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Life Update

Well, I haven't been very faithful in updating my blog, so I have a lot of time to make up for. I suppose I'll talk about my classes.

World Lit is still my favorite. So far we've read The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis, Symposium by Plato, The Odyssey by Homer, Medea by Euripides, Phaedrus by Plato, and The Metamorphoses by Ovid. Now we are done with the Ancient Greek and Roman ideas of love, and we are moving on to the Hebrew ideas of love. Thus, we are reading Hosea, Song of Songs, Ezekiel 16, and eventually The Epic of Gilgamesh also. I love reading this kind of stuff! It's so much better than reading through a textbook, or surviving only on lecture notes.

In Basic Philosophical Concepts, we had to read two books: Philosophy Made Slightly Less Difficult by DeWeese and Moreland, and Love Your God With All Your Mind by Moreland. I really wish we could have covered these concepts with a book that wasn't loaded with typical Evangelical trite answers to all of the "evil philosophies" that are "infiltrating our minds." Come on. These books were weak! Are they even trying to hide their straw men arguments? I felt like subscribing to the "evil philosophies" simply because Moreland couldn't handle a reasonable defense against them!

Finally, in Old Testament survey, we are reading The God of Promise and the Life of Faith by Hafemann. It's a pretty good book - nothing earth-shattering, but I'm glad Dr. Smith is using it for this required class. It's a good introduction to covenant-ish theology.

I heart Greek! In Dr. Smith's Greek I class, we've been sing Duff's Elements of New Testament Greek. I like it much better than Mounce's book.

Other than that, I've been reading poetry from a book that Christina so graciously let me borrow, an anthology by Robert Pinsky and Maggie Dietz called Americans' Favorite Poems. Love it, love it, love it!

Also outside of class, I'm still going through Moby-Dick (slowly) and How to Think About the Great Ideas by Mortimer Adler. It's very stimulating. I'm probably learning more from three chapters of that book than I've learned from this entire half-semester of Basic Philosophical Concepts.

Shame on me, because I've neglected reading A House for My Name. I don't really mind. I liked what Leithart was saying, and I'll probably finish the book some day, but it's just not that important to me right now.

I visited the Episcopal church in Hutchinson last week. It was about what I expected it to be - not very big, lots of older people, etc.

Also, I'm super-excited about my recent purchase of some backpacking gear from Campmor! I'm all ready for a Spring Break backpacking trip!

Speaking of which, I'm seriously considering working for Xanterra this summer, the company that runs Yellowstone National Park. I'll apply for Park Service jobs as well, but they are harder to get into (for a college student who can only work the summer months). I'll do this, that is, unless I can find a high-paying job around Sterling that will utilize my mind and leadership skills rather than just my arms, legs, and back.

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