Profundity is Overrated

I don't write as much as I'd like. Anyone who checks this blog (or has in the past, you know, when there were updates) is aware of as much. Or at least is aware that I don't write much. Well, if you were wondering, I'd like to write more, so I don't write as much as I'd like. I think I may have stumbled upon the reason for that. It appears that I have this misconception that every time I write, it has to be profound and deep. Fortunately for me, I recently came to the conclusion that this is simply untrue. Sure, I'd like to be profound all the time, and I'd love it if everyone thought I was profound all the time. Unfortunately, that would really only work on people who've never met me, and I don't think a lot of them have/will read my blog, and anyone who actually knows me and has real conversations with me will quickly uncover the ruse. So I'm done with that, then. Hopefully, this revelation will inspire me to write more, whether on here or on paper (like in the old days) but either way, it would be nice. So for now, that's all. Just a bit of an 'apostrophe' I recently enjoyed. Thought I'd share.

Also, I'm reading a book about the war of 1812 called "The Invasion of Canada" and let me tell you, we (the U.S.) really jacked that up. Can you imagine how much more lumber we'd have at our disposal if we had just successfully annexed that place almost 200 years ago? Talk about natural resources.

Not sure why I threw that in there, but I did. So deal with it. In case anyone is confused, we did not (yet) annex Canada. But don't worry, there's still time.

Ok, I'm gonna go. In review, profundity is overrated. Most of the time, anyway.

Life, of late

I haven't posted in a few days because it's been pretty busy. So now, I'll just update all (both) you faithful readers as to what's been going on - even though at least one of you was there for most of it. ;)

Recently Amanda and I went to a wedding and then her family came down to meet my family for the first time the following day. It was, all told, a pretty good weekend. Amanda and I had a lot of fun hanging out with my family, as is usually the case. She even learned how to drive a stick-shift after the wedding on Saturday! It was really impressive, she didn't kill it once on the whole way home. I was very impressed.

The wedding we went to was possibly the most awkward wedding we've ever been to (together, at least). There was no specific even that occurred to make it so awkward, it was really more of a state of being. Just not a comfortable atmosphere. Not what I expected out of a couple that's been dating for...let's just say a very long time. Since the wedding, I realized that the reason it felt so awkward was really just that it was a wedding involving normal people. By that I mean that they are part of the vast majority of people who are not, in fact, terribly comfortable in front of large groups of people. Or at least, they do not with their presence put groups at ease. This led me to the realization that I have a very strange group of close friends. By and large, my friends to whose weddings I've been invited have been very socially skilled people. A lot of my friends spend time in front of large groups on a consistent basis - either as teachers, preachers, musicians, or through the course of other more random things. Anyway, all that to say that my friends are the strange ones, and anyone who is less comfortable with these things is, I suppose, way more normal. But it just is more entertaining for the audience when the main focus is a couple who thrives in the spotlight, no offense to anyone who does not.

In other news, this week is being pretty insane at work. I started training at a new position - basically the same thing I was doing, managing a copy/mail/general service center at a law firm - but now it's exceptionally larger. I went from a firm of 13 attorneys to 60 (plus several more in the coming days and weeks) and from a staff (under my employ) of 2 to a staff of 6. That change alone would be enough, but on top of it, during my one week of shadowing the current manager and training on the position, we've got a huge in-house move to prepare for the incoming attorneys. That means that I'll be staying late, potentially several hours late, on Wednesday night, and then heading back to work at the normal 8 AM on Thursday, which may or may not also be a late night (though not as late). I've gotta be honest, I'm not exactly looking forward to all that, but such is life, I suppose.

So now that we're all caught up on my exciting life like it's something worth being caught up on, I'm going to go ahead and call it a night. Thanks for reading, and sorry it was so boring.

What's your theological worldview?

You scored as a Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan

You are an evangelical in the Wesleyan tradition. You believe that God's grace enables you to choose to believe in him, even though you yourself are totally depraved. The gift of the Holy Spirit gives you assurance of your salvation, and he also enables you to live the life of obedience to which God has called us. You are influenced heavly by John Wesley and the Methodists.
Evangelical Holiness/Wesleyan
79%
Reformed Evangelical
71%
Emergent/Postmodern
68%
Neo orthodox
61%
Fundamentalist
61%
Roman Catholic
43%
Classical Liberal
39%
Charismatic/Pentecostal
36%
Modern Liberal
29%

Understanding Obedience

Another post on N.T. Wright's book about Paul. I have a feeling these will become commonplace before this book is over. I suppose that's not such a bad thing, I'm just gonna roll with it either way.

I'm not sure exactly where it was that Wright talked about this, but it was somewhere in the 2nd or 3rd chapters, I think. In any case, I feel like God slapped me across the face with an understanding of the Cross and Obedience that maybe should have been obvious a long time ago. In his discussion of Paul's understanding of the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ - specifically from the perspective of a 1st century Roman-Jew - Wright went into some detail about the fulfillment of the prophecies to Abraham, Paul's inherent understanding of those (as well as other prophecies about the coming Messiah), and how these things would have been naturally internalized by a man like Paul.

Somewhere in this detail, I finally came to understand the part in Romans where Paul says that Christ was the fulfillment of the law and, if you will, the counterpart-man to Adam. Where Adam's sin was disobedience to God - the eating of the fruit - which resulted in Sin's great entrance into the world, Christ's sacrifice was a great obedience to God whereby sin is defeated for all who accept the gift. Sounds great, but that's about where it always ended for me before. Then I realized (again, I'm not sure exactly what it was that tipped me off) what the operative word here is - I italicized it, in case you missed that.

So obedience is what was most vividly displayed on the Cross - humility, yes; love, yes; sacrifice, yes; but all of those things were borne out of the unspeakable obedience of Christ.

I look at it this way: Adam could have eaten anything in the garden except that food. Why that food? Could God have made that food without whatever special properties it had? Absolutely. Could God have given the special properties to something else - maybe a certain part of the garden to which Adam was debarred from entering, or a body of water he was to avoid. The fruit and it's nature as food is not what's important here. What's important is that he was given a command from God - any command would have done! - and he disobeyed.

Now look at Christ. He was God and man at once. He had all power and authority in heaven and earth at his disposal (and we see examples of that, calming the storm, miraculous healings, even bringing people back from death!) and he allows himself to be treated the way he was. And let's be clear about something else here. Wright goes into detail also about the horror of crucifixion. This was not just execution. The act was so heinous, so despicable that respectable Romans avoided it in polite conversation. I can't even think of a modern equivalent (maybe that speaks to our depravity and exceptional debasement...but that's another post), but the point is, this was horrible, in the most painful sense of the word. And Christ did it - and the reasoning behind his doing it was to obey his Father in heaven.

I think this is what Paul's saying when he says that any "good" done without God is not good (I'm paraphrasing, obviously). If God wants the glory for anything we do - and if we do good things in His name, not ours - then how could we do them for any reason other than simple obedience? It suddenly strikes me that if I give out an amount of money every week or month, and that amount of money is a sacrifice for me (because I believe that just giving 10% is not what's important, what's important is not the amount, but that the giving is sacrificial, whether more or less than 10%), but I don't do it to be obedient to God, then it doesn't matter. If I tell someone I love them and give them food or money or my time, but I do it because it makes me feel good about myself or because I feel guilty, then it doesn't matter! I am convinced that the only justifiable reason for any such action is in order to obey the dictates of God. Otherwise how can I say that I do it for God? If obedience is not the basis for my action, then how can I honestly say it's not because I feel better after? Christ's sacrifice was incredible, and painful, and loving, but it was most of all - and, I would argue, most of those things simply because it was - obedient. Maybe I'm wrong here, but I cannot shake this new belief that love is not love for God if it is not borne out of obedience, sacrifice is not sacrifice for God if it is not borne out of obedience.

I'll end with this thought. If nothing I can possibly do, or say, or think, or feel can be worthy of my God on its own - and it can't, how could anything I do be worthy of the God who created me?! - then it follows, doesn't it, that only my vivid, simple, sincere obedience to God would be of worth to Him? Any amount of money I give, any amount of time I give, any amount of love I give is absolutely pathetic in comparison to Christ's sacrifice, and is of absolutely no worth in comparison to His Love - what He requires instead is constant, life-changing obedience. Nothing less, and simply, nothing more - because anything I could do should flow out of obedience to God's commands. And that's my epiphany for today.

What Gospel?

Toward the end of last week, I started reading a book by N.T. Wright called What St. Paul Said: Was Paul of Tarsus the Real Founder of Christianity? Now, I've heard a lot about N.T. Wright and I've read some excerpts before, but I've never actually sat down with one of his books myself. I have to say, I'm pretty impressed thus far. Aside from what seems an absurdity of giving a book with this title a slim 183 pages, it's packed with dense reading (plus, Wright's way smarter than I am, so I suppose I should give him the benefit of the doubt here). And it's not a scholarly work, nor is it entirely pop literature, so you sort of have the choice between making it more or less scholarly depending on what level of focus, thought, and intensity you want to give his writing.

As I'm only about 60 pages in, I can't comment on the entire work just yet, but at this stage, I'd suggest it to any of my friends, no questions. The thing that struck me most, though, was a discussion of what the word "gospel" might have meant to Paul. Wright does an incredible job of flushing out, in each of his subjects so far, the relevant sides of the relevant debates, their merits and shortcomings, and, finally, why he disagrees with both sides and chooses a third side (usually, anyway). He has an incredible grasp on the historical situation in which Paul lived, both secularly and religiously, which anyone must agree is fundamentally important in any discussion of a historical person, place, or event.

The conclusion that shocked me started by raising this question: what does it mean to say "the gospel of Christ?" The question itself shocked me because I realized that I don't have an answer to that myself. I could ramble about it for a while, but I don't think I would get anywhere substantial. He then traced a number of reasons to conclude that for Paul, the "gospel" is not any set of issues relevant in the Church today, it's not singularly about wealth or sexual orientation or giving or saving or teaching or speaking or sharing - it's about being a herald for the King. The word (in Greek) references the style of heralding the Emperor of Rome, of announcing his presence or his ascendency. This is what Paul lays out in Romans, according to Wright, as the definition of the gospel of Christ.

The most poignant part of the explanation, to me, is how Wright points out that by the very annunciation of the presence of the Lord of all the World, of the victory of Christ over death and His subsequent ascent to the Throne of Dominion over sin in the world, people are saved - salvation is the subsequence of this announcement, not the reverse! People aren't saved only to later discover Jesus' victory! If there is no victory, if there is no fulfillment of the prophecies naming Christ as Lord of all the world (as opposed to just ruler of Israel), then there would be no salvation. Bearing this in mind, Wright paraphrases Paul's mimicry of the Roman emperor's herald as saying: "When the herald makes a royal proclamation he says 'Nero (or whomever) has become emperor.' He does not say 'If you'd like to have an experience of living under an emperor, you might care to try Nero.' The proclamation is an authoritative summons to obedience - in Paul's case, to what he calls 'the obedience of faith.'"

This just floored me. The reality is that we are not living under a King who's content to let us choose whether or not He exists and is King. He has become King through the ultimate act of obedience and sacrifice - this is not a passive ascendency! He has violently laid claim to the throne of utter world domination and whether or not we decide to accept his legitimacy and his presence, it exists, and it exersizes judgement over the world. It's a pretty big deal.

Needless to say, it was a pretty intense ride to work this morning, reading this and having a series of little epiphanies. Hopefully, in my attempt to paraphrase the discussion in the book, I didn't commit too many heresies. If you spot one, let me know, I would like to not blaspheme - at least not on accident - if at all possible!

A Whole New Level of Disgust

Look at this, and discover a whole new definition of disgust, and a whole new level of vanity. And be sad with me. Misery does, in fact, love company.

And just so this post, being only my second, is more than two lines long, I think I'll go ahead and come up with something to say.

I was listening to a new album the other day and I thought it was really good. In fact, I still do. So I started telling people about it. It's a local band (but not local to me, so that's weird) and they're basically just a bunch of guys with no money who love doing music. But when I mentioned how good I thought the music was to one friend, his response was, "yeah, it's ok. I thought the vocals were too far up front and the music wasn't mixed right." I just don't understand. If you're Coldplay and you're putting out an album on the dime of a multi-million (or billion?) dollar record label, and you're working with some of the greatest sound engineers you can find, then sure, you expect perfection. But if you're a local band who scratches up the money to put together an album to sell at your shows, trying to get your name out there and just getting started, then is it really necessary to require that your album sounds like it was done by a legend?

This, to me, seems like the equivalent of looking at a car to buy and then deciding not to because, even though it's an extremely well made car, reliable and safe, with great mileage and at a decent price, but the lighting in the showroom was bad, and the salesman really needed to brush his teeth. Hmmm. Maybe I'm just not a truly devoted audiophile. Or maybe I just prefer to listen to good music roughly mastered than shitty pop music* gloriously mastered at the best studio money can buy.

Sorry this post is kind of a downer, but I think there's only one person (other than me) reading this, so I suppose it's not a huge deal. ;) So there we go, a little peak into the rantings of Joe.

*this phrase does not apply to Coldplay

insert pithy title here

It's been a big day. It's 8:43 AM and it's been a big day. Not a lot of times in my life I've been able to say that.

I decided today (well, today and last night) to become a morning person. To do a lot of things I've wanted to do for a while, really. There's this guy in my head that I imagine myself to be, and he's really not all that unattainable, but he's not really who I am. I decided that it's about time to go ahead and see just how attainable he is. One of the things he does is get up early and get things done, rather than rush around for 25 minutes and just barely make the train.

He shaves more often, too, but I think that one's more flexible.

I call this "musings from across the pond" but obviously, I'm not in York. I've not been in York for quite a while, actually. Roughly two years ago this time, I was finishing up my school work in the UK and trying to soak up as much of England and it's wonderful people as I possibly could. And it's taken me this long to start writing again for some reason. In any case, I'm back, and I think the title will stick around, too. I like it. It reminds me of a good time in my life (not that this time is necessarily bad) and, cliche as it is, a simpler time. I spent a lot of my time over there thinking, reading, playing Zelda, eating rice, drinking really good beer, and enjoying people. I also got pretty decent at frisbee (and double-bee, more importantly), but that's mostly gone, and I really need to get good at it again. But one of the things England taught me was how to be an alien. And how to enjoy it, to relish in the joy of difference. To love not belonging, not entirely, anyway. Cause, I'm not English. I know, it surprised me too. But it's true. So now matter how comfortable I got there, no matter how much it felt good to be there, and even natural, it wasn't natural to everybody. People I didn't know saw me as different, as an outsider. And it was kind of nice, to be honest. I've never really been a true outsider before. And more importantly, I believe that I am an outsider here, or I should be. My faith tells me that I'm an alien, and the more I come to realize my faith, and accept what it teaches me and try to embody it (let me tell you, that guy in my head rocks his principles like no other...it's impressive, trust me) I realize that to do that, I must be alien. I cannot conform. It doesn't work.

That was quite an epiphany for me when I realized it, and then I started thinking about York and then I started thinking about this blog and then I thought, well given this new reality, I suppose I may as well be musing from across a pond, whether that big Atlantic one or not. So the title remains.

Who writes this big of a post (with that big of a paragraph?) about a title? Me. If you're reading this, still, you should probably get used to that kind of thing. I'm sure it'll be commonplace.

So that's it, that's my first post in this new part of my journey. Hopefully it won't be my last, and hopefully it'll soon be joined by others. We'll have to wait and see, eh? In any case, it has begun. Feel free to join me if you want, though I'm not going to promise excitement...or even good writing. Just thoughts. I'll be here if you want to stop by. Enjoy yourself.

AMERICA

I'm back in the States!!!!!!!

Mom came to York on the 28th and then we went to London on the 30th and hung out there for a while and came home on Wednesday. London was a good time and mom had fun, which was good, but it was crazy hot the whole time we were there. It was in the 90s for most of the week, which of course made the front page of all the papers. Lucky us. The flight home was good - pretty uneventful, thankfully. We pulled into O'hare at around 3:30 on Wednesday afternoon and went and got some good American style pizza and equally importantly cold drinks (the English aren't terribly worried about making sure their beer/pop/anything else anyone could drink is cold). So that was a good time. Now I'm just working on getting the next few months of my life figured out and making sure I can take this last freaking class up in Chicago in the fall. Hopefully it'll all work out alright and then things will be happy. That's about all I got right now, and I need to go replace the fuel filter on my car. Man it's good to be back in the States. :/

huh...

I was just sitting here thinking. I like to read good writing, a lot. I have some friends on this thing that are really good writers, they have the ability to utterly pull you into their words and make you feel like you're with them, like you're experiencing what they're saying. I've always appreciated good writing, I think I just never really put a lot of effort into finding it and reading it - partly because I couldn't even keep up with my school reading, but still. Not that the stuff I've read before was bad writing, I just feel like I've missed out on a lot of good writing because I've been too lazy to do a lot of reading. Last week I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby and now I'm almost done with Appolonius' Jason and the Golden Fleece. It seems like England has, if nothing else (and trust me, there's some things 'else'), led me to seek out and get through good literature. Strange that none of it thus far has been English, but whatever. That's just a thought I had this morning. Oh, by the way, I might not get to go to Ireland. That sucks. Gotta go now.

(see previous post for title)

So there I was, walking through town past some charity shops (that's what they call clothing re-sale shops) and as I look in the window, what do I see? Normally after a sentence like that, a person would just go right ahead and tell you what he saw, but not me. I want more than that from you. I want you to take a minute or so and think of all the outrageously absurd things that one could see in a charity clothing shop window. And don't think stupid things like, I dunno, trees. Obviously there won't be trees in there, it's a clothing shop. Come on, work with me here. Ok? Ok. Now, here we go, I'll give ya a minute........................and stop. Got any good ones? Like, I dunno, a hat with antlers on it? Or a U.S. uniform from the Revolutionary War? That would be entertaining, good thought. But no, it was neither of those. It was, in fact, an Arizona FFA jacket!! Let me say that again, cause I'm sure some of you in the back didn't hear me. It was, in a charity clothing store in York, England, an Arizona FFA jacket (boy, after you type arizona once or twice it really starts to look strange). How freaking outrageous is that? What's it doing here? How did it get here? And why where they charging 35 pounds for it? Who is going to want that, if they aren't in the FFA? I mean come on, it's a royal blue cord jacket with tons of gold embroydery on it, someone else's name, and a giant bright gold FFA symbol on the back (consisting of plow, owl, rising sun and of course, corn, for those of you who don't know.) Actually, that parenthetical reminded me, let me just take this time to address those of you silly enough not to know what FFA is. You all are silly. There, you've been addressed. Ok, actually it's a huge youth organization centered around the agricultural industry. It's massive, and given that the ag (that's what those of us in 'the know' call agriculture, try to keep up ;)) industry is the largest employer in the country, that affects a lot of people. Go to ffa.org if you want to know more. And don't kid yourself, you do. Yeah, so anyway, that's my stream-of-consciousness post for now. An FFA jacket in York. Absolutely fantastic. Aight, peace.

NO FREAKING WAY

JOHN C. MCGINLEY A.K.A. DR. COX IS IN THE ROCK!!!!!!! That's right, we were watching the Rock the other day (it was a great day) and when it started I was like, wait a minute, I know that name, no way, he's not in that. And then, he was! This pushes The Rock over the edge into a new realm of wonder. Not only is it the greatest action film ever made, it must now have surpassed even the possibility of being challenged. Sweet. That's all.

philosophy and footie

Man, it's been a while since I've done anything on there, sorry about that. I'm just generally lazy, but you all know me, so that's no surprise. Things have been going pretty well here, time is going really fast, which I have mixed feelings about. On the one hand, I can't wait to get home. I feel like I'm in a period of my life where I am just treading water and not really moving forward, but only in some respects. Even though I'm not working or moving to Chicago right now or anything like that, I am definitely making progress in other ways. The things I'm reading for class are all about the philosophy of history, which sounds like it would be boring, but I'm kinda into boring things, so it's cool for me. It really makes me rethink the way I think about history and how how I view the importance or lack thereof in it. Stuff like that. The casual reality of my life here (no job, no car, no cell phone, it's a very different world for me) allows me to do a lot more thinking about things like this than I would do at home, I think. So that's definitely a good thing, and I'm enjoying it a lot. Plus, my friends here are fantastic and we have a great time, so they tend to curtail my anxiety to get home. But at the same time, I miss all my friends back home, I miss being able to see my family almost any time I really want to, if I just make the effort. I want to be working, finishing school, moving on with what Western society touts as "real life," if you'll excuse the absurdity of the statement. It's weird to try to articulate what exactly it is that I want to move on with, because it is so clear that the things that I'm thinking about here are so great a part of what life really is. So there I am, and it's a strange place to be.

When I haven't been thinking/reading about the history of philosophy, I've been working on getting my computer back up and running so I don't have to keep hiking over to this freaking computer lab every time I want to check an email. It's coming along slowly, and hopefully in the next week or two will be taken care of. Cross your fingers. Also, me and the guys are getting a lot better with the frisbee. I'm told there's an outdoor basketball court nearby, so if we can find a ball I'll work on schooling England in yet another aspect of what makes America great. :) And if I lose, you'll never hear about it, heh heh. It's looking like a couple of us are going to try to get to Ireland around the second weekend of June. I'm excited about that, even if we'll probably only get to see Dublin and nothing else. It'll still be sweet, plus the Guiness brewery is there. Hooray!

Yeah, so that's about all that's going on here. The 'footie' (football) (soccer) is starting up around here, so it looks like that's going to consume most of our Saturday afternoons from now on. I'll see if I can't pick up some idea of what the heck is going on, and maybe I can try to explain the peoples' fascination with sports that involve neither throwing nor catching with the hands. Don't hold your breath, though. Aight, I'd better go so I can meet the guys before the match starts!

Aight, well, I tried this the other day and it didn't work, but maybe it will go better this time. So I am back in York and had my one exam yesterday. It went alright, no big surprises, really. Now that that's over, I decided that today would be the day that I would shave my beard that's been growing for four months and cut my hair, which also hasn't been touched as long as I've been here. It's been a big day. And, I'm really excited that things like that constitute big days lately. That's fun. The computer's still jacked up, so I'm not sure how soon that'll all get figured out. Hopefully soon.

Traveling was fun, and hopefully I'll get around to chronicling (?) the whole thing at some point, though I'm not sure if I'll put that up here or not, since I have already got several posts up here from that whole time. We'll see. After Brugge I made it back to England in one day, succeeding in making it to three countries in one day, which was fun. I got to London at a decent time and met up with Andy and Colleen. I hung out there for a couple days, then went to Windsor to see my friend Dan and the castle, which was closed because the queen was there, which totally pissed off all of the locals that I met, all of whom went on a big rant about how I had traveled from the U.S. just to see the freakin' castle and she goes and closes it. I mean how many rooms does she need at one time? The nerve. But the outside was cool. Then I came back to London and stayed there for Easter and then went to Scotland on the following Tuesday, met up with my friend Lindsey and crashed at her parents' place and then proceeded up to Fort William in the Highlands, actually at the base of the tallest peak in Britain. That was cool and beautiful, even if I failed to find the really cool sounding waterfall on this river that runs out of the mountains - possibly because I didn't start walking along the river until almost 6:00 in the evening, though I still walked for a solid hour and forty-five minutes one-way, which I think should be more than far enough to find a freakin' waterfall. Any waterfall worth seeing should put itself within an hour and forty-five minutes of anyone who wants to see it, that's what I say. Anyway, then I was back in York on Friday, did some studying then and on Saturday, too, and finally got to move into my room again on Sunday afternoon. Joy. Since then not much has happened, just studying and hanging out in the flat. It's nice to see all the crazy people again and it's nice to have a home again. I don't know if any of ya'll have ever been homeless for any extended period of time, but the 5 weeks that I was without a real place to call home was enough for me. That's just a stinking awkward feeling right there. So that's the story thus far. Assuming the computer works at some point, I'll have pictures up and that will be cool, including the ones from today chronicling the various stages of me aquiring a face again. They're interesting. Aight, that's all I got right now. Peace ya'll.

ten

Aight folks, so I've only got 10 minutes or so right now. I thought I would have more but just getting this site to come up took about 5, which is kinda annoying but whatever. I just thought it would be nice to have a more in-depth update some time.

So I got here yesterday and there was only one person in the room, this Canadian girl named Sherry. We introduced ourselves and she was nice enough. I went out and saw some stuff, came back and she was in the bar at the hostel so we talked for a few minutes and then I got some dinner, read some, did some emailing and went to bed. Then today I went out again during the day and came back in the afternoon and now there was another girl, this one from Australia, talking to Sherry. We all sat and talked for a while, found out the new girl's name is Megan (pronounced Aussie-style, Meegan) and the all of a sudden the whole room filled up. So after a while we were all hungry and Megan knew about this place that had take-out pasta for like, 2.70! We went there, then got a belgian waffle and came back and now we are up to like, 8 people. It's crazy! And they're all so nice. It turns out that traveling alone has its own perks, like getting to know a ton of Aussies and Canadians (everyone in my room is either an Aussie or a Canadian except one other girl from Alaska - may as well be canadian!). But all in all it's a good time and I'm having a lot of fun with my new friends. Hooray for people traveling alone and in need of making new friends, just like me.

It's looking like the London-with-the-Keltners thing is going to work out alright, which will give me a day or two to plan for the Windsor-with-Dan and the Scottish Highlands trip. Good times. The European leg of traveling was a really good time, and I think Germany was the best part, but Brugges is fun too. It's a small town and has a cool atomosphere, even if it's just because it's made for tourists. It kinda reminds me or York and Munich, both of which have a very laid-back atmosphere and are really good for walking around. Ok, so now I only have a few minutes left so I'm gonna have to cut this short. So much for an in-depth update. But at least I got to put something up about today, and something more substantial than one paragraph. Aight, peace.

singularity

Aight, so I don't have a lot of time, but I wanted to put something up quick because, hooray, the hostel I'm in right now has American keyboards, which it turns out is one of the most exciting things a hostel can do for me, score. I'm in Bruges right now, the first city I'm doing on my own. After this I'm heading to London to crash with Andy and Colleen (hopefully) for a couple days, then with my friend Dan from York Uni at his place in Windsor, then probably up to Scotland to see the highlands. We spent some time in Paris which was alright, but generally overated, I think. The Louvre is cool and just massive. The Eifel Tower is really big and awfully ugly. Honestly, I'm not sure I see the romance of that one. Notre Dame is big, but not as big as the York Minster, and at this point I pretty much am not impressed with giant churches - they just kinda make me sad/angry. We saw Versaille, which was cool, but tours of palaces only show you the same 8 or 10 rooms of every palace, so it all kinda seems the same each time. Ok, this post is annoying me already because I'm so unimpressed with what really is pretty cool. So I'm gonna stop I think. In general, things are going really well and I'm having a good time. So there's your update. It's not as bad as the previous few lines made it sound, I'm just a cynic. :) Peace.

Germany, Part 2

So we're back in Germany now. We left Prague today at around 5:30, but only after we got to the station about 40 minutes early and then realized 30 minutes before our train left that we were at the WRONG train station. That was fun. Fortunately for us, we're getting really good at "mobilizing" as Emily put it later on the train, so we still made it. In fact, after we ran through two train stations carrying all our stuff, we ended up getting to the platform before the train! That was more annoying than it seems like it should be. Anyway, I haven't got a ton of time, so I'll make this short. We're in Berlin until Thursday and then we go to Paris. Yeah, I know, but it just seems like you should go to Paris if you're in Europe. Hopefully I'll make it through the situation. Ok, I gotta go before I run out of time. Just thought I'd try to update quick.

Today is the day we leave Hungary. We are wandering around for most of the day, trying to get a little more sight-seeing done, and then at around 6:00 we will leave for Munich. Sadly, we will only be there for about a day, then off to Prague for another short stay. The time in Budapest has made us realize that we could really use more time in these places, but we'll just do the best with what we've got. I just thought I'd throw a little update on here because I have no idea what it's going to be like in Munich and Prague, so I'm not sure how possible this might be there. So those are our plans, and hopefully it all works out. By the way, if anyone is thinking of coming to Budapest, you absolutely have to do it and you have to stay at the ART hostel. You can find it on hostelworld.com. It's freakin' amazing!

HUNGARY!

Yo ya'll. So today was the day, we started the journey. Currently we are staying at a hostel in Budapest which is freakin' sweet. It only has room for 16 people total, which makes it really cool because it feels kinda like a bed and breakfast but cheaper. We had a pretty uneventful flight here from Manchester and once we got here we just walked around a little bit (on the suggestion of the woman looking after the hostel today) and walked for a while along the Danube. It's gorgeous, just in case you were wondering. Well, not a whole lot to say right now, but the internet is free so I thought I'd throw somethin up here while I can. We leave here on Thursday for Munich and then to Prague. Hopefully I can keep this thing somewhat updated for most of the journey. We'll see. In the mean time, just know that this is really hard to do because the z's and y's are switched on Hungarian keyboards, and the apostrophe (?) is different, too. And come to think of it, so is the question mark! And the exclamation mark! Ok, I'm done. Peace.

travels!

Hey folks. So today I moved out of my room for the next five weeks and pushed all my worldly belongings (the ones here, anyway) to my friend Phil's place in a shopping cart that randomly appeared at our building. It took about forty minutes. :) We're finalizing our plans for our big travels, pretty exciting/stressful. It looks like our plan is this: On the 27th we're going to head to Manchester and take a plane to Budapest. Then on the 30th we're flying to Munich, but it's supposed to be kinda expensive there so we're only gonna stay for a day. On the 31st we take a train overnight to Prague, which should be a good time. On the evening of the 2nd it's another train to Berlin, where we'll be for four nights. We head to Paris on the 6th by plane and then on the 7th or 8th I'll leave the rest of the group to go to Brugges which is in Belgium. Hopefully then I'll have booked a ferry ride to Dover a day or two later and then I'll just bum around the UK for a day or two (some of my flatmates told me I could crash with them, score) and then head to Scotland where I can check out the Highlands. If there's time, I might just go to Ireland, too, after Scotland. Either way, the guys from my flat and I are planning a trip or two to Ireland next term just for the weekend. I'm just trying to not get too nervous about all of this, so wish me luck and feel free to send up any prayers that come to mind. :) I've never really done much of anything like this (obviously) so it'll be an adventure, I'm sure. Contact will be sporatic at best over the next five weeks, cause I'll always be on the move, but hopefully when I get back to York I will be able to get Skype working again and talk to some of you. Have a good Easter, everybody!

To sum up the trip:

Manchester > Budapest 3/27 10:05 - 13:55 Jet2

Budapest > Munich 3/30 17:55 - 19:15 (Nuembourg) 19:15 - 20:45 Airberlin

Munich > Prague 3/31 11:00 pm - 4/1 8:00 am DeutscheBahn

Prague > Berlin 4/2 17:34 - 22:18 DeutscheBahn

Berlin Schoenefeld > Paris Orly 4/6 8:45 - 10:30 easyjet

Paris > Brugges 4/7 (or 8)

Brugges > Dover 4/8 (or 9)

4/9 - 4/15(ish) > UK travel

update

Yeah, so Scotland was fun. Since then it's just been mostly trying to get ready for the big trip across the channel (?) over break. Should be an interesting time. It looks now like after I get back from the Continent I might be able to go to the Scottish Highlands with a real Scottish guide! (not like, a professional guide, but this chick from my building said she might be able to drive me up there for a couple days, we'll see) In the mean time, I've got a paper to finish up and we still need to finalize some of the specifics about travel and whatnot.

On a completely different note, it seems like I've brought Illinois over here with me. When we went to Scotland (so, two weeks ago, roughly) it had just snowed a bunch and apparently they got a lot more snow here than where we were, because I'm told of a giant exciting 200-man snowball fight all over campus. Kinda sad I missed out on that, but I got to see Edinburgh, so it's all good. Then, the week after that it was probably in the fifties here, and really nice. Then we got some more rain (which shouldn't be surprising, but I'm told England is in the worst drought since the 60's, so it doesn't rain as much as it should recently), and then the temps started dropping again. A couple of us tried to go rock climbing around here on Sunday, but it was blizzarding (kinda, england style, not illinois style), so we went anyway. We're hardcore. When we got there there was probably a good 2 inches on the ground and it was blowing and snowing pretty hard. Visibility wasn't exactly wonderful. A couple of the guys climbed a little bit and one actually made it quite a way up but didn't want to try the last 10 feet or so because it was really snowy up there and he probably would have slipped or something. I tried to climb (first time!) but that freakin rock was so cold. I got a little way up and realized that I couldn't feel my hands AT ALL so I just sat back on the rope and swung for few minutes. It was really cold. Yeah. Then yesterday it was really cold and windy, kinda like home. Probably the most like illinois it's been since I've been here. And last night it sleeted for a few hours and now we have snow again. Well, maybe it's good for these crazy English folk to get a taste of a real winter from time to time, eh? In any case, it keeps ya guessing, keeps ya on your toes.

Tonight we're going out for the March birthdays that fall during break (there are four of us). That should be a good time, but it'll probably just be really cold on the way to town so I doubt we'll do a whole lot or stay out terribly late. Plus it's the last week of class, so most of us have tests (not me) or papers to write (definitely me). Ok, that's my exciting update for ya'll. Wish me luck in getting all our crap finalized for the trip. We'll probably need it.