This is for Steph

Anne and Jude have made it safely to Rocky, and brought with them a directive from Steph that I post more on the blog. I made it here last week, after a pretty straightforward paper/ exam period. Two long papers that both went quite well (well, the one I've heard about went well, and I'm pretty sure about the other) and one Hebrew exam that was more difficult than it should have been. Part of the problem was that we weren't taught all that well. It was a very basic introduction in six weeks, and the instructor had trouble fitting it all in, which led to him going very quickly over how to parse verbs in the last class. His hurry meant that I and a friend had to teach ourselves how to parse the verbs, and then I got up the morning of the exam and taught more of my classmates. The upside was that I really understood it all quite well, since I always learn better by teaching. The downside was that, well, my classmates had to learn from me, a dodgy proposition at best.

But it came and went, and it was ok. Not a piece of cake, by any means, but manageable. With a little luck that will be the last Hebrew I have to do.

And now I'm home until the 4th, when I'm going to Toronto for two weeks. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I'm going overseas with the church for three months next summer. I don't know where yet, but I will be working with an Anglican church in a non-western country. I'll be seeing how they do things and getting a sense of how the church works in the world wide context. The two weeks in Toronto are training and orientations, mostly of the "how not to be a stupid white person" genre. Normally the two weeks of the course would not mean that I miss any school, since VST usually has a two week interterm. However, this year, because of the Olympics, the interterm is cancelled, and we have a two week reading break (during the Olymics). So, I'm going to miss the first two weeks of all my classes. I've arranged for notes, and bought the books and started pre-reading, so if I keep this pace up I'll be actually more prepared than usual!