Friday, June 29, 2007

By the way

I think I said something about this, albeit in a very passing way, in one of my posts yesterday, but I don't think I've come right out and said it yet on the blog: on August 13th I'll be leaving to go back to L'Abri for the full Fall term which lasts until December 4th.

When I went to L'Abri at the beginning of the summer, I was pretty confident that unless I hated it I'd be going back for a longer time. Of course, I didn't hate it when I got there so I'm going back for at least one more term. I'll be going back as a student again. I decided not to go back as a helper (like a student, but you work a lot more and get to be there for free) because I'd like to have more time to study. For awhile I was thinking about going to England L'Abri, but things started going really well with my tutor about halfway through my stay and that was enough to make me want to come back to Switzerland. Obviously the scenery doesn't hurt any either.

Since I won't be here for about four months I decided to end my lease in Columbia and move all my stuff back to my parents' house in Conway. So for the last two or three days I've been trying to find someplace out of the way for all of the crap I brought back with me from Cola.

As far as what I might do after I get back from Switzerland in December, I have no idea. That's a point too far in the future, and over an expanse of time in which I'm very likely to change a lot, to think about it in specifics. Generally, I guess I'd like to look into graduate school for philosophy or theology. I'd like to see about moving to the west coast. I'd like to do a ton of things, but what actually happens only time will tell. At least I know what I'm doing for the next six months. That's good enough for me.

In other news, Kate and her boyfriend Marcus get here in about an hour and a half so I need to finish cleaning my room.

Thursday, June 28, 2007

Polls! Yay!

So Blogger added this new "Poll" feature and as someone who is constantly on the cutting edge of groundbreaking technology, I decided to try it out. Over to the right you'll see a little poll I created. The question is, "How often do you check my blog?" Now, this site only gets about 20-25 visits a day so I'm not anticipating a ton of responses, but if you're reading this, why not go ahead and punch in your answer.
The main reason I'm doing this is to see how often I should update the blog. If most of you only check in once a week, then I'm not going to stress over posting everyday. But, if most of you check it at least once a day then you deserve to have at least one new post every single day.

In conclusion, if you love me, you'll answer the poll.

Let's try this out

Okay, I'm going to try to upload that video (see post below) of Peter and Andy playing pipe and piano, respectively. Now, I'm not sure if this Blogger video upload is going to work, so if you can't see the video don't be angry. By the way, these guys aren't taking themselves seriously in this video. They're just having a good time.

Well, I tried to upload it using Blogger and it took forever so in the meantime I uploaded it to YouTube. Here you go:




There you have it. Amazing musicianship from Minnesota and Colorado via L'Abri.

You think you know . . .

But you have no idea. Well, maybe it's not as dramatic as seeing a day in the life of some star on MTV's show Diary, but here's what an average day at L'Abri was like while I was there. I assume some of it changes during the different terms, but I won't know that until I go back for the fall term. So, here's an average day during the summer term:

Each day I woke up around 7:45 am. At least, that's the time that I set my alarm for. We only got two showers a week because water is so expensive in Switzerland so I never needed more than two minutes to get dressed and go downstairs for breakfast. With that in mind, I would snooze my alarm one time each morning, delaying my complete awakedness another nine minutes. So at 7:54 am I would get out of bed, get dressed, and head downstairs to the dining room for breakfast at 8 am. We had breakfast together every morning. On Thursdays, our day off, you could skip breakfast if you wanted to sleep in, but breakfast on Thursday and Sunday was already pushed back to 9 am so I never had need of more sleep. For breakfast we would have cereal and toast just about every day. Our cereal choices were pretty limited: Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies. I usually opted for Rice Krispies and two slices of toast with some sort of berry jam on it. Now, I'm not a huge coffee drinker so for the most part I would just have a glass of water with breakfast. About halfway through my time at L'Abri, however, I decided to get crazy and I started having a cup of hot tea with breakfast. Just one spoonful of sugar and it was perfect. There were three days a week on which we didn't eat cereal for breakfast. I don't remember which days they were, but one day we had oatmeal and another day we had Muesli. On Sundays we usually had something really big for breakfast like pancakes and eggs or bacon or something like that. It was a treat every time.

So, after breakfast we had until 9:30 to do whatever we wanted. If it was a nice day, I'd usually grab a book and sit out on the balcony that was right outside my bedroom door. Here's a picture of some of us sitting outside one morning. That's my roommate Jeff playing the harmonica and Peter playing the pipe. The other guy is Andy and he's one of the best piano players I've ever been around. I've got a great video of he and Peter playing the piano and pipe together at a talent show we had one night. I'll put it on here sometime soon.

At 9:30 everyone split up to do whatever they were assigned for the morning. Each day was divided into two sections: morning and afternoon. During each section you were either assigned to work or study. For the sake of this blog, I'll describe day on which I was assigned to work in the morning and study in the afternoon. I was usually assigned grounds for my work. You could also be assigned to help clean Bellevue (where the students lived), cook lunch at one of the workers houses (the students split up for lunch and eat at the workers' houses), or do laundry (they do your laundry for you everyday; it's wonderful). On grounds crew we would typically mow grass because there was a ton of grass to mow and that stuff grew faster than anything I've ever seen. You could probably spend about 9-12 hours a week just mowing and weed-eating around the grounds at L'Abri and that's just what we did. I really didn't mind mowing or weed-eating because I'm young and hip and I have an iPod that I could just put on and zone out while I worked. On the unfortunate occasion that there was no grass to mow, you were stuck weeding by hand all around the grounds. That was like being in hell.

At 12:30 in the afternoon everyone quit working and studying and would come back up to Bellevue to get ready for lunch. Four days of the week we had what were called Formal Lunches. This just meant that when you got to lunch at one of the worker's homes you would all sit around a table and wait for someone to raise a question to be discussed. The questions could be anything. While I was there we talked about sports, animal ethics, whether or not the Bible is inerrant, and politics just to name a few. The discussions were moderated by whatever worker you were with that day, and I don't think I ever heard a question raised that a worker hadn't heard before or didn't have a response to. The great thing was, though, that even though the worker probably already knew exactly what avenues we were going to go down in our response to the questions, they never just said "Well, this is the answer." The atmosphere at formal lunches was, for the most part, an open and honest one where you could say whatever was on your mind without having to worry about people thinking you were a heretic or idiot. Most people that go to L'Abri are there because they have some problem with their understanding of Christianity or God and are there as a last ditch effort to salvage their faith and so there really is a culture of spiritual and intellectual honesty there that I haven't been around anywhere else.

After lunch which usually got over at about two, we had another little bit of free time until three o'clock. During this free time almost everyone would go outside to hang out and either play or watch people playing ping pong. Right outside of the main living room/lounge in Bellevue there is a big patio overlooking the valley and mountains, and they've got a ping pong table along with some table and benches out on that patio. Here's a couple pictures:

At three o'clock we would split up again and do whatever it was that you didn't do in the morning. So if you worked in the morning, you studied in the afternoon or vice versa. In my study time I did a lot of different things. Some days I would read a book that my tutor assigned me and some days I'd just listen to a lecture or read a book that just seemed interesting. By they way, I'm not sure if I've explained this yet on the blog, but if you go to L'Abri for more than a week you're assigned a tutor, one of the full-time workers. You meet with your tutor once a week just to talk about how your studies are going, why you're at L'Abri, what you've been learning, to ask questions and discuss things, and whatever else you feel like doing. The tutors usually help you narrow down what you want to study and point you towards some books or lectures that they think might help you out some. My tutor's name is Greg Laughery and he's the director of Swiss L'Abri. He is, from what I can tell, a super genius. Anyway, after the afternoon session everyone would meet back up at Bellevue for dinner at 6:30. After dinner the rest of your night was free. Most nights some people would either go up to Villars (a ski resort town about thirty minutes up the mountain from us), play some sort of game like Risk or Scrabble, or read and just hang out. By midnight everyone was tired and went to sleep.

There you have it; a rather long and detailed post about what an average day at L'Abri is like. If you have any questions about any of it just post a comment and I'll answer them.

In other news, my friend Kate Nelson and her boyfriend Marcus are coming down to Conway from North Carolina to hang out this weekend. Should be fun. I'll take some pictures and let you guys see.

Thanks for reading such a looooong post. I'll think of something short and exciting for tomorrow.

Wednesday, June 27, 2007

But, what is it?

I realized sometime yesterday, as I was trying to figure out what I should post about, that I haven't said much about L'Abri since I've been back home. So, I think that today I'll write a little bit about what L'Abri is. This may turn into a series of posts because there is really a lot to say and explain.

Today I'll start with a very short history of L'Abri. In 1955, Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith were living in Switzerland with their children. I think at that point they had two or maybe three children. The Schaeffers bought a chalet in the tiny town of Huemoz (pronounced "Way-mo") right before their visas were going to expire and moved in with only a vague idea that they wanted to open their home for people who were questioning spirituality. Soon after they moved to Huemoz, one of their daughters started to bring friends home on the weekend from her school (I forget if it was a boarding school or if it was a university), and Francis Schaeffer started to talk to them about what their spiritual beliefs were and about what Christianity said about the world. As those girls found a lot of their questions answered, they began to tell other people and word started to spread that there was a place up on a mountain where a man would talk to you about philosophy and theology. Soon people started showing up to stay and talk about spirituality and philosophy with Schaeffer. At this point, the visitors were simply sleeping on any empty floor space around the Schaeffer's house.

Schaeffer started to lecture on various topics with the emphasis always being that Christianity is not simply a spiritual truth, disconnected from the practicalities and complexities of daily living, but that it is an all-encompassing lens through which we can view and respond to everything we encounter in our lives. At some point a chapel was built to house L'Abri's growing library and to give the students at L'Abri a place to have church on Sundays. Also, other chalets were purchased around the original chalet in order to house more students and workers who came to work full-time at L'Abri.

Currently, L'Abri consists of seven chalets. Chalet Bellevue is where the all of the students live and eat most of their meals. Four other chalets house workers and their families, and two chalets are reserved for visiting lecturers and non-traditional students (eg married couples). L'Abri also owns a good-size chapel called the Farel House which is used as the meeting place for church on Sunday mornings, the space for the two lectures that take place each week, and is also used for housing the library of about 1500 books and 1200 tapes of lectures given at L'Abri.

Below is a quotation, taken from the L'Abri website, that explains the emphasis of the teaching at L'Abri:

First, that Christianity is objectively true and that the Bible is God's written word to mankind. This means that biblical Christianity can be rationally defended and honest questions are welcome.

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Second, because Christianity is true it speaks to all of life and not to some narrowly religious sphere and much of the material produced by L'Abri has been aimed at helping develop a Christian perspective on the arts, politics and the social sciences etc.

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Third, in the area of our relationship with God, true spirituality is seen in lives which by grace are free to be fully human rather than in trying to live on some higher spiritual plane or in some grey negative way.

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Fourth, the reality of the fall is taken seriously. Until Christ returns we and the world we live in will be affected by the disfigurement of sin. Although the place of the mind is emphasized, L'Abri is not a place for "intellectuals only".

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We are as concerned for living as we are for thinking and from the beginning the concern has been that the truth is as much exhibited in everyday life as it is defended in discussion. We do not do this perfectly of course but depend on the Lord to bring forth a measure of reality in our daily life.

Today, there are branches of L'Abri in England, America, Canada, Korea, Sweden, and Holland, all of which operate under those principals but with different results depending on the types of workers and students that come to each branch each term.

If you're interested in learning more about L'Abri, I suggest going to their official website: http://www.labri.org. Or, if you're
really interested, you can buy Edith Schaeffer's book, L'Abri, which chronicles the beginnings of L'Abri and how things worked out for the first decade or two. Tomorrow, I'll post about what an average day at L'Abri was like so stay tuned for more.

In other news, I received most of my recent order from Amazon.com yesterday. I got a 120 gb external hard drive, a new wireless mouse, and a system for learning French. Big day!

Tuesday, June 26, 2007

3hive

Sharing the sharing. That's the tagline for the site 3hive. 3hive is a site devoted to bringing you, the discerning listener, the best of free music available on the internet. They go around the net pretty much everyday and link to the different band sites that have free downloads of a few of their tracks. It's great! Now, don't expect every band to be fantastic (there's a reason they aren't discovered yet), but take a listen to a bunch of the tracks and I'm sure you'll find something you like. Check it out: 3hive.

In other news, today I've got to mow the lawn, fill out the paperwork to get my very first credit card, buy the fifth and sixth Harry Potter books, and finish organizing the mountains of junk that I migrated from Columbia to Conway. Also, I'll be coming up to Columbia tomorrow. I think I'll probably try to get up there by 6 or so, and I've got a meeting for my trip to Argentina at 7. I don't know where I'll spend the night. Maybe Alan's. Who knows. Anyway, if you're in Cola and you want to hang out, give me a call (843-455-4167).

Lata homes.

Monday, June 25, 2007

The times are a-changin'

Something I've found myself asking over the last week or so is, what is the point of this blog now that I'm not in some faraway place? Now that I'm back home and I'm not just using the blog to let you guys know what's going on in my life, why do I still have a blog?

Some answers to that question. First, there are still people who don't live anywhere near me that want to know what's going on with my life; so I'll still talk about my life so that they can know what's going on. Second, I spend more time on the internet than most of you so I have found some things out there that I think may interest you or help you waste some time during the day. A good example is that Microsoft Surface video I posted earlier. I don't know if any of you liked it or not, but I did; so I posted it. Hopefully someone out there who would never have seen that video watched it and laughed. I'll also post about things that I've read or listened to that may interest someone. Thus this blog may become a link in the long chain of the passing on of information in our global village. Third . . . I don't know if there is a third. Maybe this blog is just giving me some sort of practice learning how to do some random web design stuff.

Anyway, I just kind of felt like I needed to explain to myself why I keep posting on the blog and explain to you why you should keep reading.

In other news, I got four new books in today! They are (in no particular order):
--The Fall of Interpretation by James K.A. Smith
--Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? by James K.A. Smith
--Introducing Radical Orthodoxy by James K.A. Smith
--Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Yeah, I know, three books by James K.A. Smith might be overkill, but I heard a lot of good things about him from the workers at L'Abri and I'm interested in all of the topics that the books are exploring so I think I'll make it without overdosing on James Smith. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is my roommate Nate's favorite book I think. He loves Annie Dillard, and this is her most acclaimed book (it won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1975).

Finally, I'd like to fulfill the second of my blog's stated goals before I conclude this post. I will do that by referring you to one of my favorite sites on the internet: Woophy. Woophy could possibly be one of the most amazing travel photography sites on the internet. The way the site works is simple: users can post pictures of the places that they live or visit and they site displays the pictures in groups based on the city in which the pictures were taken. When you get to the site you're presented with a large map with little dots all over it. Zoom in on an area and click on a city of your choice to see pictures from that city. Very easy. Very fun. Great way to procrastinate. So, go check out Woophy and enjoy looking at all the random places in the world.

Good bye.

Photostream Test

Well, I just wanted to try out this slideshow on my blog to see if it worked. It does. Or at least it should. If you're using Internet Explorer (shame on you), you may have to refresh the page if it doesn't show up the first time. Let me remind all of you that there's a nice link to the right that you can click on and download Firefox to use as your internet browser for free.

Anyway, I wanted to try out this slideshow so that when I finish uploading all of my Switzerland pictures to Flickr, I could use this to display them on the blog. In the meantime, here are the pictures from my final project in my medium format photography class. The series is affectionately titled "Sunshine and Stardust: Life without a seatbelt." All of the pictures were taken within 15 minutes of my home in Conway between the hours of 11 pm and 3 am using existing light or the headlights of my Toyota Matrix. I hope you enjoy.

PS - If you put your mouse near the top or bottom of the slideshow some controls will come up to navigate through the pictures.



Sunday, June 24, 2007

Epistemology

Well, I promised it a long time ago, and here it is. Finally, here is my post--or maybe posts depending on how long this is--about epistemology. I'm not sure if I can do a great job of explaining what I learned about epistemology at L'Abri. All I know is what I learned from listening to four lectures about it by a professor from Calvin College named Lee Hardy, and even what little I know will be hard to convey through a blog. But, we'll give it a go anyway. I need to say at the beginning that much of what I write will be directly from my notes and so a lot of it will be directly from Dr. Hardy's mouth. I can't remember what I wrote down verbatim from the tapes and what I paraphrased so some of these words may not be my own.

A basic definition of epistemology is that it is the study of the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge. So, if that's the definition, then a good starting point for thinking about epistemology is to ask yourself, "How do I know what I know?" In other words, how do you get your knowledge? Here are some of the main ways that most of us would answer that question:
--perception: we use our senses
--memory: we remember what we did or what happened in our lives
--introspection: we look at our feelings and interpret them
--testimony: we listen to and trust what people tell us
--reason: we use logic to make sense of the world around us
But the question that philosophers dealing with epistemology raise is, "How do you know that you can trust the faculties that you listed to produce beliefs which are true?" How do you know that those faculties--in particular your senses and reason--are giving you accurate information? Those are the questions that philosophers have been asking for a really really long time, and, as of yet, there's not really one universal answer to it. How do we know things? And how do we know that we know?

If epistemology is the study of knowledge, then we should define "knowledge." Knowledge is a form of belief. It is true belief that is justified (e.g. just because you guess that the card picked out of a deck is going to be an ace of spades--and it turns out it is--doesn't mean you 'knew' that). So we study epistemology to discovery a theory of knowledge. From a theory of knowledge we should expect a theory of truth and a theory of justification, a theory that will tell us under what conditions a belief is true and under what conditions we are justified in accepting that belief.

At the time of Descartes (Rene Descartes 1596-1650, regarded as the father of modern philosophy), most of the philosophers accepted the Correspondence Theory of Truth. This theory of truth stated that a belief is true is it corresponds to the way the world is. So, the statement "The sky is blue" is true if the sky actually is blue. The theory of justification at the time was called Strong Foundationalism. Let me try to explain this:
We all walk around with a system of beliefs that are interrelated; we believe A based on B. For example, we believe that we live with humans because our friends and family are humans. But, there must be some beliefs that are not based on any other beliefs; beliefs that we're entitled to right off the bat and which will serve as a basis--or foundation--for all the other beliefs that we have. Strong Foundationalism states that the only beliefs that can be in that foundation are beliefs that are absolutely certain and that everything we believe must be built on that foundation using logic. We should be able to trace all of our beliefs back to that indisputable foundation.

Now, Correspondence Theory and Strong Foundationalism had existed in one form or another ever since Plato and Aristotle; so then what marks the difference or change from Ancient to Modern philosophy? How did we get started down the road to the postmodernism that we are in today?

The answer is the Representational Theory of Consciousness. Whereas in Ancient philosophy the major point of interest was in being or ideas, in Modern philosophy there was a shift to focusing on consciousness as the foundation of human knowledge. The ancient philosophers were interested in being or the thing itself, but the modern philosophers are interested in the consciousness of being or the consciousness of the object. When the focus turns to our consciousness then we must ask ourselves, "Is the thing perceived (a tree, for example) the physical external thing (the actual tree)?
Modern philosophers would say no. They say this because they see no evidence that our consciousness of an object must necessarily mean that the object exists in reality. This new (and by "new" I mean new in Descartes' time) turn in philosophy and new line of questioning means that we have no way to prove that we have any direct contact with the world. We can know about things, but we can't know the thing itself. Think about it. How do you know that what you perceive--what's going on in your mind--has any correlation at all to the real world around you? How do you know that there even is a real world around you? Can you prove it? Think of being in one of those big 360 degree theaters that's like a sphere around you. You see things on the screens and it sure looks real, but how do you know that the world outside of the sphere corresponds to what you're seeing?

And this is the question that all of modern philosophy tried to answer. Postmodernism has kind of given up on trying to prove that we can have any kind of meaningful knowledge of objective reality, mainly because modern philosophers tried too hard to prove that we could have absolute knowledge of objective reality and in the end couldn't prove a thing.

I had some more typed out here. I still have about 20 pages of notes that I haven't told you about. I decided that I should probably leave it at this and let those of you who may want to know more ask me or look it up yourselves and those of you who didn't want to know anything won't have to worry about reading any more boringness. I hope I told you something you didn't know. I hope I didn't screw any of that stuff up as I regurgitated it onto this blog. Thanks for listening.

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In other news, I've got all of my stuff moved back down to Conway now. So, my apartment is pretty empty of all of my things. They are now all down underneath our house waiting for me to sort through them. I'll make a list of things that I'll be getting rid of and post it on the blog so that if you guys see anything you want you can give me an email and you can probably get whatever it is for free.

Friday, June 22, 2007

One day . . .

"One day, your computer will be a big-ass table . . . "

So begins a hilarious parody of the Microsoft Surface technology. If you don't know what Microsoft Surface is, you can watch Microsoft's introductory video about it here. The technology is pretty freakin cool, I must admit. But, this parody of it is just too hilarious to ignore. Check it out:




Also, here's the tributary picture of my old flip flops that I promised (not a promise made to you, but a promise made to my Rainbows), and a picture of the new Crocs that replaced them:














So there they are. Old and new. A faithful friend saying a sad goodbye and an intriguing stranger bidding me to come in and stay for awhile. Rainbows, you will be missed.

Cake

Just to let everyone who reads this know, I left my cell phone in Switzerland. Right now it's probably somewhere in a shipping center the US, but it's not with me. My roommate back at L'Abri mailed it to me sometime last week, but I haven't gotten it yet. In the meantime I'm using my Dad's phone. The number for that phone is: 843-455-4167. Some of you may recognize that number. Yes indeed, it is the very first cell number that I ever had. Somehow it has stayed in the family. Anyway, if you want to get in touch with me that's the number you should call. I don't have any of your phone numbers so you'll have to initiate contact.

Also, I haven't charged my camera batteries so no pics of my new kicks yet, but they're on their way I promise.

Bonus points for whoever can guess why in the world I named this post Cake.

Thursday, June 21, 2007

One more thing

Well, this post may encompass more than just one more thing, but I remembered one more thing about my trip home from Switzerland that I figured I should write here for all to hear.

I flew from Geneva to Newark in the lovely state of New Jersey. Now, if you've never flown into Newark (and I would assume it's the same at any other airport) the drill is this: if you're flying in from an international location you have to go through immigration and customs. The way that immigration works at Newark (and I would assume it's the same at any other airport) is that you have to wait in a long line and then you go up and talk to either an older-looking man or a younger-looking woman who seems tougher than the old man. In this particular instance, I was sent to the old man. He looked at me for a few seconds. He looked at my documents for a few seconds. Then he asked me what my occupation was. That was a question that I hadn't really thought about since I graduated from college. What is my occupation now?
Some options that ran through my head were: "Former unpaid campus ministry worker," "Untrained quasi-almost-professional website designer/photographer," and "Commune inhabitant." I eventually just said "minister." I don't know why I said that. I'm not a minister. I'm unemployed. Really really unemployed. With no plans for employment in the near future. Apparently it took me too long to make up my mind though. In the eyes of the old man, I was as good as guilty (of what, I wouldn't find out for another little while).
The man told me to walk to the police officer that was quickly making his way towards our desk. I guess the old man had press a panic button or something. After I was handed a small plastic envelope with my passport, driver's license, and plane ticket in it I was escorted to an elevator in a corner. The officer got the door opened and pressed the button for the floor below the floor we were currently on. I was given my instructions ("Get out when the doors open") and the officer let the doors close with only me on the elevator.
When I got out at the bottom, there were two or three more officers waiting for me. They took my documents and walked me to a sitting area which, although built to seat over 100 people, was currently only playing host to two Hispanics. I asked the younger-but-tougher-looking lady cop what was going on, to which she replied "How would I know? I wasn't up there with you. Just sit down."
So I sat. Both of the Latinos were helped and I was left just trying to figure out what was going on. After about 15 minutes I was called to a desk with a guy who sounded more New York than anyone I've ever met in person. The conversation was simple:
--"Where have you been?"
--"Switzerland. Why?"
--"Have you ever been to Jamaica?"
--"Nope."
--"Do you have any relatives in or around the Brooklyn area?"
--"Nope."
--"Okay. Here's your stuff back."
And he just gave me my stuff back like nothing had just happened. Now, I consider myself to be pretty relaxed and easy-going but at this point I had peed more than once in my pants. I was being held without my passport in an airport police station, and they weren't even going to tell me what was going on?
So I asked. Apparently someone named Christopher Allen Martin had smuggled a bunch of drugs in from Jamaica and sold them to people "in or around the Brooklyn area." So that means that I can add drug dealer to the list of awesome career choices that other Chris Martins have made. The list, in case you haven't read any of the other posts, includes photographer, media designer, international rock star, and if you count me, "minister."

In other news, I am back in Conway now. To keep myself busy I've been reading Harry Potter books. Right now I'm on the fourth book and I'm knocking out between 50 and 100 pages a day. The book is 700 pages long so this puts me at about a week-and-a-half pace, at least for this book. The next one is friggin 780 pages. Hopefully I can get it from the Horry County Library.
Also, something monumental happened today. I bought I new pair of flip flops. I guess it's been a long time coming, but it was really hard to pay for a new pair. I kind of felt like I was betraying my five-year-old Rainbows. I got a pair of the new Crocs flip flops. They're nice I guess. It'll take some getting used to. In honor of my old Rainbows, I'm going to post a picture of them as soon as my camera batteries are charged.

Stay tuned.

Thursday, June 14, 2007

Back in America

Well, I made it back to America. It was a rough trip from Huemoz to Geneva to Newark to Charlotte to Columbia, but I'm doing alright. Should I tell you about my travel back home first? I guess I will.

I left Huemoz and L'Abri on Tuesday night. Everyone gathered around and said goodbye as the bus pulled up to take me down the mountain. It was sad. Very sad. I left L'Abri and headed down to Aigle to catch the last train that would get me to the Geneva Airport before they locked to doors for the night. As soon as I got down to Aigle, however, I realized that I had left my cellphone at L'Abri. Big time bummer, but I called back up there and told them to mail it to me the next day. So, hopefully I'll be back in communication with all of my American friends in the next week or so.
Anyway, I got the train to Geneva Airport without at problem and promptly found my way to a payphone to call L'Abri again. I was lonely and there was literally no one around me in the airport for the longest time. I called L'Abri and talked to Katie and Tara for awhile. It was nice. I was going to talk to Peter, but something happened to the connection and the phone hung up. Peter, if you're reading this, I'm sorry I didn't call back. It's not you. It's me.
After the phone call, I read for a little bit and started to fall asleep in the chairs near the payphones. I did, in fact, find the blue couch that everyone told me to look for, but it was in such a lonely spot that I just didn't feel like sleeping there. I was woken up by the sound of computer speakers after about 20 minutes of sleeping, and when I looked around I saw two girls watching what I thought was Spiderman 3 on their computer. Of course, I had to see if that's really what it was so I walked over and said "Hey, I'm sorry to bother you but are you watching Spiderman 3?" Although they were obviously not America I knew that they spoke English because I heard them talking to each other, but apparently I was talking too fast. They thought I was angry at them for watching their movie too loudly. Once we got it all figured out, I found out that they were not watching Spiderman 3; they were watching 10 Things I Hate About You. The girls were from Brazil and Korea and they went to a hotel management school in Switzerland called Les Roches. They said it's one of the best schools in the world for it, and they seemed to know what they were talking about. Anyway, I watched the rest of the movie with them and then we split up to try to get some sleep around the area we were in. Here's a picture of me trying to sleep on the ground for awhile:After awhile of trying to sleep on the ground, I got up and slept in the seat of an arcade racing game. That lasted until about 4 am when I made my way upstairs to the lonely blue couch. I slept there until 7:30 am and then made my way to my plane. On my way to the plane, I passed a bunch of these very interesting signs that appeared to be guidelines for terrorists and military combatants to follow should they decide to take over the airport.








Very interesting. I really have no idea why they were there. There was another sign that actually said something like(although I didn't get a picture of it, so you'll just have to trust me) "Civilians: The goal is always zero civilian casualties, but this is not always viable."




I got the plane to Geneva and got back to Columbia safely. Last night I just hung out with Alan Davis and watched all the episodes of The Office and Heroes that I had missed. They were all good, but I gotta say, I don't really think I missed anything huge by not watching TV for the last five weeks.

Today I've got to take care of some errands: get my haircut, pay my internet and phone bills, burn the final copy of my grandparents' anniversary DVD. Then at about 12:30 this afternoon I'll head to Florence to meet my parents and go to Delaware for the next four days for my grandparents' 50th anniversary. Should be fun.

To all of my friends at L'Abri: I miss you like the deserts miss the rain. I'll call you guys soon to see how things are going. You should all email me so I have your email addresses and your last names so I can add you on Facebook and have an easy way to stalk you.

PS All of my pictures are on Tara's computer so if you want any of them, you can just grab them from her.

Wednesday, June 6, 2007

Less than a week

Hey guys. I'm in the final stretch. That's right, I leave in six days, next Tuesday. I'll be sleeping in the Geneva airport that night and my flight leaves at 9 am on Tuesday. I'll let you know how it goes. I really don't have anything else to say right now. Hmm.....

I finished reading Suburban Nation. I'll give a review on that and some other books I read here when I get home. Also, the epistemology post will be posted when I get home. So......be excited.

I am.

Monday, June 4, 2007

So you say it's your birthday

Sup everybody. I am now 23 years old. I know, it's awesome. Being 23 is kind of meaningless except that I feel like I need to be a real person now, with a real job, etc. It's a lot of pressure, but as long as I have a blog, I can't take myself too seriously and that takes a little bit of the burden away.

There's so much to talk about guys, I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll start with birthday-related things. First off, we went out to Villars (ski resort just up the mountain from Huemoz) last night to celebrate my birthday and to have one last night out with a bunch of people that were leaving today. It was a ton of fun. There were about 20 of us there and we didn't talk about theology or philosophy once. It was very relaxing. The best part was that I didn't have to pay for any of my drinks, not so much because I was the birthday boy but because people owed me money. Either way, I drank for free. The beer here is pretty limited and light. They have this beer called Carlsberg which is like Budweiser sort of. It's not very good. But, a girl here named Steffi bought me one of the most amazing shots I've ever tasted (okay, it's only like the third shot I've ever had....I'm normally just a beer guy). It was Vodka, Cointreu, and peppermint licquor and it was like drinking heaven. If it wasn't so potent I would have drank (drunk, dranken?) 30 more.
In other birthday-related news, I got a package today from Mr. Patrick McQuinn. Inside said package was a nice bottle of Lemon Fanta. To understand why this gift was so amazing, you have to understand that ever since I got back from Italy my junior year in high school, I've been telling people (or at least Pat) about how great Fanta Lemon is and what a ripoff it is that you can't get it anywhere that I've ever seen except for Italy. Seriously, I've looked everywhere. Somehow, though, Pat found it and sent me a bottle of it. I haven't drank (drunk, dranken, drunken?) it yet, but I plan on enjoying every sip. Also, my roommate Jeff wrote me a nice poem today to celebrate my birthday. In so doing, he unknowingly kept alive the two-year-old (as of this year) tradition of people writing me poems for my birthday. So, that was nice.

Now, about non-birthday-related things. A bunch of us went down to Ollon (about 10 minutes down the mountain) on Saturday night to the annual Festival of Bread and Wine. It was great. Ollon is a wine-growing area and so every year (maybe twice a year) they have this big festival to eat bread and drink wine. So, we went down and ate bread and drank wine. Lot's of wine, for next to nothing. And it was amazing wine. I'll put some pictures below.
Also, we had a talent show last night. For the most part it was incredibly talented people doing stupid things. There's a guy here that has a Native American flute and can play it like a madman, so he did an improv with another guy playing the piano. A guy named Micah can beatbox like somebody from a crazy video on YouTube and he did that while another guy who can freestyle really well freestyled about random people at L'Abri whose names we would call out. I sang harmony on a couple of goofy songs written by one of the helpers here, Josh. Combined with going out later on that night, it was probably the best night I've had here so far.

Now, I realize that the pictures I put on the blog probably take awhile to load. At least they do on the computer here. At first I didn't think there was anything I could do about it, but now I've just found an online image resizer, so the images below are resized to hopefully not take forever and ever and ever to load. I'll fix the other ones when I get home in a week, and I'll also post all my pictures somewhere online. Until then, here's a few:



Here's a picture of the traditional Swiss band and dancers at the Festival of Bread and Wine in Ollon. They really weren't very good. If you're going to do a really simple dance and wear a costume, then you should at least be completely synchronized.





This is Jo, Jeff, and Vicki. Jo is from South Africa originally but now lives in Australia. Jeff is from San Luis Obispo but now lives in Charlotte. Vicki is from Manchester, England. Just a word about Vicki. She went to Oxford and studied theology and is probably the smartest student here. She knows everything about everything. It makes me wish we did school in America like they do in Europe.




Here's a shot of the dining room from an adjacent lounge area. I know, you don't really get an idea of what the dining room actually looks like, but I really like this picture, so you'll have to deal with it until a put up all the pictures when I get back.






Finally, here's a shot of the moon over the mountains that my balcony overlooks. I thought it looked awesome. So should you.