some pictures

spring

lots of language and lots of dishes

Now Playing: Coldplay, "Don't Panic".

Despite all the work we'd gone to yesterday to get our room warmed up, it was still freezing this morning. Ah, well. Emmaline bolted down a bowlful of frosted rice krispies and warm milk (!) before dashing off to her French class. I spent the morning reading A History of the English Language and then going to ENL204 lecture and tutorial. The aforementioned textbook for this class fascinates me: in particular, the lists of words, which tell you when the words were taken into English and why. It's amazing to see the immediate connection between history and language. Reading through the lists of words taken from church Latin, Viking pirates, Norman conquerors, and Flemish tradesmen, one begins to find a sense of the vast richness of the English language. In particular, the number of synonyms: English may appear to have a hugely superfluous vocabulary, but each set of words that seems to mean the same thing is actually a constellation of various shades of meaning, each word with its own set of connotations. For instance, if I were to "ask" for something, that would be quite different from "pleading", "begging", "demanding", or "requiring".

After class, I went back to Renwick, where I found a beautiful little parcel waiting for me on the hall table from Mrs. Parnell and Mary. With her usual artistic care, Mrs. Parnell had drawn colorful flowers on the outside of the package, and inside I found two beautifully made little cards, one from Mrs. Parnell and one from Mary, accompanying a pair of tightly-knit aqua socks. My delight at the creativity of the cards made me immediately want to make something of my own, but unfortunately my repertoire of crafty materials is reduced to whatever colored papers Emmaline happens to have on her shelf and the brush pens I bought at Tesco last fall.

I helped Rachel fix communal lunch this afternoon. She had to be somewhere at one o'clock, so our efforts were frantic, to say the least. Her sister, Lindsey, was visiting, and pitched in along with Daphne, Catherine, Emma, and Linsey. We grilled sausages and had buns ("baps"), onions, and cheese to go along. There weren't many people at lunch today, despite the fact that the boys had a football match this afternoon. I sat between Linsey and Heather and talked with them, Heather chirping away merrily about her classes.

After lunch, Emmaline went to choir. I holed up in my room and talked to Logan on Skype for an hour or so. I hadn't done that in awhile and was treated to an enormous surprise, in the shape of his new beard--! I finished reading the two chapters in the ENL204 textbook, then browsed the news on Google, which was so depressing that I got out my flute and practiced for awhile. I love practicing: concentrating on the circle of sound, not having to think outside that frame of reference, simply listening to each note and seeking to tune it as truly as possible. I'm working on learning Bach Sonata BWV1030, the leaps challenging me because of my lack of practice.

Emmaline came back from choir, and I put my flute away while she was in the room. We studied staidely for awhile, until Sarah W. rang, and I, looking out the window, saw her and Charlotte standing across the street. I opened the window and had a conversation with them while Emmaline wriggled into shorts, and then the three of them went off to the gym. Resigning myself to staying behind, I managed to get about half my homework done. Dusk fell outside, a pale full moon shining like a lidded eye behind thin clouds.

At about five-thirty I went downstairs to start making tea. Emma was in the kitchen as I scrubbed and diced potatoes for mashed potatoes. Soon she went out, though, and I was left alone, humming Psalms to myself as I washed dishes and kept an eye on the boiling potatoes. Emmaline and I had mashed potatoes, sausages, and vegetables for tea--she had had to go by Centra to buy milk, and had bought a couple of little smoothies at the same time, a raspberry-cranberry and a mango-orange, to add some excitement to the meal. Rachel, Daphne, and Charlotte ate with us, keeping Emmaline and me laughing.

After tea, Emmaline and I sat up in our room and "studied". I finished my homework, put new pictures up on my bulletin board, etc., while Emmaline worked on a French translation. At nine o'clock, Pastor and Mrs. McKay, from Shaftesbury Square RPC, came up to Renwick to have a chat with the students. Pastor McKay is the Renwick chaplain, so he gave us a short talk inviting us to come to him whenever we have questions and encouraging us to stay for church on Sabbaths. Mrs. McKay had brought two amazing cakes, chocolate and lemon cheesecake, and we stood around in the kitchen eating and talking. The McKays are kind people, cordial, with warm humor. They stayed for an hour or so. We washed the dishes and put them away, to Mrs. McKay's amazement.

After they left, Andy M., Andy L., Samuel, Rachel, Emmaline, and I stayed in the kitchen, chatting for an hour: Rachel tried to convince us that physics, not math, is the "fabric of the universe"; we talked about why the speed of light is always the same; we told funny stories about circuses, gymnastics, and silly tricks we'd played as children; we laughed about hiking and getting lost in the mountains. We talked about politics, too, and the control of the media. It was great fun just to relax for awhile, without the constant brunt of sarcasm, to tell funny stories and realize just how much we have in common.

The talk ended when Andy M. went up to bed at eleven o'clock. Emmaline and I went back to our room. We read John Cleese's "Letter to America", laughing hilariously. She's attempting to finish her French translation and discussing feminism with me at the same time...!

Good night, or good morning, whichever it is by now.

I may regret this

Here's an amusing link, thanks to my aunt, having to do with people's use of language. Though I'm not really sure the U.K. would want to be associated with the U.S. at all these days.... (Apologies for any slightly off-color humor.)

http://starrgazr.wordpress.com/2008/02/15/john-cleeses-letter-to-america/

And in reply to two anonymous comments:

I wouldn't want to build a bridge even if you paid me.

Caedmon was an Old English cowherd (though his name is Welsh, so maybe he's not as Old English as some people would like to think) who wouldn't sing at feasts because he didn't have any skill with singing or playing the harp. In Bede's account, the story goes that one night when it was coming time for Caedmon's turn to sing at a feast, he crept out of the hall and went to take care of the cattle, which was his job. After he'd seen to his work, he lay down in the barn and went to sleep. But while he was asleep, he had a vision that someone came to him, called him by name, and commanded him to sing. He replied that he didn't know how to sing, or what to sing, and the man told him that he should sing about creation. So Caedmon sang a few lines of Old English poetry praising God for creation, and that was supposedly the first Christian Old English poetry. After his dream, Caedmon discovered that he had somehow miraculously acquired the gift of poetry. He joined a monastery, and though he couldn't read, he had other people read to him. When he had heard the Biblical narratives read aloud, he meditated on them and then turned them in to poetry.

silliness, anyone?

Now Playing: Skype conversations with Peter and Sarah/Laura.

The room was so incredibly cold when we woke up this morning that it was hardly even funny. Emmaline woke up to do her devotions and then crawled back to take refuge under her duvet while I sat bundled in a coccoon of jumpers and a blanket at my desk. When we went downstairs to get breakfast, the kitchen was actually warmer than our room, which is strange since it's usually the coldest place in the house.

At ten o'clock I had ENG314, Literature, Art, and Culture of the Anglo-Saxons. We finished discussing Bede's Ecclesiastical History today. It is interesting (wait, no, I'll find another word, Peter)--it is curious how much Bede refers to Biblical sources and how Biblical characters find resonances throughout his stories of saints and kings. Even the story of Caedmon is reminiscent both of the calling of Samuel and of the nativity, where the Word of God was born out of nothing in a stable. Finding Biblical echoes is one of the professor's favorite activities, anyway, so that's what I learned all about today.

After class, as usual, I went running, except that for some strange reason I had bad leg cramps today and had to spend my half-hour on the stationary bike instead of the treadmill, which wasn't nearly as satisfying or challenging. Walking back through the Botanic Gardens was lovely, the sun shining on a cold day. The crocus buds are as big as a child's fists, waxy white and purple.

Back in Renwick, I found Daphne and Catherine on the stairs, getting ready to go out to lunch. There was a rather sickening rancid smell in the stairwell: apparently, the product of another loving gift from the all-male Daphne Fan Club. Someone had put raw meat in her cupboard over the weekend, and it had gone all grey and gross.

They two went out to lunch, and I took a shower, the only time I've been warm all weekend. Then I had lunch myself, PB&J, a little tangerine, and a penguin, with tea, because for some reason you always have to drink tea with penguins.

And now I'm talking with Sarah on Skype, and Laura is talking in the background. My sister certainly hasn't gotten any more serious since I left...! Close-ups of guinea pigs and cats in the video, and of Sarah's mouth being duct-taped. Wow. Whispering to Sarah so that Laura won't hear, even though Laura is thousands of miles away... good fun.

Last week on Valentine's Day someone in the house left little presents on everyone's doors, each present with a Bible verse to go along. I happen to have an inkling as to who the someone was, and they happened to have told me what each person got and why:

Rachel, in Room 1, received a candle, with the verse about letting your light shine before men because of her interest in outreach.

Ian, in Room 2, received a pint glass because he's always disgusted with how small the cups are in Renwick. Matthew got a toy car because he got his driver's license last fall.

Linsey, in Room 3, was given a cup with little people on it that twist around so that they all have different outfits on.

Emmaline got a Tigger mug, and I was given a journal. Now those two gifts I do not understand at all.... *grin*

Phil was given a clock with footballs on it, since obviously football is one of his top pursuits. Andy M. was given a teapot--certain people in the house have remarked on the fact that he always makes his tea in a teapot instead of straight in the cup, the way the rest of us uncivilized folk do.

Deborah and Emma were both given items that had their Disney characters on them: Deborah had a Snow White photo album, and Emma a Cinderella pen.

Andy L., in Room 7, was given a set of egg cups since he eats lots of boiled eggs, and Samuel was given balloons. Whoever decided that one wasn't too bright since water balloons have been known to be dropped from the window of Room 7 on unsuspecting passers-by in the street.

Catherine was given a bear on a keyring, for cuteness' sake, I suppose, and, the funniest of all, some joker decided that Daphne needed a bottle of blond hair dye to help her cure her case of ginger-ness. Why the same person didn't decide to give me the same thing, I'm not sure.

So that was our Valentine's Day excitement.

Well, thank you all for reading.

confession

Now Playing: Loreena McKennitt, An Ancient Muse. Track 4, "Caravanserai".

One of the things that Emmaline and I are fond of complaining about to each other is how much people make generalizations that are entirely untrue. Today I found myself doing just that, and found myself in turn being contradicted, as usually happens when I start making sweeping statements.

So, the generalization that bit the dust today: "No one reads this blog." Most of you have heard me say that at some point, and I think it's high time for a standing apology. If I mean by "no one" that the entire population of the planet doesn't read it, that's correct. But I don't think I'd really like that. It would be very strange to know that the FBI or President Bush or (as a nod to politics here) Queen Elizabeth or Gordon Brown were interested in the details of my life. I'm quite thankful for those who do read (especially if they leave comments *grin*).

Anyway, the occasion for this apology is a case in point, and proves not only that generalizations are silly but also that Google has such powers of digging up the very deepest depths of the internet that I'm beginning to be very suspicious of it.

The long and short of the whole business is that a certain member of Renwick House looked up their name on Google and was unfortunate enough to stumble across this treasure trove of knowledge (read: sarcasm). As Emmaline and I were chatting after lunch this afternoon, she told me that thanks to this particular friend of ours, everyone in Renwick now knows that I have a blog, and reads it, too. It would seem that they've been whiling away all those early mornings in the common room when I've been innocently asleep by reading this and commenting on my descriptions of them.

Ha. My life just got more interesting.

So from here on out, no more generalizations about blogging, and if any of you hear me making them, you have permission to kick me (gently, please).

Incidentally, the whole thing started this afternoon when Emmaline was trying to take a nap before her tutorial. A truck with a backhoe extension mounted on the back pulled up outside our window just as she was dropping off and started to make a racket, so I leaned out the window and described it to her. When I turned round, I discovered that she was grinning at me. "It's so obvious you're an English major whenever you talk or describe something, just like when Charlotte gets going about food," she said.

I grin right back in complete agreement and say: If the world were all English majors, or all Food Nutrition, Health, and Safety majors, or even all Maths majors, it would be a boring place. So long live our differences, though I'll try to tone down my vocabulary for everyone else so as to use only words of one syllable.

Wow. That's going to work well.

It's actually sunny here today. And mild. Walking through the gardens was pure bliss yesterday, with the mild sunshine coming through the trees, which are beginning to bud. Daffodils and snowdrops, and on one green lea under a young maple tree a shimmering spread of crocuses damp with the morning's mist.

Well, I've got the Venerable Bede sitting beside me on my bed, waiting to be read. He's got about a hundred more pages of English ecclesiastical history waiting to be crammed into my brain. Lovely. I just finished the best bit, about Caedmon, the first known English poet. From here on out it's all synods and saints (like the alliteration there?).

Hum.

This is much more interesting. Exhausted hyperness, anyone? I haven't even finished writing all the e-mails I have to answer. But I had a great time at lunch watching Daphne and Rachel play off each other. Their dancing abilities are pretty spectacular, let me tell you.

And since they're probably going to read this and laugh hysterically at me, I think I'll stop here for now.

and life goes on....

Now Playing: Brahms, Concerto for Piano and Orchestra No. 2 in B Flat. Track 1, Allegro non Troppo.

When Emmaline and I went downstairs for breakfast, we found Ian and Emma in the kitchen, and a tremendous mess on the floor, the remainders of an even bigger mess of sugar and rice, with which a certain group of boys had had a food fight the night before. Going into the common room to eat my cereal, I found Daphne attempting to check her e-mail (the internet has been terribly slow this week) in a defaced room: the long curtains had all been tied into a series of tight knots; the thank-you poster on the bulletin board had been changed into a spank-you poster; the odds and ends of mail left on the hall table had all been opened. It really was quite sad, especially when Rachel came in and saw the pranks that had been pulled and was both distressed and disgusted. It's not a very good witness to the cleaner, who's not a Christian, or even to the other Christians in the house. But if the boys are banned, then they just have the glow of notoriety of being banned from Renwick, which doesn't change anything....

Last night I went to the first study abroad dinner of the semester. Emmaline told me before I left to amuse myself by imagining all the things she'd do and by building pyramids with the salt packets in honor of herself and Philip. Unfortunately, they didn't have any salt packets, but imagining what Emmaline would've done to try to make conversation with such a foreign (literally and spiritually) group of people was rather amusing. A new crop of American students, pretty much the same as the last group. (And Fiona wanted to know why I didn't want to go on the Dublin weekend again!) The conversation revolved around the differences between American football and rugby, and the superbowl. Ian should've been there: He was comically disappointed when he found out that I have absolutely no interest in the superbowl (except perhaps as a weird cultural phenomenon) and reprooved me for being an American without any knowledge of American football.

Yesterday I went and checked out The Norton Anthology of Poetry, and as a result yesterday afternoon wrote two poems. Strange: It would appear necessary for me to be reading poetry in order to write the stuff. Not sure why that is, especially since the stuff I was reading yesterday was mostly of a very depressing nature (Pound, Lawrence, and Browning). After the dinner last night, I came back to Renwick only to find Linsey and Catherine watching a rather shady movie in the common room. So I curled up in Room 4 and read from "Lothlorien" to "The Great River". Those chapters, together with "Three Is Company", "In the House of Tom Bombadil", and "Of Herbs and Stewed Rabbit" are probably my most favorite in the trilogy. Tolkien's art of creating a beautiful world, close but distant, is stunning.

Just to add a bit of excitement to our life, the shower broke this morning while Emmaline was using it. I meant to tell Rachel, but after seeing the mess the house was in, didn't have the heart. Hopefully some sturdy duct tape will do the trick.

As far as the weather goes, it's actually sunny today. We'll see how long that lasts. Like the internet connection: you never can tell....

It's February, so...

... WHITE RABBITS are leaping everywhere!

semester 2, day 3

Now Playing: Disney Robin Hood DVD (on Emmaline's DVD player, which has been installed in the common room).

This is absolutely hilarious: Twelve college students sitting around a room, cracking up over an ancient Disney film. "Oh, this is the best part!" *giggle giggle* "Haha! This is great!" *laugh laugh* "Hee hee! I haven't seen this since I was a kid!" *chuckle chuckle* (Most of the giggling and chuckling done by the boys...!)

Class at ten o'clock today: History of the English Language, team taught by the same professors who took Discovering Old English last semester. It's not a huge class, between twenty and thirty people. For tutorial, immediately after, I have the same professor who taught the Beowulf class, an eccentric blend of strictness and friendliness.

After class, I went running. I had to walk through the Botanic Gardens to get to the gym, the first time I'd been there since exams. Walking past the damp beds, I saw, to my surprise, long green spears of daffodils poking up through the wet leaves, and snowdrops on long white curving stems blooming under the dark bushes.

I walked back to Renwick, stopping to post a couple of letters on the way. Everyone was in the common room for communal lunch, but I took a shower, came down eventually, and ate an orange, sitting and listening to everyone talk.

This afternoon, Emmaline, Rachel, Naomi, Pamela, Rosemary, and I went to the Renwick boys' football match. (Anna, you'll be pleased to know that the Renwick football "kit" is black and lime green.) The match today was against RP pastors and students at the seminary. The six of us stood on the sidelines for two hours or so, watching the game. It was freezing cold. A strong northwest wind swept over the muddy grass. At first the teams were evenly matched, but the Renwick boys finally got a goal, and it went on from there. The match ended 4-0. I could not get warm when we were finally back at Renwick. Everyone else sat around the common room, talking, but I crawled upstairs and sat with my back to the heater, reading the ENL204 textbook.

At six o'clock, everyone in Renwick, with the exception of Deborah, who's on teaching placement, and Ian, who had a rugby match, went out to tea. We walked down to Benedict's, a nice restaurant on the way in toward the city centre. Rachel described the restaurant as being rather like a ship inside, and the description somewhat suits, if you think of a ship along the lines of the Titanic: a long curving staircase, heavy wooden panelling, ornate Gothic carvings on wooden screens, elegant floral designs painted on the ceilings, etc. We were seated at a long table and served by a garrulous waiter.

Back in Renwick, we decided to watch this DVD, Robin Hood. Quite funny, watching the boys watch it, and listening to Emmaline sing along with every song.

spring semester, day 1

Now Playing: Coldplay, "Clocks".

I have to admit that today wasn't exactly the best day of my life. Emmaline's alarm clock went off at six o'clock this morning. The phrase "bright and early" doesn't exactly apply since it was pitch black and cloudy outside, all last night's glorious stars covered by clouds coming up from the southwest.

We both got dressed and went about the business of getting ready to take the seven-twenty train to Belfast. Eating a hurried breakfast (cereal for me, pecan pie for Emmaline), choosing some DVDs to take, hauling our suitcases downstairs, and piling everything into the car. Mrs. M drove us to the train station. We were just in time to catch the train, which was early, dragging ourselves, limb-weary, into the seats, with our bags and baggage. Emmaline finished the Janette Oke novel she had been reading over break and then fell asleep, while I settled happily into The Lord of the Rings. While the sun rose over the small steep hills, over the crooked hedges and the sudden hummocks and barrows, over the fields of sheep and the towns with their stiff white houses, I went from the Ford of Bruinen to the last grey evening in Rivendell, and left the Company on the threshold of Elrond's house as the train pulled into City Hospital.

Emmaline and I trundled ourselves to Renwick through sidewalks crowded with students going to the first classes of the semester. In the hour between our arrival and my first class, I managed to unpack and put most things away. My first class was at ten o'clock in University Square. It turned out to be in the back classroom on the ground floor, the one painted pale blue and white inside. This is the class on Literature, Art, and Culture of the Anglo-Saxons. Unfortunately, I wasn't much impressed by the first lecture. Our lecturer is Professor H., who did most of the lectures for Discovering Old English. The class doesn't promise much discussion, though I know I shouldn't make my judgment based on the first day, when no one has read anything. He lectured for two straight hours, sitting rotundly on a chair with his legs stuck out on either side, Humpty-Dumpty style. He does know his stuff, though. And he's very fond of puns. Our first text is Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Anglorum, and as he advised us which text to buy, he said with a mischievous smile, "If you buy them all, you'll have a whole string of beads!" Referring to Canute, the Danish king who ruled England in 1030, he said, "But he's not king yet, since it's only 10:20." It does add some amusement to the lecture, I must say.

After the lecture, I discovered that the day, which had begun sunny, had become grimly overcast, though the clouds, despite their attempt to make the return to the gloom of December, couldn't obscure the slight warm wildness in the air, a foreshadowing of spring. I walked down to No Alibis bookstore on Botanic Avenue to buy textbooks. The usual hodgepodge scatter of shady mystery novels on the shelves and textbooks piled in neat alphabetical piles in the centre. The proprietor was smoothly friendly, in a way that slightly disturbs me. With my new books (two of which are "real" textbooks for the History of the English Language class), I walked back to Renwick, and discovered, to my delight a package slip awaiting me. Before rushing off to collect it, though, I put in a load of laundry, and on the way through the kitchen was regaled by Ian (unusually communicative) with a ridiculous story about how, in his blood-drawing lab this morning, half the class, composed of dentists and doctors, fainted, and the ambulance had to be called.

I practically bounced down to the post office to pick up my parcel, and waltzed back to Renwick to open it in the room. Sitting down, I opened the box, exclaiming to myself over all the little treasures. I ate one of the rather squashed cookies, and relished the familiar taste, which immediately took me back to biking home on hot summer nights and bowls of ice cream eaten before bed.

I tidied things up, and then went downstairs to scrounge up some lunch. Emmaline had brought four friends back from her math tutorial, two of whom I didn't know. I sat down with them, to finish off the tomato soup and bread while listening to them discuss their lecturers.

After lunch, Emmaline and I went to Tesco to buy groceries. So the two of us went. On the way back, Emmaline ran into at least three people she knew and stopped to chat with them. In Renwick, we unpacked things, and I spent the afternoon fiddling around. One of Emmaline's friends, Esther, came over briefly--a pleasant, softspoken girl. At five o'clock, I started to fix supper, chili tonight. Chatted with Andy L., also unusually communicative. Daphne and Catherine burst in and put on girly music, teasing Andy L., who teased them right back. Catherine dried dishes while Daphne chopped vegetables for fajitas. Emmaline, Catherine, and I had chili for supper.

After supper, washed the dishes, etc. Emmaline and I went late to CU tonight, at seven-thirty. CU was unusually uninviting. The message consisted mostly of anecdotes, and the upstairs room, despite being fairly crowded, was freezing cold. Afterward, everyone mingled, talking to friends they hadn't seen since the start of December.

Back in Renwick, Emmaline, Charlotte, Sarah W., Michaela, and I sat in the kitchen. Emmaline heated up a pizza, and Michaela made delicious hot chocolate in her careful, deliberate way. Emmaline, Charlotte, and Sarah W. laughed and talked busily.

pictures at long last

Inter-semester Break

to-do list

Now Playing: "Diagnoses Murder", a mystery TV show with Dick VanDyke. Happens to be one of Emmaline's favorite shows....

For the two weeks' break, we had quite a list of things to do, including

Visiting Downhill Castle, which we did last week. An 1800s mansion, ruins positioned strikingly on top of cliffs looking north over the sea. It's in a sheep field now, open to the wind and rain.

Singing Handel's "Messiah" with a motley choir of two hundred fifty people drawn from across Northern Ireland. We only had two rehearsals, one Saturday morning and one Saturday afternoon, with the performance Saturday evening. Still, the choruses sounded absolutely gorgeous, reverberating in the big church where we were performing.

Hiking the Glens of Antrim, specifically Glenariff Forest Park. Two awesome waterfalls, swollen with rain, thundering down over black rocks. Also, Glenarm Castle, which has a falconry, though it was closed because of the winter. The drive to the glens was starkly beautiful, along steep cliffs, through small villages where steep-keeled sailboats were dry-docked in little harbors.

Touring Tyrone Crystal factory, where we saw glasses being hand-blown. The master blowers took the bead of glass out of the furnace, twisting and blowing into the blow-hole until a bubble formed, then twisting continually as the glass was lowered into an applewood mould in a wooden bucket full of water. Still twisting, the blower let the glass fit the shape of the mould, and as he did so, a moyle, a mushroom-shaped formation, congealed on top. This had to be sawed off, and the edges of the glass smoothed, before the glass was marked and cut in the frost-elaborate patterns famous of crystal.

Exploring Ulster American Folk Park, a living history museum telling the story of immigration from Northern Ireland (ports such as Londonderry) to America. This and the above two were done with Catherine and Emmaline and involved a lot of driving over the past few days, bumping and tripping over narrow country roads with all their odd jogs and hummocks.

Watching movies, such as The Parent Trap (and lots of others: Spider-man 1, Fantastic Four 1 and 2, etc.).

About half of which we haven't done: me teaching Emmaline how to play Milles Bornes, which she has because it's a French game but doesn't know how to play; putting together T-shirts for the girls in the group who went to Paris; painting big strips of wallpaper on the blank side to hang as posters in our room; planning games for Glenmanus RPC's annual congregational meeting in a couple of weeks (their meeting consists of a fellowship meal, then the meeting, then games and a talent show--!).

But there have been plenty of new things along the way that I wasn't expecting:

Milking, as mentioned in the last post.

Rice pudding at lunch today. Hadn't had it before--a fluffy, milky concoction, sweet and bland, tastier when mixed with raspberry jam.

That lovely walk down to the beach last week. Went down to the beach again this past Sabbath with Emmaline, Erin, and Alistair. This time, the East Strand, on the other side of the broad curve of the bay where Portstewart Strand is. We scrambled up a big sand dune--or rather, Alistair and Erin did; Emmaline and I pulled each other up, and then dragged each other down again, laughing and getting completely filthy with sand.

Right now Emmaline is working on one of the things on our list, the games. We'd thought of playing a game in which you took pictures of familiar people and cut out a nose or an ear and tried to get everyone to guess to whom it belonged. So she's scanning old congregational pictures into her computer, showing me some of them along the way. Always amusing to see how friends have changed.

All-in-all, a good two weeks. After this: School, anyone?

Yesterday the three of us decided that two of us (Emmaline and I) are quite happy just to be hanging out around here, enjoying the release from the pressures of school and city life, whereas Catherine desperately misses Renwick and is eager to fix supper for all the girls and play pranks on all the guys (!).

Anyway, ready or not, classes start on Monday.

moo

(1/21/08)

This afternoon Mr. M needed Emmaline to help with the milking, so I tagged along. Before we went out to the milking parlor, we had to suit up--Reuben's plastic leggings and boots and an enormous jacket for me, and a dark blue boiler suit and Nathanael's boots for Emmaline. The afternoon was grey, and the day's heavy rain lay in mucky pools on the concrete. Emmaline stepped into the dairy to turn on the milking machines, and then she and I went next door into the parlor.

Mr. M has a Lithuanian boy working for him, a ruddy blond young guy who barely understands English. The first group of cows came in, and we set to work. Before the milking machines go on, all the cows' teats have to be dipped in disinfectant, then wiped. So I set to work on that while the others came along behind, putting on the milking machines. It wasn't exactly the cleanest job in the world. One has to yank on the cows' mucky tails with one hand in order to get them to stand still while one's other hand is busy.

While the parlor was full, Mr. M and his helper went out to feed the calves while Emmaline and I stood waiting for the cows to be done milking. The pipes and tubes churned and swished overhead and on either side. The mucky black-and-white rumps stood lined up at shoulder-height on either side while we stood down on the walkway running between the milking machines. In the holding pen behind us, at the other end of the walkway, other cows stood waiting, their huge inquisitive heads peering down into the walkway, steam blowing from their nostrils as though they had been a crowd of benign dragons. When one group of cows was done, they had to be cleaned again, then chased out. Shouting usually did the job, reaching up through the bars and contraptions to slap their filthy gritty legs and rumps. Then the gates had to be shut and another lot shouted in, and the same thing done again. The floor was slippery with spilled milk and water, and the cows' hooves clopped and slopped on the mucky floor.

After a couple of rounds, Mr. M sent Emmaline and me out to feed one of the calves with a big bottle of milk. We went out of the parlor and round into the barn behind. There were three pens of cows here--a pen of young frisky heifers, a pen with a couple of calving cows, and a pen with some old cows, their hides greyed with years. Emmaline and I climbed into the pen with the two calving cows and attempted to feed the newly-born calf. Its hide was still wet, its fur feathery, red afterbirth still clinging to its legs. It tried to get up, but unsuccessfully. While Emmaline tried to feed it, I climbed up a ladder onto the hayloft and started to throw straw down into the pens. Great prickly handfuls, sweet memory of summer, cascading down onto the black-and-white backs below. The heifers kicked up their legs and galloped round their pen, churning up the fresh straw. Emmaline, giving the calf a rest, took the big handfuls I threw down and scattered them around the pen, a shining golden whirlwind around her black head. Between the three pens we used up the better part of a bale, covering the old muck with a deep layer of fresh straw. Then we tried to feed the calf again, but it was too silly and young to know what it was doing, so we let it go.

Back into the parlor we went to help with the last couple rounds of cows. I climbed the steps into the holding pen with a piece of PVC piping and used it to shoo the next batch of cows into the parlor. "C'mon, c'mon, c'mon!" "Up, up, up, up! C'mon, girls!" Mr. M shouted, calling the finished group back out into the barns while I jostled and whacked the next group into the parlor. While the last group finished milking, Emmaline and I hung up the milking machines, like so many four-legged spiders, neatly on the little shelves in the parlor. When the last group had been shouted into the barns again, Emmaline turned on a power hose and gave me the job of washing down the parlor, spraying the muck and spilled milk into one of the drains.

At last Mr. M told us we were free to go. Stepping outside, I took a deep breath. The very last of the sunset was reddening on the western horizon, beyond the house. Overhead the stars were very crisp and clear in a deep blue sky, and the full moon shone down through clouds turned bright pink by the very last of the far sunset. To the east, the lights of Coleraine shone very gold in the black folds of the land.

Emmaline and I went inside and washed up, scrubbing the muck off our hands and faces. My hands still smell like cows--a sneezy smell, not exactly unpleasant. We stripped off our suits and went into the house for supper.

sea and sun

Now Playing: The Postal Service, "Such Great Heights". (Courtesy Philip. Seems appropriate, somehow. Whenever I listen to this song, and to Nick Drake's "River Man", I listen to them over and over again....)

First things first: another poem up on Through A Glass Darkly, at last. Keep in mind, when reading it, the transience of human life.

This morning I woke up in the McCollums' house to the sounds of Erin, Eleanor, Nathanael, and Reuben getting ready to go to school. Familiar household sounds--pots and pans clattering, doors banging, feet hurrying up and down the stairs, voices shouting and replying. Emmaline's alarm went off beside me, and she turned it off but stayed half-asleep until I elbowed her (as requested the night before), and she woke up with a chuckle. While she took a shower, I dressed, then went downstairs. Mrs. M was just going out to drop the girls off at school. I had a bowl of cereal, sitting alone in the empty kitchen. Outside the day was still dark and cloudy, as though morning had forgotten to come, or was running late as well. I meandered around the house, standing by windows in hallways, watching dawn come slowly in the east beyond the sycamore trees. Steel grey-blue clouds moving away southeastward, leaving behind a periwinkle sky.

I loitered in the kitchen while Emmaline grabbed her breakfast and discussed plans with Mr. M, who was eating his breakfast after the morning milking. Emmaline left at nine-thirty or so, to spend the day with Alistair: he was given a flight lesson for his birthday, so he'd invited her to come along for the half-hour flight, and then to spend the day. After she left, I chatted with Mr. and Mrs. M some, then moseyed upstairs to sit on Emmaline's bed and study Philippians 2. Philippians is proving to be a difficult book to profit from, more so than Ephesians, which had immediate relevance when I first began to study it. I know that I need the messages of Philippians about Christ's love on my behalf and how I ought to reflect Him in my treatment of others; also, the messages about peace in Christ concerning prayer and contentment, which I desperately need during this season of life as I move constantly from place to place. Nonetheless, I find this epistle more disconnected than Ephesians, which in some ways makes it harder to "get into". (Nickel Creek, "Nickel Creek", Track 1, "Ode to a Butterfly" now--perfectly blissful music.)

Anyhow, at about ten-thirty, I pulled on my sturdy trainers, my pashmina and gloves, and coat, and set off alone to walk down to Portsteward Strand, as the main beach nearby is called. A good three-mile walk, at least. The house was quiet and empty as I left it, sitting behind me in the sunshine. The sun was thinly veiled by clouds, and the morning still had a wintry chill to it, though the cold was more bracing than unbearable. I walked down Islandtasserty Road, over the bridge where the road leaps above the railroad line that runs between Londonderry and Belfast. I crossed the Coleraine Road, and went up the Agherton Road. A couple of houses at the start of the road, where big dogs barked irritably at me, but after that, the familiar network of small fields, punctuated only here and there by houses. British robins twittered at me from hawthorn hedgerows; crows pecked at the rich brown furrows of a ploughed field; a tortoiseshell cat eyed me yellowly from under a fence. The grass at the edge of the road was wet, and the black road gleamed blue, slick with water.

I went up the Agherton Road as far as I could, to the roundabout by the graveyards, where a new cemetery lies on the right and an old cemetery with the ruins of a chapel in it on the left, and continued on, up toward Portstewart. Houses now, on either side. New developments--tall white houses, reminding me of the ones in Boulder, Colorado. Behind me on the road I heard the clop of horses' hooves and , glancing over my shoulder, saw a pair of riders coming up behind me. The road fell by degrees toward the town, in two long slopes. More and more houses, smaller semi-detached houses, older ones, closer to the town. Another roundabout, and then down into Portstewart itself, along the Promenade. Past The Anchor pub, and turning off finally by the Catholic priory, where St. Mary's Star of the Sea church faces out over Portstewart harbor, and the priory itself sits on the cliff above, like a white battlemented ship.

I took the cliff walk, running along the cliffs under the priory, and at last to the Strand. Emmaline, Erin, and I had walked along here the last Sabbath I visited them, in the afternoon. That day it was cloudy and the waves were enormous, crashing against the shore with plumes of spume. Today it was sunny, the sun coming out by degrees until the air was quite mild, and the waves were blue-and-white. The path snaked along the cliff, sometimes going up and down slick uneven flights of steps. Grass grew in mats on the cliffs. Below, the waves broke on black outcrops of rock where seagulls and other small seabirds stood on the lees of the rocks.

At one point, I scrambled off the path onto one of the little shelf beaches that come cupped in the cliffs as they fall lower to the sea, toward the Strand. The tide was running high, so I had to dodge the waves that came slithering in as I walked along the little beach. Delight settled on me as I sifted through the beds of shells washed up among the rocks. Great heaps of shells, piled and stirred together, many of them no more than tiny broken fragments, making a sort of dark coarse sand. Here the shells are conical, like barnacle shells, and striped--orange, grey, black, white, and grey-blue. Sometimes there are the twisted snail shells, but most of the shells are these zebra ones. Among them I found pieces of sea glass, green and pale blue and white, scooped and scoured by the waves. Soon I had a handful, and had to climb back onto the path with a pocket that clinked slightly as I walked.

I climbed down to the beach on the flight of stairs, and walked along the beach a little way. Erin and I had walked almost all the way down the beach that Sabbath afternoon, so I didn't feel the need, with the hour-and-a-half walk back to the farm lying before me, to go very far. The firm brown sand shimmered where the waves had made it wet. The waves surging, cresting, and falling, stroke after stroke, the endless sound. The sun shone down on the water and turned it a vivid, living teal, and glanced on the white walls and dark roofs of the Portstewart Promenade, crusting the eastern arm of the bay. To the west, the strand curved away up to the point where Mussendun Temple stands. Beyond that, flecked gold and green in the sunshine, was another headland, and beyond that, more cliffs--Donegall, western Ireland.

Walking back along the cliff walk, I stopped on a bench in the sunshine to rest before marching back to the farm, my back to the warm stone wall, holding back the cliff on which the priory stands. Moving on, somewhat restored, I climbed up through the town again. Voices of people around me: a mother coaxing her toddler up the street; two women greeting each other at the door of a drug store. Not many people out. At the roundabout where the old graveyard is, I took a short detour, scrambled up some grassy steps, and went into the old graveyard. I walked around the ruins of the chapel a bit--not much to see, just wet grassy mounds, thin stone slabs aslant, an old yew tree, a lanky rosebush with one pale waxy bud coming into bloom in the shelter of the stone walls.

It was good to be back on the Agherton Road, out in the country again. Alone under the blue sky. Silence--no wind, and hardly a whisper from the busy Coleraine Road.

The farmyard was as quiet as I'd left it. Young heifers eyed me out the "window" of their winter barn, white eyes rolling in black faces. I went into the house. Mr. and Mrs. M were just sitting down to lunch and welcomed me cordially. We had a thick soup with carrots, barley, lentils, tomatoes, and celery. Mr. and Mrs. M told me a funny story about how Mr. M had gotten lost on a walk in County Armagh while he was attending synod there. After lunch, we sat around the kitchen table, drinking tea out of thick white mugs. Mrs. M was in the midst of trying to put together the church's financial reports for the congregational meeting in a couple of weeks, and detritus of papers, slips, and charts layered the table. Mr. M read classified ads out of an American dairy farming magazine, asking me jokingly if I would like to manage a cheese farm in California for him.

Mrs. M needed some desserts baked for her WMA meeting tonight, so I offered to do it. She got me started in the kitchen. At first I worked on making coffee walnut chocolate cookies (!), but once I'd gotten all the mix into the bowl, the blender refused to do the job--and I remembered that I'd promised to talk with my mother on Skype at three o'clock. Mrs. M took over for me, and I, very apologetic, disappeared upstairs to sit on Emmaline's bed with my laptop. Outside, clouds were coming over again, from the east this time. I heard doors slam downstairs--the others were back from school. I said good-bye to my mother at four o'clock or so, and went downstairs to see what I could do.

Mrs. M had baked scones in the hour since I'd been in the kitchen, and they were still warm. She, Eleanor, and I sat around the kitchen table, eating the warm scones with hazelnut honey Emmaline had bought at the Christmas market in Paris. Eleanor hung around while I made the malteser bars (the cookies were in the oven). She helped mostly by licking the spoon.

When the bars were made, the cookies were ready to come out of the oven, so Mrs. M and I pulled them out and slid them onto cooling racks, where they were sprinkled with powdered sugar. The counter was positively snowy by the time Eleanor and I were done with it. I washed up the dishes I'd used, and crept away to fetch my laptop. Eleanor and Nathanael settled down at the kitchen table to do homework while watching the new Yours, Mine, Ours on the computer in the kitchen. I curled up in the little sitting room by the fire. I'm on one of the leather sofas; Reuben is on the other, playing his PSP, a handheld gaming device. I can hear the clashing and clicking of the "Star Wars" game he's playing, but I've got my Skype headset in so that I can listen to "Nickel Creek", too. The fire crackles and clinks on the hearth--almost the same sound as the sea makes, tumbling shells in the backwash of its waves.

moodiness

Now Playing: Loreena McKennitt, "The Book of Secrets". Track 1, "Prologue".

January 10, 2008.

I let myself stay in bed until nine o’clock this morning, though I woke up when Emmaline did, at eight. In some ways it felt good just to lie still and breathe, but the heater at the head of my bed was on, and as a result my head was hot, and my feet were cold, so with some amusement I eventually bounced out of bed, dressed, and did my devotions. Emmaline and I ate breakfast together at about nine-thirty and spent the morning studying. I sat at the foot of my bed with my laptop and wrote endless e-mails and Facebook posts, while she sat on her bed in a nest of papers and studied. When I finished my correspondence, I sat on the cushions in the window and worked on finishing God’s Ultimate Purpose by D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones. Emmaline played Disney favorites and snips of musicals on her laptop.

At one o’clock, Catherine came tripping (in the graceful, not the noisy, sense of the word) downstairs so that the three of us could go out to lunch together. She confessed to me that she'd slept in until half-twelve, about which she was humorously embarrassed. The three of us walked up Elmwood Avenue and then up the Lisburn Road, past Tesco, to Doorsteps, the sandwich shop where Rachel and I had gone for lunch on the Monday after term ended. It's a fair walk, at least fifteen or twenty minutes. Because of all the rain, the uneven sidewalk was full of puddles. Catherine bounced over them, squealing every time she did, until Emmaline started to make fun of her, which only made Catherine laugh. On our way, we passed Steven, who works at a photography place up the Lisburn Road. He looked at Emmaline with an expression which Emmaline described as, "What is my cousin up to now?" Catherine and Emmaline discussed people, especially Catherine herself and Renwick people, subjects on which Catherine never tires.

We finally reached the sandwich shop, which was as crowded as it had been the day when Rachel and I visited it. Emmaline, Catherine, and I squeezed in the door and stood at the end of a line curving along the counter. The menu was chalked on a blackboard on the wall behind the counter: over fifty kinds of sandwiches, a pretty awesome selection. The four or five workers were busy behind the counter, scooping and dabbing and daubing and slicing, taking ingredients out of an array of containers under the glass countertop. Emmaline, Catherine, and I needed the full wait to decide what kind of sandwich we'd get. I ordered a chicken salsa sandwich; Catherine ordered a club sandwich, and Emmaline ordered a duck sandwich. Catherine's took longer to make since it was hot, so the three of us pushed through the small, crowded restaurant to find a place to sit. We cleared a place for ourselves at a little round table, where everyone had to push past us, but there wasn't much help for that. The deep leather sofas along the wall were occupied by rather large businessmen; the tables by the window had been descended upon by highschool-aged school girls, resembling starlings both in their dark jackets and in their incessant twittering. When Catherine's sandwich arrived, it turned out to be a massive two-tier with a piece of potato bread separating the chicken on bottom and the bacon on top, and mounds of lettuce. Catherine's face was a study, and Emmaline and I both burst out laughing. Emmaline gave thanks, and we ate, Catherine pulling off little bits at a time with her knife and fork. My sandwich was delicious, the spice of the (authentic) salsa balanced by the smooth creaminess of guacamole. Emmaline didn't much like her sandiwch: "I don't like cold meat, but I always forget until after I've ordered it," she sighed. We sat and munched away. The restaurant cleared out pretty quickly, actually, at one-thirty, and we were left at the little table on the edge of a pool of latte-colored sunshine streaming in through the low windows over the dark floor.

When we'd finished eating, we walked back to Renwick, stopping on the way at the Starbucks at the corner of Elmwood Avenue and the Lisburn Road to buy dessert and hot drinks. I just had a cookie--one of the small reminders of life in the States, a real soft chocolate chip cookie. None of this biscuit business for me. :o) Back in Renwick, Emmaline and Catherine stood around in the kitchen while I made tea. Andy M. was eating his lunch and was surprisingly talkative. Catherine started to complain about going upstairs. "You know it's dangerous to go upstairs after lunch," Andy told her. "Really?" she asked, her eyes widening. "Yes. Your body's circadian rhythms slow down for about ten minutes every day. So you're more likely to trip and fall if you go upstairs now." That made Emmaline laugh.

When it was safe (!), we went upstairs. I settled down in the window again with my cookie and cup of tea. Half of the cookie managed to see me through the rest of God's Ultimate Purpose, while Emmaline sat at her desk, drinking coffee and eating a banana muffin, and studying French. At about three-thirty, I changed clothes and walked to the gym to go running. In the gym, I ran into Andy L., who is part of a program similar to ROTC, and goes to the gym to work out (as Emmaline said, he's about the last person you'd want to run into in the gym). I listened to one of Pastor Parnell's sermons, on irresistable grace, while I ran, and went on the stationary bike. By the time I left the gym, it was nearly dark, and the gates to the Gardens were closed. I had to walk around through the Holylands, which are the neighborhoods behind the Gardens. The afternoon exams had just let out, and I had to struggle through crowds of talking students. The Holylands can be fairly dangerous at night, but it wasn't late enough, and there were enough other students around to make it safe.

Back at Renwick, I showered. Emmaline was still studying.... I sat on my bed and wrote notes about the things I'd read, both for my Old English exam and in Lloyd-Jones. Emmaline and I chatted some. She sat on her bed, working on math, and singing along with "The Best of Broadway", while I chuckled at her. We talked silliness sometimes, and sat quietly sometimes. She drew spirals on her papers and signed one of the "pieces of artwork" for me. At about seven o'clock, Emmaline ran upstairs to see if Catherine wanted any tea (that's supper to you on the other side of the ocean). I kept writing away quietly--until I heard them come thundering down the stairs again, Catherine chasing Emmaline, and both of them screaming and laughing at the tops of their lungs. It turned out, once the racket died down, that Catherine didn't want any tea after all, so Emmaline and I went down to the kitchen and fixed ourselves pizza. The Dumwoody boys came in with Chinese take-out, and we joked around with them.

After we'd washed our dishes, I made myself a cup of Mrs. West's mandarin orange green tea, and took it upstairs. I sat down with my computer to get on the internet and see if anyone had replied to my e-mails; Emmaline sat down at her desk to work on French studying. I started to fiddle around with my blog (in case some of you couldn't tell), trying to find something new, and trying to get the picture to stretch all the way across the top (despite an evening's worth of searching through the html code, I couldn't find the code for the picture size). I found an e-mail from Mrs. Knorr with an update on Amy (you can read these updates yourself here or by going to the RUF Tulsa link in the sidebar) , and all my frustration, worry, concern seemed to come crashing down around my ears. I sat in a very miserable huddle on my bed, trying to make a card for Amy, though of course it probably won't reach the hospital in time.

This was my state of mind when Claire suddenly came into the room. She'd apparently been working in the common room since five o'clock on an online application, but since I hadn't gone into the common room, I had had no idea she'd been in the house. Emmaline and I were both happy to see her. She flopped down on the cushions in the window and talked lazily with Emmaline about exams. I tried to pay attention but was too frazzled to do more than sit dully, watching them. After Claire left, I finished the card for Amy. My concentration could only last so long: Trying to hold myself together, I was finally on the edge of tears. Emmaline and I prayed together and spent about an hour talking about Christ and the church, which helped both of us, I think, in the midst of our stresses. We were in bed by midnight, though as soon as the lights were out, Emmaline got hyper. I was too drained to do much more than giggle in reply as she talked away on the other side of the room, and eventually we both went to sleep.

prayer requests

1. Please pray for Amy S., a friend of mine from RUF in Tulsa. She had a bad snowboarding accident a couple of days ago and, last I heard, is in a coma in critical condition. The doctors are "cautiously optimistic", but please pray for God to work in her and heal her quickly. Please pray for her family and friends, who are all in need of comfort right now.

2. Please pray for those here who have exams right now, especially for Emmaline and Catherine. I finished my last exam yesterday, but Emmaline has three more, all of them pretty difficult, and Catherine has one more. Pray for diligence, skill, and peace.

snapshot

Picture this: Emmaline and I sitting on either side of our room in Renwick, studying for exams. Emmaline brought up a tray with hot chocolate and pecan pie earlier in the evening. After awhile, she comes over, sits down on my bed beside my desk, and slices another piece of pie.

"If I go back to the other side of the room, I'll have to do work. If I sit here long enough, maybe it will go away," she whispers.

"Well, let's keep whispering, and maybe it won't hear us, and will think we've gone to sleep, and will tiptoe away," I suggest.

"Yeah."

We sit for a minute while she munches her pecan pie meditatively--and then she flops over with a sigh, and I start to laugh.

procrastination

Been studying all afternoon.

Amazing, the ways one's mind finds to occupy itself when there's perfectly good work to be done. Don't worry; I've learned the passages that will be on the exam and read over my notes from the past semester at least three or four times now.

Anyone have any tips about knitting? Mrs. Rees gave me some yarn as a Christmas present while I was visiting them. One of the yarns is a beautiful long eyelash yarn, green, red, and brown--ruddy colors. She started me knitting a wrap with it, a light scarf, but this evening, to my dismay, I discovered a couple of rather serious mistakes in it, and since I couldn't figure out how to make them up, I ended up unraveling the whole thing. Emmaline assures me that Catherine and Amy both knit and that I can ask them for help, but there's something frustrating in not being able to cast on my own row of stitches.

Erin and Eleanor both came bouncing in this afternoon while Emmaline and I were studying and started to watch YouTube videos and play songs on their laptops. Erin is back now, quietly reading a book, sitting wrapped up in a blanket beside me on Emmaline's bed.

Helping Emmaline out with her French essay is another way to do procrastinate, in a sort of negative way, since my procrastinating (theoretically) keeps her from doing the same. She's supposedly writing an essay on the French play Waiting for Godot, but not getting very far with it.

The Dream of the Rood is on my mind right now. The sort of poem that you could sit and ponder forever, just about. When you actually sit down and learn the language itself, all sorts of strange parallels and paradoxes start to appear, the poet exploiting his form as much as possible to display the mysteries of the incarnation and redemption. The poem itself is something of an anomaly, combining dream vision, riddle, elegy, and epic, not to mention Christianity and pagan Anglo-Saxon heroism. My question is how to make all those rich layers of metaphor and language available to normal people without boring them out of their minds with the technicalities of grammar and poetics.

When I look at a word, I hear all sorts of meanings and connotations, playing off each other like the echoes from a peal of bells. An instrument, for example, could be anything from a tool used for creating music to a "blunt object" used in a murder to someone who's being exploited or domineered over. It gets even more complicated when you sit down with a heap of Old English words and try to sort out their relationships to each other and the range of possible meanings in modern English. How then do you select just one meaning to be put down in a translation? And is it possible to map all these words, each one with its township of connotations, so that anyone could navigate through them, without overwhelming or seeming ridiculously postmodern?

I have a feeling that this is the sort of thing I want to study after I graduate: To find a common ground between the postmodern poetry that I learned in Dr. G's class last year and this Anglo-Saxon poetry because in some sense the many-faceted flexibility of the postmoderns might help to make the dazzling richness of Old English more accessible.

It's not just for the language itself, either. Perhaps a better understanding of the power of words might make us as Christians more aware of what we say to each other, the range of different possible meanings people might put on our words, and how careful we need to be to make ourselves clear when presenting the Gospel. In one sense there's already a common ground with Old English poetry since much of this poetry is concerned with the Gospel and Biblical themes.

And again, I think that this poetry can speak to us here and now. These people dealt with transience, facing at once the beauty of the world and its grim fragility. Sifting through the quickness of life, maybe we face the same thing.

This whole post is at risk of turning into a lecture fit for a graduation or some other such stuffy occasion. Dull.

Yuck.

So anyway....

I do realize that all these grandiose schemes can't come to anything unless I actually make sure I'll do well on these papers and this exam.

Reuben made an angel food cake, with Mrs. McCollum's help, and ate at least three pieces of it himself--! It was pretty good, but not that good. Mr. and Mrs. M went out to a friend's house tonight, leaving Emmaline and me in charge of the bunch here. We had Chinese take-out for supper and ate it in the little sitting room, with the fire burning on the hearth. The boys were watching a "Scooby Doo" movie on TV, which I'd never seen before. Emmaline had to jab me and tell me to "Enjoy it for what it is!" when she saw me rolling my eyes.

She's trying to get the boys to go to bed now. They're both being unmitigated sillies.

Well, back to trying to memorize the preterite tenses of Old English vocalic verbs. Oh, joy....

"oh the rain, it rains all day long...."

It snowed in Northern Ireland yesterday, a grand total of four inches. That may not sound so exciting to you all in Oklahoma, but it caused major hoopla here. I, unfortunately, was stuck on the other side of the Irish Sea, and so spent yesterday morning frantically looking at airplane and train timetables to make sure that everything was running as normal. I did manage to get back safely to Belfast, with only an hour's delay at the East Midlands airport, and from Belfast to Coleraine without incident. Woke up this morning to a wind howling around the house and dashing rain against the windows.

Emmaline has gone upstairs to "study". We'll see if that actually happens.... Both of us start exams on Monday.

Happy New Year's

No point in saying 'White Rabbit' since my dear aunt (*grin*) so thoughtfully white-rabbited me already.

2008 began for me last night, or early this morning, as I lay in Oliver Rees' little room in the bed underneath the window. His walls are painted in black-and-white vertical stripes since he supports the Newcastle United soccer team. Through the window, ten minutes before twelve o'clock, I heard bells begin to ring--a peal of bells, chasing the changes, like at the end of The Nine Tailors. Then, as the bells tolled the twelve strokes of midnight, I could hear a crowd cheering and fireworks going off.

I went to sleep as soon as the racket was over....

I'm staying with the Rees family this week. Alistair is 15 and Oliver is 11, I believe, and they live in the little village of Rothley near Loughborough and Birmingham. Their family has been very pleasant and welcoming to me. I went on a walk with them and their church today, just out into the fields and woods beyond the town. A cloudy, damp day, the fields very muddy, but pleasant to be outside. This afternoon I studied for my Discovering Old English exam, which is in a week.

I'm sitting at their computer in a little cubbyhole in the living room. The boys are playing games on an XBox, and Mr. and Mrs. Rees are washing the supper dishes in the kitchen. I've offered to help, but they always seem to have it covered.... After supper, we sang a few Psalms. They have their Psalters, rather unused, but Alistair and Mr. and Mrs. Rees remembered some of the tunes, so it was good to sing them again--107D, 22I, 150B, 100A, and 136A.

So that's all for now. 

Paris, day 4

December 21, 2007. Our last day in Paris. We got off to a slow start this morning. Emmaline and I were both a bit impatient with everyone: we’d planned to be out of the hostel by nine-thirty, but we were only sitting down to breakfast at nine o’clock. The eating area was so crowded that we had to split up between tables and share seats. There was a great scramble after breakfast to get all the luggage packed, the rooms cleared out, and everything taken down to the luggage holding area, which turned out to be a dank, clammy, catacomb-like basement under the hostel. An arched ceiling barely high enough to stand up under, and pipes gurgling against the stone walls. We left our luggage there, though, and set out for our last day’s worth of adventures.

While we waited on the first platform for our train, we stood in a circle and held our prayer time. This morning we went to the Eiffel Tower first. The line for the lift wasn’t too long—it didn’t have any curves in it when we arrived. The tower reared over us, sturdy on its four low arches, the sun glancing through the metal network of its body. Pigeons stalked around our feet, clattering their wings, their feathers iridescent in the sunshine. Emmaline ran up and down the queue impatiently (I joked to Charlotte that Emmaline is only our leader because she can’t stand to be still for too long). We finally decided to get out of the queue for the lift and take the stairs up as far as we could. So we bought tickets at the other pier and set out up the stairs. It was a stiffer climb than any of us expected, I think. Heather, Michaela, and Catherine struggled particularly. The metal stairs clanked under our feet. Up and up, flight after flight, the ground gradually dropping away below us. On the first platform, we found surprisingly that the viewing walkway around the edge of the platform was covered in snow—why, I don’t know, though Emmaline surmised it was to keep the walkway from being slippery (if so, it defeated its own purpose!). We climbed on up to the second platform by the stairs, and from the second platform had to take the lift to the very top. The view from the top of the tower was quite impressive. As we stepped out of the little room onto the viewing walkway, a gust of wind whipped into our hair. Walking around the platform, we could see down onto the great city, Paris, lying rosy like a living being below us. A brown rime of smog hung between the pink haze of the city and the blue sky. Looking down we could see all the places we’d visited: the Musee d’Orsay, the Louvre, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, the Arc de Triomphe, the Seine laced with bridges. It was wonderful to be able to spot these famous places and recognize them among the crust of other buildings—the clutter of apartments, flats, restaurants, businesses, shops, veined through with streets like hieroglyphs on a tablet. We found someone to take a group picture and then went down to the second platform.

We ate our lunch on the first platform at a little round table, sharing out the remains of our food: bits of baguette, a lump of rubbery cheese, big soft grapes, Cadbury bars, etc. The familiar taste of bread and cheese, eaten shivering in the cold…. When we’d finished eating, it was back down the flights and flights of stairs again, onto solid ground. I was thankful to be on solid ground. The line for the tower stretched away in a snakey curve. We wandered past the line, across the street, down to the Seine, where we found, tucked away behind the walled bank of the river, a little Christmas market. Bright red carpet spread on the ground between the little wooden shacks, the sellers just opening their shutters to display their wares. We stopped at a stall where a man was selling scarves, and several of the girls bought some. Light clouds over the sky today; the cold was not as harsh. After awhile, we wandered up to street level again, where there was a carousel and a crepe stand. Sarah, Michaela, Charlotte, Emmaline, Heather, and Catherine all rode the carousel, but I stood and watched and took pictures—they pulled faces at me as their colorful plastic horses flashed past.

We wandered on then—over the bridge of the Seine, and up the Seine, towards the Louvre, to visit a café that Catherine Donnelly had recommended. It was good to walk outside in the open air for awhile, to stretch one’s legs. We walked past endless monuments, the Eiffel Tower looming behind us to the right across the river, and war memorials, museums, statues, etc. sprinkled to our left along the street. We walked on the sidewalk under the trees that skirt the Seine. We walked past houseboats moored at the bank, bobbing up and down, their decks covered with potted plants and lawn furniture. Finally we arrived back at the far end of the Champs Elysees. We crossed the square where the ferris wheel is, and ended up in a fancy shmancy shopping district. Five-star hotels, first-class restaurants, high-end namebrands. Sarah and Charlotte and Michaela walked at the back, oohing and aahing over the famous designer clothing shops. Emmaline and I walked in the front, shaking our heads and laughing at them. The streets were crowded with businessmen and Christmas shoppers. Many of the shops were decorated with lights and evergreen. Finally we found the café, Angelina’s, facing the main street running parallel to the Seine, the Rue de Rivoli. Immediately all of us felt very out-of-place. Like the other shops along the street, Angelina’s had its name and insignia in mosaic on the sidewalk, and on a plaque by the door. Inside, we were surrounded by gilded archways, chandeliers, plush carpets, mirrors. A waiter took us upstairs to a corner table, where we sat a bit stiffly, both from weariness and a feeling of unbelonging. Catherine wasn’t feeling well due to a sore tooth. A kind waitress bustled up to us, laughed at our awkwardness at the language, and took our order. She soon returned with it, in white pitchers: famous Angelina’s black hot chocolate for all of us, except Catherine, who’d ordered white, and Sarah, who’d ordered ice cream instead. We sipped the hot chocolate slowly out of white cups. It was as thick as chocolate sauce, and as rich—bitter, unless swirled with cream, and incredibly strong. I could only drink a few sips at a time. It would’ve been more pleasant savored over an hour’s quite conversation, perhaps, but it was still richly delicious. We sat around talking and resting, looking at the splendor around us—the sunbursts and paintings on the walls; the chandeliers; the gilt frames of the mirrors.

Finally we paid and walked to the nearest subway station, through all the fanciness. We took the metro to the Opera Garnier. The Opera Garnier was just as spectacular as we’d expected, though sadly the main part of the Opera was closed off due to renovations. It was this opera house on which The Phantom of the Opera was based, and looking at it, I was swept up for a little while. The façade was gilt, of course, with the figures of Choreography and Lyric seated on either side, resplendent. Inside, along the first entry area, were lifelike statues of famous composers—Handel, Rameau, etc. Standing at the arches of the first entry area, we could look at the famous staircase—sparkling with light, gilding, and statues. Bronze women posed at either side of the head of the stair, balancing chandeliers on their heads and arms, which fountained over them with beads of crystal. Faces stared and swirled from every inch of balustrade. Over our heads, stone masks glared down at the first entry area, their eye sockets eerily black as the light shone starkly up at them.

As we left the Opera Garnier, it was beginning to get dark. Emmaline navigated us through the metro to San Sulfice, where we found, at last, a proper Christmas market, nestled under the shoulder of a church. The trees of the market sparkled with little lights. There were rows and rows of stalls, with carpet running between. We split up to look around. A much more relaxed atmosphere than in Belfast. The sellers would actually talk to you, being friendly. There weren’t many other people around, and Christmas music was playing from one of the stalls, drifting on the night air. Heather, Catherine, and I looked at jewelry and candies. We looked at stalls of French confectionery, polished stone jewelry, pashminas, Asian flower art, Canadian beers, all sorts of odd little random things. When we met up again, Charlotte requested that we go to the train station with the bookstore so that she could buy some French comic books for her brother. So we went back to Gare Montparnesse. While Charlotte and Emmaline looked in the bookstore, the rest of us browsed in the small Christmas market behind the train station—much more grubby than San Sulfice, and not nearly as pleasant—more like a cheap wholesale tourist stop than a Christmas market. Heather found ice skaters performing, though, and that kept her happy until the rest of us were ready to go.

Then came the final piece of excitement of our trip: the race to the airport. Sarah and Emmaline wanted to go to the grocery store to buy French foods, so while they did that, the rest of us went to the hostel and took out our luggage. We managed to haul all our luggage, plus Sarah’s and Emmaline’s, to the train stop, but Sarah and Emmaline were late. Michaela and I, both on edge, started to carry things down past the ticket barriers (our tickets always malfunctioned; mine was the last to do so, but thankfully Michaela knew enough French to get it fixed before Emmaline showed up). When Emmaline and Sarah came, we raced to the train, and from that train to the next, to the next…. Tense, Charlotte panicked, Emmaline and I trying to reassure everyone, though, as I watched the hands on my watch slide past, I felt my heart sinking. At last, sweating and breathless, we caught the final train to the airport. Charlotte was dizzy, nearly fainting from hunger, so Emmaline pulled out the bread, cheese, and fruit she’d providentially bought at the grocery store, and we made a small meal, sitting on the train—the familiar taste of bread and that soft spreading cheese for the last time. Sitting there watching the city slide by, from the fancy buildings of inner Paris to the office buildings to the grimy slums and convenience stores on the outskirts, I shook my head at Emmaline.

When the train let us off at the airport, we ran from the train station to the terminal, and arrived with just seven minutes to spare at the checkout. But after we checked in, we found, to our complete dismay, that we had a twenty-minute wait to get through border security! We all managed to get through, though, and ran up to the clerk at the gate—only to be told coldly, in broken English, “You wait!” Our plane was half-an-hour late. So we sat in the airport, recovering our breath, laughing shakily in relief, and resting, until finally it was our turn to hand in our boarding passes and take the bus out onto the tarmac. We climbed the stairs onto the plane, and were again surrounded by the familiar sound of Northern Irish voices as the stewardesses gave us our safety instructions. And then the plane lifted off…

I spent the flight with my head in my arms, reliving the past four days, and dozing. When we touched down in Belfast again, I was struck with a sudden and very bad case of motion sickness. The airport seemed oddly familiar, memories of it from that dazed September day. I went through the non-EU customs alone, and met the other girls on the other side. We collected our bags, then went out to meet parents. One by one we said our good-byes. Mr. Wilson, Sarah’s father, was there to pick Emmaline, Sarah, Catherine, and me up from the airport. All of us dozed on the hour-long drive back to Coleraine. He dropped Catherine off at her house, then Emmaline and me off at the dark farm. Stepping into the kitchen, I found myself suddenly surrounded by more familiarity, by warmth—a big Christmas tree in the corner by the bay windows; cards hanging on the cabinets; lights strung in the windows; little decorations sprinkled on the shelves. Emmaline and I went up to her room and went to bed, but of course neither one of us could fall asleep immediately. We lay away for at least half-an-hour talking, reliving the trip, all its silliness and unpleasantness and strangeness. We laughed about bread and cheese, about the cold, about all the stairs we’d climbed, about the metro, about difficulties speaking French. At last we dropped off to sleep. I could still hear, in my mind, the noises of the city—the emergency sirens, the noise of cars, the patter of French.