Well I seem to have fallen of the rocker a bit here, but I'll do my best to recap. I left Dulles the night of the 5th and landed at Heathrow the morning of the 6th. Praise the Lord I managed to sleep nearly four hours on the plane! That is seriously a major rarity for me. A couple Messersmiths picked me up from the airport and the kids were in charge of keeping me up all day, which they may have enjoyed a little too much hahaha. Great seeing everyone at CBC again that weekend.
School:
Somehow I managed to turn in 9,000 words worth of essays in the first week. Seriously, homework over Christmas should just be illegal. One of my professors highly discourages people from going home because we should be working on essays. Really?? It's Christmas!
My schedule is the same this semester because all of my courses are full units, meaning they go the full year. It's nice in that I am finally getting to know these classmates. Apparently I'm not the only one who felt like no one talked last semester. A group of us has started hanging out after class a bit and of course there are always the library parties. One of them goes to the gym I work at, so I've started having a gym buddy again which to me is super exciting.
Right now I'm in the middle of two essays, a presentation, and three dissertation proposals. And of course all of the weekly readings, but that is just assumed. Thankful that the SOAS library has longer hours than the UCL libraries!
Work:
I've been able to get more shifts so far which is exciting because I want to earn as much extra as possible to be able to visit some other countries while I'm here. This week was a bit insane because I worked two doubles on back to back days on top of everything else but I was glad to get the hours in.
Hockey:
Spring season has already started! Crazy, I know. Today will be game three already. The weather had been really mild up until last week. Now it's freezing and, speaking of which, Thursday night training was cancelled this week because it was too cold. The problem though was that it was sent via e-mail only a couple hours beforehand and since I don't get e-mail to my phone here I didn't see it. Therefore I ended up standing around a bit at the turf and then waiting an hour for the bus back to the Underground in the freezing cold. Not fun. Hopefully today's game won't be too cold. It took me well until yesterday afternoon to feel warm again!
Church:
Like I said, it was great to see
everyone again. One of the Sundays we visited a nursing home, the same
one we visited once in the fall. We sang hymns and gave a Gospel
message. It's really neat to see some of the really old people who
can't even really talk or anything anymore mouthing a lot of the words
to the hymns along with us. The next Sunday at church I had the
privilege of praying with someone to accept Christ! That was super
exciting!
Randoms:
I'm wondering why I have been calling this the "Randoms" section instead of Miscellaneous, especially in light of my blog title. Oh well.
The Chinese New Year has come and gone. The New Year was on the 23rd. Rachel and I went to Chinatown that night, ate Chinese food, and took in the atmosphere. It was really cool to be there and it was nice to get out a bit. I hadn't done anything except church, school, work, and one hockey game at that point since coming back. The Chinese celebrate for a week, so this past Sunday Emily came with me between morning and evening services to Chinatown and Trafalgar Square where they had the end celebration going. There were booths with food and souvenirs, lots of lanterns, and traditional Chinese entertainment on a big stage in the middle of Trafalgar. I introduced Emily to baozi and I am happy to report that she loves the red bean one like all people should!
Yesterday I swam a mile and a bit at the gym. It felt so good I wonder why I don't do that more often. I hadn't swam since sometime last semester. I think I'm going to start incorporating it into my training more. It's a nice change especially when I don't like running in the cold or on a treadmill. Oh summer, come quickly!!! I also seem to have a new squat max! My body just appears to have some miraculous way of hanging onto strength. My lifting was so scattered last semester due to being sick a lot and I didn't have a gym over break and now after only a month of lifting regularly I already have a new all-time max?? Crazy in my opinion but I'll take it!
Received a penguin beanie with ear flaps and a penguin snuggie in the mail just in time for all the cold... thanks Kris!! And it looks like some good friends are going to come visit in May! I'm excited :)
Overall, I feel so much better about being here now than I did last semester. For whatever reason I finally feel like I belong. Like I walk around campus and I feel like this is my school. I'm not just some random visitor. I am so thankful for that. Makes it all so much easier.
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