Colourless Green Ideas: Christian Stuff, Chronic Fatigue, and Crystopher

Once again, I must apologise for the delay since my last post. The last couple weeks have been an odd mix of excitement and difficulty, highs and lows...this makes it a little tough to write about, but it's about time I make an effort to.

So, where to start...I've been attending a lot of really interesting lectures this term. One of my biggest difficulties though, is that I've been suffering from a kind of fatigue that makes me really sleepy in lectures, when I'm reading articles and doing translations. This means it's been quite frustrating too. But I'm trying to do the best I can to find the source of the fatigue. Everyone I speak to has a different theory; low sugar levels, low iron, low blood pressure, glandular fever, Vitamin D deficiency or just general winter blues etc. (Having said that I'd appreciate no further advice on the possible causes, but prayer that it can be sorted out soon). I'm working with the college nurse who has given me an iron supplement and I'm having a blood test on Friday.

I'm getting by, however, so it's not all bad. On the upside, I've had quite a busy term getting involved in various Christian events. At the end of January, I attended a conference run by Developing a Christian Mind (in Oxford) which is targeted at Christian postgraduates and academics with a focus on what it means to be a Christian in academics, and how our faith and work should interact. It was a great encouragement and it gave me to chance to meet Christian graduates from other fields of study, colleges and churches. I even met a few South Africans ;-)

Then in fourth week, the Oxford Christian Union put on their Tri-annual Mission Week, called "This is Jesus" (they have a mini-mission week in the two intervening years but every three years is a big one). Two well known guest speakers spoke at lunch times and in the evenings in the Oxford Town Hall. We had over 400 people attending the lunch talks and 600 in the evenings, mainly undergrads, although there was quite a mix in the evenings. The talks were good, open and honest and dealt with real questions people have about God and Christianity, targeted specifically at Oxford students.

Moving from the spiritual to the more trivial...I finally got to see my first snow fall ever!!!! :D It fell on 4 February. When it started at about 4 pm, I was shocked at how tiny the snowflakes were (really expected them to be bigger). I was too excited to work so I went to help one of our CU Reps, Claire, write notes on the Gospels of John we'd been given to give out to every undergrad in college leading up to Mission Week. By the time we were done, it was dark, but snowing heavily and the snow had started to settle. I had dinner in hall that night and was in complete awe of how the already beautiful college was transformed under a layer of white. It's almost like God looked at the beautiful architecture and said, "Impressive, but I think I can make it look even better."

The next day, I went all around college taking pictures. Unfortunately it was melting quite quickly, and when I finally took a walk around town, there wasn't much left to see of it. The college fields stayed snowy for longer though, so when I came back I was re-cheered by the sight. By the end of the day I'd taken something like 160 photos.

It snowed again the following Thursday night. I actually walked in it on the way to the Mission Week talk. Afterwards I went with some of my college friends to the ice cream shop across the road. So I can now officially say I have eaten ice cream in the snow.

The next day, Maryanna, who's studying linguistics with me, helped me build a snow man. We were going to make one in my garden, but again the snow was melting fast and there wasn't enough left. So we made his head in my garden and carried that over to the Worcester field to make the rest of him. We named him Crystopher Icicleston after one of the Doctor Who actors Christopher Eccleston.