Thanks for visiting my little blog, I hope your stay is pleasurable.
Well, It's been about a week since I've written a post, and a lot has happened!
Between classes and living in England and all, someone we've invested time in while here has been Jesus. So you know, there is a student fellowship here and it's so great. We meet once a week, talk, share testimonies, pray, and other great things. If any of you who are in it are reading this, I want to say how much I appreciate you guys. Community is so important, and you have provided it wonderfully. We're all on the same path, traveling to many of the same places, all far from home, and all struggling to get the swing of things here, so it's great to have people who want to keep close to Christ through it all. If you don't go to the fellowship, we meet Tuesdays at 8:45pm for awesomeness and Jesus. You can come and chill, yo.
Also, something that I've really been digging lately is procrastinating homework to read this one book that the lovely Susan Creech gave me called Blue Like Jazz by Donald Miller. It's so great. The author basically talks about his experiences with God, but he's so down to earth, so hilarious, and so humbling at the same time too. It's a great book, you should read it. It's less about the motions and mechanics of Christianity and more about just loving on Jesus and experiencing him. The real meat.
One other thing going on in my life that I haven't talked about with you guys are my classes! Which I love. I said earlier that I have Media Writing, World War II, and British Studies.
For Media Writing I have a wonderful visiting professor named Jeanie Adams-Smith from yours truly, WKU! She's a genius in the world of journalism; she worked at the Chicago Tribune for 10 years as their photo editor.
For World War II, I have one of the British professors: Dr. Bujak (Boo-jack). He is perhaps one of the funniest human beings I have ever met. And on top of all that, he's so intelligent and always willing to help. He's constantly telling us to come visit him in his office to chat about class and our papers. When class is over, I'm actually sad and want 5 more minutes. I love it so much already.
Third, British Studies is a little different. It's an interdisciplinary course, which means it's constructed in a different way and brings in different disciplines. However, overall it's a history course. It's a 6-hour class in which 4 professors teach different sections of British history and the entire Harlaxton population meets in the Long Gallery for lecture, which probably adds up to almost 200 people. After lecture, we head to seminar, which is basically where we reflect and discuss lecture. This has about 25 people, and my seminar leader is Professor Magennis (Muh-guenn-is). She's from Belfast, Northern Ireland and has such a wonderful accent, and she's so caring and funny too. I also happen to be in an Honors seminar, in which I meet with another professor (Dr. Green) along with 4 other students and we discuss topics we want to write about in our British Studies research papers.
Anyways, enough about daily life here. Let's get down to business. Not to defeat the Huns, though.
We traveled to Cambridge this weekend! Yeah, the one with the university. That's the one.
And it was adorable. And cold. Very cold. I lost the feeling in my toes a couple times. Or many times.
One interesting thing we did was visit an American WWII cemetery. This was a place where Americans soldiers from the war were buried if they were unable to make it across the Atlantic to Arlington, for instance. Also, there was a wall there commemorated to the missing.
A marine gave us a tour of the cemetery and the wall, telling us stories about the individuals and perhaps how they died.
It was a great and humbling experience.
After this, we headed to Cambridge, which was only 15 minutes away. Cambridge was so charming, and what you picture a small English town to look like. It was so chock-full of history and Britishness.
And I mean that in the best way.
After this, we did a bit of shopping in the market, which was really cool to see! Probably our favorite stop was TK Maxx, sound familiar?! It was pretty much a TJ Maxx but perhaps more organized. We found some great bargains; we walked home very happy ladies.
After this, we bravely decided to take a boat tour in that weather. Which turned out to be quite great despite the bitter cold. We haggled a bit and got the price from 16 pounds to 10! Thank you, thank you. Okay, Susan was the one who did it, so props to her ;)
The boat tour was so interesting and let us know a lot more about the town and university, especially the university. Did you know Prince Charles went there?
It's such a beautiful university, with ages and ages of history to it. People such as Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton studied there too. We sat beside two lovely Chinese individuals, and I regret to inform that I cannot remember their names because they sounded like on-yong or something like that. I'm pretty close I think. But anyways, they were really sweet! We shared blankets. Here's a few pictures from the tour:
After this, we headed home and watched Love Actually and got something to eat. We really have adapted to British culture, haven't we?
This morning, we went to the wonderful Harlaxton village church. It was an Anglican service, which was very cool because I'd never attended one of those before. It was actually very reminiscent of a Roman Catholic mass! Afterwards, the locals offered us tea, coffee, and biscuits ("biscuits" is British lingo for "cookies"). They were so welcoming and gracious.
Phew! So sorry. That's a lot for you to have read, isn't it? I apologize, there's just so much going on here!
If you'd like to Skype me, just let me know on Facebook. I love it, and I love seeing and talking to folks back home! Seriously, don't hesitate. Hope you're doing well in the States, and thanks for reading!
Cheers,
Shelley
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