Of "Heathens", Snow, and Ghostbusters

1. Me and my new love Regent had our first fight yesterday -- it involved a very intense academic tutorial (My Brain = "Yum!") which ended with 10 minutes of all of us praying together (My Brain = "Augh!"). It's not that I don't like or appreciate prayer, it's just that I'm not used to being around Christians all the time, and that I still seperate education from faith in my head. So I freaked out for a while, then went to go talk to my professor. After listening carefully to my somewhat jumbled explanation of why I was so bothered, he had this to say:

Prof: "Do you need to spend more time with heathens? I mean, I don't mean heathens in a pejorative sense, just in.... it's okay to say yes!!"

Me: "Bwahaha! ... Maybe."

I told him that my dad playfully calls himself a 'heathen', and slowly realized both that my perhaps-profession of pastor will involve me learning how to spend more time around Christians, and that also I don't need to lose my 'flight' response entirely (being around 'normal people' sometimes is a good thing). So it was a minor spat really, but an interesting one nonetheless.

2. There was about 3 inches of snow on the ground yesterday morning, and this caused Vancouverites to go bat-shit-crazy. I mean it -- they just freaked out. There was a train derailment, busses stuck on hills, people abandoning their cars, people staying home from work -- it was hilarious, even after I'd realized that the normal lack of snow, the amount of hills, and the dangerous climactic mix of wet roads and near-freezing temperatures did actually make some sense out of all the transportation chaos. Half the population of Vancouver seems to pride itself on wearing shorts no matter what, so a little snow is definately cause for concern. I loved it, even I got sprayed with grey slush while waiting for busses and had wet pants all day. I had a good snowball fight in the afternoon, and got the brief but glorious vision of all the trees swathed in white.

3. I've been hired as a custodial worker at Regent, which means ten hours a week (mostly early morning or evening) of cleaning, tidying, locking/unlocking, and AV help. This morning was my first training shift and I discovered one of the perks of the job -- a backpack vacuum cleaner that looks just like the one from Ghostbusters. Awesome.

Pulses (of cities, of me)

People here routinely thank their bus drivers. Not just overly nice people either -- I've seen young, old, tourist, local, friendly, unfriendly -- at least a couple of people every bus ride I take say thank you to the bus driver on their way out the door. Some yell it as their going out the back doors, others come to the front door so they don't have to shout, some say it as they're walking past the open door -- however they do it, it's done. And it's lovely, especially when the bus driver (last night it was a heavily tatooed guy with a mohawk) respond with a cheerful "Have a good evening!".

I'm sure there's shitty busdrivers and rude passengers, but so far I haven't seen many of them.

In other news, I've gone from liking Regent to being full-blown in love with Regent. All the signs are there -- pounding heart, giddy demeanour, desire to be with my new love as much as possible, crazy rushes of hormones making me see only the good and none of the bad, and absolute, overwhelming happiness. It's wonderful and it's insane, and if I neglect this blog (or any of you) in the coming weeks because of my infatuation, I beg your forgiveness.

Holy Shit, Vancouver has Mountains!

I woke up at 7:15 am yesterday morning (in preparation for my first Tuesday with classes from 9:30am to 9:30 pm) and two wonderful things happened. First, I could breathe through my nose again! After a week of the flu and a couple days of intense sinus pain, this was a really big deal (as I tried to convince my somewhat startled roommate when I started enthusiastically wheezing at her -- "Nasal passages clearing. Acne...remains... But nasal passages clearing!")
Secondly, it was neither raining nor looking like it was going to rain, so after a week and a half here I finally got to see blue skies and the tops of the mountains. And they are glorious. I spent my whole bus ride staring at the mountains (dodging in and around confused commuters, bobbing and weaving as the mountains played hide-and-seek among the buildings) like some kind of lovestruck teenager. It was great.

The rest of the day was a blur of new courses (wow, graduate courses really do have more reading than undergraduate courses...), new people (I was overjoyed when, every so often, I would meet someone else who had forgotten my name just as I had forgotten theirs), and new ideas. I got home at 10:30 or so, and basically collapsed in bed. Now, in the morning of my first no-classes Wednesday I'm reconsidering my idealistic notion of being able to work part time while I study, doing laundry (I'm currently wearing pyjamas over my clothes because they were so deliciously warm when they came out of the dryer), and trying to organize all the masses of information I got yesterday.

Some highlights: My history professor is a woman from Oxford who wants us to study 'gobbets' of text and quite ably managed to have a discussion with her 100 students all at once; my Christian Thought and Culture course devoted a good 20 minutes to an explanation of the deliberate ambiguity in the title of the course (Christian thought and Christian culture, or Christian thought completing with/in opposition to culture?); the weekly chapel was led by a woman who laughed and said "you'll fit right in" when I confessed that I'm not terribly pious; and my evening 'Soul of Ministry' class taught by a hilariously sardonic full-time clinical psychologist who thinks it terribly important that before all us MDiv students go off to be ordained, we should spend a little while being assessed to figure out if we're actually psychologically fit to do such a difficult, ambiguous, and stressful job. And I tend to agree with him.

Finally, on a non-school not, if you haven't yet seen the movie Once and you like indie music of the emo-folk-guy variety, then you should definately see it.

Peek-tores!

Here are some fuzzy pictures of where I live and the kitties that make me happy. Currently, I am full of soup, basking in the kindness of Ben and Laurena, savouring yesterday's meeting with an awesome pastor who is pretty much me (in a time warp, after a sex change), leaking from the nasal cavity at an alarming rate, and looking forward to classes on Monday. That is all.






PS -- The orange tom is Nemo, the brown and black tabby is Sophie. The woman in the mirror be me.

The Joys of Low-Tech Living and Doing Orientation with the Flu

Lack of internet access still proving annoying. Yesterday was finding computers in the Student Union Building on UBC campus, today is working with the old and recalcitrant computers in the Regent Library, tomorrow will (hopefully) be bringing my laptop into the Wireless-friendly Regent Building and navigating that new adventure. That is, if I don't expire from this bloody flu first. I should really be in bed, but there's just too much going on here to miss.

For those of you who asked me why I had to go all the way out to Vancouver for a theological degree, here's a better answer than a probably gave you. Regent is not a seminary (in that it doesn't just train ministers, in fact out of 40 students in orientation, only 4 of us are taking the MDiv), not a Bible College, and not like anything else I could have chosen to go to. The faculty here are stunningly brilliant (many of them are the world's authority in their field), I'll be in classes with people all around the world, and one of the paid student positions is for someone in charge of making soup for the entire community (500+ people) every Tuesday. Awesome. In other words, considering this is a Christian graduate school, it's about as open and inclusive as it could be. I think I'd find any other place where I could study an MDiv too narrow.

In between the achy bones and the frustrations/sadness of living in a new place, I'm really excited to be here. I saw the mountains between the clouds today, I laughed inapropriately loudly when people said things I never expected to hear in a room full of Christians, and I heard some amazing stories of people from New Zealand, Singapore, and California.

There's still so much to do though. School supplies, registration (should I change courses?), finishing up my previous courses, sleeping, eating, making new friends (I hope). By the time the term starts I'll finally be all ready for my Christmas holiday....

Arrival in Vancouver

Have been in Vancouver two days now. Everything going tolerably well. Bags and boxes and boxes and more bags all unpacked (moving always makes me want to sell all my possessions and be a nomad) into my larger-than-I-remembered it room. Basic orientation established, homesickness felt, rainy weather experienced. Laurena and Ben = awesome, roomates are very nice (especially adorable kitties), and area I'm living in is quite trendy and exciting. 56 k dial-up modem in apartment is not so good (hence radio silence) but that'll be rectified soonish. Expect updates in a few days.

A little whine before I fly out.

I'm pretty sure I have the flu, and I'm starting to get cramps. My four pieces of luggage are crammed and jammed full of everything I need to take (I've worked up a pretty good zipper callus on my pointer finger), and I'm hoping none of them are overweight. I'm tired and crabby and I have about 2 hours before I leave and I've still got to finish cleaning up, have a shower, and eat dinner. I'm so very, very tired of packing and moving...

Edit: (2 hours later) I'm feeling much better now, mostly because everything's done and now it's just the emotional stress to deal with, rather than the physical stress. Still tired and slightly sick, but at least now I'm less grumpy.

'Aught Eight just doesn't sound as good...

It didn't feel like New Year's Eve at first, but it was nothing a little bubbly wine with cranberries, some lovely snow, a Canadian trivia game, and hilarious resolutions about time-share man-wives (they're docile, attractive, do the dishes, and are gone half the week -- what more could you want in a man?) couldn't fix. I wish all of you good fortune, good food, and good friends in '08. Also, on a more global scale, here's hoping the Beijing Olympics are good for, not detrimental to, the unfortunate state of human rights in China. It's a faint hope, but who knows...