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.