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....