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LONDON: First, Bryce finished his Greek exam and began to eat the Christmas dinner at Free Church College. Then he had to leave early to catch our 4.5 hour train to London. We made it easily (minus screaming babies and smelly-man behind us) to our hotel in Knightsbridge (around the corner from Harrod’s) and were greeted with big hugs by my parents. We feasted on Thai food that evening. Some things we did: rode the Tube a lot and enjoyed listening to the buskers, went to Camden marketplace (home to 80s psychadelic punkrock scene), saw an escape artist in Covent Garden (who escaped from chains, straightjacket, padlocks and toilet seats), saw the changing of the guard outside Buckingham Palace, walked around Harrod’s with our mouths gaping, walked along the Thames and saw Big Ben, the houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye (world’s biggest ferriswheel) all lit up at night (well, at least in the dark, it may not have been ‘night’ exactly). We also saw Les Mis and Mama Mia and ate Italian, Japanese (noodle bar), and had tea and biscuits quite regularly. We also got to watch TV and take super-hot showers–we lived the life, let me tell you!

YORK: We spent one day is this beautiful little town. We noticed right away how much more friendly the cabbies were here than in London; it is true that the farther north you get, the friendlier it becomes. We saw the Minster (huge cathedral where we had to pay to get in, particularly ‘miffing’), walked around the town, ate fish and chips, and walked through the Shambles (old medieval streets where the buildings are so closely packed and are sagging down and away from their foundation, so it feels a bit Alice-in-Wonderland-ish). We also went to the Castle Museum (the actual castle’s been demolished 100s of years) but the museum was really interesting and had a walkable model of an old town, very cool.

BANCHORY: We hired a car and drove up to the Crocketts’ for 2 days. We loved being with family and being out in the country from all the metropolitan places from which we had come. We had a yummy turkey dinner on Christmas eve, went to the Watchnight church service at 11 PM that evening, watched our new DVD (the Italian Job), and had such fun times being with family, relaxing and eating home-cooked meals. We were extremely blessed with presents and should stay warm and entertained for a long time!

EDINBURGH: It rained the whole drive back to Edinburgh. En route, we stopped at Dunnottar Castle (see the pic on the front page of our website) on the way out and ate some steak and Guinness pie at an Irish pub. We tried to go grocery shopping as we had no food at all, but lo and behold, supermarkets are not open on Boxing Day. It was funny as the only way Bryce and I know how to get to ASDA is by taking Bus #5, so when we had the hired car, it made for a pretty circuitous route to get to ASDA. My parents did the Edinburgh city bus tour the following morning and we toured the Castle and walked along the Royal Mile, stopping at the Tartan Weaving Mill and St Giles Cathedral. We ate at Pizza Express (kinda like CPK for all you Californians) in Stockbridge overlooking the Water of Leith last night. Today was great; we were back at our church and my parents took us and Jonathan and Sarah out to lunch. We had the best burger in Edinburgh (well, the only one we’ve had and it was quite good) and then made a trip to IKEA to pick up more candles, napkins, lightbulbs, and fold-out tables that will be our pseudo-desk in efforts to prevent total curviture of the neck/spine. Tonight we’re planning on seeing Lord of the Rings and the next 2 days we’ll take day trips to Stirling and St. Andrews! Then it’s Hogmanay in Edinburgh.

We hope you all are having a great holiday!

Bryce has his last exam today in Greek. I’ve finished rough drafts of my papers and have submitted my biography reviews. So while my husband has a three-hour exam, I’ll be cleaning the flat and finishing up last-minute packing. We leave today for London at 2 PM and we’ll be running around that huge city for 3 days and get to eat Thai food, Japanese food and oh yeah, see some sights: Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, Camden marketplace–you know, the usual. Then we have one day in York en route to Edinburgh. We’ll be having Christmas with the Crocketts and we hope it’ll snow! Then we’ll be back in our flat and plan to take day trips to Stirling, St. Andrews, and probably Glasgow. We are so looking forward to a nice long break from work and it’ll be great to be with my parents. We hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and that Christ is glorified in your celebrations.

I know, I know, we’re busy and all, but really, we could use some comments on our blog here. I’ve finished my rough drafts for my papers (lets out a cheer) and now before Friday, just need to read (read: skim) three biographies, write a short bit on each and shortlist one for the prize. Exciting life I lead, let me tell you. We had a nice weekend and didn’t do much studying–which I’m sure we’ll regret once the week progresses and Bryce doesn’t sleep much since he’ll be cramming for Practical Theology and Greek. We finished up some last-minute Xmas shopping and even went out for an inexpensive lunch on Saturday. We went to both morning and night services at church and didn’t leave until nearly 10 PM as we were chatting with folks–it was really enjoyable. But we hadn’t eaten since lunch, so by the time 10 rolled around we were pretty hungry so we stopped by RiceBox, a Chinese takeaway (which amazingly was pretty good!). We also watched the Two Towers (inbetween services) as I hadn’t seen the second Lord of the Rings and since the last one is due out this week, we thought it’d be a good idea.

In case you didn’t know, we’ll be gone from 19 Dec-26 Dec in London with my parents and then in Banchory with the Crocketts for Christmas. So not too much blogging will be going on then. We love you all and hope you have a fabulous Christmas holiday!

I have now completed 2 of my 4 finals. This morning was Old Testament. I studied last night (this morning, to be precise) until about 5AM. I woke up after about 3 hours of sleep with the feeling that the final would go about as smoothly as shifting from 60 to reverse on the freeway. Aside from only having 1 day to prepare for this exam, the prof is known to ask tricky or obscure questions.
Thankfully, the exam went quite well. Much to the dissapointment of our class’s guru-of-speculation, we did not have to discuss the length of a creation day. I feel I answered all the questions well, I even managed to quote a page number, which is pretty impressive for a closed book exam (in my humble opinion).
So, the most difficult of my finals are now behind me. Now I have to teach myself some apologetics (as the profesor neglected to do that) for Tuesday, and make sure I can still do a little bit of Greek for Friday.
I’ve come to the conclusion that pastors are required to go to seminary not primarily because of what they learn while they are there (though that is, of course, quite useful). The real reason is that after 3 years of being daily confronted with one’s own inadequicies, one can’t help but emerge as a humble servant of God.
That’s it for now. We get free dinner tonight! Woo hoo!

Ok, so here?s a cultural idiosyncrasy: there?s no lumbar support in this entire country. Really. And after having spent the better part of the last week sitting in a chair, reading and typing, my back and neck are less than happy with me. Thankfully my wonderful wife gave me a short massage tonight. I could really stand to have a chiropractor straighten a few things out, though.

I had my first final today, for my church history class. I feel pretty good about it. It was a 3-hour exam in which we were to answer 3 essay questions. I wrote for about 2 hours 45 minutes, after which point my hand refused to cooperate any further. I guess my hand muscles are not used to writing, since I do almost all my writing on the computer.

My next exam is on Friday, for Old Testament. I?m sitting here with a pile of books to study, and yet I?m writing this blog rather than reading . I?ll be at the college all day tomorrow reviewing; hopefully my classmates will be so kind as to return the commentaries on Leviticus and Deuteronomy that I need.

Ok, ok, here?s another trivia question — I hope it?s not overly academic, but hey, that?s what?s been consuming my life for the last few weeks. Name the early church father credited with coining the term ?Trinity?. Hint: he was also the first theologian to write in Latin. For extra credit (which will get you an extra dose of nothing) name the heretical group to which he belonged in the later years of his life.

Thought you all might like a little recent update and, as I just got home from work and don’t want to cook or start dinner yet, now’s as good a time as any. So you all can picture us, we’re in our cozy little flat, it’s in the mid 40s F (quite warm compared to the last few days), we have our gas fireplace on, and are listening to Derek Webb’s CD (“She Must and Shall Go Free”–an awesome CD). Bryce is sitting at our dining table and has been sitting in the same chair for roughly 18 of the last 36 hours, studying. His first final exam is tomorrow, Church History. He says he doesn’t feel very prepared for it, but I’m sure he’ll do wonderfully.

Weekend update: Friday we just studied until late into the night…

Saturday was more studying and then at night we went down to Princes Street and wandered around the ‘Winter Wonderland’ before going to the ‘Messiah’ performance. The ‘Winter Wonderland’ is an outdoor ice rink, German food/drink market with shopping stalls, a big ferris wheel and other carnival-type things. It’s in Princes Street gardens, a sunken area which used to be the Nor Loch, between the Royal Mile and Princes Street, heading to the Georgian New Town. We had some pork steak thing on a roll and then went off to see the ‘Messiah’ at the Anglican cathedral. It was a great performance and the singing so beautiful. We really enjoyed it. As we had purchased an all day bus pass we figured we’d go to ASDA quickly to pick up some stuff; we arrived there and found out the last bus was leaving ASDA in 10 minutes, so we dashed around getting the few things we needed (a la Supermarket Sweep) and made it just in time; that’s gotta be the shortest trip we’ve had there! It’s funny, the few times we go into somewhere like ASDA or Woolworth’s it’s amazing being in such a huge commercial store; there’s loads of course all over the states, but it’s a bit more of a rarity here, so when we go, it’s so exciting–it’s like a kid being let loose in a candy shop.

Sunday we went to church and then had Jonathan and Sarah over for tortilla soup but I don’t think I put enough stock in, so while it cooked while we were at church, it got burnt. But mostly it was salvagable. We relaxed and then that night, we did more studying and Bryce went back to church for the evening service.

Monday, I woke up way too early for a day where I don’t have classes until the afternoon and I don’t have to work. I walked down to the library to meet a girl whose MPhil paper I’ve been editing and lo and behold, she told me she had printer problems and so she didn’t have her paper. Thankfully she got that all ’sussed’ and I edited and met w/ her about her research until 2. Meanwhile, Bryce was home in the same chair, studying. Monday was so chilly, I felt like my jeans were a bit frozen when I was walking around. Monday night my class went over to our prof’s beautiful flat and watched a film, “Players”, that is relevant to the class the Literature Industry. He was so nice to open up his home and it was a bit funny as he spent a lot of the evening having his son pass around finger food while he continued to fill up our glasses. I got home at midnight and it was 22F degrees outside. And Bryce was sitting, leaning back, in the same chair studying.

I bet you’re all dying to hear how we have snow–bad news, we don’t. It’s sometimes definitely cold enough to snow, but usually then the sky’s really clear. Or we just get a nice thin coating of frost on grass or something, but no snow. And I’ve heard it doesn’t snow much, if at all, and if it does snow, it doesn’t stay on the ground. But we’re hoping it’ll snow for Christmas when we’re in Banchory as it’s north and more inland than Edinburgh is.

So that’s pretty much it for us. Bryce is studying hard and I think I’ve made up a schedule that won’t stress me out and will still allow me to get everything done in time, before leaving for London. Tangent–In the UK they say schedule like “shed-yule”; it makes me cringe, I think it’s really the only lingo I just cannot adjust to! Anyway, have a great day!

That’d be a pretty good headline for some paper, eh? Well, my computer has a virus (I think from a girl whose papers I was editing via email attachments). I may have to erase my hard drive and so spent a chunk of my paper-writing time uploading files to Yahoo Briefcase–fun stuff. I hate erasing my hard drive.

The paper writing is going alright; I have nearly 2000 words of my 5000 word paper. I’m doing the boring one first (of course the shorter one is the topic I’m more interested in). I may be doing a lightning-quick editing turnaround tomorrow and so need to get most of my paper completed tonight. I met with a prof yesterday, Susan Manning, who has been leading the American portion of my course the last three weeks. I talked with her for an hour about various research interests; she’s probably one of the most ‘famous’ people in the department and seems keen to work with me and guide me into a suitable area for Ph.D. research. She gave me some good practical advice and said how she enjoys working closely with text which really thrilled me! I have felt that so many of things I’ve heard lately have been about theory and practically, we only tend to use the literature to bring out themes rather than delve into anything deep within the text; so Susan’s interest in the text really was wonderful. I’m currently considering studying issues of physical space and its relation to the individual (what a house says about a person, how people cope in a prairie and other immense, sublime spaces, how they internalise space, are just some of the initial inquiries); also I’m looking at studying Scottish immigrant narratives to the US or other transatlantic issues.

We also had our last research methods class today, so happily that is over with. For my Monday class we’re meeting at the prof’s house to watch a film on the subject and have a discussion as well as eat some food and we’ve been told to ‘bring a bottle’ of some sort. Other than that, I made a pumpkin pie last night: good food is a good diversion from writing. Also, I am finished with my Xmas shopping and tomorrow night we’re going to hear Handel’s “Messiah.” But really most of the weekend including Monday will be spent in our flat, writing and studying. I remember when I was teaching how much I was looking forward to going back to university and now, sometimes I wish I just had a 9-5 job.

Just to give a preempted apology if we don’t blog much in the next month. Bryce has one week left of classes and then two weeks of finals, so he’ll be sitting in front of his stack of books and computer until we leave for London on Dec 19. I have three weeks of classes, in which I’m trying to read a bit and participate marginally, so that I have more time to research for my essays. I have one essay due in each class (one’s 3,000 words, the other’s 5,000) and they are worth 50 percent of my grade for my degree combined. So yeah, that’s a lot of work. Also, I’m editing a girl’s first chapter of her dissertation this week. Plus, it’s nice to spend some time together doing laundry, eating meals, sleeping in and vegging. So sorry if you don’t hear from us for awhile.

We had Thanksgiving last night with the Hays. Sarah and I were quite impressed at how well all the food turned out being that neither of us had ever cooked a proper Thanksgiving meal ever before. We had turkey, gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, biscuits, green beans, corn, pumpkin and apple pie. Sarah finally found ‘tinned’ pumpkin so we could have a yummy pie! The guy at Sainsbury’s looked at me like I was from Planet Loser when I asked about canned pumpkin and suggested just making it myself…yeah right. So I tried my best at an apple pie. It tasted pretty yummy but looked awful, oh well.

Today was what we expected Scotland to be like more than it has been: cold, overcast, rainy, and windy. We did some Christmas shopping and went to IKEA, spending probably too many hours hopping buses. OK, that’s it right now; my brain is hurting. Yay, tomorrow is Sunday and how we need a day of rest.

Hope you all had a Happy Turkey Day. Bryce said it’s been odd for him explaining multiple times the meaning of Thanksgiving in America and what everyone eats. P.S. His sermon went well and I got to hear it on audiocasette. Good stuff.

Hey there. It’s officially freezing: 30 degrees (even though today’s low still says 36, you’d think they’d change it once it gets colder). This morning as we walked to church there was frost all over the ground and I had fun sliding around like a kid. I’m surprised at how well we are adjusting to the cold weather, it’s not half as bad as I expected it to be. I’m holding out hope that it will snow, even though it apparently hasn’t snowed in Edinburgh for at least 3 years.

We got some Christmas shopping done after church, aren’t we ahead of the game? They start getting ready for Christmas even earlier here than they do in the States. I was surprised when I first noticed this happening, but after many hours of thought dedicated to the subject, I’ve come to the conclusion that it is the result of not having Thanksgiving to hold them back. On November 5th they celebrate Guy Fawkes Day (a holiday which celebrates an unsuccessful attempt to blow up Parliament, a strange thing to celebrate in my opinion), after which point the Christmas decorations that have slowly been invading stores take full force.

Last Friday I turned in my last paper for the semester: “The Effect of the Rise of Islam on Christianity.” I have 2 more weeks of class, then 2 weeks of finals, and then I’m 1/6 of the way done. Crazy, in some ways it still feels like we just got here. This Thursday I am preaching for my homiletics class (yes, that’s Thanksgiving, and of course the only 2 Americans in the class are scheduled to preach that day) on Exodus 3:1-4:17. Obviously the majority of my week will be focused on preparation for that.

Ok, so, my last trivia question caused a small amount opposition, let’s see if I can keep myself out of trouble this time. Here it is…A number of the feast in Old Testament Israel begin on the 15th of the month. What is the significance of this? Ready….Set….GO(ogle)!

And finally, today’s cultural idiosyncrasy:
The word “pants” refers to underwear in the UK. What we think of as pants are known as “trousers.” Forgetting that can get you into a sticky situation.