Seriously?

*bangs head on desk*

It’s STILL raining. It’s been raining for three days. Will it ever stop?

Don’t get me wrong, I love the rain, but I have grown accustomed to a certain ratio of sun to cloud and this is just silly.

I think part of the reason for my bad mood concerning this is the fact that I was sick this morning. I think I’m still getting over jetlag and I have no idea if my tea with milk last night had something to do with it. I’m lactose-intolerant, for anyone who doesn’t know, but I can eat yogurt and ice-cream, so it’s not a life or death thing. I don’t know. I’m feeling better now, it being about 1:45 pm. Sherry Rankin (that’s Bill Rankin’s wife) had some anti-nausea medication and she gave it to me. It helped tremendously and I was able to participate in class quite a bit (since 20% of my grade is participation, this lift was greatly appreciate).

Our lesson in Lit. Crit. today was primarily about the difficulties of learning concerning different languages. You see, according to St. Augustine of Hippo, human language is only a way of describing God’s primary language of actual things. In God’s language, light simply is just that. But humans have to use a secondary language (like French or Swahili or whatever) to describe light. In English, it’s “light”, in Spanish “luz”, in French “lumiére” and so forth. Also, with all the diversity of language brought forth by the fall of Babel, translations have to be done for the entire world to be able to understand God’s primary language (we like to call it “truth”). Therefore, good knowledge is difficult to obtain and that is why it’s so valuable to us. Humans believe things are only worth the hard work used to obtain them (“Beauty is pain”, “Rome wasn’t built in a day”, ect.). I’m really enjoying this class and hope to learn a lot more of it. I hope you don’t mind me talking about it, but it’s the only way I can bring all of my thoughts about the lesson together in my mind. And I think coming back on these blog entries will help me write my papers.

The symposium was once again delightful. We talked about different kinds of community, including that of the university, and how one can sometimes learn more from the thoughts of one’s peers than in an actual class. I’ve certainly seen that that’s true in my life. We also talked about the nature of sacrifice in LOTR, especially that of the hobbits and the elves, but I won’t bore you with the details.

Today will be filled with much studying because the reading for tomorrow is, I think, perhaps the longest of all. I have a Mars bar and a Lilt by my side (I wanted to try the local candy and soda, so sue me. Lilt is like Sprite, but grapefruit and pineapple flavored instead of lemon and lime (it has an interesting aftertaste) and Mars bars are a bit like a combination of a Three Musketeers and a Snickers).

I promise promise PROMISE to get some pictures up soon. It’s been a bit too wet for my camera. I hope you understand.