the battlements. Down below us, inside the inner court, there was a lawn of vivid green grass. Children had come for a birthday party, and they were running around, shouting and yelling. They were all dressed up in (very fake) medieval costumes, as knights with plastic helmets or friars with plastic crucifixes or maidens with plastic cones on their heads. They were all having a screamingly good time (literally!), running around the green grass in their costumes, red and yellow and orange and teal caught vividly in the sun. I found a hidey-hole in one of the windows--a narrow opening, which opened onto a tiny chamber not quite tall enough for me to stand up in, with a barred window at the other end. Claire and I both got in, and then she ran down outside the castle and took pictures of me sitting in the window in the walls. Then I ran out, out over the grass of the inner court, out under the big archway, out over the cobblestones of the outer court, and out through the thick wooden door, and down to meet her in the parking lot.

We drove from the castle into Carrickfergus. A row of shops and houses faced the main street, which ran between the town and the sea. We went into Maud's and bought ice cream in little cups, and perched on the warm stone wall facing out, beyond the road, towards the sea. The smell of the sea came up to us. We watched the ferry from Scotland come in, pushing slowly up the loch. Out on the shimmering water, people were jetskiing. Sailboats like moths with tiny pointed wings flitted about on the water. We sat quietly, eating our ice cream slowly. The afternoon was perfect, warm with just a little breeze, reminding me of those occasional October Oklahoma days when the sky hangs still and milky over the yellowing arms of the maple trees.

When we'd finished our ice cream, we drove up through the narrow streets of the town and parked by a Presbyterian Church. Mrs. Wilson had asked us to buy carrots, if we could, so we looked around for a grocer's shop that would sell fresh carrots, but the only ones we could find were in a supermarket in plastic bags, which Mrs. Wilson had expressly warned us against. So then we looked for a drugstore where Claire could print some digital pictures. We found one, and I nosed around the store while she printed her pictures. Evening was coming on, and the small sleepy town was becoming even sleepier. The red, white, and blue bunting strung between the shops over the town square fluttered vaguely in a light breeze. Claire and I took silly pictures of each other posing in the old town stocks (the wall of the house behind the stocks was painted with humorous scenes from the middle ages--dogs and boys and two men yelling at each other). Then we drove back to the Wilsons' house.

Claire and I settled ourselves down in the living room to sit around for a bit. Claire turned on the TV, but there wasn't much on--stupid silly home videos and that sort of thing. We did find a 'Planet Earth'-type program, depicting the changing of seasons in the ocean, so we watched that for awhile, and when Calvin came home from work, he joined us (and he had a packet of gummy fruit candies that he shared with us). We sat laughing and poking fun of all the weird undersea creatures--sea slugs and plankton and baby crabs. Fiesta colors spread flagrantly all over reefs and kelp forests, though of course God is the only one who can properly see and enjoy them all the time. There was gorgeous footage of kelp forests growing in the summer, and of orcas hunting in the winter, clicking and whining eerily to locate their prey. When that TV show ended, Calvin wanted to watch an episode of 24, an American crime show.

After that ended, it was suppertime (about seven o'clock). Night had settled down outside. Mrs. Wilson had fixed pizza for us for supper, with bell peppers, onions, mushrooms, and bacon. Quite good. Claire and Calvin teased each other during the meal, and Calvin practiced his imitation of an American accent, which he has to use for his school's production of Annie. Claire and I sat and laughed at him. After the meal, Mr. Wilson gathered all of us around the table, and we had family worship. Mr. Wilson read the passage in Matthew where Christ prophesies about the destruction of the temple. Since I was the guest, they let me choose a Psalm, and I chose Psalm 101, the Psalm I sang on my first night alone in Renwick, and also with a tune that's familiar to users of the Irish Psalter. Then Mr. Wilson prayed.

Calvin went out with his friends tonight, after being direly warned by both his parents to look after himself. Claire and I did the dishes. Then I fixed tea for us, and cut slices of apple crumble, and served smarties ice cream (smarties are the equivalent of M&Ms) for both of us, and we went upstairs to the guest room where I'm staying, and settled down on the big double bed. Claire brought in her laptop, and we watched the Bourne Identity, the first of the Bourne films, which are some of Claire's favorites. It was a good movie, after all (I must admit that I was a bit skeptical after all the media hype over the release of the last one). Fairly clean, just a plain, uncomplicated action-adventure thriller, not requiring too much thought. Claire and I both enjoyed it. Claire nearly screamed at one surprising point in the film, though she'd seen it before (I sat and laughed at her).

The movie ended at about ten-thirty, and Claire said good-night and went to bed. I took a shower and then sat up for awhile, chatting with Logan online, which was good (no one else was logged into Skype, except the Spitlers, who were away, I suppose). It was about midnight when I finally went to sleep.

'the lines have fallen to me in pleasant places'

In church today, in the opening exercises before everyone split up to go to their Sabbath school classes, we sang part of Psalm 16. As I struggle to have peace and joy here, I was encouraged by the verses in this Psalm that talk about God's goodness, the joy of His salvation, and the rest that we have in His promises. So partly as a reminder to myself, but also so that you all won't have too much of a dull picture of my experiences in partcular and Northern Ireland in general, I thought I'd write up a description of what I did yesterday, as a way of thanksgiving to the God who has provided all good things for us richly to enjoy.

October 6, 2007

I woke this morning, Saturday morning, under the deep duvet and blanket in the spare bed in the back bedroom of the Wilsons' house. The house was quiet, and vague morning sunshine was beginning to come in through the windows. I got up, dressed, and did my devotions. Somehow or other my laptop managed to pick up a wireless internet signal from somewhere, so I took a bit of time to put things on my laptop in order that require the internet. I discovered recently that because I have a Blogger account, I also have a Gmail account. Since I've been studying abroad, my University of Tulsa e-mail account has become quite bogged down with correspondence, so I switched to the Gmail account that I have anyway. Now I still receive the mail from Tulsa, but it all forwards to Gmail.

I was sitting and busying myself happily with these things, only regretting that it was far too early for anyone on the other side of the world to be awake and up for chatting, when Claire knocked on the door, and we went downstairs for 'breakfast'. She often has trouble sleeping, so it was actually about eleven o'clock by the time we were downstairs. Mrs. Wilson was busy in the kitchen, cooking up soup for lunch and preparing a meal to take to Richard, an elderly fellow in the Trinity RPC who recently suffered the loss of his brother. Mrs. Wilson had just baked Irish soda bread, and she gave some to me to eat. It wasn't at all what I was expecting. Instead of being a loaf, it turned out to be a flat round farl of bread, cooked on a griddle. It was warm and soft and tasted a lot like the biscuits that my mother used to bake when we would have soup in the winter. It was the best bread I've had for a very long time. We sat in the warm kitchen, eating and drinking tea and chatting while the pots bubbled on the stove.

After we finished eating, Claire had work to do, so she went into the living room, and I went back upstairs to finish what I'd been doing on my laptop. Then I came down and sat with her for awhile. She was copying down notes from the night class she's been taking on Mondays. She had the TV on, but there wasn't much worth watching, so for about an hour we sat quietly, she writing away on her notepad, and I sitting on the floor, reading Letters of John Newton, which I borrowed from the Trinity RPC library (remembering the recommendations of John and Syneva). I was struck in particular by one of the letters in which he talked about the blessings of salvation to believers: how we are Christ's jewels, precious to Him, which reminded me of Ephesians and the 'riches of His inheritance in all the saints'. We are usually, and rightly, humbled to think ourselves as inheritors of God's grace, but I don't think the thought is very common that Christ inherits us--but in that passage in Ephesians 1, it seems as though what Paul is saying is that Christ has actually chosen His people as a rich inheritance for Himself. Also, though there is a proper emphasis on God's glory in salvation, Newton in this letter talked about how God has chosen to bind up our happiness with His glory so that the happiness of His people is one of His chief concerns. And then, of course, the wonderful truth that we are not just God's servants but also His friends, the ones to whom He has opened His mind and the plan of salvation.

So I sat quietly on the carpet, watching the sunshine drift in onto the yellow walls, and listening to Claire's pen roll over the pages, and thought about these things.

At about one-thirty, Mrs. Wilson called us in to have our lunch. It was simple: hot vegetable soup and soda bread, plain and warm. Mr. and Mrs. Wilson sat down with Claire and me, but Calvin goes to work on Saturdays, so he wasn't there.

After lunch, Claire and I picked ourselves up, hopped into her car (which is a rather clunky set of wheels), and drove about ten minutes over to Carrickfergus to visit Carrick Castle, which was Claire's idea. On the way, we went through a list of the people living in Renwick House this year, as Claire was eager to hear about everyone and my impressions of them. So this is as good a place as any to give you all, also, an idea of my fellow housemates, though of course keep in mind that I've only known most of them for about two weeks.

Rachel Montgomery lives on the first floor in Room 1 and is the warden (i.e., RA). She's a second-year student, slender, with straight shoulder-length brown hair. A friendly girl, always ready to laugh, ready to be involved in just about anything that includes other Christians, and eager to make opportunities for fellowship. She's from Ballymena, and talks really fast--we've already had at least one amusing situation in which I completely misunderstood what she was saying. 'If Rachel ever does that to you again, just tell her she's going Ballymena on you,' Daphne told me.

Ian Dumwittie and Matthew Curry live in Room 2 on the next floor up. They're both first-year students. Ian is a quiet, reserved boy with dark hair and a girlfriend who's around a lot. Matthew is not quite as quiet. He broke his ankle playing soccer for the Renwick 'football' team this week.

Lindsey lives in Room 3. She's also a first-year student, I believe. She's friendly and will pop into our room for a chat if the door is open. She has glasses and short dark hair, and is usually stylishly dressed. She has a boyfriend, I believe, but she won't go out 'clubbing' with her friends, though she seems to me to be quite a social sort of person.

Emmaline and I live in Room 4. Emmaline is a first-year student, one of the livelier, louder girls in the house, eager to try new things, especially if they involve athletics. But she's also trying to be in the orchestra and the choir this semester.

Room 5 is occupied by Andy McKelvey and Philip Dumwittie (I don't know if I'm spelling his last name right). Philip is Ian's older brother. Andy is a gentlemanly, courteous sort of person, very studious. Philip, on the other hand, reminds me very much of a cross between my brother Philip and Asher...! He's a second-year student. He led our Psalm sing Monday night, and did an excellent job of making comments on all the Psalms--but he's also got the gift of getting everyone laughing afterward. Thursday night a bunch of us watched Batman Begins, and he and I made snide comments at the mushy parts of the film, which was fun and helped to break up the tenseness of the storyline. I think my friendship with him will be similar as it is with Asher or Philip at home.

Deborah Steele lives in Room 6. She's a second-year student, always very stylishly dressed, one of the 'cool' people, but friendly enough.

Andy Lynch and Samuel Morrison live in Room 7, above Emmaline and me. Andy Lynch is also friendly enough, and since he and I were the only two people in Renwick last Sabbath evening, we ended up chatting and joking about the differences between American and Northern Ireland for an hour or so. Samuel, like Ian and Matthew, is not one of the guys I've gotten to know very well. He gives the impression of being rather a geek, if I may use the term, though I've heard that he can be quite crazy and pull some clever pranks when he gets in the mood for it.

Room 8 is Emma's room. She's somewhat similar to Lindsey and Deborah, in that she's usually very well-dressed, but she's a down-to-earth, friendly sort of person, who gets along well with just about everyone.

Room 9, right up under the roof, is where Catherine Morrison and Daphne Frizzell live. N.B.: Catherine is no relation to Samuel. Catherine is a petite girl, quiet and kind, with a funny bubbly sense of humor, a first-year English student. She, Emmaline, and I get along quite well and cook for each other, and Catherine is always in and out of our room. Daphne is good friends with Rachel. Daphne has red hair, and when she and Rachel get together, they're absolutely crazy. I just sit and laugh at them, and they laugh at themselves, and it's all in good fun.

So that's us, as they say....

And methinks I shall break this up into another post, to stop the monotony.

sleepy

Why is it so difficult to come up with good post titles?

Yesterday, I went to Late Medieval Literature lecture and tutorial. Still doing Chaucer, the Monk's tale and the Reeve's tale. About as bawdy as you can get. I've been waiting with great anticipation all week for one of my textbooks, an edition of Beowulf in Old English, to arrive, but it still hasn't come. Also for my flute to arrive. But I learned yesterday that there's a postal strike on in the U.K., so we'll see whether any mail gets through at all. Everything here seems to move at a much slower pace than in the States, but this is rather frustrating....

I had to buy a membership to the gym yesterday in order to go running. I knew I would have to, but it still was unpleasasnt to spend £100 just for the sake of getting exercise. I am thankful, though, to be so well-provided for by my parents. It was good to get exercise again. I listened to one of Mr. Carroll's old Sabbath school lectures on The Rare Jewel of Christian Contentment, which I've been working through this past year or so, on and off. One quote from Burroughs that Mr. Carroll mentioned was this: 'Ingratitude in small things is the work of the Devil,' which certainly gave me pause to think.

Walking back from going running was so pleasant. Here the light always seems to linger at late afternoon: whether it's high noon or six o'clock, the light drifts down long blue shadows between the building. In order to get back from the gym to Renwick House, I have to walk through the Botanic Gardens. The trees in the gardens are beginning to prepare for autumn. The maples are burning red and orange at the edges; the elms are turning yellow and copper; the oaks are going brown and bronze, but the pines and spruces are still blue-evergreen. Walking through the gardens I passed the rose garden on the left, basking in the last level light of the sun, and then the bowling green on the right, the long smooth bowl of perfectly-green grass stretched contentedly to the blue sky.

Emmaline, Catherine, and I fixed potato bake for ourselves for supper tonight. Neither one of them likes vegetables much (people here just don't know what's good for them.... *grin*), but I had made a salad on Tuesday and was determined to eat it. After supper we washed up, and then I spent a couple of hours studying and writing letters in my room, listening to Saint-Saens and Tchaikovsky. At about nine o'clock, someone came down and knocked on my door. I opened it, but didn't see anyone until I cautiously looked round the corner and saw Daphne standing there, grinning at me. Daphne, Catherine, and I debated about how we wanted to spend our evening, the main result being that we stood in the kitchen, drinking tea and eating chocolate and talking.

We ended up eventually going into the common room with some of the guys and watching Batman Begins. As people trickled back to Renwick from their various evening activities, they joined us, so that pretty soon a good many of the inhabitants of Renwick, with an assortment of friends, were all squeezed into the common room, watching the movie. It was midnight when the movie ended, but the Northern Irish people were still going strong. Philip put on another movie, and while everyone settled down to watch it, I slipped out and went upstairs to bed.

Today I haven't had any classes. I spent the morning reading Chaucer and managed to finished the assignment for next week, only to discover, when I got on the internet in the library, that I have a short paper assigned for later in the month. It's only 500 words long, but it's been so long since I've written a paper. Emmaline and I had lunch together and then she left to catch the 2:20 train. I'm to spend the weekend with the Wilsons again and go to Trinity RPC on Sabbath.

not much

'Dodgy' means something along the lines of 'suspicious, shady, not quite accurate, not quite right'. It's sort of a catch-all word for anything that appears to be questionable.

It rained today. Hard. But now as evening is coming on the low grey clouds are breaking up and moving away eastward, and golden-green sunshine is glowing down on the brown roofs and red chimneys and and distant high-rises and yellow-green leaves of the elm trees.

more adventures

Now Playing: Mendelssohn, 'Italian' symphony--if I were in my room, that is.

Still no internet in Renwick. I've heard a rumor that it's coming 'Tuesday week', which means a week from today, but I'm skeptical. They use all sorts of different words over here. I'm 'ginger', not red-headed. It's nearly 'half one', not one-thirty. I go to lectures and tutorials, not class or discussion sections. For dessert, we eat biscuits, not cookies (and they aren't cookies really--they're hard, like graham crackers). I'm wearing trousers, not pants (and beware of calling them pants, because that's the word for undergarments here!). This computer lab is wee, not little, and instead of welcoming someone, 'Hello, friend!', they might say, 'Heya, love.' They drink squash, not juice (and dilute it with huge amounts of water!), though they do have proper juice. They say 'youse' instead of 'y'all'. All very strange....

Anyhow, there are pictures up on photobucket, Belfast Week 3, though practically none of the pictures are from Belfast. They're from last weekend, which I spent in the Republic of Ireland. IFSA-Butler, the study abroad organization, requires its students do spend a weekend with a family in the Republic, called a homestay. Myself and two other Americans from the Butler program spent the weekend with a couple in a town called Navan, about an hour northeast (I think) of Dublin. The couple was older-middle-aged, and didn't have any children, but a very friendly medium-sized dog. They had traveled all over the eastern hemisphere (Sri Lanka, France, Italy, Spain, Australia), and were great cooks.

On Saturday, they took us to Dublin to show us the sights. They seemed to know every possible trivial fact about Dublin that anyone could know. Every other building was a landmark where some famous person that I'd never heard of had been born, or died, or taught, or lectured, and every other street or pub was of historical significance of some sort. We went to Christ Church Cathedral and Trinity College--where, delight of delights, I got to see the Book of Kells! The real, live Book of Kells. And, better still, the Long Room, which is where Trinity houses its 'special collections'. But what a special collection! A room at least three stories tall, running long and narrow the length of the building, with a high wooden ceiling in a narrow arch. Down both sides ran bookshelves, with windows between them, and at the head of each bookshelf was a white marble bust of a famous author or philosopher--Milton, Sophocles, Bacon, Newton, Homer, Virgil, and so on. There was one story of bookshelves, with ladders leading up to the upper shelves, and then there was another story of bookshelves, all open--row after row of books, calfskin, parchment, vellum, leather, red, brown, black, tan, dun, books and books and books. And in the middle of the room there was a glass case with the oldest known Irish harp inside--a wooden harp with thin carving all over it. I wish I could portray the awe of the Long Room, but I can't really. A great silence, a great stillness, as though no matter how many people walked through it, it would still be there, standing aloof and remote, with its wordless books and its soundless harp.

We also went into the trendiest shopping area in Dublin. People from all over the world, speaking all different languages. Street musicians playing a digeridoo, an accordion, an electric guitar. We stopped in a cafe for tea.

Saturday evening, our hosts took us up to Trim to show us Trim Castle by night. The castle is lit at night with various lights so that it shines eerily out of the black countryside. There are ruins scattered all over the area--monasteries, churches, castles. A strange country, where they keep ruins in their back pockets.

On Sabbath, my hosts offered to take me (the only Christian) to Mass or to the Church of Ireland, but I declined, and spent much of the morning reading the Gospel of Mark and listening to Psalms and Sabbath school lectures on my MP3 player. In the afternoon we drove to the High Seat of Tara, where the prehistoric Irish kings had their court. There's not much left now of the old battlements and buildings--mostly green ditches and dykes and embankments, covered with thick wet grass, where sheep graze. A lonely, secret place, though open to the wind and the sky. We looked into one of the barrows, which has a low stone entrance, and we walked down the length of what was once the banqueting hall, now just a long trough in the grass. It reminded me of the Barrow Downs in The Fellowship of the Ring--a queer, chilly feeling slithering up my spine.

As we drove back to Navan, we took back roads, and stopped at Bective Abbey, which is out in the middle of someone's cow pasture. Our hosts pulled over and let the three of us girls out so that we could explore the abbey. It was good fun, climbing over the old stones, going up and down narrow spiral staircases, walking under old archways, looking at carvings on the window frames. The study abroad group went back to Belfast Sabbath evening.

Yesterday I didn't have any lectures, so I spent most of the morning translating the first fifty or so lines of Beowulf and reading The Book of Margery Kempe for Late Medieval Literature. In the afternoon I wrote mountains of e-mails (most of you probably got one!) and went shopping. In the evening, Catherine, Emmaline, and I made supper for ourselves--leftover mac-and-cheese that I'd fixed last week, and leftover creamed chicken that Emmaline had brought back from her home this weekend. We went to CU at seven o'clock. CU is sort of like RUF, but much, much bigger--at least 400 people. Since the Christian Union is interdenominational and run by a committee of students, it doesn't have a pastor. So they have a different speaker each week. This week the speaker was rather 'dodgy', which was disappointing.

Afterwards, people from Renwick, their friends, and relatives (nearly everyone here is related!) gathered in Renwick for a Psalm sing. They used the room that Emmaline and I share since it's one of the bigger rooms in Renwick. We sat on our beds and on the floor, and people brought in chairs from their rooms. There must've been about twenty of us. We spent about an hour-and-a-half singing Psalms. It was a blessing to see Christian brothers and sisters singing--reinforcing to me the fact that they really are related to me in Christ, and not complete strangers. I did struggle some with the Irish Psalter. Emmaline was in charge of picking the tunes, and thankfully she picked mostly tunes that I know from the American Psalter. But the words in the Irish Psalter are slightly different, and a couple of times I caught myself singing the wrong words. After the Psalm sing, we sat around in the common room downstairs, drinking coffee and eating 'biscuits' and talking. Philip Dumwittie led the Psalm sing, but he and Johnny, one of his pals, kept all of us laughing afterward--somehow they know how to tell jokes and stories just right to amuse the group. They were still going strong when I went up to bed at twelve-thirty.

This morning I went to Beowulf class, the first time I've gone to it since I missed the meeting last week. A good class, fairly basic, though I was relieved to find that I'd gotten my translation pretty much correct. There are only ten of us in the class, so it meets for two hours, and is supposed to be a mix between lecture and discussion. The professor, Dr. Magennis, does most of the talking, though. He talked a lot today about the distance between old Anglo-Saxon oral poetry and the written texts we have today; also about the distance between the Anglo-Saxon poets and the idealized heroic past they describe in their poetry since even for them Beowulf and the other figures in Anglo-Saxon poetry were myths. Good stuff, but I'll not bore you with it any more.

And now I'm getting ready to go have lunch. High time!

looking up

I put up some pictures of the room that Emmaline and I share on photobucket. I added them to the folder Belfast 2, if you're interested.

Had my first lecture and tutorial today, the Discovering the Earliest Writings in English lecture. It's team-taught by two nice, cheerful elderly chaps. They make me want to chuckle because they're both the perfect stereotypes of the British university professor: rotund, grey-haired, red-faced, with 'propah British accents', but to add to the charm, 'wee' little bits of Irish tossed in here and there. Today they took us through some very basic Anglo-Saxon history (which I already knew from reading Rosemary Sutcliff! yay!) and Old English (which I also already knew from the class at OSU). But it was good to have a reminder of these things anyway, and I think the class is going to be fun. One of the professors, Dr. Magennis, is the one whom my advisor got in touch with last schoolyear. He's been e-mailing me, and I went up and introduced myself to him today. He invited me to come to his tutorial and also to be in the Beowulf class, which I'm not enrolled for right now. During the tutorial, which is immediately after the lecture, fifteen of us crammed into Dr. Magennis's office, and he took us through a handout teaching us how to pronounce Old English words. Good old thorn, eth, ash.

Last night I spent some time 'hanging out' with the Renwick crowd. It was the first time they'd actually included me in the fun as a group because before there have just been random people visiting. Last night it was mostly Renwick people, though there were a couple of guys that I met at Emmaline's CY this weekend. We played Rummikub. I find the Northern Irish (not just plain Irish, as Emmaline informed me, but either Northern Irish or British) sense of humor to be quite funny--very dry, lots of sarcasm, and they can keep it going endlessly. Some of the guys were talking about making a spoof of synod...!

Guess that's all for now. I need to go see about arranging classes and such.

holding on

Now Playing: Irish guys talking at the next computer.

*cough*

I'm on the third and top floor of the Seamus Heaney Library in the computer lab. Papers rattle, keyboards tick, voices murmur, and the computers hum. It's been raining this morning. While we were eating breakfast, I saw a rainbow out the kitchen window against a dark wall of cloud, arching over the roofs and chimney pots. Emmaline wasn't impressed. I suppose Northern Irish people see rainbows all the time.

There are more pictures up on photobucket: username Elfellyn, password flook07, file Belfast 2. Though only a few of the pictures are actually from Belfast.

I spent the weekend with Emmaline McCollum, my roommate, and her family. They live between Portrush, which is as far north as you can go in Ireland, and Coleraine, and they go to the Glenmanus RPC, which is in Portrush. I went with Emmaline and her two sisters to CY on Saturday night. Because the Glenmanus church is small, their CY joins forces with the Ballyclabber RPC CY. They're going through Philippians. They had an interesting discussion format: the leader of the study took the group through the passage, a paragraph at a time, and just asked people to say what they thought about the verses in the paragraph, verse-by-verse. No discussion questions or anything, though of course the leader had done study beforehand. Because everyone was willing to talk, the format worked really well. It allowed the members of the CY to come up with applications and ideas on their own, forcing them to think freely about the passage as it applied to them rather than comping up with set easy answers to questions.

I worshipped with the Glenmanus church on Sabbath, but Sabbath evening, instead of going to the evening service, Mr. McCollum took Emmaline, her two sisters, and one of her brothers, and me, to the Drimbolg RPC for a CY praise service. We took a narrow bumpy back country road, where the asphalt had sunk in places because the road was built over a bog. On either side were boggy pastures or thickets of trees where water gleamed between the swampy roots. The praise service consisted of Psalm singing, young people getting up to talk about missions teams they'd been on during the summer, and a brief message. The singing was lovely, about ninety people giving voice in a big fellowship hall. A lot of the churches here have recently refurbished buildings and added fellowship halls or expanded sanctuaries. It's encouraging to see this expansion going on, and also the vitality and eagerness among the young people to serve and do outreach.

Anyhow, the pictures on photobucket are from the Giant's Causeway and Carrick-a-rede rope bridge. Emmaline's family only lives about ten or fifteen minutes away from them. Also there are pictures of the Grand Opera House, where Emmaline and I saw Beauty and the Beast Thursday evening. We ate supper in a Subway sandwich shop beforehand, looking across the busy Belfast street at the Opera House. Nice juxtaposition: American food surrounded by all this Irish history and architecture.

Last night we drove back from Drimbolg to Belfast with Catherine and Amy Morrison. Catherine lives in Renwick on the top floor. She's an English major, and she and I get along quite well. (She reminds me of you, Tara.) Today is the first day of classes at Queen's, but I don't have any classes today, so I've just been trying to take care of all the little necessary details. I need to buy books somehow or other.

today

I spent most of this morning and early afternoon just walking around Belfast. I went down and saw Spires Mall, which is across the street from the hotel where I stayed last Tuesday night. I walked over to Belfast City Hall, and then down through the crowded shopping district, and came out on the other side at St. Anne's Cathedral. A heavy Romanesque building, not nearly as beautiful as Glasgow's cathedral, but I spent a pleasant while in there walking around and thinking. I went up the street and saw a Congregational church and a Catholic church, St. Patrick's, to add to my collection of churches. Belfast is rather a sad city, I think: the shoping areas seem very materialistic, but then there is a lot of poverty and grime in the neighborhoods on the edge of the city. It's not a very clean city, either: old gum and rubbish stuck to the sidewalks, old broadsides plastered to walls and electric boxes, grafitti on blank spaces, parking lots surrounded by high walls and barbed wire. Yesterday I went on a bus tour of Belfast offered as part of the freshman orientation (or Freshers' Week) at Queen's. They took us to the shipyards on the Lagan River, and they took us up the Shankill Road, which is the Unionist, Protestant, British part of Belfast, and then up the Falls Road, which is the liberationist, Catholic, Irish part of Belfast. The two roads are separated still by a high reinforced metal wall that runs through some people's back gardens. There are gates in the wall where you can cross back and forth, but the police still shut the gates every night. The big courthouse on Shankill Road is eerily empty, with smashed windows and pigeons walking in and out over the big Classical portico with Greek-style statues looming overhead. It may be safe now, but the animosities are still present.

Pictures of Queen's, of the hike into the Mountains of Mourne on Saturday, and my walk round Belfast today are up on photobucket. I smuggled them in on my USB card. Still no internet on my laptop....