Everything is the same and yet it is all so different.
I thought it would be neat to record some of my more day-to-day life during my last year at Hendrix like I did while I was in Chester. There's no reason why life in Conway, Arkansas can't be just as fascinating as life in Chester, England! I want to celebrate this last year, and I want to be able to look back on the things I wrote about it with fondness, like I now do with my blog entries from England....
I'm living in an apartment with two of my best friends--Heather and Ali--and I couldn't possibly love it any more. We've collected a hodgepodge of furniture and created a cozy, cute little home that feels like ours and we enjoy sharing with our friends who visit quite frequently. We're trying to take turns cooking dinner and having "family meals" together. And like good Christian women, we always say grace :)
For the past two years I've helped lead a Bible study group out of my dorm room and tonight we were able to host our first meeting of this year in our apartment living room. It was so nice to welcome all the girls in, make them cups of tea, and just sit and enjoy the community we create together for a couple hours.
I'm pleased with my class schedule for this semester. I'm taking Contemporary Christian Thought, Theories and Research in Religion, a sociology class entitled Food Culture and Nature, and I'm doing an independent study course with a religion professor about experiences of women in Christianity. The independent study is designed to prepare me to write my senior thesis paper next semester in which I will be exploring parallels between women in the Bible and women in ministry today. I'm planning to combine Biblical studies and Oral History when I conduct interviews with women in ministry next semester.
Outside of school and life with my friends, I'm learning how to be president of our Religious Life Council, a slightly intimidating but mostly fun (because of the other people involved!) task. My favorite part of this organization are the road trips we take to various centers of religious faith. In the past I've been to an Eastern Orthodox church as well as a nondenominational African-American church. They couldn't have been more different or more awesome of experiences and I'm looking forward to planning some more great trips this year.
I've been skyping every here and now because there's kind of this boy in England that I enjoy talking to. His name is Jon, you may have heard me mention him before. :) Tomorrow when we talk I will simultaneously be attempting to cook my first family dinner for the girls. Hopefully he will read this beforehand and prepare himself for the disaster that could possibly ensue! Jon's coming to visit in 40 days (not that I'm counting or anything), and I'm already looking forward all the American things like pancakes and high school football games that I can introduce him to!
Life is good. I'm experiencing a lot of reverse culture shock as I slowly remember the pace of my American life, and am challenged by the feeling that I will always be missing and may never quite fit in anywhere anymore.
Some days I wish more than anything I could walk down to the River Dee, eat a 99 pence flake icecream cone, and chat aimlessly without a care in the world. I wish I could spend a freezing night at Cuppa, walk the walls, and be special because I talk weird. Most of the time, though, I embrace the tension of loving my life here, and knowing I've left a piece of my heart 4,000 miles away. Cheers, yall ♥
Our first family meal :)
My best friends and I wearing skirts that Heather and Rachel had made for us all in Ghana.
All dressed up for the first big party of the year.
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