Caffeine

That's what this little girl is made of!
Thanks to my coffee press and grinder and pounds of coffee, necessitated by the many hundreds of pages of reading that ushered in the new semester, I'm going on little more than adrenaline and the miracle legal stimulant. I'm off to work a reception for catering, then to translate some Hebrew and read some stuff. Tonight's goal is to get something approximating an appropriate amount of sleep. Odds? Slim.

I heart NY

I've said it before and I'll say it again. New York City is great. It's fast and loud and dingy in places; churches and monasteries are nestled into unexpected places where the City has grown up around them; people actually sit on park benches, reading or talking or just watching the world. In the movie Keeping the Faith Father Brian says of NYC, "people who live anywhere else must be kidding themselves." Granted, I don't live there, and I haven't honestly spent all that much time there, but I reserve the right to love it none the less. I would live there. Particularly Manhattan on the Lower East Side.
Free Train Week on NJ Transit has inspired this little burst of affection for the City. With just my student ID and a coupon I get to ride from Princeton to Penn Station, a mere 45-70 minutes depending on the train, absolutely free. On Thursday I went up for a few hours to go to The Strand (think Powell's in Portland, but a little smaller). It took over an hour to walk from Penn Station to 12th & Broadway, and it was great. The Strand embodies all things book lovers love about books. Huge stacks, rickety ladders to the top shelf, hand-written signs labeling the dozens of categories, grungers/nerds/hippies stocking the shelves. I got four novels for my lit class and a tote bag I've been eyeing for a few years. Come visit me and I'll take you there.
Pretty soon here I'm heading back up for the day with my friend Bill so we can catch up after long summers, and probably do some reading. (I already have 500 pages of Faulkner and 50 of Plato plus a bunch of other articles and stuff to get through.) I'm a happy girl with my coffee, my friend, and my City.

Senior Year . . . Again

Today has been my third Senior Year. Most of the world doesn't get even one Senior Year, and here I am wondering what to do with this, my third. I have not grown so attached to this place that I start the semester with a dull melancholy of the sort that settle upon me as Bianca and I rolled into Spokane in Fall 2004. My reaction is more like "What!?" I just had Senior Year two years ago, and now I have to do it all over again. The desperate meeting of course requirements, the savoring special everyday moments, and the ever present question of what I am going to do next year. The last is the main difference between this Senior Year and all the others. I knew I would go to college, I knew I would go to seminary, but now I'm more or less clueless. Options abound, limited mostly by my debt load, my determination to no longer live in a dorm, and the conviction that whatever I do next needs to be directly related to some aspect of the larger calling toward which I sense my life is headed. At this point all I can do is research, pray, and take the GREs.
I wish I could say I'm taking it easy this year, but alas there are requirements to fill and money to earn. I'm taking 16 credits and working 15-20 hours/week. My classes look good so far though, and if they live up to my expectations the year will be fruitful and not too overwhelming.
I'm taking:
Church and State in Modern Europe
Gospel and Culture: The African Experience
Old Testament Readings in Greek and Hebrew
Educating Congregations for Mission
Friendship, Love, and Justice
American Religion and American Literature
With the help of my new coffee press and variety of delightful coffees, I just might even stay awake for all those classes.

25

In honor of my first full day as a 25-year-old, here are 25 things I am glad to have accomplished during my first 25 years:
1. Learned to walk;
2. and talk;
3. and read;
4. tried nasty liquor and got over it;
5. became a beer snob;
6. learned Latin;
7. remained friends with my Latin buddies;
8. finished 6 years at D'Evelyn;
9. stopped hitting my sister;
10. learned to like rice;
11. figured out I'm allergic to bananas;
12. gave competitive sports a fair shot;
13. learned to be okay with sucking at sports;
14. read the whole Bible;
15. figured out why I'm Methodist;
16. love Jesus;
17. all those WRUMC mission trips;
18. learned to install dry wall, sub-flooring, siding, gutters, doors, tile, etc.;
19. went to Whitworth;
20. lived with awesome roomies;
21. travelled;
22. taken risks;
23. stayed in touch with college friends;
24. made good friends at Seminary;
25. drank enough coffee that I'm probably 25% caffeine.

And since there's much more to go, here's 25 for the next 25 years:
1. Graduate from Seminary;
2. live in Eastern Europe for at least 1 year, more if I like it;
3. earn a PhD;
4. finish the darn ordination process;
5. become fluent in at least 1 spoken language;
6. play with my friends' babies;
7. be a good wife if I'm married or a good single woman if I'm not;
8. write a book;
9. pay off student loans;
10. be discontented with the status quo;
11. live in intentional community;
12. live in an urban area;
13. See a Broadway show;
14. participate in international relief work of some sort;
15. visit friends as often as possible;
16. live green;
17. dress like a grown-up (sometimes);
18. hike a 14er;
19. get the hole in my ear drum fixed;
20. be faithful;
21. travel more;
22. don't get sucked into the academic vortex of prestige and name-dropping;
23. learn to cook;
24. pastor a church;
25. and whatever else God wants for me.

Thanks y'all, for making it a great 25 years!

Unleashing my Inner Extravert

It's difficult, when I really don't think I have an inner extravert. So new student move-in day is an awkward combination of excitement about meeting new people and finding out who from Whitworth shows up at Princeton, and anxiety over constantly trying to be friendly and outgoing and helpful. I'm a Deacon, which is like MCs were at Whitworth but with even less of a clear job description. So yesterday and Wednesday our job was to run up to people's cars as they arrived to move in and help them unload. It's a little crazy. I think we scared a few people, a see of people in maroon shirts hauling stuff out of cars and vans and u-hauls. It'll be good to get settled into a routine and have pictures on my walls.

Dude!

I finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows this morning (that's right, I got up early before Church to read it). I feel like I did after the series finale of Friends; like it's the end of an era. I have nothing deep to say on the topic, but I really liked the books and want to re-read them now. Sadly school is about to start so I won't have time for that.
Maybe once school is in gear I'll actually have something remotely interesting to blog again ;)

Since I've been back

• 2 Starbucks drinks
• 3 Salads
• 2 Plums
• 2 Peaches
• 3 Cans of Diet Pepsi
• 1/2 of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows (and don't dare spoil it)
• 3 Trips to Target, 2 of them to help out international students
• 1 Beer (Sam Adams Oktoberfest is a winner)
• 1 Day I've remembered my Malarone

It's nice to be back, mostly to be with people. The thing about Seminary is that almost everyone has had an interesting summer. Chaplaincy, camps, churches, and other things that don't start with C.

I'm staying in my friend Geila's apartment while she's home in Michigan, loving having a bathtub and a kitchen and plenty of space. But I'm also eager for friends to return from summer adventures and for the fall schedule to get going. I start work tomorrow, and it'll be nice to do something familiar at which I am competent.

I've also been sorting and labelling Ghana pics and will notify folks when they are ready on my kodak gallery. It'll be both educational and entertaining ;)