Hey everybody
Sorry I haven't posted in a while. When life is the busiest and friends most want to know what's going on, I have the least time to post. Anyways, since my last post I packed for college (mostly the morning I was leaving) and flew to Burbank without hassle. All of the stores and offices were closed for the weekend, so I got close to nothing done the first few days I was here. Soon, though, I was whisked off with a bunch of other Caltech people to go on a week-long backpack in the Sierras. The trip was strenuous and the people were interesting. Our group, the most advanced of the three, covered 52 miles in six days (and 14 in one day!); it was the most I had ever hiked. As an added bonus, we did the backpack in Sequoia and King's Canyon National Park, so I got to see the enormous trees there. There's a mighty big difference between these groves and the lodgepole forests back home.
Once the five hour, harrowing shuttle bus ride back to Caltech was over, I took a shower and procrastinated. Hey, it was the weekend again, and again, nothing was open. Today, however, orientation started in earnest and the entire day was spent walking from office to office filling out different paperwork and retrieving important information. All in all it was very productive, and I feel like a real student here now. Tomorrow the entire freshman class will leave to go to an off-campus orientation retreat. From looking at the schedule, it's structured like a conference with meetings throughout the day with different speakers. Thankfully, there is free time available for going to the beach or hanging out.
Next week, I will go through Rotation Week. This time period at Caltech enables the entering freshman to experience the different cultures of the eight houses here. After eating a meal in each house throughout the week, I will rank the houses according to my preference; and be assigned to one. The whole process should be pretty fun, though I hope it becomes clear to me which house would be best - I really have no idea what their distinctives are.
P.S. Rotation Week is also the first week of class... but I hear that the professors don't really assign any homework that week.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Tuesday, September 9, 2008
Gymnastics
Well, this week is my last at Lone Mountain Gymnastics. I am going to miss it a lot, and am going to try to go to a gym in Pasadena. School might be too crazy, though.
As a last hoorah, I managed this trick last night (the first time I've ever done it). Some things are just too exciting not to share. Enjoy!
As a last hoorah, I managed this trick last night (the first time I've ever done it). Some things are just too exciting not to share. Enjoy!
Sunday, September 7, 2008
I Feel Like I've Been Here Forever...
July 16, 2008
Today I played an Ultimate Frisbee game in the morning, then worked at St. Joseph's, the hospital here. I failed to make a database enhancement, and broke the entire databse in the process. After this amazing success, I worked on a powerpoint presentation (and eventually got the database working again). By lunchtime I felt productive; hopefully I can finish the presentation on Friday.
After lunch, I went over to the orphans and played with them some more. The little girls are very cute and like piggy-back rides and hide-and-seek. The boys' soccer ball (that our group had given them) had been taken by the students at the school next door, so we threw around a frisbee and jumped rope.
Also, I helped Menzi start to learn standing backflips; he can already do roundoffs and is pretty athletic. I had him stand on top of a pile of sand that was there; it worked nearly as well as a wedge-shaped mat except the jump up was difficult. I doubt he'll be able to do them alone before I leave though.
July 17, 2008
I think that it's worth making a note on the food at this point in the trip. All of our meals are eaten at the Cuddle Company, a factory that employs women (60% of whom have AIDS) to make stuffed animals for children. They sell an eccentric parrot crossed with a Zebra in Holland, and for each one they sell, another is given to a child in Africa. The " Company" is run by a Dutch businessman as a charitable venture. (If you would like to read more about this non-profit, here is an article I found in the Times: http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/News/Article.aspx?id=586462).
So, our meals are cooked for us in the cafeteria of the Cuddle Company and we eat them buffet style. One of the ladies there is named Dina, of "Someone's in the Kitchen with Dina" fame. She didn't know the song so we sung it to her :) The food is good but very repetitive. For breakfast there is usually eggs, toast with jam, and some variation of oatmeal. Dinner is sausage or chicken, rice, gravy, some vegetable (beets, squash, potatoes), and possibly a salad. Lunch is some mixture of these courses. Because our group is large and eats like athletes, it is hard to get enough food. I try to show up early or at least ontime for meals (most people are 5 min late for breakfast) so I can go back for seconds.
July 17, 2008
Today I took a shower after breakfast and watched people play Ultimate. I was pretty tired and didn't want to have to take another shower right away. One of the girls was also watching, and we talked about athletics in college. (I had earlier shared with the group about wanting to do some sport, especially being around all theses atheltes.) She told me that college athletics had meant a lot to her, but that a debilitating blood clot after her senior year in high school meant that she couldn't do any athletics. Even now, she can't play ultimate or any sport where there is a possiblity of contact. For her, athletics had been everything but she realizes now that not doing it let her do many different activities that otherwise couldn't have done. I liked hearing her perspective because she's on the other side of this issue I'm facing.
After this the Boston crew went to the University of Pretoria (main campus) with the explicit purpose of evangelism. I went with Zach and Zach and we talked to four Afrikaans men. Afrikaans are the Dutch settlers who make up most of the white population here. Also, Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch, is still widely used. These men were all 5th, going on 6th year engineering students in four year programs. They smoked cigarettes and seemed to be the chill dudes on campus. Though happy to talk about spiritual things, they were not receptive to the gospel. Two were syncretists/relativists and two were dissilusioned christians. This made it hard to talk to them all at once, the conversation kept jumping back and forth between worldviews. The main contention of the first group was that all religions teach the same thing (and who are we to call someone else wrong?). One of the relativists also asked, on hearing that we didn't follow the Catholic church, why we had left what had been the Christian church for hundreds of years. He asked when the next major theological change was so that the world could plan to switch all its beliefs =P. The bone of the second group was how are we, as engineers who understand how the world works, supposed to believe dogmatically and unconditionally all that stuff in the Old Testament? One guy mentioned the impossibility of Noah's Ark. Overall, they knew the Bible and brought up some tough questions. I was happy that Petra had enabled me to answer them (it worked, Mr. V!!).
The second conversation that I had was after a prayer meeting with students from the University of Colorado, also on a missions trip. Zach S. and I talked with three black guys who were receptive to the gospel, one very much so. He said that in the prior year he had relinquished his previous authority (his father) and had become a slave to girls and drinking. Now, he was searching for a new authority and so we shared why God should be his ultimate authority. We gave them "Knowing God Personally" booklets and our email addresses and drove back to Sizanani.
That night we had worship and a talk like most nights, but for worship we went into the disabled clinic. The children that could dance tried, and those that could move any limb did so; they loved the music.
Dana's 2nd quote, from JFK: "We do these things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. They measure and test our strengths and abilites."
Today I played an Ultimate Frisbee game in the morning, then worked at St. Joseph's, the hospital here. I failed to make a database enhancement, and broke the entire databse in the process. After this amazing success, I worked on a powerpoint presentation (and eventually got the database working again). By lunchtime I felt productive; hopefully I can finish the presentation on Friday.
After lunch, I went over to the orphans and played with them some more. The little girls are very cute and like piggy-back rides and hide-and-seek. The boys' soccer ball (that our group had given them) had been taken by the students at the school next door, so we threw around a frisbee and jumped rope.
Also, I helped Menzi start to learn standing backflips; he can already do roundoffs and is pretty athletic. I had him stand on top of a pile of sand that was there; it worked nearly as well as a wedge-shaped mat except the jump up was difficult. I doubt he'll be able to do them alone before I leave though.July 17, 2008
I think that it's worth making a note on the food at this point in the trip. All of our meals are eaten at the Cuddle Company, a factory that employs women (60% of whom have AIDS) to make stuffed animals for children. They sell an eccentric parrot crossed with a Zebra in Holland, and for each one they sell, another is given to a child in Africa. The " Company" is run by a Dutch businessman as a charitable venture. (If you would like to read more about this non-profit, here is an article I found in the Times: http://www.thetimes.co.za/PrintEdition/News/Article.aspx?id=586462).
So, our meals are cooked for us in the cafeteria of the Cuddle Company and we eat them buffet style. One of the ladies there is named Dina, of "Someone's in the Kitchen with Dina" fame. She didn't know the song so we sung it to her :) The food is good but very repetitive. For breakfast there is usually eggs, toast with jam, and some variation of oatmeal. Dinner is sausage or chicken, rice, gravy, some vegetable (beets, squash, potatoes), and possibly a salad. Lunch is some mixture of these courses. Because our group is large and eats like athletes, it is hard to get enough food. I try to show up early or at least ontime for meals (most people are 5 min late for breakfast) so I can go back for seconds.
July 17, 2008
Today I took a shower after breakfast and watched people play Ultimate. I was pretty tired and didn't want to have to take another shower right away. One of the girls was also watching, and we talked about athletics in college. (I had earlier shared with the group about wanting to do some sport, especially being around all theses atheltes.) She told me that college athletics had meant a lot to her, but that a debilitating blood clot after her senior year in high school meant that she couldn't do any athletics. Even now, she can't play ultimate or any sport where there is a possiblity of contact. For her, athletics had been everything but she realizes now that not doing it let her do many different activities that otherwise couldn't have done. I liked hearing her perspective because she's on the other side of this issue I'm facing.
After this the Boston crew went to the University of Pretoria (main campus) with the explicit purpose of evangelism. I went with Zach and Zach and we talked to four Afrikaans men. Afrikaans are the Dutch settlers who make up most of the white population here. Also, Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch, is still widely used. These men were all 5th, going on 6th year engineering students in four year programs. They smoked cigarettes and seemed to be the chill dudes on campus. Though happy to talk about spiritual things, they were not receptive to the gospel. Two were syncretists/relativists and two were dissilusioned christians. This made it hard to talk to them all at once, the conversation kept jumping back and forth between worldviews. The main contention of the first group was that all religions teach the same thing (and who are we to call someone else wrong?). One of the relativists also asked, on hearing that we didn't follow the Catholic church, why we had left what had been the Christian church for hundreds of years. He asked when the next major theological change was so that the world could plan to switch all its beliefs =P. The bone of the second group was how are we, as engineers who understand how the world works, supposed to believe dogmatically and unconditionally all that stuff in the Old Testament? One guy mentioned the impossibility of Noah's Ark. Overall, they knew the Bible and brought up some tough questions. I was happy that Petra had enabled me to answer them (it worked, Mr. V!!).
The second conversation that I had was after a prayer meeting with students from the University of Colorado, also on a missions trip. Zach S. and I talked with three black guys who were receptive to the gospel, one very much so. He said that in the prior year he had relinquished his previous authority (his father) and had become a slave to girls and drinking. Now, he was searching for a new authority and so we shared why God should be his ultimate authority. We gave them "Knowing God Personally" booklets and our email addresses and drove back to Sizanani.
That night we had worship and a talk like most nights, but for worship we went into the disabled clinic. The children that could dance tried, and those that could move any limb did so; they loved the music.
Dana's 2nd quote, from JFK: "We do these things, not because they are easy but because they are hard. They measure and test our strengths and abilites."
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
The Adventure Continues
July 15, 2008
Today, for the second time, I read the Bible with one of the male group leaders. I liked doing this a lot, I want to find a person or group that I can do this with at college. It helps to get someone else's opinion and views and knowledge and experience on a particular passage. As an added bonus, if you've committed to meet someone to study the Bible, you can't postpone or neglect it.
After this, I went with the Boston group to the Mamelodi campus again. While there myself and another girl talked to a security guard about her faith, and tried to witness to her. The testimony she gave was a testament to how powerful and gripping spiritualism and ancestor worship is in Africa. I won't go into the details here, but some of her beliefs were unerving, if not downright creepy. There were some students at the campus, but not many. In fact, next year it will be shut down or used only for science classes as an extension of the Praetoria campus. For these reasons, and because the students' schedules have minimal free time, we decided to focus much of our efforts at the main University of Praetoria campus. We drove there in the afternoon.
The main campus was intimidating; it was huge and packed with people. Here's a photo of one of the quieter parts of the quad, and the admin building:
At the campus we talked with a couple groups of people and tried to "decode" the campus. This involved learning where students hung out; what the religious atmosphere was like; how students liked their school; etc. The conversations we had were good, and with some groups we discussed heavy religious issues. I was amazed, however at the amount of racial separation there was. Particular parts of the quad were almost exclusively black or white; some of the students pointed out to us which sections the races generally occupied. It was rare to see a group of blacks and whites together. Nevertheless, there was no awkwardness for us to approach a black group; so the separation seemed passive and almost a matter of habit more than anything else. Hopefully this will change over time as the apartheid-era mindset expires.
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