"Boys are friends, not food"

We gave our dorm brothers some donuts and apple cider, and that's what one of my fellow dorm mates wrote on the card to them. It made me laugh.

Perspective

"So you're from California? I never would have guessed. You don't seem like the typical California girls I've seen here."

Thus spake one of the guys in my freshman class. I'm in a small group that meets on Tuesday night. Tonight was our first meeting and we were visiting afterwards. This same fellow, Andy, gained points a little later on when another guy, Mike, asked how old I was. (Rats. I would rather they live in ignorance on that score.) I somewhat reluctantly told them, and Mike said he thought I was probably twenty-four.

(insert Andy to Mike)

"Really? I wouldn't have even guessed that old."

An out of town guest

Today I was blessed to be able to spend the day with a good friend. What a treat! Thanks for coming up, Amie. After giving her the grand tour of dear ol' NTBI school (and finishing my laundry) we went "out on the town" and enjoyed shopping and catching up over a cup of blended coffee. It was interesting to look back over the past couple years and see where God has lead us. And where will be two years from now? Only the Lord knows. Life is definitely an adventure when you're walking with Jesus. There is no place I would rather be.

Gah!! Extremely loud noise!

We had a fire drill today. Fortunately, I was NOT in the shower when the alarm went off. It is my understanding that by law the school is required to have four fire drills and one tornado drill every semester.

I am currently working on a paper on Augustine for my hermeneutics class. Aside from the usual bio information (where/when he was born, where he went to school, family and personal life, etc) we are also supposed to determine which hermaneutic he employed regarding the following issues:

A. The Kingdom of God - Literal, spiritual, or allegorical?
B. The Church and Israel - Does the Church get the promises of Israel? Why or why not?
C. Old Testament Prophecy Fulfilled - For Israel, the Church; literally, allegorically, or spiritually?

The most challenging part about this assignment is that we are only allowed five hours to work on it. (gulp!) If we have spent the allotted five hours but have not completed the paper we are supposed to write, "I have completed five hours" and turn in the paper as is. Interesting, eh?

As I was leaving the dining hall this evening, one of the staff children (12 boy) was asking a guy if he wanted whatever was in the five gallon bucket he was carrying. I peeked inside and immediately recoiled. It was a huge, brown praying mantis. That thing was probably five inches long!! Yuck! I hate praying mantises. I saw one eat the head off of another one once, and I haven't liked them since. There is another guy here at school that has a praying mantis and he said he feeds it crickets and grasshoppers. (shivers!)

......after I got back up to my dorm I thought maybe I should keep it myself. It might help me get used to gigantic bugs just in case I end up in a tribe someday. But alas, I have nothing in which to keep the dear little thing.

Hazard warning

One of the hazards of attending a family-friendly school:

I rounded the corner to head down the hallway where the several of the married students live and was hit by the unmistakable smell of a dirty diaper.

But it is totally worth it. I love having so many children running around here.

Due to yet another case of writer's block...

Fossy599 (12:27:55 PM): Hey.
MrTaxPreparer (12:28:03 PM): Yo.
MrTaxPreparer (12:28:19 PM): Howarya?
Fossy599 (12:28:29 PM): We got out of class early today, so I am going to ATTEMPT to post an update on my xanga.
MrTaxPreparer (12:28:37 PM): Yahoo!
Fossy599 (12:28:40 PM): I've been having trouble with writers block lately.
Fossy599 (12:28:42 PM): Sorry.
MrTaxPreparer (12:29:00 PM): I want something like ...
MrTaxPreparer (12:29:16 PM): "Well, here's a shotgun peek into my world:
Fossy599 (12:29:34 PM): Okay.
MrTaxPreparer (12:29:43 PM): "My dormroom is on the 3rd floor in six story brick building ...
Fossy599 (12:30:03 PM): Three story brick building.
MrTaxPreparer (12:30:07 PM): Whatever
MrTaxPreparer (12:30:09 PM):
MrTaxPreparer (12:30:23 PM): As I was saying ...
MrTaxPreparer (12:31:12 PM): "The campus is is very small, with a guys dorm, a girls dorm, the main building (offices, classrooms), and a cafeteria/gymnasium"
MrTaxPreparer (12:31:35 PM): "The weather has been ...
MrTaxPreparer (12:32:19 PM): "Jackson is similar to home in that .... but it is also much different because ..."
MrTaxPreparer (12:32:47 PM): "I have attended ... churches, and I'm feeling drawn more toward .... because ...."
Fossy599 (12:32:55 PM): Mongolia!!
Fossy599 (12:32:56 PM):
MrTaxPreparer (12:32:56 PM): etc, etc, etc
MrTaxPreparer (12:33:11 PM): Mongolia, Magnolia, whatever
Fossy599 (12:33:17 PM): Our chapel speaker today was from Mongolia.
MrTaxPreparer (12:33:23 PM): Nice
Fossy599 (12:33:23 PM): Talk about crazy weather!
MrTaxPreparer (12:33:29 PM): No!
MrTaxPreparer (12:33:35 PM): Not to me! POST! POST!!
MrTaxPreparer (12:33:45 PM): The rest of the California world wants to hear, too!
Fossy599 (12:33:51 PM): He said it can get up to 115* during the day and -40* at night and ALL IN THE SAME DAY.
Fossy599 (12:34:00 PM): How does the human body handle that???
MrTaxPreparer (12:34:02 PM): What??
Fossy599 (12:34:08 PM): I know! Crazy.
Fossy599 (12:34:57 PM): By the way, did you see the picture of me as nun?
MrTaxPreparer (12:35:14 PM):
MrTaxPreparer (12:35:15 PM): Yup
MrTaxPreparer (12:35:19 PM): What was that all about, anyway?
Fossy599 (12:35:26 PM): Open dorm night. Our dorm became a convent for the night. Funny, I've always wanted to be a nun.
Fossy599 (12:35:52 PM): I really, REALLY wish we could have got a picture of our dorm along with one of the guys dorms.
Fossy599 (12:36:17 PM): They wore white togas like the Romans.
Fossy599 (12:36:19 PM): LOL!!
MrTaxPreparer (12:36:24 PM): hehe
Fossy599 (12:36:32 PM): What a contrast between us and them. There we were dressed in black from head to toe, and they were, um, well.....
Fossy599 (12:36:34 PM): LOL
Fossy599 (12:36:40 PM): It was pretty funny.
MrTaxPreparer (12:36:46 PM): Man - all this starts to shed some light on Kevin Bertram
Fossy599 (12:37:22 PM): It was a blast. It was a really good time of mixing up with everyone and just getting to be more familiar with the students.
MrTaxPreparer (12:37:42 PM): Coolness, coolness
Fossy599 (12:50:19 PM): Well, I guess I'll have to do the xanga post another time.
Fossy599 (12:50:33 PM): I'm afraid I used up all my writing brain power on dear you.
MrTaxPreparer (12:50:42 PM): lol
MrTaxPreparer (12:50:55 PM): Fine then - copy and paste our conversation into Xanga
MrTaxPreparer (12:50:58 PM): That'll do for a start
MrTaxPreparer (12:51:04 PM):
Fossy599 (12:51:10 PM): That's exactly what I'm doing.
Fossy599 (12:51:13 PM): Great minds....
Fossy599 (12:51:25 PM):
Fossy599 (12:51:33 PM): TTFN!
MrTaxPreparer (12:51:36 PM): Cya!
Fossy599 (12:51:38 PM): Love you.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Sorry, folks. It's the best I can do for now. But I will say that I am still thoroughly enjoying being here at NTBI. We are now studying History of Hermaneutics, the Pentateuch, and continuing Evangelism in a Postmodern World. The homework is not quite as intense this block, but we do have a LOT of reading. So off I go!

Reading, reading

SO MUCH reading! I can't seem to take it in fast enough. Whew!

Tonight for supper they served scrambled eggs, country potatoes, and sausage along with the usual salad bar. It was a fun change. The food here is really good. (I don't remember if I've mentioned that or not yet. Amazingly enough, in the two-plus weeks that I have been here they have not served the same meal twice with the exception of breakfast and pizza Fridays. Yesterday we had beef stew for lunch and joy! CHEDDAR CHEESE! (That was for you, KT.) The stew tasted almost exactly like Mom's. But not quite. :)

All rightly. "Enough of this jibber-jabber!"

Back to the books.

Sleep chapel

On Tuesdays there is no set chapel. The students fondly refer to this period as "sleep chapel."

Sleep is overrated. I choose to STUDY! We have our first test in Bibliology at 10:00. I will have to remember words like "canonical," "Torah, Nevi'im, and Kethuvim," "Homologoumena," "Pseudipigrapha," etc. Cool stuff.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Edit: 10:30am

I owe Pastor Glen a big thank you for all those nice LONG tests he gave us each week in Bible study. I was prepared for the "worst," but our Bibliology test was surprisingly short and must easier than I expected. Hurrah! I know I didn't ace it, but that's all right, because it helped me to know in which areas I need to study more. And LEARNING is the whole goal of being here at NTBI.

Freshmen classes

"The key to doing away with [gender and race bias] mythologies isn't challenging attitudes, but talking differently. Words don't describe reality; they create reality. We will never form a society free from such prejudice, they believe, unless we control the words and language upon which that prejudice is based. The political-correctness movement isn’t just an attempt to keep from hurting people’s feelings, but an attempt to create different kinds of people by changing the cultural environment." THE DEATH OF TRUTH, “Postmodernism and ‘The Myth of Progress’” pg. 48-49

Let's all call a snake a dove.... The whole "politically correct" thing has confused me for so long. This totally brings it into a new light. Absolutely amazing.

Today being Labor Day we do not have any classes. (Yay!) It has been a nice quiet morning and I've been able to get quite a bit of homework and studying done. Following are the classes I am currently taking:

BIBLICAL FOUNDATIONS - Learning objective statement: "Upon completion of this course the student will have a basic understanding of the progression of Biblical revelation as well as the major themes in Scripture. This will give the student a solid foundation for further Biblical studies."
(In this class we are basically going through the entire Bible in a matter of fifteen days. Whoosh! Obviously we do not go into much depth, but it shows how the Bible is one continuous story.)

BIBLIOLOGY - Learning objective: " For students to understand the necessity of God's revelation to man; to see the uniqueness of the Bible and to understands its claim of inspiration; to understand why the 66 books of the Bible are the only books to be included in the canon of Scripture; to understand how accurate our Scriptures are in comparison with the originals; to be convinced that the Bible can be relied upon as an adequate source of God's revelation to man; to understand the process of translation and the basic characteristics of English translation."

EVANGELISM FOR A POSTMODERN WORLD - Learning objective: "Upon completion of this course the student will be able to discover ad evaluate different worldviews with the purpose of clearly communicating the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the unsaved."

They are all very good classes and I really like my teachers as well. I think the evangelism class is probably my favorite simply because I am learning so much. I almost feel my brain stretching. The homework and require reading takes up the bulk of my time when not in class, but I am thoroughly enjoying it. I am thrilled to know I have two full years of this ahead of me, Lord willing.