Term One in Retrospect

Hi Everyone!

As incredible as it seems, the first term is almost over and I will be home in roughly two days (a little more with the time change)! There has been so much going on over the past few weeks that I am now completely exhausted and very ready for a nice break. But for all of the craziness, it has been really good. We have studied the Nature and Character of God, Christology and the Trinity over the course of the past 3 weeks. I especially enjoyed the lectures on the Trinity and some of the mind expanding mental grappling that we did. We also have been pushed to express ourselves more creatively and I surprised myself by really enjoying that.

Last night we had our Christmas banquet. (I love how British people actually call the meal a Christmas feast!) Below are a few pictures from last night.

The Americans - Stefanie, Sarah and I

Me and Beverly

This requires some explaining. You see, the girls convinced me to wear some very high heels. I suffered in them for about 15 minutes and then went barefoot for the rest of the night. We decided to go to a pub afterwards and I, without really thinking, told the guys that I would walk with them instead of getting a ride in a car. Yeah, I didn't make it very far. One of the guys was pushing a bike, so they stuck me on it and pushed me the rest of the way. (Yes, I can normally ride a bike by myself, but the seat was too high for me to really reach the pedals.)

So I was thinking back over the past 4 months and a few things stuck out to me:

• I am so glad I am here. It is so hard to believe that I almost didn't come. I am as sure as I have ever been that I am in the right place. I even just remembered last week that when I was about 10 years old, I used to tell people that I was going to go to the Bible College in England that Brother Andrew (my lifelong hero) went to. I think I found out that it had shut down, so I gave up on the idea. I hadn't thought about that for years, but something recently triggered the memory. I wouldn't base my life around things like that, but it is interesting....
• I am feeling more and more at home in the Salt and Light community. A week and a half ago, some of us drove up to a Jason Upton concert at the Salt and Light church in Derby. I was pleasantly surprised to see lots of people there that I knew and to have some nice catch up time. The most important of these people was my friend Abby, who I did know before coming here (She is a friend from DTS and the reason why I am here at KBC in the first place!) But all of the other people are ones which I have met since coming here. It was amazing to realize that I have actual friendships with these people and I suddenly felt so much more at home here.
• England is beautiful. I often don't stop to notice things because I see them every day, but lately I have been appreciating my walks just a little bit more. I love how similar it is to New England and yet how different. It's hard to explain, so sometime I will try to take some pictures of where I walk every day and post them here. Even today I took a bus out to Wantage (the town where I have church placement) and I was enjoying passing sheep grazing in green fields. And Wantage is just the cutest little old English town ever!

Ok, now I really need to go to bed. I still have church placement in the morning and then go have lunch with someone in the church in the afternoon. After that I will probably walk into the center of Oxford to finish up some Christmas shopping and then head over to the guys' house for some controversial theological discussions which have been planned (yes, we are Bible college geeks!)

I'll be seeing a lot of you soon, but in case I don't, Merry Christmas!

Thanksgiving in the UK

Last week I had my first Thanksgiving away from home. I thought I would really splurge so for the first time I went and bought a cheesburger and chips (fries) from the cart across the street from the college. I must say, it was a disappointment. The cheeseburger just didn't have that substantial meaty American feel. And the guy put pepper on my fries - not a good combo, let me tell you. And that was Thanksgiving. At least we weren't fasting until the next day...

Now that you are all feeling nice and sorry for me, I'll tell you the rest of the story... (I'm feeling a little like Paul Harvey now!)

We didn't have a proper Thanksgiving on Thursday because it was kind of a crazy day - but we did plan one for Saturday. We ended up feeding 26 people - 3 Americans, 3 Canadians, 1 half American/half Canadian, 1 German, 1 Romanian, and the other 17 were British. We had the full meal - turkey, cranberry sauce (Ocean Spray!) stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, rolls, sweet potato casserole, and apple and pumpkin pie for desert. We got a turkey roll instead of a regular turkey (basically a big mass of turkey meat, looking somewhat like a small child). It took an extra hour and a half to cook, but came out nice and moist so that you almost didn't need gravy - which was a good thing because the gravy just wouldn't thicken and we ran out of cornstarch. Other than those two minor blips, everything went as smoothly as it possibly could and was amazingly delicious. I think my favorites were the stuffing and the sweet potato casserole. After being properly stuffed, we all collapsed in front of the TV to watch a movie - a nice traditional Thanksgiving! Oh, and you all will be very happy to know that I told them about the first Thanksgiving before we ate. It was an edited version because the British have short attention spans for history which doesn't revolve around them... (Sorry, I'm in kind of a punchy mood tonight. That was primarily aimed at the former history majors in the college. I just told one of my housemates what I wrote and she claims that Americans are the ones who do that. She's probably right...)

Ok, before I really start perjuring myself, I'll finish the story with some pictures...

Sarah, one of the other Americans, and the primary organizer of our feast

How do you carve a turkey?

Waiting for food...

A beautiful sight!

The cleanup - so glad we decided to use paper plates and plastic cups!

Canned pumpkin is not generally sold in the UK and we weren't able to find any. Zoe had a can leftover from her Canadian Thanksgiving which she was saving for Christmas, but she shared it with us instead. We made her an honorary American for the day!

More from Blenheim Palace!

One of the guys here took some really good pictures the day we went to the park at Blenheim Palace. (We give all the credit to his nice camera - but to be fair, he does have some skill too!) The pictures were too nice not to share with you.

Rolling hills - it actually makes me a little seasick just looking at it.

There was this amazing moment when the sun broke through the clouds. Ben was there to capture the moment - and I was there thinking, "Oh good, Ben will get a good picture and then I will steal it!" - a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The whole group of us who went out that day

Birthday Pictures

Those of us who were up at 12:03 am on November 20th to welcome in my birthday - the earliest I have ever seen it (because of the time change).

My beautiful flowers - thank you Mom and Dad!

A Saturday Ramble in the Countryside

Wellies are the best things ever invented!

Driving on the left-hand side is starting to make sense to me - scary, I know!

Lovely Louise

You can see Blenheim Palace in the distance.

Helen tried to cross the puddle in her wellies, but couldn't quite make it.

I tried to make friends with the sheep, but Mike ruined my efforts by chasing them.

Back at the guys' house we had curry from the Indian restaurant around the corner and then passed out on the floor (or at least I did - that's me in the blue skirt).

It's all going by so fast!

I have started writing two separate blogs in the past few weeks and then waited so long to finish them that I had to start from scratch again. Whew! I can't believe how fast time is going. It sometimes feels like I've been sucked up in a tornado. I think all of us in the college are feeling like that. There is a facebook group for our class and on it we have a section for funny quotes that happen throughout the year. Here is one of my favorites (said while a few of the girls were sitting in McDonalds have a small group meeting):

Sarah: Oh, it's going so fast!
Louise: I know. We just have to enjoy the time together.
Sarah: Oh no, I was meaning my McMuffin.

Yeah, don't know that most of us have had Sarah's experience with a McMuffin (for the record, I have not been into McDonald's since I've been here), but we are feeling that the days are flying by!

We had two weeks on Church History which were so good - although not nearly long enough. I have been challenged so much both intellectually and spiritually. Particularly in the second week, it was amazing to see God doing major work in a lot of us through the stories of men like John Wesley and George Whitefield. It was especially powerful hearing about Smith Wigglesworth on the last day. Our lecturer was originally from the same area as Smith Wigglesworth and had grown up hearing firsthand stories about him from area pastors. After that we ended up scrapping the last hour of our lecture to have some prayer and ministry time. Really powerful stuff - and kind of crazy that it all happened during a Church History week when we didn't even crack open the Bible!

From Tuesday to Thursday this week we were in Derby for a prayer conference with the leaders of Salt & Light churches in the UK. It was a very intense time between fasting on Tuesday and then praying all day Wednesday, but I enjoyed it so much. I was surprised at how easy it was to pray for that length of time. We kept splitting up into different groups to pray for different things, so it was great to get to know people from all over Salt and Light as I prayed with them. A highlight was when one of the pastors assumed that I was Irish - after having heard me pray! Yeah, his hearing must be going or something, but I milked it for all it was worth with the rest of my team because they all wish they could talk in an Irish accent!

One of the reasons that things have been picking up in pace is that we have been given our church placements. I am with two other girls at a church in Wantage, a smaller town about twenty minutes drive from Oxford. I honestly don't think that I could have been put in a better church. The people are so welcoming and friendly and I feel at home with them already - which is good because I will be going there a couple of times a week for a good long while. I also really enjoy the pastor, Neil, and his wife Dee. I am definitely looking forward to spending more time with them!

In our group we have kind of settled down into being one big crazy family. There are always issues to be worked out as we live in community, but we are learning to love each other right through our faults, and sometimes even because of them. Things are messy and exhausting with lots of late night talks and hugs, but it is all part of how we grow.

Oh, and I had a birthday yesterday! Everyone was great about wishing me happy birthday and offering to get me tea/coffee/juice. We were having a training time with a well known evangelist that day, so it was very intense and tiring - not really the kind of day that makes you bounce up and down and say, "yay, it's my birthday", but it was good. We didn't get home until the evening, but I was then surprised by the whole elementary school at TNT singing happy birthday to me on Skype. It made my day! It was also great to talk to my family. We went over to the guys' house to watch Band of Brothers, so I talked to them on Skype from there. It was kind of surreal to be sitting on the floor of the guys' house, opening presents in front of a computer - but it was nice!

Ok, gotta head out! I'll try to post pictures later tonight. Hopefully this makes up for some of my delinquencies in blogging.... :)

It's snowing in Walsall!

Yes, I meant that. Not Warsaw - Walsall. And it really is snowing! Ok, actually I just looked outside and I think it has stopped. But it did snow gigantic flakes for an hour or two and accumulated a couple of inches on the ground. Snow in October would be newsworthy in Massachusetts and is nothing short of amazing in England.

So to backtrack a little, I am in Walsall for reading week, staying with my friend Abby and the family that she is living with this year - Erin and Dan and their 3 boys. Sam and Ethan are twin 6 year olds and Judah is 3. (By the way, the picture is of Ethan as he is walking out the door to go play in the snow.)

~ ~ ~ ~

Ok, I just took a little break to get little Judah into his pajamas, but now I'm back. So as I was saying, I'm here through Thursday and then I go to Gloucester to visit my friend Mike from KBC and then we'll catch the train back to Oxford on Friday. I have to admit that my schedule is not the most conducive to reading, but I am doing the best I can in that department - and having lots of fun in the meantime! Being in a house with little boys is an especial treat and I am trying to soak up as much of the random silliness and cuteness as I possibly can. I am also really enjoying the adults in the house - lots of good talks about books and economic systems and just processing stuff from Bible college.

Ok, it's almost dinner time and the bedlam in the kitchen is reaching a fevered pitch, so I'm going to stop for now. More will come later!

American Culture - I'm spreading it like the plague!

Just a quick post while I stand in our kitchen, waiting for my cookies to cool...

So for all of you people back home, yes I am keeping track of the Sox (and holding my breath tonight - well not literally, because I'll be asleep by the time the game starts) On Monday night the game started at 4:37 EST - so it was 9:37 our time instead of 1am like it has been for all the other games. One of the guys here was able to get the game on his computer by some miracle of downloading (he says it's legal...) so I was able to watch the first few innings. I was surprised at how nice it was to see Fenway Park again - a little taste of home! I was literally bouncing up and down. :) I spent most of the time trying to explain baseball to the British guys, but was paying enough attention to see Lester give up 5 runs. Yeah, not the best innings to watch - but I am glad I got to see some.

Along the sports line, on Saturday a group of us played American football and I got a huge ego boost when I discovered that I can throw better spirals than the British guys. Not farther, but better! Thank you Ben Creisher for teaching me how to throw a spiral one recess back in 10th grade!

My last little bit of American culture is that I just made a ton of Snickerdoodles! I have already won the girls in my house over to believe that Snickerdoodles really are the best cookie ever created. I am going to bring the rest over to the guys' house where we are having dinner tonight and hopefully spread the love a little more. Muhahahaha!!! Just a little less distinction between England and America!

Kurds and Cooking

It is definitely time for another blog. If I don't write one soon, I won't be able to remember everything that has happened. Actually, things are already kind of fuzzy from last week. I actually have no idea what I did Tuesday night. And I thought my memory would get better once I stopped working nights...



So the highlight of lectures last week would have to be Tom Sine coming. He talked about different ways that churches are rethinking what they are focused on and how they interact with the community. He also talked about Christians living more in community (not communes!), for economic, environmental and spiritual reasons. He did some quoting of Shane Claiborne (for anyone who has read The Irresistible Revolution). He also encouraged us to do a lot of brainstorming for ways that we could do things differently after we get out of KBC. In some ways this lecture would have fit more into the third term of our course, but I think it was a good thing to have it now because it got us thinking about how we can practically apply things that we are learning.

Tom was with us on Thursday and then Friday after lectures I drove up to Derby with Daniella, one of the other students who is from Derby. (By the way, Derby is pronounced "Darby", although no one could give a good reason for why they say it that way!) We stayed in the house that Dani had lived in before she came to KBC - and it was amazing! The giant three story house is owned by Adam and Karina who are the pastors of the International Salt and Light Church in Derby (as opposed the regular Salt and Light church in Derby which is much bigger and meets in a regular church building.) Also in the house are Adam and Karina's three kids, a young married couple (the husband is an American!), a girl who is working with the international church, and a young Iranian guy who is doing a discipleship program with the larger Derby church. Actually, those people are just the current permanent residents. There is also a constant flow of missionaries who are home on sebatical or people like us who are just passing through for a night or two. I love how Adam and Karina will just welcome anyone into the house. It is such a homey atmosphere and they don't seem to stress about anything. Billy, the American guy, was telling me that one night a week before there were 18 people in the house - with only one shower because the other one was broken. Incidently, 5 out of the 6 adults in the house are former YWAMers so they know how to live in those types of conditions!

The house is in a highly Middle Eastern neighborhood - specifically a very Kurdish area. I loved watching how all of the people in that house have become a part of that community. The night that we got there, Adam and Karina went with their kids to visit a new family on the street (I think the family was Iranian, but I could be remembering wrong). Adam ended up sitting down with local mosque committee and telling them a parable. Then Saturday night a Muslim Jordanian couple was over the house. It was amazing to see how you can be cross-cultural missionaries without ever leaving the western world!

Here are some highlights of the weekend: On Saturday night we were hanging out in the living room having an impromptu worship service. (We were singing OLD songs from this book in which the titles were written in a type of Arabic - so it was a constant guessing game of name that tune!) Then a missionary couple who were spending the night came home. Food was brought out and port was poured. We were passing around pieces of nan bread (which is a flat bread, almost like pita bread except better and without a pocket), when Adam was like, "Well, we might as well have communion while we're at it!" So we prayed and had communion with the port and nan bread. I loved it! Another highlight was getting to spend time with Tasha, the single girl who lives there. She is a good friend of Dani and also of some other people here at KBC - and she is so great! On Sunday we went out with Tasha and a couple of her friends to Kurdish Kabbob restaurant. If you ever have a chance to eat Kurdish food, jump at it! My goal is now to learn to cook like that. :)

Speaking of cooking, we have community lunch for all of the staff and students every Thursday and today I led the group which did the cooking. That in and of itself is kind of funny because I have spent the last month saying, "I hope that when I'm on community lunch there is someone in the group who really knows what they're doing." Well, I guess that person was me! Our group was generally inexperienced in cooking, although I did recruit my little brother Mike who can cook and was a great help (good job, Mike's mom!) So we made lasagna and this banana cake with chocolate chips for desert. Everything came together and I think people enjoyed it. It was kind of hard to tell myself, because I was too busy to really taste the food I was eating - and I was pretty sick of it after looking at it for so long. The banana cake didn't fully cook in the center, so we tried to just pass out pieces from the outer edge and people didn't seem to mind. We also accidently put in double the amount of salt than there was supposed to be in the cake batter (lack of communication between several cooks). I did have a dream last night that I was explaining to Simon and Gaynor, our principal and his wife, why the cake tasted salty - but thankfully my dream did not come true and you couldn't really notice the extra salt. I was completely exhausted by the time we were done, but it was a good experience and my group was so great!

Ok, gotta take a nap now. I am really looking forward to resting this weekend and hopefully will be able to write about lectures this week. Lots of good stuff to think about!

~ Hannah

Off for the Weekend

Hey guys!

Just a quick post to let people know that I will be gone for the weekend at a Salt and Light worship conference. I won't be back until Sunday afternoon and may not be skype-able until Monday.

By the way, we had a guy named Tom Sine speak yesterday. Really, really good stuff, although our brains are all about to explode from the influx of new ideas and ways of thinking. He is getting people to re-think a lot about how we do Church and Christian community. Good stuff. I haven't read any of his books yet, but I plan to and I would recommend other people to also (yes Dad, that means you - you know you want to!)

Ok, gotta polish off my exegesis steps which are due today. Not much more to do!

pancakes and communion

So I am kind of having a moment right now. I am the only one in the house, an occurrence which is extremely rare and therefore very exciting. We went to church this morning and now the other girls have gone out to a pub for lunch, but I felt like I needed some time alone to think and pray and process and hopefully do a little reading. So I came home, made myself an omelet sandwich and am now sitting by our bay window...having a moment.

Yesterday was full of people. As I mentioned before, we had an open invitation for people to come to our house for American pancakes on Saturday morning. If I remember right, there were 19 people, counting myself. I have no idea how many pancakes I made. Let's just say that I was cooking one and sometimes two pretty continually for somewhere between 2 and 3 hours. I made banana pancakes, blueberry pancakes, and of course good old plain ones. As far as I can tell, no one there had ever had American pancakes before, but they were a big hit. Hehehe, I am infiltrating their society with American culture!

After eating, we hung around for a while playing trivial pursuit (which by the way, is very difficult because the questions are mostly British). Then we headed out to the park to play tag and football and lie around on the grass. After that it was off to another student house for one of the girl's birthday party. We rounded off the day back at our house with a nice "sleepover" in our living room. Five girls were lined up on the floor and I got the couch because I had made pancakes. Altogether it was a relaxing day in a very social way, but I am glad to have some time alone right now.

As I was making my omelet, I was thinking about communion. At the college, we have communion at least once a week during our chapel on Thursday. I love the way that they tie in communion with community. Sometimes the leaders have had us take some bread and then go find someone to share it with - someone we haven't gotten to know as well or just need to pray with. One time they had us share communion as houses and last Thursday it didn't really fit into the flow of chapel, so we just had communion in the middle of our community lunch. Before this, I used to think of communion as being a very personal thing, a time for just me and God. Now I see it as being between me and God and my Christian family, particularly my KBCTC family. It is amazing how much you bond with people by sharing communion in this way. One of the days, I shared it with Meg, one of the other students. I felt like I only knew her in very superficial way and needed to get a little deeper. We ended up just standing there and talking about how amazing it is that Jesus came to earth as a human being and died for our sins. I have had a different perspective of Jesus and of Meg ever since.

I was just thinking about how, in a way, yesterday was a day of communion. We were eating together and learning together and just living life together. Sometimes we directly talked about God and sometimes we talked about everything else under the sun, but it is all part of Christian community. Somehow my relationship with God is intimately connected to my relationship to all of these people.

Just some of my thoughts.

By the way, my moment is over. While I was writing that last paragraph, eight chattering girls burst into the room. There are now about three conversations going on and music playing. Oh but I do love them! (By the way, they just found out that I am writing about them and Sarah made me promise to say hi!)

Week 3

So I am just pooped at the moment. In about 20 minutes I am planning on passing out and sleeping for a whole 8 hours - yippee! But before I do that, I wanted to write a quick post telling you about my week.

This week has flown faster that any of the other ones. It honestly seems like just a couple of days ago that it was Saturday. I guess this is because things have been very busy with classes all morning and sometimes into the afternoon, random busyness in the afternoon, and something going on almost every night. It has been fun, but a little crazy and I haven't been good about getting enough sleep...which explains my soon to be passed out state, of course.

We have been learning the steps of exegesis for the past 5 days. The staff kept warning us that this would probably not be a week where the lectures would give us God tingles - and they were mostly right. It was a pretty tough week with all of us trying to sort through and make sense of this new process. I have to admit that I still am kind of confused - although hopefully that will be remedied when I actually do our practice exercises. Yes, I have been a bad student, frequently being distracted by the guitar and keyboard downstairs instead of being up in the library with the good students. I've been blaming my buddy Mike. He's a handy scapegoat for the whole college because no matter what the issue is, Mike is usually responsible. So yep, my story is that it's Mike's fault. Next week I plan to spend some time not hanging around Mike and actually get some work done.

We also just started our Emmaus groups, which is KBCTC's version of a small group. I have to say, I don't think I could possibly love my Emmaus group more! We have a range of ages and 3 guys and 2 girls, but I think our personalities work well together and it already feels like a very secure environment. Plus Dave and Gordy, the couple leading our group, are great - and Dave is a nurse, so it's nice to talk about nursing stuff with him! So we are all very excited about that.

And tomorrow we are having half the world over for American pancakes (as opposed to British ones which are like crapes). Ok, we are actually only having about 15-20 people over, but that includes several boys who can each eat more than should be physically possible for any human being. So I imagine I will be making a LOT of pancakes! It should be interesting doing all this in our teensy kitchen and cramming everyone into our living room - but that is what makes it so much fun!

Ok, bedtime now. By the way, my foot swelled up and turned interesting colors (it still has some blue-gray shadows), but I happy to say that it is almost back to normal and I am planning on going for a run tomorrow - yay! I will tell about our pancake breakfast soon. Oh yes, and the picture is of my room. There really isn't much more to it than what you see in the picture, but I don't have much stuff and it is very cute and cozy.

some pictures

Our house

Lucy cooking dinner

Our living room/dining room (with candles in the fireplace because we can't have a fire)

View of our back yard from out of the bathroom window

Mike picking apples from our apple tree

Playing cards in the park

Sarah and me (she is from the northern part of England and you should hear her accent!)

The first two weeks...

Hello Everyone!

I apologize for the distinct lack of blogage on this site. The thought of describing everything that has happened in the past two weeks has been overwhelming me, but I realized that the longer that I wait, the more there will be to tell, so I’m going to do my best to just jump in!

I arrived two weeks ago Friday to a house full of British girls – Lucy, Helen, Louise and Rachel. They have been amazing – so friendly and welcoming – plus they all love to hug, so what more could I ask for? Our house began to feel like a home almost immediately and we are now all functioning well in our all funny all-female family. I am the chief dishwasher – because I actually like doing it. And I usually make the lunches in the morning because I am the first one up and I figure it will atone for my general lack of cooking skills (although I did make a nice potato soup the other night and then baked a loaf of bread). My most important role is that of bug catcher/killer. You see, three of my housemates scream bloody murder when they see a spider and the other one doesn’t like touching them herself, but also won’t let me kill anything. So I generally run around with a plastic cup and then release the insects back into the wild of our front yard. If nothing else, it keeps things lively!

We just finished up our first week of classes and it has already been really good. We have been working through what the inspiration and inerrancy of Scripture actually means. I love wrestling through the more difficult aspects of this in our class discussions. And then we usually eat lunch together, so the discussions continue – textual criticism, the legitimacy of revivals, casting out demons, modernism vs. postmodernism, whether or not angels actually had children with humans in the book of Genesis – you name it, we’ll talk about it! One thing I love is how the intellectual side is combined with seeking God and listening to the Holy Spirit.

I have also really enjoyed Oxford. The couple of times that I have been into the center of town, I have been struck by how old and beautiful it is. The amount of history that has taken place here is just staggering. I live in a suburb called Botley. On the way to school every morning, we walk along a path with giant old trees over us and fields on either side. Sometimes there are horses in one of the fields. Parents and children pass us, riding their bikes or walking to school. Their inevitably seems to be one little four or five year old toddling along behind the group with a panic stricken look on his face. Yesterday was beautiful – sunny and in the 80’s – so a group of us took our lunches and walked along the river until we found a freshly mown open field to have a picnic in. (Trivia note: The river we were walking along is technically the Thames, but only in Oxford it is called the Isis.)

Today (Saturday) is what our college has decided will be our Sabbath or day of rest because we will usually be very busy on Sundays. So this morning I woke up, stuck my clothes in the washer machine, and went for a run. When I came back, my clothes were done, so I took them out in a basket and hung them on our clothesline (because it was another beautiful sunny day – not common in Oxford). Then I climbed one of our apple trees to try and reach the ripe ones and discovered that I could spy on the neighbors who live behind us. (Well they were burning things in their garden and I wanted to see where all the smoke was coming from!) I then ate an apple from one of our trees (one tree’s apples are only good for cooking, but I just discovered that the other ones are much smaller and sweeter). I then went inside and cleaned up the kitchen. I just felt so domestic!

Later in the day, a group of us went to a big nearby field, complete with a football (soccer) field and a playground. There was a guy there kicking a football by himself, so we asked if we could play with him. It turns out that he is a 17 year old kid from Philadelphia who just moved over a couple of months ago because his dad got a teaching job here. Later, while everyone else was taking a break, we kicked the ball around and had a nice chat. I think it was good for both of us. I’m really not having a hard time at all with the cultural adjustment, but it is nice to talk to an American every so often.

So now I really need to go to bed. Tomorrow should be nice. Church at 10:30 and then I am invited to one staff member's house for lunch and to another one for tea. I am dreading all the walking a little though because I hurt my toe playing football today and my foot is now kind of swollen and tender and bruised. Hopefully it will be better by tomorrow!

Well there is my massive update!

Hannah has internet!

I'm sorry that I've gone so long without blogging. Our house just got internet today, so I should be able to post fairly regularly from now on. Gotta go to bed now, but here is one picture of some of my friends here. Helen and Lucy (left to right) are two of my four housemates and Mike has become my surrogate little brother - and of course that is me on the far right!

Get set...

I am now sitting in Logan Airport, waiting for my flight to Heathrow to board. My initial flight was to DC and then to London, but God - through some guy named Nick - got me a one-way flight from Boston. I never did see Nick, but he offered me the switch (by proxy) at no extra charge! Yes, this mysterious Nick is my new best friend.

So that's what is going on with me. I am currently extremely tired after staying up very late packing and continuing to wrestle with my bags all morning. My big hiking backpack is now as full as it can get, my guitar is stuffed full of clothes, and my carry on purse/briefcase/laptop bag is larger than any such bag ever should be. Did I mention that I'm tired? Yep, really really pooped. People keep asking me if I'm excited. I'm just too tired to be excited. I'll save that for when I get there. Right now I just want to board the plane and sleep....

Get ready...

So this is my blog for everyone who wants to know how things are going during my coming year in Oxford...and wherever I go after that too I guess. Hence the name "Hannah's Guide to the Universe". (And I apologize Jeremy, if you think it is too presumptuous. By the way, did people notice my use of the word "hence"? I am trying to brush up on my intellectual language since I will be living in Oxford.) So let the blogging begin...in a couple of weeks.