Yesterday, Brethren went dark. Quite literally. It's "Energy Conservation Weekend" or something like that, which means that whichever dorm building reduces it's energy consumption the most gets an ice cream party. Thus, our hall has gone dark, as everyone is trying to turn off the lights as much as possible, even to the point of turning off the bathroom lights, permanently. This is hard to get used to, since there's no windows, and the door is blocked off from the rest of the bathroom by a wall. This means that when one is taking a shower, one does so in total, absolute, and indisputable pitch black darkness. It takes some getting used to, but it's actually kind of cool.
In addition to conserving energy and learning to shower while blind, This week I got to struggle with the impossibility of having a reading light by my bed. I had a lamp at the beginning of the semester, but it's developed a nasty habit of turning off 30 seconds after I turn it on and refusing to turn back on. I then borrowed another lamp from Brett Borland since he wasn't using it, only to find that it had a short somewhere and sputtered like a candle, rendering reading impossible. God's way of telling me just to go to bed? Maybe.
Wednesday was Student Appreciation Day, which was really cool. The whole day was devoted to trying to make us feel special with free ice cream, professors who wore "I love Covenant Students" t-shirts, and better food in the Great Hall. Ironically, by replacing the omelet bar with a French Toast bar and normal food with chocolate chip pancakes, Chartwell's compelled me to eat cereal for breakfast. I'm not complain though, since lunch was fantastic and dinner was steak.
Rehearsals for Niada are going swimmingly (haha...pun...yeah...) I still need to learn to dance, which is a bit daunting, but compared to last week I feel like things are coming together really well. We have most of the set, lines are pretty much memorized, and costumes are coming together. Plus the opening scene looks really cool when synced with the music and dancing that Alysha's put together.
This afternoon I got to go to a special lecture put on by the Pre-Law Society (and advertised by Gareth Jones) by Salem al-Hasi, a practicing Muslim and eminent Islamic Scholar, who spoke on the idea of Modern Sharia Law. It was fascinating, and I'm going to summarize it in a moment, but before I do, I want to mention an interesting incident just before the lecture started. Dr. Haddad, my Arabic professor, was speaking with Mr. al-Hasi just before we were allowed into the lecture hall, and she called Jeremy Mosley, aka Corporal, over to demonstrate his Arabic. After he'd said hello, he literally grabbed my from the water fountain and interposed me between him and Mr. al-Hasi. It would have been hilarious had I not been completely unable to remember how to say hello. I finally managed to blurt out "Marhaba! Ahlan wa Sahlan" which means "Greetings, Welcome." but which at the time for some reason I thought meant "Hello! Hello!" and was unnerved. I then said "Kuwayis?" meaning "How are you?" he said he was well and asked me how I was doing. I stood there for a moment and then, seizing upon the correct phrase, exclaimed a bit too enthusiastically "Al Ham Du Allah!" Praise be to God! He laughed kindly and complimented me and Corporal on our Arabic, and then the lecture began. Heh heh.
Basically, Mr. al-Hasi told us that, much like the media's portrayal of Christian morality, Sharia law is mostly misrepresented in today's culture as a Machiavellian medieval code of law, much like the Spanish Inquisition. Instead of this, he defined Sharia (which means "stream of life") and said that it stemmed from 5 main sources. First, anything the Qu'ran says is instantly allowed to be Sharia, however, he made sure to clarify that a lot of assumptions that people make about how the Qu'ran is interpreted by mainstream Muslims is incorrect. For example, "Kill the infidel" is interpreted under the larger "theme" verse that says basically: "Kill those who attack you, and kill them no more than a limit, for Allah hates those that exceed this limit". So a modern Muslim would read that verse as saying: "Kill a nonbeliever who kills your own, but do not escalate." He even used the example of black powder, which was banned by Islamic teachers when it was first discovered because they were afraid that it would cause innocents to die.
Second, Sharia law comes from the Hadiths, or sayings of Muhammed. He explained that while the Qu'ran is universally agreed on, the Hadiths are not. Many "fabricated" and "weak" hadiths were composed during the years after Muhammed's death, because, as he put it: "One of the best ways to get someone to do something is to tell them that god wills it." The third source of Sharia law are the Consensuses, which he said are exceedingly rare because they require all of the various leaders in Islam to agree that something needs to be in Sharia.
Fourth comes reasoning anlogy, which means that when the Qu'ran is unclear on a specific issue, Muslims examine the Qu'ran for something which they can use to reason out the Qu'ran's teaching. For example, the Qu'ran forbids alcohol, which it defines as a liquid with a certain smell, certain taste, and which causes one to lose control of their actions. However, when drugs first entered the scene, some Muslims argued the Qu'ran did not forbid them, since they did not fit the definition. However, since they cause a loss of control, the Islamic leaders used the reasoning analogy to argue that they qualify as Qu'ranic alcohol and thus were banned.
The fifth and final source was the Purpose of the law, which Mulsim scholars agree is to make life better for those in society. Basically, if a law does not make people's lives better, it's a bad law. I'm not sure how totally mainstream al-Hasi is, but still, it was really fascinating
Overall, it was really cool, and I felt much more informed about what Islam is and what Muslims believe. I was glad I went and I'm thankful that Gareth put the whole thing together.
That's about all I have to say about this week, so I'm going to wrap up. Oh, I forgot to mention that I'm trying to get my hands on an alarm clock that wakes you up with the call to prayer and has spikes around the snooze button. :) :) :) Until next week! Ma'a Saalama, and props to my sister for getting to octofinals (and possibly more at this point) in debate!
Friday, March 26, 2010
Saturday, March 20, 2010
I'll Bet Tiger Woods Never Tried This
Well, this week has been quite interesting to say the least. Just a taste of the lunacy that this week contained: If you had happened to walk onto Brethren last night, you would have found twelve shirtless men standing around a cardboard box with two holes in it set in front of a ramp made of cardboard leading to a mug turned on its side near the wall playing putt putt golf. More on that later though.
Getting back to school after fall break was less of an adjustment than I thought it would be, though for some reason Brethren was totally empty Sunday night, and after trekking all around campus looking for our hallmates, Dan Rienstra and I ended up touring other halls looking for people we knew. We started on Carter, (which, incidentally meant that I actually saw what a Carter hall looked like for the first time) and then moved to Mac. We never did find anyone from our hall, but we still had fun exploring.
Niada rehearsals have started in earnest, which have been a great deal of fun. I'm convinced that Katie Jenkins is having entirely too much fun playing the Sea Witch, however, and her glee at the prospect of having sea monster pets is both amusing and mildly frightening. Additionally, working with Beth Mixon and John Hollback has been pretty entertaining. The three of us have quite a few scenes together, and the interactions Alysha's put into the script are hilarious. I also learned that I get to slap Dorian upside the head in scene one while calling him an idiot. :D
Early in the week, we were given the opportunity to host two members of African Bible College-Malawi's band Mingoli which means "beautiful sound". I got to talk with Yunjin (I have no earthly idea if I've spelled that even remotely correctly.) and Ronald (RON-ald) for a while, which was really cool. Brandon even traded two American-style shirts for one really cool African shirt with Ronald. I'm slightly jealous. In addition to Mingoli, Covenant also received a visit yesterday from Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World Magazine, who spoke in Chapel about the concept of social justice. Very interesting.
Last night I finally got to see West Side Story, the musical production which has been preparing to perform since September. It was a pretty spectacular show, and I could definitely tell all the work that had been put into it. Justin Johns as Tony was awesome, and the music was extremely well done. Also, I bumped into Marianne Sterne and her roommate (my friend who attends Bryan College), and until I realized that I was in Q104, not S104, I thought that I'd been sat right next to them. Instead, I got to sit next to my good friend the Pillar in the back right of the Chapel.
After West Side, I returned to Brethren to find a very large crowd of people in the commons either watching or attempting to putt a golf ball from one end of the commons into a mug at the opposite end. We added a twist by forcing putters to bank their putts off of a box of instant rice and then into the mug (I made it on the first try!) After open dorms ended and all the girls left, we started adding difficulty to the shots by putting a ramp in front of the mug, and then adding a "barn" which was a cardboard box with two holes cut in it in front of the ramp. Tim Van Vliet made it through the box on his first try, which was deemed to be worthy of forcing everyone else to remove their shirts.
That brings us up to this morning. Somehow I actually felt like getting up at 8:00, eating breakfast, and then realizing that I was one of three people on campus who were awake. It felt like being in I Am Legend. I even saw a dog on my way back from breakfast. It's about ten thirty, now, which means that I've seen some movement around campus, but still nothing that looks like signs of life. Since I'm out of things to talk about, I must wrap up. (Wait, I have nothing to say? The world has ended. :) ) Anyway, adios amigos!
Getting back to school after fall break was less of an adjustment than I thought it would be, though for some reason Brethren was totally empty Sunday night, and after trekking all around campus looking for our hallmates, Dan Rienstra and I ended up touring other halls looking for people we knew. We started on Carter, (which, incidentally meant that I actually saw what a Carter hall looked like for the first time) and then moved to Mac. We never did find anyone from our hall, but we still had fun exploring.
Niada rehearsals have started in earnest, which have been a great deal of fun. I'm convinced that Katie Jenkins is having entirely too much fun playing the Sea Witch, however, and her glee at the prospect of having sea monster pets is both amusing and mildly frightening. Additionally, working with Beth Mixon and John Hollback has been pretty entertaining. The three of us have quite a few scenes together, and the interactions Alysha's put into the script are hilarious. I also learned that I get to slap Dorian upside the head in scene one while calling him an idiot. :D
Early in the week, we were given the opportunity to host two members of African Bible College-Malawi's band Mingoli which means "beautiful sound". I got to talk with Yunjin (I have no earthly idea if I've spelled that even remotely correctly.) and Ronald (RON-ald) for a while, which was really cool. Brandon even traded two American-style shirts for one really cool African shirt with Ronald. I'm slightly jealous. In addition to Mingoli, Covenant also received a visit yesterday from Marvin Olasky, editor-in-chief of World Magazine, who spoke in Chapel about the concept of social justice. Very interesting.
Last night I finally got to see West Side Story, the musical production which has been preparing to perform since September. It was a pretty spectacular show, and I could definitely tell all the work that had been put into it. Justin Johns as Tony was awesome, and the music was extremely well done. Also, I bumped into Marianne Sterne and her roommate (my friend who attends Bryan College), and until I realized that I was in Q104, not S104, I thought that I'd been sat right next to them. Instead, I got to sit next to my good friend the Pillar in the back right of the Chapel.
After West Side, I returned to Brethren to find a very large crowd of people in the commons either watching or attempting to putt a golf ball from one end of the commons into a mug at the opposite end. We added a twist by forcing putters to bank their putts off of a box of instant rice and then into the mug (I made it on the first try!) After open dorms ended and all the girls left, we started adding difficulty to the shots by putting a ramp in front of the mug, and then adding a "barn" which was a cardboard box with two holes cut in it in front of the ramp. Tim Van Vliet made it through the box on his first try, which was deemed to be worthy of forcing everyone else to remove their shirts.
That brings us up to this morning. Somehow I actually felt like getting up at 8:00, eating breakfast, and then realizing that I was one of three people on campus who were awake. It felt like being in I Am Legend. I even saw a dog on my way back from breakfast. It's about ten thirty, now, which means that I've seen some movement around campus, but still nothing that looks like signs of life. Since I'm out of things to talk about, I must wrap up. (Wait, I have nothing to say? The world has ended. :) ) Anyway, adios amigos!
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Like living after Noah's flood with better food.
Well, I'm back in Maryland for a Spring Break! The massive snowstorm in January still hasn't completely melted, meaning that the ground is incredibly wet and spongy. Small piles of snow dot the landscape, and our dog must keep constantly moving to prevent from sinking into the ground and being swallowed up. Getting to hang out with family and friends back home has been a refreshing break from life a school. I was definitely ready for the break, and fortunately I was able to get to the airport earlier than I expected, thanks to Jeremy Mosely offering to give me a ride at 1:30, which judging by the time it took to get to the airport, was exactly when I had to leave to make my flight.
Before I left school, the Trifectas (Me, Ann Jones, Jordan Linkston, Katie Jenkins, Justin Johns, and Alysha McCullough) went to Yellow Deli for a "Trifecta Date" and had one of the most amusing evenings, which spawned about a million inside jokes. I also learned the meaning behind the necklace Jordan always wears, the plot (basically) of the play Katie wrote for next year, and that Alysha's glasses give me a headache.
After getting to the airport later the next day, I was again subjected to Dr. Oz because my flight still didn't leave for an hour. After failing to ignore the show for forty-five minutes, I managed to learn that diet pills are bad, not being able to breath at night can threaten your health, and that Dr. Oz has absolutely no reason to be wearing surgical scrubs on every episode.
I got home about dinnertime, and was welcomed back with an awesome homemade meal and a huge loaf of bread. Apparently since I left, Dad's hobbies have expanded into making massive amounts of bread in various varieties. His favorite is sourdough, and he has a thing in the basement fridge that he uses to make sourdough bread sour. It's basically a lump of yeasty dough from what I understand. Emily calls it Stanley. After dinner, Em and I played "Beatles Rock Band" (which I didn't know existed) and I learned that everything they produced after '67 makes no sense at all.
Josh Bernitt came over Saturday and we caught up for a while. He's headed to UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County) next year, and he's going to be studying Physics. (May God have mercy on his soul.) Cooking class was on last night, and I was tasked with making dessert for the students (my sister must hate them all). It started as a cake, became a fiasco, and ended up mixed into ice cream to disguise my mistake(s).
Anyway, since Alysha wants Niada off-book when we get back from break: I've been practicing in the basement apartment. Since during the times I was practicing my family were all out of the house, I had to use stand in's for the characters. I've cast the drum set from Rock Band as Dorian, an armchair as Princess Aislyn, and an oriental lamp as Merin the mermaid. I'm glad no one was home to see my trying to give CPR to a lamp.
That's about it for now, I think. Oh, and when thinking things over on the airplane, I realized that in starting this blog, I made no arrangements for the continuation or cancellation of it in the event of my death. Rest assured that if I die an at an inconvenient time I will do my best to find a computer and update. If heaven hasn't got wifi. I'll haunt one of you and ask you to deactivate my account. (Alternatively, you could make up fictitious adventures for me, but if you make my afterlife too confusing, I'll have to ask you to stop.) :)
Anyway, with that bit of long-neglected housekeeping out of the way, I'll wrap this up. (also, if anyone has any ideas for a new wrap-up gimmick to replace my usual and exhausted habit of saying good-bye in foreign languages, let me know.)
Until you do.... gis la revido!
Before I left school, the Trifectas (Me, Ann Jones, Jordan Linkston, Katie Jenkins, Justin Johns, and Alysha McCullough) went to Yellow Deli for a "Trifecta Date" and had one of the most amusing evenings, which spawned about a million inside jokes. I also learned the meaning behind the necklace Jordan always wears, the plot (basically) of the play Katie wrote for next year, and that Alysha's glasses give me a headache.
After getting to the airport later the next day, I was again subjected to Dr. Oz because my flight still didn't leave for an hour. After failing to ignore the show for forty-five minutes, I managed to learn that diet pills are bad, not being able to breath at night can threaten your health, and that Dr. Oz has absolutely no reason to be wearing surgical scrubs on every episode.
I got home about dinnertime, and was welcomed back with an awesome homemade meal and a huge loaf of bread. Apparently since I left, Dad's hobbies have expanded into making massive amounts of bread in various varieties. His favorite is sourdough, and he has a thing in the basement fridge that he uses to make sourdough bread sour. It's basically a lump of yeasty dough from what I understand. Emily calls it Stanley. After dinner, Em and I played "Beatles Rock Band" (which I didn't know existed) and I learned that everything they produced after '67 makes no sense at all.
Josh Bernitt came over Saturday and we caught up for a while. He's headed to UMBC (University of Maryland Baltimore County) next year, and he's going to be studying Physics. (May God have mercy on his soul.) Cooking class was on last night, and I was tasked with making dessert for the students (my sister must hate them all). It started as a cake, became a fiasco, and ended up mixed into ice cream to disguise my mistake(s).
Anyway, since Alysha wants Niada off-book when we get back from break: I've been practicing in the basement apartment. Since during the times I was practicing my family were all out of the house, I had to use stand in's for the characters. I've cast the drum set from Rock Band as Dorian, an armchair as Princess Aislyn, and an oriental lamp as Merin the mermaid. I'm glad no one was home to see my trying to give CPR to a lamp.
That's about it for now, I think. Oh, and when thinking things over on the airplane, I realized that in starting this blog, I made no arrangements for the continuation or cancellation of it in the event of my death. Rest assured that if I die an at an inconvenient time I will do my best to find a computer and update. If heaven hasn't got wifi. I'll haunt one of you and ask you to deactivate my account. (Alternatively, you could make up fictitious adventures for me, but if you make my afterlife too confusing, I'll have to ask you to stop.) :)
Anyway, with that bit of long-neglected housekeeping out of the way, I'll wrap this up. (also, if anyone has any ideas for a new wrap-up gimmick to replace my usual and exhausted habit of saying good-bye in foreign languages, let me know.)
Until you do.... gis la revido!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
In Which Many Many Things Happen and I Italicise a Lot
Right, so first things first. My sister totally dominated her competition at a speech/debate tournament in Virginia, so BOO-YAH! In addition to her awesomeness, our club's debate teams (1 with my sister in it) advanced to the out rounds, even though both teams are made up of people who've debated 1 year or less (with the exception of my sister.) Great job Em!
While my sister was crushing the competition, Lucifer had two more shows, and then closed. As always, I'm happy/sad to be done with it, and I'm even happier that due to some ingeniousness by Prof. Slav, the chariot (usually called the "stupid chariot" or worse) finally worked right, and didn't get stuck bringing it on stage. Hopefully it looked good, I couldn't really see around Lucifer's awesome wings. Afterwards, we struck the set, and I got to keep Raphael's branch of peace, a demon dagger made of plexiglass, and one of those cool angel torches, which I call my epilepsy stick, since it flashes with three different colors on one setting. Immediately afterward, we started to construct the set for Alysha's play: Niada, which, due to my friend Mitch having to drop his role, I get to be in after all.
Niada is basically a re-telling of the original Little Mermaid story. I play Kade, the older brother of the man whom the mermaid (named Merin in this play) falls in love with. Since my younger brother is kind of an idiot (though well intentioned) I get to roll my eyes and make sarcastic comments, which suits me just fine. However, as much as Kade may make fun of him, it's obvious that he cares about his brother, so it won't be all sarcasm.
Anyway, after Lucifer closed I had a bit of a chance to catch my breath and enjoy the weekend. Earlier this week I got an e-mail asking me to go on a "mystery date" with someone unknown from Imani hall. I said yes, since I'd heard stories about people saying no to these things and it making people feel bad, and I immediately started worrying that it would be a very awkward day spent with someone I didn't know. I needn't have worried though. Come Sunday afternoon I found out that my mystery date was good friend Liz Brink, and we had a great time on a scavenger hunt through downtown Chattanooga with the other 20-some people in our group. We had a great time, and even though we came in nearly last, we still finished the whole list of things to find.
Sunday night we had the cast party for Lucifer, where we recorded a lot of testimonies about how God worked in the production, and it was all very encouraging and amazing to hear about everyone's experiences and how they grew during the show. Later on, we also played that awesome game we always play at cast parties (the question-answer game thing. I know I've mentioned it before here). It got recorded too, which will no doubt be a hilarious recording if anyone ever finds it. Highlights included:
Q: "What would you do if the whole world thought you were a rabbit?
A: "Well, I would avoid the taxidermy department."
Q: "What would you do if Justin Johns told you he had unlimited psychic abilities, was about to conquer the world, and asked you to be his queen?
A: "I would call Janel Corbett and yell 'It's true! It's true!"
Anyway, we had a blast, and several of the seniors read Prof. Hallstrom a very moving bible passage from Isaiah, as a thank-you gift for all her hard work. The iGallop made another appearance, and we had an awesome time.
Monday was a normal day, but today we had a snow day. Again. Oh, well. I guess we'll eventually get a week without snow. On the plus side, a bunch of people built an awesome igloo between Mac and Founders. It's absolutely massive, and has little snowmen carved into it. I'm not sure whether they're supposed to live there or if this is more like what Calvin does to his snowmen.
Oh, and last week at the Niada read-through, Katleyn and Alysha joked that because I'm playing Kade, I'd have a lot of fans. This prompted Jordan to make a Facebook group called "David Pickering's Screaming Fangirls." with some very amusing descriptions of me written in the info boxes. Highly flattering, and also really funny. If any of you happen across this, don't worry, I don't really have screaming fangirls, just a bunch of awesome friends. :)
Anyway, ciao for now.
While my sister was crushing the competition, Lucifer had two more shows, and then closed. As always, I'm happy/sad to be done with it, and I'm even happier that due to some ingeniousness by Prof. Slav, the chariot (usually called the "stupid chariot" or worse) finally worked right, and didn't get stuck bringing it on stage. Hopefully it looked good, I couldn't really see around Lucifer's awesome wings. Afterwards, we struck the set, and I got to keep Raphael's branch of peace, a demon dagger made of plexiglass, and one of those cool angel torches, which I call my epilepsy stick, since it flashes with three different colors on one setting. Immediately afterward, we started to construct the set for Alysha's play: Niada, which, due to my friend Mitch having to drop his role, I get to be in after all.
Niada is basically a re-telling of the original Little Mermaid story. I play Kade, the older brother of the man whom the mermaid (named Merin in this play) falls in love with. Since my younger brother is kind of an idiot (though well intentioned) I get to roll my eyes and make sarcastic comments, which suits me just fine. However, as much as Kade may make fun of him, it's obvious that he cares about his brother, so it won't be all sarcasm.
Anyway, after Lucifer closed I had a bit of a chance to catch my breath and enjoy the weekend. Earlier this week I got an e-mail asking me to go on a "mystery date" with someone unknown from Imani hall. I said yes, since I'd heard stories about people saying no to these things and it making people feel bad, and I immediately started worrying that it would be a very awkward day spent with someone I didn't know. I needn't have worried though. Come Sunday afternoon I found out that my mystery date was good friend Liz Brink, and we had a great time on a scavenger hunt through downtown Chattanooga with the other 20-some people in our group. We had a great time, and even though we came in nearly last, we still finished the whole list of things to find.
Sunday night we had the cast party for Lucifer, where we recorded a lot of testimonies about how God worked in the production, and it was all very encouraging and amazing to hear about everyone's experiences and how they grew during the show. Later on, we also played that awesome game we always play at cast parties (the question-answer game thing. I know I've mentioned it before here). It got recorded too, which will no doubt be a hilarious recording if anyone ever finds it. Highlights included:
Q: "What would you do if the whole world thought you were a rabbit?
A: "Well, I would avoid the taxidermy department."
Q: "What would you do if Justin Johns told you he had unlimited psychic abilities, was about to conquer the world, and asked you to be his queen?
A: "I would call Janel Corbett and yell 'It's true! It's true!"
Anyway, we had a blast, and several of the seniors read Prof. Hallstrom a very moving bible passage from Isaiah, as a thank-you gift for all her hard work. The iGallop made another appearance, and we had an awesome time.
Monday was a normal day, but today we had a snow day. Again. Oh, well. I guess we'll eventually get a week without snow. On the plus side, a bunch of people built an awesome igloo between Mac and Founders. It's absolutely massive, and has little snowmen carved into it. I'm not sure whether they're supposed to live there or if this is more like what Calvin does to his snowmen.
Oh, and last week at the Niada read-through, Katleyn and Alysha joked that because I'm playing Kade, I'd have a lot of fans. This prompted Jordan to make a Facebook group called "David Pickering's Screaming Fangirls." with some very amusing descriptions of me written in the info boxes. Highly flattering, and also really funny. If any of you happen across this, don't worry, I don't really have screaming fangirls, just a bunch of awesome friends. :)
Anyway, ciao for now.
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