I must apologize. Things were hectic all week last week with a massive workload, and this weekend was constant busyness. Fortunately for me, I got all my work done and in on time, and made it through the weekend without missing out on anything. Things here should slow down a little for the week, which is great and will finally give me a chance to focus on the people here for a little bit.
Last week was filled with work. I spent most of my time working on an exegesis of John 15, where Jesus claims to be the vine. I honestly have never spent that much effort working on a paper, and I feel like it turned out great. I also got a solid grade on it. I'm pretty proud of that paper, and it's the first time in recent history that I spent a couple of hours in preparation before I wrote one word of the paper.
Nothing too significant happened last week. All my free time was spent in the dining hall working on one of my papers, which meant I had a lot of community time with some of the other people from my classes.
For Biology on Friday, we went and investigated some areas that have streams running through them, and measured the effect people have on the environment. After that, we went for a fun walk in a nature reserve nearby and saw giraffes. They were pretty cool, and the looked very goofy, and ran in what looked like was slow motion. I wasn't as impressed as everyone else though.
I'm learning something about myself on this trip. I've always admired nature and loved to be in it to a degree. But I'm realizing I don't appreciate it as much as some other people do. Not that I don't love it - I value every moment I get to spend in the wilderness out here, and am taken aback by every breathtaking view I witness. I see God in all these things, and the cool animals I have never seen in person so close before. But when I look at some other people I know, who can go out and climb rocks for 5 days straight and admire the awesome views, that's just not me. I get my rush and my closeness to God from interacting with other people. This makes me so confident and reassured of "my" career choice. I'm pumped to someday, for a living, get to interact with people. It's definitely more of my field of knowledge.
This Saturday, we went on a hike through the Drakensberg mountains. If that doesn't sound manly enough for you, Drakensberg is Afrikaans for "Dragon's Back." So we went to the Dragon's Back mountains to see paintings from bushmen tribes and that stuff, which was alright. The great stuff was the 45 minute hike back through a "half-Braveheart, half-Lord of the Rings" world. There's a rumor going around that they did set modeling for LOTR less than 50 miles from where we were at, and if this is true, it definitely showed. It was gorgeous. The other awesome part was the fact that many of us took the opportunity to spend about an hour wading in a stream that was pretty fun. Some of us fell in when no one was looking, but pretended that they were just planning on getting wet the whole time so no one could tell (that was me). It was a three hour drive each way, so that was most of the day. The evening was spent with 7 of the 11 guys watching The Patriot from a Heath Ledger variety pack on a projector screen, and one of the first times that I really got away from girls on this trip. I didn't realize how overwhelmed I was by the estrogen, but I'm definitely planning on more "guys only" events in the future, so I don't get as irritated with the girls when I do spend time with them.
Speaking of girls, and keeping in mind that I was very irritated with a large quantity of the girls on this trip, I am very pleased with the girls that are here. Part of it is spending more time with the girls I like, part of it is spending less time with the girls I find annoying, and part of it is realizing that no matter what, 99% of the people will be irritating at one point on this trip (including the girls). It may have been the man night, or the acceptance of stupid things most people will say, or understanding the closeness of living situations will bring more conflict, but I definitely have felt closer to a lot of the people here lately.
Sunday was great. Church in the morning was great as always, and lunch was fun. After lunch was an event where all 50+ of us played drums together, making awesome beats and sounds and such. After this was a campus-wide game of Capture the Flag, and it was intense and great. After that was dinner, which was a nice, dress-up dinner followed by a dance party that lasted for two hours. It was great to just be goofy and dance and mess around for a while.
Today (Monday) was great. Despite a 45 minute Bio presentation I had yet to look at this morning, the responsibility of putting my groups slides together, receiving 3 of the group members slides with less than 15 minutes until class, and a miscommunication about who was doing which sections, I finished the project and we presented it without any mistakes. I also got a test back I though I had done incredibly poorly on, but I apparently got an A on it. I'm not complaining.
Tonight, for Valentine's Day, all the guys who didn't have previous engagement decided to have a Valentine's Night guys hang-out time, where we talked about cool things like Biblical friendship, and what real friendship is with God's role in that friendship. By the end of it, the study had become story-telling about ridiculous friends from home. It was great because it was spontaneous and fun, and I asked about 3 questions the whole 45 minutes to spark discussion. Definitely on of the best Valentine's Days ever. No doubt about it.
So that's been the week. This next week should be a relatively light workload, so hopefully I'll be able to finish 1984 finally. It will hopefully be a relaxing week to get ahead on homework and reload for the hectic pre-finals and finals week. With that being said, I'm over halfway through my classes already. I have less than 3 weeks left. This semester is ridiculous!
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