Catching up on life in VA

I can’t believe a week and a half has slipped by since my last update. In that time I’ve been through orientation and begun classes, and we’ve also had some great fun along the way as a family.

A week ago Sunday was Sarah’s sixth birthday. We had already been invited to a party at the home of a returning student who allowed us to include our own special occasion in the proceedings.

Then began a week in which we all met many, many more people. My class (“juniors” in seminary lingo) consists of 45 M.Div. students and a bunch of MA and other types of students besides. Apparently, it’s a larger class than they were expecting. I’m working hard to memorize names of students, spouses, children, faculty, staff, etc. I spent Wednesday through Friday of that week in a variety of orientation sessions.

This past Sunday, we took a bus and a train into D.C. and visited the Smithsonian Natural History Museum. Sarah even got to ride the merry-go-round on the Mall.

During the August term, most of us juniors are taking two main courses: a language in the morning (Hebrew in my case) and a writing workshop in the afternoon. I felt a little overwhelmed by Hebrew at first, but now that I’m getting the alphabet down, I anticipate that it will get easier.

The aim of the writing workshop is to get us all writing in many different styles: formal and informal, devotional, academic, homiletic, etc. Christy has been hired as an editor for this class; she will coach a number of my classmates on their writing as the term goes on.

At this point, we are two days into both of these classes; today we will break from our regular classes to take the required workshop for preventing sexual misconduct in church settings.

Yesterday afternoon, a friendly soccer game took place on campus, and both Sarah and I played, along with some really amazing players and a couple players even younger than Sarah.

In this time, we’ve visited two churches: Immanuel Church-on-the-Hill and St. Luke’s, both in Alexandria. Sarah participated in a Vacation Bible Camp at St. Luke’s called Island Odyssey and had great fun. We’re also slowly unpacking our apartment; we’ve reached the phase where most of the boxed-up things are at least in our closets, out of sight.

Sometimes I still feel a little like my family has come with me to a long retreat or something, and that one day it’ll be time to pack up and go home again. I’m sure this feeling will fade in the coming weeks. We really are having a fabulous time and are making good friends.