Some exciting things

It's been about a month since I landed in Aberdeen!

A few exciting things have happened since I blogged last. Here they are in increasing excitement levels:

I wrote a paper on the Trinity. It was a 500 word response, and was one of the most frustrating things I have written in the two and a half years I've been in religion classes.

At the natural foods store, I bought non-British tea. Lots of it. I'm not really sure what all the hype is around tea here, because like almost everything else here, the rest of the world does it better. The last week and a half has also seen the mysterious disappearance of my coffee mug and its miraculous return.  I've also been eating so...much...rice. In addition to non-British tea, I also bought some African soup (I had this crazy craving for peanut butter soup), and a couple Indian curries. Before you ask, no, I haven't braved the haggis or black pudding.

I have started giving myself 10 extra minutes to walk to campus in the morning so I can detour and walk along the River Don to the west of the park. The sun is supposed to be out this week, so pictures to come soon.

The thesis statements for two of my three big term papers are sort of set...something about an analysis of Constantine v. Ashoka for Buddhism and a short survey of the resurrection from an orthodox perspective (with a second section on new readings of the resurrection story in light of radical suffering) for my doctrine class. I haven't exactly made friends in those discussion tutorials. Students in those classes aren't big on questioning the opinions of the authors - something I learned in the awkward silence that followed my somewhat forceful contradiction of someone's opinion on sin. I regularly wonder if my Rhodes professors would laugh if they saw video recordings of my class discussions, and sincerely hope they do in storytelling debriefs during office hours in the fall.

I've seen some familiar faces on Skype! I caught my sister on FaceTime just as she was leaving Cafe Eclectic, so I got the iPhone tour of the restaurant and the short trip back to campus. It was good to see all of the familiar art and brightly colored walls. I thought about the ridiculous number of cups of Citrus Spice tea I'm going to drink and the wonderful people I'll run into there in just a few months (I'm looking at you St. John's!).

Spring/Easter break is coming together in little bits. The trip to Iona Abbey for Holy Week is more official. I'm "penciled in" and need to start figuring out how in the world I'm going to get there (it involves a train, a bus and at least one ferry).

That's about it! Miss you all.