Well, for starters I went on the best hike so far this past Thurday. Thomas, one of the workers here, got the car for the day and he drove us (me, him, Nichole, Valerie, and Jon) to a place called Solalex (pronounced 'Soul-ah-lay') from whence we hiked to a place called Azendaz (pronounced 'Ah-zen-dahz'). Now, dispensing with the parentheticals, I will tell you about the hike.
We started up at about 10:15 am and the air was chilly. The sun was out, however, and they day looked promising. I can already tell that I'm not going to be able to keep up this style of writing for much longer. In fact, I think two sentences is enough. Details are overrated and a picture says a thousand words so there are some pictures down at the bottom. Just in case you didn't venture to drag your cursor over the pictures on this blog--at which point you would be rewarded for your effort by seeing the little pointy hand which would have tipped you off to exactly what I'm about to tell you--you can click on any of the pictures here to see a bigger version. Anyway, I'll tell you a little bit more about the hike. The hike was cool because on the way up it was very rocky and craggy (think of the Aggro-Crag from Global Guts) and on the way down there were tons of boulders to jump around on, and let's face it, the most fun thing for any person to do in this world is climb up a rock, stand triumphantly on top, shout at the people beneath you, and then jump off and do a roll for good measure.
It wasn't a long hike, maybe four hours round trip. Afterwards we went back to L'Abri for a few minutes to change into our bathing suits and then we went to the Turkish baths down at the bottom of the mountain. The baths are pretty cool as well. Not as cool (not even close really) as jumping up and down on rocks but nice. There's a big pool with a bunch of fountains in it. There's also a sauna, Turkish baths (which is like a sauna but with thick fog inside), an aroma therapy room, and a weird room that just has black lights in it and slow chill techno music playing. We stayed at the baths and destressed for about three hours and then headed back up to L'Abri for a nice dinner of the week's leftovers. It was a day well spent. Possibly, no, definitely my favorite Thursday so far.
In other news, my tutor Greg assigned me two new books this week. The titles are "Seeing Through Cynicism" and "Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self" and if you care to investigate them further, you'll notice the updated "What I'm Reading" list over there on the right. "Seeing Through Cynicism" is easy enough, but "Interpreting God" is as obtuse as the title suggests. Let me give you a little quote, just one sentence, from the introduction to give you an idea of what it's like: "An adequate account of the self and of personhood cannot stop with its situatedness in some instantaneous moment within processes of shifting flux." If that's not enough for you, try this baby on for size: "This is an approach which combines the Buddhist negation of a stable differentiation between levels or between opposites with a postmodernist theory of signs as semiotic system." So, yeah. If I decipher what in the world he's talking about I'll let you all know.
I think it has something to do with post-self-fluxitudinal semiotic Buddhism.
PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Here we are about to cross over the river. In the spring, all of the rocks are where the water is.
King of the hill....stump.
We are walking.
King of the hill....crag. "Let's check out the leaderboard, Moe!"
And finally, here I am getting back into the car to go to the baths.
2 comments:
Ok so #1, I'm assuming you are working for Ralph. I don't know if you've heard the stories about him from Winter term... but be careful... he's a tab sketchy.
#2. I also hear from josh that you are taking on his music for the talent show. I want video because I'm pretty confident that it's going to be amazing.
Anyway.. just wanted to say that I hope everything is going well over there... and tell Stefani Verana Henrickson that I say hello.
-Madeline
You know, I think I sort of understood those sentences, once I looked up a word here and a word there in the dictionary. From what I can tell, the statements being made could have been stated in a much clearer manner with less obtuse wording. Verbiage, all is verbiage! So, what's the plan for when you leave L'Abri? Got any ideas yet? I've been reading this book called Taize by Olivier Clement, and I really want to go visit there sometime.
Oh, and being the only white guy within a few blocks and at the place that I work is an interesting feeling, though I don't really feel out of place for some reason.
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