My first full week of school

Dear Friends and Family,

My first full week of school has gone well. I’m still alive and excited about next week. I feel like I’ve been here for ages though. I have to think for a moment, “has it only been one week?”

I have finally made a final decision on what clubs I’m going to participate in. Though I really wanted to, I’ve decided to pass on the Renaissance Guild club. It was tons of fun, but it would take too much time and money. Instead I’m joining the women’s rugby teem, and the OSU college Republican’s club. Yesterday I volunteered for a door to door campaign effort to support the republican candidates for city council and mayor. They have elections this Nov. for city level stuff. It was nice to talk politics with people.

Arabic is really hard at the moment because it is so difficult to distinguish the sounds of a word and then write them down. They all run together and sound different with each person saying it. I have to admit I feel sorry for people who have to learn English. I have never yet learned a phonetic language where I was not born and raised with the alphabet and phonetic rules. The letters aren’t hard to remember, just knowing how to spell stuff (and I’m not even good at spelling in English!). I wonder if they have spell checkers for arabic.

Chinese is easy in concept, hard in the amount of homework I have to do. I gave my first oral report on Friday and turned in my first composition in Chinese characters. The report went well, though it was a bit too long *sheepish look*. I haven’t gotten my composition back yet.

Comp. studies class is very interesting. We have finished looking at scientology and are starting on hinduism next week. I actually feel pretty guilty, because all I wanted to do while talking about scientology was laugh at how foolish and blind scientologists are. But it also made me very sad. I wanted so badly to just burst out and yell the wonderful message of Christ’s sacrifice. I wanted to tell every body in that room that Jesus would welcome them with open arms if they would just believe, but I knew I couldn’t, and my heart hurt for them. It is very hard for me to sit in a class while we discuss all religions on an equal footing, as if they are all equally absurd and simply the fancies of the human mind, or the “opium of the people” as Marx puts it. It is a sore trial for my soul, but a good one, I think, that will force me to ever look to Jesus for reassurance.

In other news, my bike’s tire went flat on Thursday, and I was stuck walking all Friday (ohh the agony!). Actually it wasn’t that bad, its just that for my Chinese classes, which are back to back, I have to carry about 25 pounds of books, and the straps on my backpack are a joke, so it kindof hurts. Friday night I took it up to a bike shop on high street and got it all fixed for just 12$, which seemed like a pretty good deal to me.

I have a long way yet to go, and I’m very excited about that. I love learning, and I love working, I just wish I had a little more time to do it all. By the way, for some of you who have asked me (you know who you are, if you don’t care skip this part), I can now tell you exactly how many credits I need since I talked to my advisor last week. For two degrees, one in Chinese and one in Arabic, I need a total of 236 credits: 75 Arabic, 75 Chinese, and 85 GECs. I am also adding an International Studies minor, which is actually a good idea, because I can overlap almost all of those credits (30) with my GEC credits, so I really only doing about 10 extra credit hours. By the end of autumn quarter I will have 45 credits (I transferred some in). So, 200 credits left, and 11 quarters to do it in if I want to graduate in 4 years is roughly 18 credits per quarter, which is not a big load at all (remember most classes at OSU are 5 credits each, not 3, so 18 credits is about 4 classes). Plus, I will probably be going to Qingdao next summer and earning another 15 credits there, plus there’s wherever I’ll go for my Arabic overseas. So really, it is not impossible at all for me to get two degrees and one minor in four years. So, **glares at skeptical people** just shush and let me do my thing.

For all those who are not in the skeptical people category, thank you for your support, I’ll be sure to invite you to my graduation.
Love to all, I’d love to hear from you and let me know how you are doing.

Lydia

“Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.” I Corinthians 1:3

“Age is foolish and forgetful when it underestimates youth”–Albus Dumbledore