Happy Halloween!

Hi all,
First, a general announcement: the UK's Daylight Savings Time ended last night, so currently I have fallen back and you haven't, and the time difference between me and MS is temporarily 5 hours; between  me and Atl. it is 4 hours.  Next Sunday (Nov. 7) you'll fall back, and we'll be on the usual 6 hr/5 hr lag again.

That having been said, I need to apologize for my remissness in updating this blog--I know this is the only way I have to keep in touch with a lot of people, esp. at church, and I haven't been doing a very good job of it.  So, first things first, I'm going to start downloading the pictures for that town tour I promised you, what, a month ago?

Part of my slowness in updating is that not a lot is happening.  Despite the exotic location (made more exotic by those palm trees...), I am, in fact, at school, and 90% of what I do is classes, lab, and homework.  This is almost exactly the halfway point of my semester (can you believe it?!), so while we don't have midterms (about 90% of my grade in each class is the final exam), I do have graded homework assignments, labs, essays, and a talk to prepare over Reading Week, the "vacation" week that starts Nov. 8.  I am under no illusions that this week will be a vacation.

The weekend before, however, will be, because my flatmates and I are going on a tour of the western highlands!  We'll be making a loop from Edinburgh northwest to the coast near the Isle of Skye and then back (Google "Eilean Donan Castle" if you want to see the part I'm really excited about).  I'm looking forward to it, though I hope that in the future I'll be able to take more self-guided trips rather than bus tours.  But still.  FUN!  Pictures will be taken, though whether I'll ever get around to posting them here remains to be seen...

...Photobucket is working on the other albums...I still have an hour before I have to get ready for church; maybe they'll be downloaded by then...

But anyways.  As for how I'm doing here, I think I'm alright.  I go through days/moments where I feel really stressed with work and just generally not having time for anything, and then times when I feel like it's all manageable, but that's just typical school, I think.  I also go through random spurts of homesickness, usually focused on a craving for something mundane like looseleaf paper (they don't sell it here!) or a muffin from Broadstreet.  Or less mundane things like Jason cookouts, my family, the barn, RUF or Hapkido.  Skype is a Godsend; I think without it I'd be a lot worse off as far as homesickness is concerned.

A lot of the trouble I am having (if you can call it "trouble") is in trying to find my place here, so to speak, to figure out what I can do and how I can contribute.  Part of what frustrates me is that I've stopped taking the Aikido class.  I don't like dropping things; I like being committed and working hard to improve at things that I find difficult.  But when I realized that I was having to convince myself to get up and go to each and every class, I realized it was probably not something I ought to be devoting my time to, even if I wanted myself to want to go.  Instead, I run to get some physical activity.  Those of you at Tech, especially in my Hapkido class, are gaping right now because you know how passionately I HATE running.  Well...I'll just say it's different when you have cool weather and a place like this to run in.  I NEED to take some pictures of the Lade Braes walking trail for you all.  It's beautiful, and it at least provides a reliable distraction from the utter misery of running itself.

But more than that, I've been struggling to figure out how to participate at my church and the Christian Union.  I don't like being just an "attender" in my church or ministry; I like to be a contributing member of the community, and I've been thinking and praying a lot about how I can do that when I'm here for so little time.  I had a great conversation with the leader of my small group  about this.  What she said and some of the other things I've been thinking about have kind of changed the focus of my thoughts from "creating a role for myself," which is hard when you won't be here to carry out any responsibilities, to doing things that put the community in a position to grow even after I've left, which I can do.  And rather than give all of you a blow-by-blow of everything that goes on in my head on this topic, I'll stop here and go get ready for (appropriately enough) church, which starts at noon.

Photobucket had to start over and my faith in its ability to finish in the next half hour is small, so I'll be posting links to the various albums as they come available.  But please, e-mail me if you would like and tell me how you're doing!  I can guarantee that I'll read e-mails, while I may miss a comment on one of my posts.  I'd love to hear from everyone, so please do write!  Bye for now!