This Is It

Nothing about this is wrong

2008-01-03T20:29:00.000-05:00

***Update: Thanks to Dave for pointing out that the link below takes you to a version of the test that kicks you to a dating site at the end. Here's a link to a quiz that will actually give you an answer . . . . actually . . . yeah, I just went and changed the coding for the badge below so now it will take you to a non-manipulative version of the quiz.***

25

Boy you craysee

2008-01-01T19:29:00.000-05:00

I know: two posts in one day?!? What am I thinking? Well, I'm thinking that you need to check out this great website. It's called Songza and it's a music search engine that let's you search the internet for songs by your favorite bands. You can listen to the song on their site or go to the source which is, from what I can tell, usually YouTube or MySpace videos or tracks. Check it out.

Songza

Zombies again

2008-01-01T18:50:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year! Or is it New Years? As I've been wishing people that all day today, I question myself every time I say it. I think it must be 'New Year', but if you think otherwise, I'm up for correction.

Anyway, check out this awesome video I just found. It's a zombie remix of the West Side Story. Amazing.

No voices in my head

2007-12-27T01:37:00.000-05:00

Okay okay, I know that lately, I've only been posting links to things and not really posting anything original at all. There are a couple of reasons for that. First, I've been in Conway sitting around watching SportsCenter again and again and again all morning and YouTube videos all afternoon because there's just not that much to do here, and that leaves me with very few interesting stories to tell the 12 of you who read my blog. Second, I've promised that I would write about some of the things that I've been thinking about for the last few months, but as of yet, I don't think I've finished thinking through those things enough to be able to offer you a summary. It's been good for me lately to just write down as many of my thoughts as I can in rough form and start to mull over those. As of this very moment I'm renewing my vow to you (isn't that romantic?) to actually write something serious on this blog and try my best (for your sake and mine) to summarize what I learned at and through L'Abri.

Until then, I want to point you to an article that I just read. Literally, I just finished reading it, and I don't think I've read something that's summed up my views on an issue this well and coming at such a perfect time as this. The article is called "No Voices in my Head" and it's by Bill MacKinnon who writes some at the blog The Internet Monk which has quickly become one of my favorites. The article concerns the idea of God's leading or personal revelation to individuals and how obsessed the evangelical church in America has become with "feeling led" by God or "hearing" from God in a private way. Here are two excerpts, one from the beginning of the article and one from the end:

I’m a lousy Christian.

There. I’ve said it. People say that admitting it is the first step. What makes me a lousy Christian you ask? Hidden sin? Lukewarm commitment? Worldliness?

I wish.

At least if it were one of those, I could do something about it. No, what makes me a lousy Christian is something I don’t seem to be able to do anything about. You see, God isn’t speaking to me. He won’t give me assignments. He didn’t tell me who to marry. He was obstinately silent when I had to decide whether to take my current job. He doesn’t give me secret knowledge about other people or situations. In short, He isn’t doing for me what seemingly the rest of the evangelical church claims He is doing for them.

and

It is curious to me that if someone in a typical evangelical church stood up and said an angel spoke to him and told him that God wanted him to be a missionary to Africa , we would be very skeptical at best. Yet if that same person stood up and said that he “just really feel led to go to Africa to be a missionary”, the "amens" and applause would be deafening. Yet the former is biblical and the latter is not.

Read the article. It's not that long. Don't be turned off by what seems to be cynicism about the idea that God could speak to people privately. He says in the article that he's not talking about what God can do but about what we can teach (read: tell people to expect).

I imagine that when I summarize my thoughts over the last few months, this issue will play prominently into the discussion. Read the article and if you have the time and energy I'd love to hear what you think about it, positive or negative. Any of your thoughts will help me work out my own.

In other news, I leave in about seven hours to go to Atlanta with my family to hang out with my dad's side of the family for the weekend. There's about 30 of us so it should be loud. It's always a good time. If anything awesome happens I'll be sure to let you know.

Spanish is como estas

2007-12-26T08:47:00.000-05:00

Since there's not a whole lot to do around Conway right now I have been watching almost every video on YouTube. It's a little bit dorky, but I don't care because if I wasn't watching every video on YouTube then I wouldn't be able to show all of you these great clips that I find.

Here's four videos by the same people. I'm sure you've seen the first one, but I just found the other three and they are just as funny if not funnier. I hope you enjoy.

Happy merry

2007-12-25T11:06:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas everyone. I'll post something with more words in it tomorrow, but until then, here's my Christmas gift to you: a dance video I edited last night while waiting on Santa. It's made up of a bunch of clips from different times while I was at L'Abri. Enjoy

PS If you're reading this post on Facebook, you'll have to actually come to my blog to see the video.

American Gladiators

2007-12-21T18:56:00.000-05:00

This was the most exciting show of my childhood. American Gladiators was, is, and will always be the best fighting/wrestling-related action/drama ever made in the 80s and resurrected in the 00s. Here's a great clip that, I think, truly shows the high quality wrestletainers that they had on this show. We can only hope that in the new version there will be gladiators as amazing.

Amazing beatboxing puppets

2007-12-20T11:19:00.000-05:00

I need a life . . .

Classy people read my blog

2007-12-19T11:41:00.001-05:00

This might creep you out, but I don't even give a care.

After I started my blog up, I registered with Google Analytics so I could see how many people were coming to my blog, where they were coming from, how long they were staying, etc. Don't worry, I can't find any information about you specifically unless I know you're in some random place like Croatia on December 12 and I see that I had three hits from Croatia that day. I would know that it was probably you, but it doesn't tell me your name or anything like that so don't be so paranoid and vain, as if I would try to track you.

Aaaaaaaanyways. One of the things I can check on is what things people search for on Google that leads them to my blog. The following are a few of my favorite keywords that people have searched for and ended up at my blog:

--"that bird is not my doppelganger"
--"beard growth fill in" - this person actually spent 9 minutes on my blog
--"fisherman beard" - there were numerous beard searches which leads me to believe that I'm not the only one self-conscious about my lack of manly facial hair
--my favorite beard-related query: "how to shave so that it grows more and tough"
--"bicep is twitching"
--I would like to meet the person who searched for this, I'm sure he's . . . awesome: "pictures of awesome jet planes doing awesome things" - he only spent 30 seconds on the site so I guess the Swiss jets weren't awesome enough or doing awesome enough things
--"where do most jamaicans live in brooklyn?"
--"it's my last chance to say something to save my marriage" - fortunately this guy/girl didn't stay on my site for very long

And finally:

--"dirty swiss lady gallery" - proof that there are lots of pervos on the internet; this guy searched my site for dirty Swiss ladies for 8 minutes before moving on

Yes, classy people read my blog. People who are interested in an eclectic mix of topics ranging from SNL skits to how to be a more manly man to where to find weird niche pornography. Thanks for reading y'all.

Journaling

2007-12-18T19:20:00.000-05:00

Here's a good and interesting article comparing the journaling habits and styles of early American Christians to those of the modern American. Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

In this essay, which briefly compares the recent phenomenon of “journaling” to early American devotional writing, I’ll try to answer several questions: Why did so many early American Christians feel compelled to keep diaries, and why has there been such a surge of interest in “journaling” in our own time? How do today’s “spiritual” journals either resemble or differ from early American diaries? In the first part of this essay, I show that early American Protestants kept diaries in order to “crucify” themselves and worship a transcendent God. In the second part, I argue that today, Americans write spiritual journals for a very different set of reasons: to create an authentic sense of selfhood, to come to a deeper appreciation of their own worth, and to find God within them.

And here's a link to the article. "'A place to go to connect with yourself': A Historical Perspective on Journaling". Interestingly enough (and the author mentions this as well), many of the critiques that we could level against the modern practice of journaling find no criticism or counter-examples within current Christian writing, thought, and theology. Also interesting is, in my opinion, how the theology of several of the most widely-read preachers and writers coming out of the theological traditions of the early American Christians (Puritans) can, if read without care to discern these themes specifically, leave the reader or listener with the same sense of self-loathing and lack of self-worth that the author rightly criticizes in the theology of their predecessors.

Enjoy the read.

Two new vids

2007-12-18T07:37:00.000-05:00

So, I might post again later on today, but as of right now (7:37 am) I think the most important thing for all of you to see is these two videos from L'Abri. They're made by a girl named Valerie (not the one in my 'Day at L'Abri' videos) who was at L'Abri for about ten days. The first one is mainly a bunch of the girls dancing on a day trip to France, but at the end is some footage of us playing volleyball. The second one is a group of four or five people walking up to Villars to go to a bar one night. They made the mistake of taking the trail through the woods instead of just going up the road. Rookies.

Enjoy!

Zombie Survival Guide

2007-12-13T18:08:00.000-05:00

Bought it today. The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead. I'll let you know how to save yourself after I'm finished reading it, which will probably be by the end of this weekend in Asheville.

In other news, if you didn't already know, I'll be going to Asheville this weekend with my family to stay at the Sourwood Inn.

Okay, this blog post, however short, has been too much about my boring life for my comfort. I want to stay away from the type of blogging where I just tell you what is going on in my life unless I'm going to make it into some half-fictional story that will entertain you.

I'm done.

There goes my hero . . .

2007-12-12T18:49:00.000-05:00

Watch this video. It is my hero, the author of "The Zombie Survival Guide" and "World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War", Max Brooks. Here's a link to a video of him explaining how to survive a zombie attack.

Here I Am

2007-12-12T08:54:00.001-05:00

I made it back to America! Yeah, I landed in Charlotte, NC at about 5 pm on Friday night, and I was picked up by Pat and Alan and brought back to beautiful Columbia, SC. That night I had an amazing burger and a dark beer at Rockaways and then had some more good beer with Dando, Nate, Pat, and Alan. Couldn't ask for a better first night back. Friends, food, and beer that, unlike all the beer you could get in Villars, is darker than my pee.

Since I've been back I haven't done much. It's been at least 80 degrees here in Columbia every day and I don't have a car so I've been trying to find stuff to do in Alan's . . . wait a second. I'm watching TV right now and a show just came on where they're documenting the Ohio State Grade School Wrestling Championships. I don't even know what to say. Little kids throwing each other around on a mat acting like hardcore big dogs--like they're already men--until they start to lose the match and start to cry. There's nothing wrong with crying. It's just that if you didn't see the little kids wrestling in the background, you'd think all the adults were coaching and screaming at grown men and the kids are acting like grown men until the match is over and the loser is sobbing hysterically and everyone has to switch gears back to the reality that the kid that they just told (and I'm quoting) "This is the most important match of your life" and "If he hurts you, you hurt him worse" is just that: a kid who is at most 11 years old. That was a long long run-on sentence. Anyway.

I've been trying to stay inside and not sweat to death. Today I'm going to hang out with James Basler and get some lunch somewhere downtown.

I'm not sure what all I should write in this post. I think I want to give you all a rundown of some of the things I was thinking about while I was at L'Abri, but I need to think about it a little bit more and take some more time to process everything a little bit more. Until then, here's a quote from the blog of a girl, Emily, that I think is a good beginning to my thoughts about my time at L'Abri:

"It was a time to stop 'doing' and think about what it was that I was doing. I was allowed the freedom and time to explore thoughts that I have never before allowed myself and then to actually attempt living out some of those things with the space to fail. I can’t quite describe in words how valuable this has been in my life and how badly I needed such a thing."

That's from Emily's blog. I linked to it on the right, but here's another direct link. Check it out.

Before I go, here's a video I've been watching about five times a day for the last three days. It's a music video for Kanye West's song "Can't Tell Me Nothing" and it's starring Zach Galifianakis and Bonnie Prince Billy. It's amazing. I think it's hilarious. Maybe you will too. Here's a link to the website of the director: The Claw Productions. Check him out.

A Day at Swiss L'Abri - pt 6

2007-12-04T05:39:00.001-05:00

Here's the final video. See you guys in a week!

Zombie Cockroaches!!!

2007-12-04T03:59:00.001-05:00

Yes.

There you go . . . almost

2007-11-28T14:09:00.004-05:00

I still have to upload part 6, but here's the majority of the video of a day at L'Abri. The reason they're so short is that I didn't want to compress them at all so to fit them within the size requirements for YouTube, they had to be short. The size means it takes forever to upload them, so at some point--maybe tomorrow--I'll upload the last vid.

A Day at Swiss L'Abri - pt 1

2007-11-28T14:09:00.003-05:00

A Day at Swiss L'Abri - pt 2

2007-11-28T14:09:00.001-05:00

A Day at Swiss L'Abri - pt 3

2007-11-28T14:08:00.003-05:00

A Day at Swiss L'Abri - pt 4

2007-11-28T14:08:00.001-05:00

A Day at Swiss L'Abri - pt 5

2007-11-28T14:07:00.001-05:00

I'll be posting later on tonight...

2007-11-27T05:35:00.000-05:00

Yeah, I haven't posted in a really long time, but it's for a good reason. I made a video showing what a day at L'Abri is like and it's taken me awhile to upload it to YouTube because the six parts are so big. Hopefully I'll have at least four of them up later on tonight for you to watch. Until then, here's a book cover I've been working on for my tutor Greg.

***Update: For some reason, at least on my computer, the colors of the picture are coming out weird. Just imagine that the sky above the grass is blue like a normal sky and the mud at the bottom is brown like normal mud. I don't know what Blogger's up to with these weird colors.***

Zompires

2007-11-08T08:00:00.000-05:00

Val says that a vampire attack would be preferable to a zombie attack. I say that Val is naive and is disconnected from reality. And yet she continues to argue her side.

The survivability of a zombie/vampire attack, in fact, has been the most talked about subject at L'Abri as of late. Let me tell you why.

Things that led to the zombie and subsequent vampire discussion at L'Abri:

1) I love zombie stuff. I love the movies, the books, the games, whatever. I don't know why. I just do.
2) Over the break I re-listened to an audiobook version of 'World War Z: The Oral History of the Zombie Wars' by Max Brooks. This book is an account of the Zombie Wars that nearly wiped out the human race in the early 21st century.
3) My tutorials each week with Greg get done at about 6:30 pm which means that I have to make the 15 minute walk back to Bellevue in the dark. This gives me ample time to contemplate how we at L'Abri would survive the inevitable zombie holocaust.
4) Also over the break, Jon listened to 'World War Z', and so became qualified and well-versed enough in zombie combat to offer educated insights into surviving the aforementioned zombie apocalypse.

So, one night when I got back to Bellevue from my tutorial with Greg I told Jon, Renea, and Val that I thought we had a pretty good chance of surviving a zombie attack if we were at L'Abri. I told them my plans and they were all impressed with my intimate knowledge of the habits of zombies. My plan hinged on the fact that by late January most of the zombies around Huemoz would be frozen solid. This would mean that we could go outside, kill the frozen zombies, handle any of the ones that were halfway frozen and at least slowed down by the cold, and then hunt for food and get fire wood. The winter would also allow us a chance to refortify Bellevue and build walled walkways to a couple of the chalets nearby. Of course, the residents would have already been evacuated to Bellevue, but we would go back there for clothes, books, anything we might be able to use.

Anyways, I don't have the time or energy to go into all the details of the plan, plus you don't really know the layout of Bellevue so none of it would make sense to you. Suffice it to say that if we stuck by my plan, we would have a good chance of survival here.

As I was explaining all of this to Val, Renea, and Jon, however, Val said that she would much rather be attacked by vampires than zombies, and that she thought that vampires would be way easier to survive than zombies. Obviously she's dead (or undead, ba dum pshh) wrong, but just for the heck of it, let's think about this.

Zombie attack: A zombie's main goal in death is to eat people. Not all the way usually, but at least a few chunks. Zombies don't move quickly because their brains aren't fully functioning. You kill a zombie by destroying the brain matter. This can be by shooting them in the head or by beating their head in. Unless you destroy their brain they can come back. Zombies don't think; they just go towards food and moan. This last part is important for our discussion. Zombies do not think. They may swarm towards food in groups of thousands or even millions, but they do not think.

Vampire attack: A vampire's main goal in death is to drink blood, turn other people into vampires, and live a lavish life. Some vampires may not want to fight a war against humans, but some do, and those are the ones that we worry about. Vampires can move very quickly and have superhuman strength. Some may be able to turn into bats, but that may just be superstition. Also, they may or may not be able to seduce you in your dreams into doing what they want you to do. Vampires can kill people, make them into human blood banks by enslaving them and just taking a little bit of blood at a time, or turn you into a vampire by taking all of your blood. Vampires can be warded off, some say, by garlic (this may just be superstition), crosses, and holy water, but the only things that kill them are sunlight or a wooden stake in the heart. Some people say that vampires can only come into your house if you invite them in. This may be true, but it is unimportant if they can seduce you in your dreams into letting them in your house. Unlike zombies, vampires can think and have tactics when they fight people. Not only do they have tactics, their tactics are sophisticated and have been forged over many centuries of undeadness.

So, which would you rather fight?

Zombies of course. Yes, an army of the undead would be frightening, but when you start to fight back all you have to do is move methodically. There will never be a 'boss-level' zombie. They will never adjust their tactics. They come to you and you kill them. All you need is enough ammo. Vampires on the other hand are cunning and fast and strong. They can take a break and make you think you've won the war and then come back and launch a surprise attack. There's just no telling what they'll do.

In conlusion, I give you two pictures. Which one would you rather fight? If you say vampire, you are wrong.

In other news, things are moving along here at L'Abri. We've got less than a month left. I've finally finished reading 'Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self', and I must say that even though it took me a month-and-a-half to read it was well worth it. I hate writing book reviews/summaries so even though I should qualify that last statement, I won't. I also just finished reading a book called 'Still Life with Woodpecker' by Tom Robbins which was okay. It's a novel. Fiction. Tom Robbins did a lot of drugs I think and this story was the result of that. Let me write for you the book description from the back cover so I don't have to describe the book myself:

"'Still Life with Woodpecker' is sort of a love story that takes place inside a pack of Camel cigarettes. It reveals the purpose of the moon, explains the difference between criminals and outlaws, examines the conflict between social activisim and romantic individualism, and paints a portrait of contemporary society that includes powerful Arabs, exiled royalty and pregnant cheerleaders. It also deals with the problem of redheads."

After reading it, I can say that the book successfully fulfilled that description.

What else, what else? Oh yeah, there's a girl here from Columbia. Her name is Sarah Goddard and she grew up in Chapin and went to College of Charleston but now she lives in Columbia. Her dad is Hule Goddard and he teaches at CIU. She works at Yo Burrito and she's cool. Maybe some of you know her.

The end.

The internet's been out

2007-11-08T05:07:00.000-05:00

But I'm working on a post right now, and I'll probably post sometime later today. Sorry for missing Tuesday.

Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century

2007-10-31T17:21:00.000-04:00

This blog is proof that people really make websites about anything.

I am very impressed.

I present to you, Mustaches of the Nineteenth Century: A Daily Celebration of The Golden Age of Upper Lip Hair.

Um.....

2007-10-30T15:38:00.000-04:00

I really don't know what to say about this post.

I've made a video. A video that could ruin my chances of ever becoming an elected official.

I guess I should at least explain what's on the video so you won't be blindsided.

On Sunday night we watched the movie Zoolander at L'Abri. Afterwards we had a "Ridiculously Good-Looking Party/Walk-Off". Of course, I won the walk-off. I would say, in fact, that I dominated it.

This video is a record and commemoration of my victory.

Disclaimer: I was wearing makeup, but only a little bit, and no more, I think, than Hansel himself would wear.

Enjoy.

Little Monster Man

2007-10-28T10:04:00.000-04:00

Pics are up

2007-10-25T15:07:00.000-04:00

I updated the vacation post and put all the pictures on it. You don't have to reread the post, but at least look at some of the pictures. And for all of you old people don't forget, you can click on the pictures to see a bigger version.

Enjoy!

The Dance

2007-10-23T16:40:00.000-04:00

This is it. The second most amazing thing that I saw/did on my vacation to Italy. Andrea and I were walking around Florence when we found this party and went in for the music and free wine. Little did we know that we would see something this amazing. Watch this video. Send it to your friends. Spread the love that is this man's dance.

A vacation of epic proportions

2007-10-23T16:18:00.000-04:00

There once was a young man named Chris
Who went on a trip just like this:
First to Florence and next
To Livorno, but vexed
He and Jon realized that Livorno is retarded and so are all the people that live there who have no idea when or from whence the ferry to Capraia leaves their unbearably hot and smelly town.

Yes, my dear friends and family, Livorno is hella-dumb. Online, the ferry ticket office told me that there were five ferries leaving for Capraia on Sunday. When Jon and I arrived there, however, there was no ferry in port, the ticket office was closed, and no one around the port seemed to know or even believe that ferries would actually go to Capraia. After some deciphering of the signs on the ticket office door, we discovered that a ferry would be leaving the next morning at 8:30. Unfortunately for Capraia, Jon and I really didn't feel like staying in Livorno for the night so we hopped a train (and by "hopped", I mean we paid for tickets and boarded legally) to Cinque Terre and figured we'd just bum around there until the girls (Amelia, Erin, and Emily; all from L'Abri) got there on Wednesday.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning of our trip. Interspersed throughout the post will be pictures from our trip. I'm going to make them small in the post, but just click on them and you can see a bigger version.

Jon and I walked out of Chalet Bellevue on Thursday morning at 10 with our backpacks strapped tightly to our backs, ready to hitchhike to Turin, Italy. We had a sign that Greg Laughery made for us in French that said "We are going to Turin, Italy. How far can you take us?" Hitching down to Turin turned out to be pretty easy. We made it in just about five hours. Our hitches were as follows:
1) A former missionary nurse from Albania took us down the mountain and wished us luck.
2) A British lady from Villars drove us to the next town, Monthey, and told us she knew a bunch of people from L'Abri and that anytime she picked up hitchhikers she knew they'd be from L'Abri. She was nice and had on three pounds of makeup.
3) These two old Swiss ladies who spoke absolutely no English picked us up and drove us about 40 minutes to the far side of Martigny. I told them that I didn't speak any French, but I guess I look like I can understand what anyone is saying because they talked and talked and talked to us all in French. I just smiled and nodded and Jon played Sudoku.
4) A middle-aged Swiss lady picked us up and drove us to the beginning of the highway that leads into Italy. She was very nice and told us that when she was little she memorized all 50 states of America. She also taught us how to count to 20 in French.
5) A Kosovar couple (if you'll notice, this is the first man that has picked us up; middle-aged women loved us) picked us up and drove us about 10 minutes up the road towards Italy.
6) Best hitch of the day. A French-turned-Swiss lady (middle-aged) picked us up and drove us all the way to within 50 km of Turin. We were in the car with her for about two hours during which she told us all about her travels around Europe and how she came to be a Zen Buddhist. She was incredibly nice and was a huge help for us.
7) We got dropped off by the Buddhist lady at a toll booth to get onto the main highway into Turin. Jon started making the sign for Turin (Torino). If you'll notice, he started out a little overambitious with the size of the letters and had to squeeze the 'I' 'N' and 'O' in at the very end. After he got the sign done, however, we quickly got picked up by a guy who was half Italian and half Scottish. He was an older guy who hitchhiked around Europe in the 70s and he took us straight into downtown Turin and dropped us off near a bus stop that we took to the train station.

We just barely made our train to Florence, but we did make it, and we saved about 40 euros by hitchhiking to Turin instead of taking a train straight from Huemoz.

Anyway, we made it to Florence and after waiting for a little while for the girls (Carla, Grace, Faith, and Andrea) we were on our way to their hotel. The plan was for all of us to sleep in the one room that Carla's dad had booked for two people. Of course, we had to be sure that the management didn't charge us extra for the extra people, so stealth was key. Unfortunately, they locked the doors to the hotel at 10 and we had to be buzzed in and the lady asked for Jon's and my ID (the girls had run upstairs as soon as we got through the door). So, since Jon and I couldn't stay at the hotel that night, we had to leave the room at about 12 am and search for another hotel to stay at. I've never tried to book a hotel room at 12 am, but I really didn't think it would be all that difficult. It was. It took us two hours and over twenty hotels to find one that had a double that was vacant. When we finally found a hotel, we went in and crashed hardcore.

The next day (I promise my descriptions are going to get much shorter; this post won't be book-length) we all met up at the Accademia Gallery and saw the David by Michaelangelo. I've seen it before, but it's such an amazing sculpture that I'd love to see it again and again. We saw the David (You aren't supposed to get pictures with the David, but I'm a rebel so booyah) and then went out to lunch near the Uffizi. Although we were supposed to go to the Uffizi at two that afternoon, all of us except for Carla and Grace were too worn out to go to another gallery so Andrea, Jon, and I walked up a hill on the other side of the river just to see what we could find. What we found was a free art exhibition that was jam-packed with people. They were only letting in about 20 people at a time so there was a mad rush every time they would open the doors to let people in. The picture of us in the crowd is the three of us waiting to get inside and an Italian man who was very frustrated to be stuck next to the Americans. The exhibit wasn't actually that good. Just some lame impressionist paintings. Andrea and I went up the hill further and found a big church with a view over the city so we sat up there for awhile and then met up with everyone else back down in the city. We bought dinner from a grocery store and ate in the hotel room (we got into Carla's room) that night.

On Saturday, Grace, Carla, Jon and I went back up that hill and sat up at the church and chilled for a couple of hours and then we all split up and had some alone time. I ended up sitting on a bench next to an old old old Italian couple who were flirting the entire time. It was kind of cute. Kind of uncomfortable. I just listened to my iPod and pretended that, in addition to not being able to understand their language, I also could not understand any of their actions or body language. They eventually left and Andrea found me and told me that she had found a garden party that we should go to because there was a disco band and free wine. We went and we witnessed the greatest dancing that I've ever seen by an Italian man over the age of 60. I videoed it, and it's on YouTube. I'll embed the video in a post after this one. It is the most amazing thing I've ever seen.

Anyways, that night we ate out and then chilled in the hotel room again. Here's a picture of the sleeping arrangement in the room. Three people on the beds. Three people on the floor. It was tight.

Sunday came, and Jon and I headed to Livorno where, if you'll remember the limerick above, we found out that no ferries exist on Sundays. So we went to Cinque Terre early.

I'm glad that we made that decision. Cinque Terre is maybe one of the most relaxing and beautiful places I've ever been. If you don't know what it is, let me explain. Cinque Terre is a series of five little fishing and wine villages on the coast of Italy that are set in a national park and are connected by a little train. Jon and I stayed in Monterosso which is the most touristy of the towns but also the only one with sand beaches. Since it's October, though, there were hardly any tourists there and the beaches were pretty empty every day we were there. The picture of the village is Vernazza which is the next town over from Monterosso, but all the villages look pretty much like that one.

So, Monday Jon and I went on a hike up and around all five of the villages and then went back to Monerosso and chilled for the night. Tuesday = beach all day long. It was about 75 degrees Farenheit and sunny every day we were there. Wednesday we hit the beaches again and then met the girls at the train station. It turned out that Grace, Carla, and Carla's friend Spencer came to Cinque Terre that day as well as Erin, Amelia, and Emily so it turned into a little bit of a people overload. No sweat, though. Thursday we hiked another trail with the girls and then went swimming. And Friday we all went out to breakfast before Jon and I took a train to Locarno, Switzerland to meet Faith and do the bungee jump of a lifetime on Saturday.

Locarno. What to say about Locarno? It would be a great city if you took out all the jerk faces that live and work there. I guess it's usually a resort town for the rich Europeans so they really didn't like three dirty poor (North) Americans coming into their restaurants. Whatever. We came. We saw. We conquered in the name of (North) America.

Our hotel was nice. I didn't really care about anything in Locarno except for the bungee jump, and it more than met all of my expectations. I'm getting tired of typing things so I'll just refer you to the pictures and video below to see how the jump went.

Okay, so that was my break. I don't feel like typing anymore. I'll post again next Tuesday or maybe earlier. I hope your lives are great.

Firenze!

2007-10-12T15:23:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone. Just a quick update for you. But first, let me clear something up that hopefully no one was actually confused about. That last post's introductory dialogue had nothing to do with any reality except that of my own rambling imagination. I just decided when I started to type that entry that I would just say whatever came to my mind. And that was it. Kind of scary.

Anyway. I'm in Florence (Firenze en Italiano) and it's pretty nice. Jon and I got here without a . . . I almost typed 'without a hitch', meaning with no problems, but we did get a hitch, and no, I'm not trying to be funny, I almost did write 'without a hitch'. We got about 5 or 6 hitches from Huemoz to Turin where we caught a train to Florence. It was a long day yesterday, not just because of the hitchhiking and travelling (it took us from 10 am til 8:30 pm to get to Florence from Huemoz), but also because when Jon and I went to go upstairs to sleep in the hotel room with our friends from L'Abri, the lady at the desk told us if we stayed the night that we would be charged for a room. Sooooooo, at about 12:30 am, Jon and I set out to find a hotel/hostel/bench. We checked with literally 20+ hotels and they were all booked up. Finally, at a little after 2 am, we found a double room for 109 euros for the night. I'll expand on this story later, but suffice it to say that tonight we were much sneakier about getting into our friends' hotel and now we are very very very thankful to have a place to sleep for the evening.

I'll post again as I have time and energy. Tomorrow we're exploring more of Florence and then on Sunday, Jon and I leave for Capraia.

Ciao.

I'm here to save your marriage

2007-10-10T16:48:00.000-04:00

Hey everyone. Yes, I know, I didn't post yesterday. See what had happened was, I was going to write it up and post last night, but since a bunch of people were leaving this morning to start their break trips and some to leave for home, we all decided to go up to a place called the targets (it's just a scenic lookout spot) and hang out for a few hours. So, it was you or them. And, I chose them. But only for last night.

Today, as I write this post during my study time here at L'Abri, I am choosing you, my faithful readers. I am choosing all of you, that is, except for 'Anonymous' who commented that I'm "shit at updating this blog." You are not chosen, Anonymous. You are rejected.

I guess I should take this time to let you all know what I'll be doing on my 11-day break from L'Abri. I'm sure it is of great interest to you. I can picture you now, huddled around your dinner tables at night, speaking in hushed but excited whispers. "When is Chris going to tell us what he's doing over his break?" "I don't know, but if he doesn't I'm just going to kill myself, I swear I will, and don't you dare try to stop me Bill." "Just calm down, Darla, I'm sure . . ." "NO! I will not calm down! Do you know how hard it's been for me lately? You have no idea! You go off to work everyday, and I just sit here, hoping that Chris gets some spare moment to post an update when I'm not expecting it. Damn you and your career! You have no idea! . . . . I think I want a divorce."

Just hold on a second guys. Fear not. I'm here to save your marriage. Now grab a nice glass of vino, gather round the family PC, put your arms around each other, and live vicariously through me.

That last sentence kind of rhymes. Maybe I'll make it the new slogan of my blog.

Tomorrow morning Jon and I will leave L'Abri right after breakfast, probably sometime around 10 am. Before I go any further, I need to decide which is the best format for describing my plans to you. I think I'll go for an itinerary format with comments on different days. So, here we go:

Day 1 (Thurs Oct 11)- Jon and I wake up, eat breakfast at L'Abri and then head to the hitch spot outside of Huemoz to try to hitchhike to Turin, Italy where we'll get a train to Florence. By hitching to Turin (about 3 hours drive from here) we'll save around 40 euros on train tickets. That night we'll meet four girls from L'Abri at the train station in Florence and hopefully stay in their hotel with them until Sunday morning.

Day 2 (Fri Oct 12)- Today the six of us (me, Jon, Andrea, Carla, Faith, and Grace) will go to the Accademia Gallery (where Michaelangelo's David is) in the morning and then the Uffizi Gallery (where Raphael's David in bronze is, I think) in the afternoon. I've already been to both of these museums before (when I went to Italy for three weeks after my junior year in high school), but they are awesome enough to warrant another visit.

Day 3 (Sat Oct 13)- Still in Florence. No plans except maybe go check out the Pontevecchio which is the big famous bridge in Florence, and maybe go see the Duomo and the Baptistery in the city center as well.

Day 4 (Sun Oct 14)- Jon and I leave early from Florence to hitchhike to a little port city called Livorno. It's on the west coast of Italy, just west of Pisa. From Livorno we'll get a ferry to a tiny island near Corsica called Capraia. We don't know much about the island except that it's there and has some good hikes and beaches.

Day 5 (Mon Oct 15)- Capraia exploration. The island isn't very big at all, so I'm not sure what all there is to explore, but we're going to find out. Maybe we'll even try to get a boat ride to Corsica. Who knows.

Day 6 (Tues Oct 16)- Depending on how interesting Capraia is, we'll either spend the whole day here and leave the next morning, or we'll spend half the day here and catch the ferry back to Livorno that afternoon and hitchhike up to Cinque Terre (about an hour drive away).

Day 7 (Wed Oct 17)- See above. Either explore or get to Cinque Terre, Italy today. Cinque Terre is a series of five small villages on the coast that are apparently some of the most beautiful places in Italy. Classic Italy is what everyone says. So, we'll get there and find a place to stay (I have a list of hostels or cheap hotels for the places we're going but we don't have any reservations) and then we're going to meet three other girls (Erin, Amelia, Emily) from L'Abri in a town called Monterosso (one of the five towns in Cinque Terre). Hopefully we'll be able to stay in the same hostel so we can hang out while the five of us are all there at the same time.

Day 8 (Thurs Oct 18)- Hike around Cinque Terre. The surrounding area is a protected park so there are some good trails from village to village. I'm not quite sure what to expect in Cinque Terre either, but that's what's nice about not really having too much of a schedule; we can basically do whatever we want.

Day 9 (Fri Oct 19)- Spend the first half of the day in Cinque Terre, maybe go to the beach and read some. I don't know. Then, towards early afternoon Jon and I will get a train (7 hours, suck) to Locarno, Switzerland where we'll meet Faith (one of the girls who was in Florence with us) and get a hotel room somewhere so that we can wake up early the next morning and . . .

Day 10 (Sat Oct 20)- BUNGEE JUMP! At 2:30 in the afternoon, the three of us have a reservation to jump from the second highest bungee jump in the world (the first highest is in China and is less than 20 meters higher than this one) at 220 meters. Hopefully the weather will cooperate with us. We've heard stories from one of the workers at L'Abri of other students who went to do the jump but were thwarted by the weather. Keep your fingers crossed.

Day 11 (Sun Oct 21)- Maybe catch a train, maybe try to hitchhike, back to Huemoz where we will be reunited with the rest of the people who are here for the whole term.

So, there you go. I'm going to take as many pictures and videos as I can so that I can show you all of the people and places. The only thing I'm really worried about with the trip is, well, two things. One, I don't have a very big backpack (besides my huge one) to take my stuff in, so packing is going to be tight. And two, weather during the week and a half that we'll be on break. Really, it could rain every single day but be sunny on our bungee day and I'd be happy.

In other news, the weather here has been pretty great lately. They actually have a fall here, which is nice. It's around 65 or 70 during the day and chilly at night. About of the trees around here have leaves that change color so it makes the mountains around us look beautiful.

I really can't think of anything else to tell you. Is there anything in particular that you'd like to know that I haven't written about yet? Just let me know.

In conclusion, here's a picture of the white-out type of fog that we get around here. The picture below was taken on Sunday morning before chapel. The crazy thing is that only four hours later it was perfectly sunny and clear all around. I guess this is just something that happens when you live 3300 feet above sea level in the Swiss Alps.

Lata.

Oh yeah. I won't be posting for about a week probably. I'm not sure how much internet access I'll have while we're on the trip, but if I do get a chance I'll post a little update.

Well, it looks like Blogger isn't going to let me upload photos tonight. Just imagine a foggy scene with a tree and another tree and a bench and some grass and no mountains. If you can see mountains then your mental picture is a lie from the devil, so . . . . .

It got pretty here.

2007-10-02T05:43:00.001-04:00

Yes, it got very pretty here. It was rainy for about four days. Grey (or gray?). Gray. Cold. Miserable. I really just don't do well with no sunlight. I can handle coldness. It's just when everything is completely fogged over (which is what happens here; I'll take a picture next time it happens) and you can't see anything at all outside that I get cabin fever and start to go crazy. Luckily for us, Saturday and Sunday were beautiful days, as was Monday. Today seems to be keeping the streak alive.

Since it was so nice outside on Sunday, a few of us decided to go on a hike. Actually, I didn't want to go at first, but I was talked into it. I'm glad I went. It was a nice one. We hiked up to Roc D'Orsay from Huemoz, about a three hour hike. It wasn't very strenuous but a couple of the people that went with us got worn out by the time we made it to the top. The problem was that we were at the top at 4:30 that afternoon, we spent half an hour looking around, and then we had to be back at L'Abri for dinner at seven o'clock. It wouldn't have been that big of a deal if half of our group wasn't completely and utterly exhausted and thus taking forever to walk down the mountain. After about thirty minutes of me and another girl, Erin, going at our own pace running and jogging down the trail and then waiting for ten minutes for the rest to catch up, we decided to split up. By "we", I mean me and Erin. Uli, one of the new guys here (he's from Gemany), also thought we should split up, but he agreed to stay back with the slowpokes. The problem was that the slowpokes thought we should stick together, that it was a bad idea safety-wise for us to be separated. Well, I disagreed and we argued about it for awhile and never came to an agreement. So, Erin and I told them that we would see them at the bottom, and we ran off down the mountain. It was actually a much more tense situation than I can describe on a blog, but it doesn't really matter. I don't think you care very much about it.

In other news, I finished reading The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind and I highly recommend it for everyone who thinks about anything at all. It's a great look at how evangelical thought got to be where it is today, which is, in the author's opinion, slowly recovering from a century of anti-intellectualism characterized by tendencies towards activism (as prioritized above the life of the mind), intuitiveness (relying on your gut feeling as opposed to seeking out the truth), populism (as opposed to scholarly research and publication), and biblicism (relating absolutely everything that's going on in the world to some prophecy or something else in Scripture). It was a helpful book for me because it brought to the fore some of those proclivities in myself. It's an interesting, albeit brief and sometimes overly general, history of evangelical thought in America. You should read it.

Now, I've picked up a book called An Emergent Manifesto of Hope which is a book written by numerous authors, thinkers, and participants within the Emergent movement, a 'postmodern' response of some Christians to the thoroughly modern evangelical church. After finishing the first two sections, I'm not very impressed. I'm going to keep reading it because I feel like it's an interesting movement, but the writers of the book aren't very good at saying anything solid and don't seem to realize that the ideas that they're throwing around (ie the breakdown of knowledge) are huge ideas with serious implications, and they aren't being appropriated by the Emergent church very scrupulously. I know, I know, that's a very general statement made after reading only two sections of the book. I'll post more later.

Anyway, here's some pictures from the hike. Well, the first one isn't from the hike this week. It's from the L'Abri looking across the valley at the Dents du Morcles, the mountain I hiked a few weeks ago.

Enjoy!

The Dents du Morcles are those two points jutting up on the right.

Stopping for some pictures. From the left: Peter (Australia), Hugh (BC, Canada), Uli (Germany), Amelia (behind Uli; Tennessee), Erin (Florida).

Leading the way.

The Swiss army has all of these doors put up on the mountain. We couldn't kick them open.

Up at the top.

Change of plans

2007-09-30T16:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, well, I don't have the time or energy to post today, and I think that this posting on Sunday thing just isn't working out for me. It's not you, Sunday, it's me. I just don't think I'm ready for this kind of commitment when there are so many other things I could be doing today besides spending time on a blog.

Anyway, I'll be posting on Tuesdays from now on. Expect a great one on Tuesday.

A Momentous Occasion! And a video . . .

2007-09-27T09:37:00.000-04:00

Woohoo. For the first time ever in the history of humankind more than 20 different people visited my blog in one day! Twenty-three to be exact. I know, it's awesome.

To celebrate, here's a video done by a magazine I enjoy. Watch the video and if you have some time, watch the other videos by these guys.

Brenda Lee

2007-09-25T15:51:00.000-04:00

First of all, I'm sorry. I told all of you that I would post every Sunday, and I didn't post this Sunday. For those of you who thought I was dead or worse, I'm alive. For those of you who thought I just stopped caring about you, my heart is overflowing with emotions for you. For those of you who thought I had lost all of my money and was therefore unable to afford internet time, rest easy. I am not yet bankrupt. I was simply irresponsible. I was irresponsible with my offline time, with my online time, and most importantly, I was irresponsible with your hearts. Forgive me.

Well, now that that's out of the way, I think I've got a lot to tell you about.

I think I'll start with last Thursday. Nothing too too exciting happened, but I did go to a city in Switzerland that I had never been to before. That city is Montreux (pronounced "Maun-true" not "Maun-tro" as people at L'Abri are apt to say; in French 'eux' is 'ue' like at the end of 'true' and 'eaux' is 'oh' like at the middle of 'Geaux Tigers' [for LSU]). Whether you know it or not, you have a relationship, albeit an unknowing one, with Montreux. "How is that?" I hear you say. Let me show you. Here is the first verse from a well-known song by a band that we all love, Deep Purple:

We all came out to Montreux
On the Lake Geneva shoreline
To make records with a mobile
We didn't have much time
Frank Zappa and the Mothers
Were at the best place around
But some stupid with a flare gun
Burned the place to the ground
Smoke on the water, fire in the sky

So, that's where I was. Here's a link to the Wikipedia article about the song. Anyway, I went with Jon, Kate, and Chloe, all of whom are at least four years younger than me, which means that they're younger than my awesome little sister, Whitney. The thought in the back of my mind for the first 30 minutes was "These people are younger than Whitney", but I got over it. The reason the three of them wanted to go to Montreux was to get holes poked into their bodies. Kate wanted one (besides the original two) in her nose. Chloe wanted two on each ear. Jon wanted one in his eyebrow. I tagged along because I wanted to see what I thought then--and only believe more firmly now--is the most spectacular and awe-inspiring sight in all of the Land of the Switzers. Here are some pictures:

If you can't tell by the sweet mustache and firm buttocks, that's the late Freddy Mercury, lead singer of the band Queen. Apparently, there are a lot of Freddy fans in Montreux and they actually have a Freddy Mercury Montreux Memorial Weekend the first weekend of every September. The statue is right on Lake Geneva and across the street from the piercing boutique that the three young'uns so since the boutique wasn't open when we first arrived, we walked down and admired the statue for a long while. After they got their various body parts peirced, Chloe went back up to Huemoz, and Jon, Kate, and I got a hitch to Vevey (pronounced "Vuh-vay") and ate lunch and hung out down by the lake. It was nice.

On Friday, the whole group of us had a field trip! We drove to a little town about half-an-hour away called Martigny and went to a Marc Chagall exhibit. I don't really feel like describing him or his paintings, so here's a link to his Wikipedia page. It was a good exhibit. Very enjoyable.

What else? Ah yes. Sunday nights are high tea nights here. We don't really have high tea (that ended when Edith Schaeffer left L'Abri), but we have dinner and a group activity afterwards. This Sunday night was the classic bonfire.

I need to be honest with you right now. I'm getting tired of writing this blog post. I've got about an hour's worth of good, motivated writing in me anytime I write anything, be it a paper, a poem, a song, or a blog post. I've been working on this post for about an hour and I'm almost out of motivation. I will struggle on, for your sake, and for the sake of my children, and my children's children.

So we had a bonfire. Jon and I created it, and it was good. We all sat around it and told a communal story (everyone got a minute or two to talk) involving children, their parents, ogres, beanstalks, flying squirrels, and laser guns. The laser guns were my idea. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is an excerpt from the story. Actually, it's just the two times that I got to tell part of the story. I think you'll agree (without even hearing the rest of the story) that it's the only exciting and imaginative part.

Well, that's all I can think of to write right now. There are other things, I guess that I could tell you about, but I think I'll wait until Sunday. Here's one final picture for you to enjoy before you go.

The Singing Jogger

2007-09-20T14:24:00.001-04:00

Just something to make everyone happy.

Pictures of the race

2007-09-18T04:16:00.000-04:00

So here are the pictures from the car race that took place on Saturday and Sunday. I hope you guys enjoy them. Also, I realize that the image quality of the pics in the hiking slideshow isn't spectacular, but I had to shrink the files down to upload them. I apologize.

America power!

More America power!!!

This guy is typical of the type of people in the race. Old, bearded, probably French.

I don't know what kind of car this is, but it probably talks to you.

Again, no idea what kind of car this is. Maybe a custom?

Where we were standing was the beginning of the longest straightaway in the race, so people were trying to pass each other coming out of that last turn.

Here's a couple cars from the Formula 1/Indy Car category. Some were old school, some were pretty modern.

And lastly, here's the line of motorcycles making their way back down the mountain after the race. Those motorcycles with the sidecars were hauling some major buttocks.

Pictures of the hike

2007-09-18T04:01:00.000-04:00

Alrighty, here is the slideshow of 50 pictures from the hike. Here's a copied and pasted version of how to use the slideshow (from the other post that I used a slideshow on):

Here's how to work the slideshow: first, put your mouse over the slideshow and a little menu will come up from the bottom, click on the little comment bubble to be able to see my captions for the pictures; second, you can either press the play button to play the slideshow or, if the pace of the slideshow is too fast (I can't slow it down) then you can just click through the pictures using the arrows; third, if you'd rather see the pictures without the slideshow, just click on one of the pictures and you'll be taken to the album itself on Picasa's website.

Enjoy!

Hell is a stairmaster

2007-09-16T15:57:00.000-04:00

Well hello there everyone. Thank you for stopping by today. Today I have a harrowing tale of adventure on the high seas. High seas in Switzerland? you say. Yes, high seas. The high seas of the Swiss Alps.

So . . . no, not the high seas, per se. A harrowing tale, nonetheless, of an epic journey to the top of an epic mount reminiscent of that sacred mount upon which Moses was handed down the laws for a nation of outcasts by a man named "I am." This, my friends, was no ordinary hike. It was a covenant entered into by four willing and yet unable persons.

I feel like if I try to keep using that metaphor, the fact that I went on a hike on Wednesday and Thursday would be completely lost amidst my verbal self-indulgence. So on with the story!

Wednesday afternoon at 5 pm, Nichole, Jon, Greg (a new guy here who's staying with his wife and kids in a chalet just up the road), and I set out for a hike to the top of one of the mountains across the valley from Huemoz. Greg had mentioned it to me the first day he got here, and when we realized that the next Thursday would be bad because of weather we decided to make it happen this Thursday. Since the hike was such a long one, we had to leave on Wednesday afternoon to get a ride to the bottom of the mountain and hike up to a refuge (a little cabin type thing) to spend the night. Now, Greg is in pretty good shape and he told us before we started that it was going to be really strenuous, but I don't think any of us thought it would be as hard a hike as it turned out to be. The hike up to the refuge was an 800 meter climb over the course of about four kilometers laterally. It was steep. Almost all the time it was steep. By the halfway point of the hike up to the refuge, I was wiped out and wondering if I could keep going. Luckily, there was no turning back really, so I had to keep going. I say luckily because spending the night up at the refuge was one of the coolest things I've done since I've been here.

What is a refuge? Well, let me tell you. All throughout the mountains in Switzerland are these little (or not so little sometimes) cabins that are kept up by the districts in which they're located. Most of them are at a scenic point or strategic point for a through hike of some part of the mountains. The one we stayed at was one of the smallest and hardest to get to, but the views were outstanding and the place was just plain cool to stay at. It was basically just a little stone cabin with some tables and a kitchen downstairs and two rows of sleeping mats and comforters upstairs for people to sleep in. We took a bunch of food up with us that night and cooked tuna lemon pasta for dinner and had a nice bottle of wine and some beer that they had there. There were about four other people there besides the four of us, and they all spoke French exclusively. Fortunately for us, both Greg and Nichole are fluent in French and were able to translate for Jon and I.

So, we spent the night at the refuge and woke up the next morning slightly sore, but ready to set out for a day of hiking. The map we had said that our route would take us 14 hours, but we were pretty sure we could cut that by a third at least. We set out down the mountain (yes, we had to go all the way back down to where we started the day before so that we could pick up the other trail) at about 8:30 that morning. Going down was nice. Very nice.

The new trail at the bottom wasn't too bad at first. I actually started to think that maybe it wouldn't be hard at all and that Greg had just been exaggerating about the difficulty of the hike. Well, after about the first mile or two, things took a sharp turn vertically and we started up the first of two 500 meter ascents. It wouldn't have been so bad except that the ascents were 500 meters up over the course of only about 1000 meters laterally. This meant that most of the time, I could bend at the waist slightly and put both of my hands on the ground. It was steep. At points, I started to think that maybe it would be better just to "slip" and tumble down the mountain to the bottom instead of continuing up. After about an hour or so of climbing, we reached the top of the first ascent and had some cheese sandwiches and chocolate for lunch. It was the best tasting food and water I've ever had in my entire life. Alas, we only rested for about twenty minutes before setting out on the second ascent of 540 meters.

This ascent was ever harder than the first because it was mostly over a bunch of scree, just loose rocks and rubble, which forced you to concentrate on every single step you took so that you wouldn't just slide off somewhere down the mountain. About halfway up the second ascent we came across a little glacier area and stopped to chill out (pun only slightly intended) there for a little bit before heading up to the top which was about 45 minutes away. The last stretch was by far the hardest. Just like being in hell. It seemed like it would never end. Jon and Greg were about 10 minutes ahead of me most of the time and Nichole was about 10 minutes behind me so I used waiting for her as an excuse to stop a few times.

Finally, after five hours of hiking, I made it to the top, and let me assure you, it was totally worth it. The top was at 2520 meters elevation so the views were spectacular of the entire valley. We stopped and took a little break to enjoy the view and take a bunch of pictures and videos of the top before setting off down the mountain.

The hike down was almost as tough as the hike up just because we had been going and going for sooooooo long that everyone's knees and feet started to hurt. After another three hours of hiking down, however, we made it to a little village where we got a few cold beers and called a cab. Mission complete. Greg told us afterwards that this hike is the second hardest hike he's ever done. So, yeah. We were all proud of ourselves and each other and we all had great stories to tell when we got back to L'Abri that night. It was a great time with great people and it made me really glad I decided to come back for a second time.

I'm typing this post on my laptop so I don't know how much I'll be able to get done today, but hopefully I will have posted some pictures or a video or both. If I post pictures then I'll put some comments on each picture to give it some context (to see how to work the slideshow, check out this post) and if I post the video (more likely since pictures take longer to upload) then here's the context: the first clip was taken when we had hiked into the middle of the mountains and were in a little bowl sort of place with a bunch of cows; it's right before we started climbing. The second clip is of us at the top of the mountain. Enjoy!

In other news, if you watched the video I posted yesterday then you'll know that they've been having a big vintage car race from Ollon to Villars. It was neat to see the old school cars the first couple times, but now it's just really really loud and obnoxious. Today is the last day of the race. I think I'll post some pictures of the cars coming by at the bottom of this post. That means that I'll for sure be posting the video and not the pictures of the hike. So, I'll post the pictures on Tuesday when I've got some time (for free) on the internet.

Also, the weather here has been awesome for the last week or so. Every day is sunny and 70 and at night it drops to about 50. I'm hoping this keeps up for the rest of the month.

What else? Jon and I have decided to hitchhike east for the break. We haven't quite decided where to go yet. We're thinking southern Italy or Greece. I think if we can make it down to southern Italy, we might be able to get a boat ride to Greece somehow. The big thing, at least at this point, is just making it back to Switzerland to do the bungee jumping on the last day of the break. If you want to see what the jump is like, go here, and be impressed. We're also thinking about compiling a list of "challenges" for us to try to complete while we're out. So far we don't have much, just to get to an island at some point, bungee jump, and get free rides on scooters somewhere. If you have any ideas, please chime in. We're not trying to make the challenges unreachable, but so far I think we only have things that can be pretty easily accomplished, so give us something actually challenging.

I need to stop typing now. This has been my longest post yet, I think. Thanks for sticking around.

Later.

PS I am now on the computer, and I forgot to put pictures on my USB drive so all we have for right now is the video of the top of the mountain. I'll put lots of pictures up on Tuesday.

Awesome Vehicularity

2007-09-15T09:47:00.001-04:00

In keeping with the trend towards awesome vehicularity in and around Huemoz, I present to you a video of the Ollon-Villars Car Race. It's held once every four years and it goes from Ollon (the big town beneath us) to Villars (the big town above us). It's mostly old cars from Europe, but I've got some pictures of a couple of Mustangs and even a Corvette. I'll post some pictures tomorrow, but for now, here's a little video I took of some of the cars going by. I hope you enjoy.

Post-self-fluxitudinal Semiotic Buddhism

2007-09-09T16:27:00.000-04:00

Hey everybody. Thanks for tuning in again. Let's see . . . what can I tell you about this week?

Well, for starters I went on the best hike so far this past Thurday. Thomas, one of the workers here, got the car for the day and he drove us (me, him, Nichole, Valerie, and Jon) to a place called Solalex (pronounced 'Soul-ah-lay') from whence we hiked to a place called Azendaz (pronounced 'Ah-zen-dahz'). Now, dispensing with the parentheticals, I will tell you about the hike.

We started up at about 10:15 am and the air was chilly. The sun was out, however, and they day looked promising. I can already tell that I'm not going to be able to keep up this style of writing for much longer. In fact, I think two sentences is enough. Details are overrated and a picture says a thousand words so there are some pictures down at the bottom. Just in case you didn't venture to drag your cursor over the pictures on this blog--at which point you would be rewarded for your effort by seeing the little pointy hand which would have tipped you off to exactly what I'm about to tell you--you can click on any of the pictures here to see a bigger version. Anyway, I'll tell you a little bit more about the hike. The hike was cool because on the way up it was very rocky and craggy (think of the Aggro-Crag from Global Guts) and on the way down there were tons of boulders to jump around on, and let's face it, the most fun thing for any person to do in this world is climb up a rock, stand triumphantly on top, shout at the people beneath you, and then jump off and do a roll for good measure.

It wasn't a long hike, maybe four hours round trip. Afterwards we went back to L'Abri for a few minutes to change into our bathing suits and then we went to the Turkish baths down at the bottom of the mountain. The baths are pretty cool as well. Not as cool (not even close really) as jumping up and down on rocks but nice. There's a big pool with a bunch of fountains in it. There's also a sauna, Turkish baths (which is like a sauna but with thick fog inside), an aroma therapy room, and a weird room that just has black lights in it and slow chill techno music playing. We stayed at the baths and destressed for about three hours and then headed back up to L'Abri for a nice dinner of the week's leftovers. It was a day well spent. Possibly, no, definitely my favorite Thursday so far.

In other news, my tutor Greg assigned me two new books this week. The titles are "Seeing Through Cynicism" and "Interpreting God and the Postmodern Self" and if you care to investigate them further, you'll notice the updated "What I'm Reading" list over there on the right. "Seeing Through Cynicism" is easy enough, but "Interpreting God" is as obtuse as the title suggests. Let me give you a little quote, just one sentence, from the introduction to give you an idea of what it's like: "An adequate account of the self and of personhood cannot stop with its situatedness in some instantaneous moment within processes of shifting flux." If that's not enough for you, try this baby on for size: "This is an approach which combines the Buddhist negation of a stable differentiation between levels or between opposites with a postmodernist theory of signs as semiotic system." So, yeah. If I decipher what in the world he's talking about I'll let you all know.

I think it has something to do with post-self-fluxitudinal semiotic Buddhism.

PICTURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here we are about to cross over the river. In the spring, all of the rocks are where the water is.

King of the hill....stump.

We are walking.

King of the hill....crag. "Let's check out the leaderboard, Moe!"

And finally, here I am getting back into the car to go to the baths.

TastiBurger

2007-09-08T05:53:00.000-04:00

Yes, I'll still do an update tomorrow (and it's going to be a good one), but I've got a few minutes on my hands right now while a file is saving (I'm editing audio files for my work time today). I found this video on some random website and I thought that all 18 of you (avg number of visits to the blog per day) should see it.

The caption was: "Ever wonder why fast food employees seem so sad? Joey and David have a prediction."

Enjoy!

Ze Plane, Ze Plane

2007-09-02T17:37:00.001-04:00

Yesterday and the day before were amazing here. Not because of any awesome lectures or any great discussions or any good conversations, though there were many. No, these past two days have been amazing here at L'Abri, perched amidst the Swiss Alps, because the Swiss Air Force has been having practice in the valley right outside my door. The past two mornings at about 11 am groups of 2-7 fighter planes have made their way into the valley and practiced flying in formation. But not just flying in a straight line. These guys were doing backflips, barrel rolls, nose dives, and sharp banking turns all while flying what looked like five meters apart. At some points they would come screaming past L'Abri within 200 meters of our heads. It makes for a loud day, but every time you hear and feel the jet sound wash over the mountain, you know you're about to see something awesome.

I'm not sure what kind of planes they're flying. When they're flying in formation they have some smaller planes, but after flying in formation for a couple of hours they send in one huge jet at a time to really show off. The guys in these jets were doing some amazing stuff. At one point I saw one of them fly straight up into the air, seemingly stall out, and then roll over backwards and go into a full-throttle nose dive, pulling up at the last second. A girl up on the mountain we hiked today said that the Air Force does this every month at the end of the month to use most of their resources so that they can get the same amount next month. Whatever reason they have for doing it, it is so freakin cool.

I took some pictures so you could see. They'll be at the bottom. I only got a couple of the formation flying, but I got some good ones of the single jets. If you guys know what kind of jets they are, post and fill me in.

In other news, I got my first real outsider comment on my blog the other day. Yep, after I posted the video of Miss Teen South Carolina at the Miss Teen USA competition and made a little comment about South Carolina's education system, I got a nice long comment from some guy or girl from Oregon. So that's exciting. I didn't think real people (ie people who don't know me) read this blog. It turns out I was wrong.

Also, I'm starting to plan out what I'm going to do for the break we have here from October 11-21. I was thinking about going to England to visit some people that were here last term, but it turns out that they won't be available during the break. That's okay though because I had already started to formulate another plan with a guy here named Jon. We're going to try to hitchhike somewhere in Europe or maybe even to Africa. Africa? Yes, Africa. We think we might be able to get to Morocco in the 11 days we have off. Actually, I'm pretty sure we could get to Morocco in three days, but then getting around there might be a little more difficult. I don't know what it's like to hitchhike in Africa. But, it's a predominantly Muslim country and they're pretty hospitable people, so maybe it'll be easy. Who knows.

We're in the planning stages right now so we only have one for-sure stop. That stop is right outside Locarno, Switzerland, at the Vascazo (sp?) Dam. It's the home to the world's second-tallest bungee jump. It measures in at 220 meters. If you've ever seen Goldeneye (the 007 movie) then you may remember the scene where Bond bungee jumps off of a dam. This is the dam. This is the jump he did. It's going to be awesome. So, since that is east of where we are now, we may end up going down to Greece and trying to get to one or more of the Greek isles. We just aren't sure yet. If you have any suggestions, let me know.

Let's see . . . what else is there to tell you . . . I went on another great hike today. Today Nichole, Renea, and I hiked to a little town called Bretaye. It was really cloudy at the top when we got there but the temperature was nice and the company was good. Plus, our waitress at a little cafe we stopped at up there was from Goldsboro, North Carolina. She came backpacking through Europe after she graduated from UNC six years ago and never left. Her French is actually better than her English now.

As for the temperature here, it's still pretty warm. I'd say an average of 70 each day, but the nights are getting cooler and cooler. From what I've read and heard, the temperature should drop about 10 degrees each month. Actually, this Tuesday it's supposed to be pretty chilly. In the 40s I think.

So, comment, email, whatever, I'd love to hear from you guys. Lata.

Just in case you can't see it in the picture (above), the guy is doing a nose dive.

The Iraq

2007-08-28T03:52:00.000-04:00

Well, right now I'm sitting at my laptop in an office at L'Abri. For my work period today, I'm starting work on designing a book cover for this guy that lives down the road from L'Abri. He's an American who moved here about five years ago I think, and he's sort of involved with L'Abri. I think all he really does is write books. I don't know that much about him. But word got to him that I was a Media Arts major and he asked if I would try to design some book covers for him. So I'm about to start that.

But right now my computer is updating itself and that takes awhile. So, I went to YouTube and I found the most amazing video that any of you has ever seen. This video is a testament to the education system in South Carolina. I am almost speechless at how ridiculous this video is. For some background info, this is the Miss South Carolina contestant at the Miss Teen USA competition.

Enjoy!

Jigga What?

2007-08-25T17:08:00.000-04:00

***The title of this post has nothing whatsoever to do with the content. I just couldn't think of a better title***

Hey guys and gals. Thanks for coming back to read my blog even though I'm updating it sporadically at best. I should decide on a day that I'll definitely update it every week. Let's see . . . how about Sunday. I'll do my best to update this blog for sure every Sunday. I'll probably update it on other days as well. But now you know that if you can only check back once a week, there'll be an update for you on Sundays.

Things at L'Abri are going swimmingly. I've had my first meeting of the term with Greg Laughery, my tutor. We picked up pretty easily where we left off. We're talking about a bunch of different things, but I'll try to outline here two of the main things that I'll be studying and thinking about and talking about with Greg this term:

1. What's the point of Christianity? By this I mean . . . well, I mean what's the point. Is it all about getting to heaven? Is the most important thing about Christianity believing the right thing or is it doing the right thing? Are they equally important? It's a hard question because the answer obviously isn't just one thing, but that's the way that it's presented in most churches and books. Take the Four Spiritual Laws, for instance. Seeing that tract makes it pretty clear that Campus Crusade for Christ believes that if you know only one thing about Christianity, it should be how to get to heaven. If the most important thing about Christianity is how to get to heaven and the only way to get to heaven is to believe the right thing, then it is pretty important to make sure you believe the right things. Throw into the mix the idea that if you do believe the right things then you'll want to act a certain way--even have certain emotional responses to things like sin and worship and God, himself--and it becomes very easy--at least for me--to worry constantly about whether or not you get it. So, I'm trying to figure out what the point is. Should I be so worried about what I believe and feel about God or is that just one point? Is it more objective than subjective? I've been reading a book by an Anglican bishop named N.T. Wright called "Simply Christian" to help me think about that some. I highly recommend this book because of it's casual style and original thought. It's been really helpful to me as I've read it some last term and come back to it this term. Of course, I've been reading the Bible as well.

2. Well, I guess this sort of runs in with the other point. I'll also be studying doubt and faith. I think I may have written about this a little bit the other day. I'm reading a book by Os Guinness called "God in the Dark" that outlines seven different types of doubt. It's been a really interesting book so far as well, simply because it's easy to apply to your own life. Reading each chapter takes you into a slightly different form of doubt stemming from different issues. I'm studying this to supplement the first topic and give me a way to interpret some of the doubts that I've been having about the reality of Christianity.

So there you have it. If you've got any questions or comments about any of that or you just want to hear how the studies are going, feel free to shoot me an email.

In other news, I went for an awesome hike this past Thursday. We started at L'Abri and hiked to a mountain peak called Roc D'Orsay. It was about a four hour hike up, and when I say "up," I mean straight up. There were a couple of fields along the way that gave our legs a break, but for the most part, it was just straight up incline the whole way. Below I've put some pictures for your viewing enjoyment.

Also, I've been asked by a local expatriate in town to design some book covers for him. He does this self-publishing thing and writes a bunch of pulp fiction books. He's loosely affiliated with L'Abri because he's arranged to have one or two of Greg Laughery's books published and we were introduced at chapel last Sunday. The books aren't very good and he's not paying me to do it, but they've worked it into my work schedule so I'm not having to take any of my spare time to work on it. Plus, I've never done a book cover before so it'll be a challenge. If I think what I make is good at all I'll post one of the covers on here for you guys to see.

Anything else? I don't think so.

Here we are hiking hardcore style. If you're wondering who those people are, here's the list, starting from behind me: Rhett from Alabama, Jon from New Hampshire, Molly from Connecticut, and Renea from Texas.

That's the mountain peak we were about to hike up. The last bit, going up to the very top, almost killed me.

I didn't really take many pictures at the top because it's just the same thing all over this country. Mountain, valley, mountain, valley, vineyard, mountain. The picture up at the top of the post is at the top of Roc D'Orsay, but you can't really see that much except me. I figured I'd put that one up there so you'd have a visual of me on mountain saying all of this to you. Anyway, here's a pic of our gondola ride down. We decided that it was worth it to grab a ride down. Also, they weren't checking tickets so we just kind of snuck on one.

I am victorious

2007-08-20T16:51:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm not sick anymore. Yippee! I battled my bowels and I won. I am now in control of my body. It was a tough fight, but I am always and ever victorious!

There's not really too much to say since I was in bed from Thursday until today (Sunday). I read a lot. Well, I tried to read a lot. I fell asleep a lot because just climbing in and out of my top bunk felt like running a marathon so I was constantly exhausted. I actually thought I might have mono for a while, but I guess it was some other mystery disease that Mr. Pansy Bowels picked up.

Hmmmm . . . I can't think of much else to write. Maybe I'll just tell you what books I've been reading in bed. I've started reading 'Pilgrim at Tinker Creek' by Annie Dillard, and although it took me a chapter or two to get into her writing style, I've been enjoying it ever since. It's a very wordy and descriptive (but not fluffy) book describing the author's year-long stay by Tinker Creek in Virginia. It's one of my roommate Nate's favorite books.

I know that's not a very good description, but I don't really feel like writing much more about it.

I'm also reading a book called 'God in the Dark' by Os Guinness. It's a really well-written and interesting book discussing doubt in God. Guinness (awesome surname) was a worker at L'Abri in England for awhile and has written a ton of books. This one was recommended to me by a guy named Nico from Argentina in March, but I'm just now getting around to it. So far I'm only through the first two chapters. In those chapters he outlines the purpose of the book and defines 'doubt' as he will be using it. In the next seven chapters he's going to go through the seven main "families" of doubt. It should be good.

I'm not very good at doing book reviews.

I can't think of anything else to write. I'll post again later.

My Mom was right

2007-08-17T14:50:00.000-04:00

Yep, my Mom was right. I have a weak stomach/immune system. Just a few days before I left to come to Switzerland, my Mom made a joke about how I get sick everywhere I go (horrible bloody food poisoning in Beirut, horrible projectile vomiting food poisoning in Buenos Aires, etc). Of course, I told her that I had a superman stomach that was impervious to all but the most mishandled of foods, and I also reminded her that I didn't get sick once while I was at L'Abri over the summer.

Well, I was wrong. Something horrible exploded in my bowels yesterday (Thursday), and it has had me reeling for the past 36 hours. I woke up yesterday feeling kind of nauseous but I figured it was just from being worn out from travelling a quarter of the way around the world. By lunch I was feeling green. By dinner I was violently ejecting all liquids and solids from my system . . . from both ends. I was sitting on a toilet with a trash can in front of me for about an hour, praying to the gastrointestinal gods for mercy. Alas, they have not granted it.

Last night I slept about three hours because of this demon inside me. I think I had a pretty high fever, and I couldn't stop shivering and sweating profusely. I would go to sleep for an hour and then wake up dehydrated and urgently needing a toilet. Today has been similar though slightly better. I think the fever is almost gone, and I'm not puking anymore, but as far as my guts being back on track, I think I have a long way to go. I'm also a little bit achy in my muscles and bones which makes me worried that it could be the flu, but I'll hold out hope until tomorrow morning.

Another girl here is sick as well. The same symptoms as me and we both started puking within an hour of each other. My roommate says he's starting to feel a little sick as well. Let's just hope that I start to feel better by tomorrow morning because being confined to my room today made it the most boring day of my life.

In other news, I made it here safely and aside from the sickness things are going well so far. Since there's only one guy helper this term, they've put me in charge of two of the grounds crews each week. Because of my bacteria-laden bowels, I had to abdicate my position for the day. My roommate is Tim, the one guy helper, and he's pretty cool. He's from Denver (although he grew up in France because his parents are missionaries) and he was at L'Abri in the summer of '06. Pretty much all of the students here this term are here for the whole term which is nice because it'll give us a chance to get to know each other really well. Everyone seems really cool. The weather's great here: 65-75 and sunny. It's a nice break from the triple-digit temps we had back in South Carolina.

Anyway, I can't think of much else to write so I guess I'll conclude this post. Thanks for reading and shoot me an email sometime because I love to hear from you guys. I miss y'all.

Yo man let's get out of here.

2007-08-12T13:29:00.000-04:00

Word to your mother.

Yep, I'm leaving tomorrow for Switzerland. My sister's driving me to Charlotte tomorrow morning and my flight leaves at 2:50 in the afternoon. I'll be in Geneva by 8 am Tuesday morning and to L'Abri by 11 that afternoon. Soooo...I'll see you guys in a few months. Three-and-a-half to be exact. I'll be back in the states on December 4th. I'll miss you guys.

As far as my blog goes, I'm going to try to update it at least once a week. Once I get over there, I'll probably decide on a day or two that I will definitely post. Another thing is that since I'll have my computer with me, I'll be able to write blog posts offline and then post them once or twice a week. So look forward to that. It's going to be awesome.

Bye guys.

Everything you need to know

2007-07-29T23:16:00.001-04:00

Seriously. Go to WiseGeek.com and you will find answers to any question you could realistically imagine. They have answers to everything. What do you want to know? Hmmmm . . .

-What is a quarter horse?

-How can I clean a keyboard?

-What is the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs)?

And that is just a few of the millions of questions and answers that you can find on this amazing website. I highly suggest you go and waste as much time as possible on WiseGeek.com.

In other news, I went with my family to Charleston this weekend. Every year they take a boat trip down there with the Tammy and Kendall Elvis and (for the past three years) Rick and Jackie Norris. The trip was great. I got to hang out with Josh Eichenberger and Peter Hearn, two of my best friends from high school who I haven't seen in probably three years. I also got the pleasure of hanging out with Becky Ryan one night. Between those friends and my awesome family, the weekend was a blast.

Curse you, Chris Martin!!!

2007-07-24T19:04:00.000-04:00

Before I say anything else, I'd like to apologize to the five or six of you who read this blog with any regularity. I'll be honest with you, I just haven't really felt like posting anything on here for the past couple of days. It's a horrible thing, apathy; it's a real disease, with doctors, and medicine and everything (Blades of Glory--good movie, saw it on the plane back from Argentina). But enough of my shortcomings, on to the post.

CURSE YOU, CHRIS MARTIN!!! No, I'm not cursing the Christian media designer Chris Martin, nor am I cursing the lame-o Chris Martin who has yet to put up any of his certainly hideous photographs at www.iamchrismartin.com, and I am most definitely not cursing the international superstar frontman of Coldplay Chris Martin. I am cursing the Brooklyn-based drug trafficker Chris Martin.

Yes, his infamy has once again caused my untarnished reputation abroad to fall under the dark shadow of doubt. In case you missed the first go round, you can read the post here.

This time around, I was coming into America via Atlanta, GA. After an incredibly uncomfortable 12-hour flight from Buenos Aires--during which we were diverted around Brazil for lack of permission to use their airspace which forced us to land in Ft. Lauderdale, FL to refuel before we got to Atlanta--I was stopped in customs in the same fashion as last time, diverted down to a sitting area, and told to wait until someone could figure out why I was there. The questioning, once I was called forward, was pretty much the same as last time:

--"Have you ever been to Jamaica?"
--"No."
--"Do you live in Brooklyn?"
--"No. Hey, is that about that guy who sells drugs from Jamaica? Cuz I'm not him."
--"Do you have family in Brooklyn?"
--"No. Hey, when I came into the country earlier this summer they asked me all about this and they said I wasn't him either so . . . "
--"How are you employed?"
--"Un."
--"You sure do a lot of traveling for an unemployed person. Mind telling me how you afford all of that?"
--"Well . . . it all started about six years ago in Laos. I'd heard the legends, we all had, but that's all they were, right? Just legends. As I set out to hike to Cambodia, I had no idea of the adventure on which I was about to embark. The mystery, the intrigue, friends made . . . and lost. And, of course, the treasure . . . I'm just kidding. I have money saved up from other things." *see note at bottom*
--"Well, Mr. Martin, that will be all. You can take your bags right through that door and rejoin your group."

So, I asked her if there was any way that I could get my name somehow put on the "Safe Christopher Allen Martins" list and she said there was nothing that they could do. I asked if I should expect this the next time I return to the country from abroad. She said I should expect it until the other Chris Martin is arrested.

With that said, I am calling on all Christopher Allen Martins (yes, he shares my same exact name) to help me apprehend and destroy this traitor to the name! I'm talking about an army. An unstoppable, vigilante, paramilitary force. I'll let you guys do most of the planning. I don't want to have too much of the power concentrated in one place since, as far as I have been able to tell, I'm the only one speaking up about this and am thus very susceptible to attack. Get on it, guys. I'll be waiting for you to contact me.

In other news, Argentina was awesome. Too much to write here, but a picture says a thousand words so here's a few thousand at least:

This is one of the churches we did construction on. It was in a poor area of a town called La Plata. We built some walls, poured a lot of cement, and painted a lot of stuff.

Here's Johnny putting the final touches on one of the walls we helped build.

This is a shot of downtown Buenos Aires.

**Note: I didn't actually say anything before that last sentence (I have money saved . . .); it's just what I wish I had said to make the situation a little more comical.

Leaving on a Jet Plane

2007-07-12T11:56:00.000-04:00

Bye everybody. I'm going to Argentina today. Don't worry, I won't be gone long. I'll be back next Saturday (the 21st). The trip to Argentina should be a good one. I'm going with Northeast Presbyterian Church which is the church I went to for awhile in Columbia. The guy who's leading the trip, Henry Clay, was a missionary in Argentina for about two decades and so he enjoys taking some people down there each summer to get an idea of what the church and culture are like in and around Buenos Aires. We're going to be doing some construction work on an orphanage and meeting a lot of the people that Mr. Clay worked with while he was down there.

I'm going to take as many pictures as I can, and I'll be sure to post and write about it when I get back. I hope you guys don't miss me too much cuz I won't be posting while I'm over there.

I'll leave you with this amazingly addictive game. It's called Escapa! and you can play it here. The goal is to click on the red square and keep it from hitting any of the walls or the moving blue shapes. My personal record is around 40 seconds. See if you can beat it. Escapa!

Oh Snap!

2007-07-11T01:29:00.000-04:00

Okay, okay, I guess this may be considered old news, but it has just reached my desk and I'm loving it.

Check out this article (actually, a confirmation of a widely circulated e-mail) that compares the energy efficiency of the houses of two politicians.

Don't get me wrong, I hate climate change as much as the next guy and I'm not dissing Al Gore for making his documentary, but Mr. Gore, I think you just got served.

I am . . .

2007-07-10T14:35:00.001-04:00

I am sitting in a computer lab in the Academic Enrichment (read: tutoring for athletes) Center at USC. I never thought I'd be using a USC computer again, but apparently I just can't stay away. Actually, the reason I'm here is that James Basler, a friend of mine, needed a ride up here so that he could apply to be a tutor this year. I guess they're in desperate need for tutors because the first thing that the woman said to him was "When can you start?" Yes, at USC it's none but the best tutors for our athletes.

I hate being talked down to. The lady who was helping James apply to be a tutor spoke down to me. She told me I could go use the computer lab, but only if I "promise to be an exemplary student." I know it doesn't sound very condescending when I write it out, but if you had been here, you would have felt it.

I don't have anything to say here; I'm just wasting time until James gets done. It's been about 30 minutes so far. I'm going to see if I can find anything interesting.

I'll be right back.

Well, here's something. An article at CNN.com with the headline of "Man flies 193 miles in lawn chair." Pretty amazing. Actually, it's just amazing that this guy does this kind of stuff just for fun. He's not a professional pilot or anything; he just decided he wanted to fly through the air on a lawn chair lifted by helium-filled balloons. Check out the article. It's worth a read.

I think James is almost ready to go. I can hear him talking to that lady in the hall. I think she's asking him if he can tutor tonight. I better go.

Good bye.

Oh yeah, I leave for Argentina in two days! I'll post about that trip before I head out on Thursday.

Switzerland Pictures!

2007-07-07T01:55:00.000-04:00

Finally, here are the pictures from Switzerland. I know that the slideshow isn't as sleek as the Flickr one, but Flickr was just too much work to upload pictures to. Instead, I used Google's free program, Picasa, to sort, label, and upload all of these pictures. It's a great program, and I highly suggest you check it out.

Anyway, here are the pictures. If you'd like a high res version of any of them or if you have any questions or comments, just post a comment on the blog and I'll get back to you ASAP.

Here's how to work the slideshow: first, put your mouse over the slideshow and a little menu will come up from the bottom, click on the little comment bubble to be able to see my captions for the pictures; second, you can either press the play button to play the slideshow or, if the pace of the slideshow is too fast (I can't slow it down) then you can just click through the pictures using the arrows; third, if you'd rather see the pictures without the slideshow, just click on one of the pictures and you'll be taken to the album itself on Picasa's website.

There are about 150 pictures. It's a lot, I know, but I wanted to be thorough. Enjoy!

inTransit

2007-07-06T12:50:00.000-04:00

Okay everyone, I've got a great new site for you to go check out. I actually just found it myself, and I spent about an hour going through all the different videos and reading stuff. The site is called inTransit, and as you may be able to discern from the name, it is a travel site of sorts. The description on the site says that

InTransit is a reality based travel series that follows most triumphant dudes as they travel to and through exotic locales by unusual modes of transportation. Unscripted and unusual, the series focuses on the journey, more so than the destination. Unaware of what's to come, the travelers pack up and explore the world. Whether it's riding a bicycle across Europe, sailing the Caribbean, boating the Mississippi River or walking across a country, there are no limitations to what travel they pursue. Follow the cast as they interact with each other and the environments they surround themselves in.

Right now, the guys are traveling across the country on two 49cc scooters. They call themselves The Scootstars. The videos are fun to watch and are updated almost daily so there is great potential for procrastination for me and you. Check it out: inTransit.

Behind the Music: This Is It

2007-07-05T09:30:00.000-04:00

I thought that today I'd give you all a behind the scenes look at my blog, This Is It. What I mean by "behind the scenes" is actually just a good explanation of everything that's on here so that you, the user, can get the most out of my amazing blog.

Before I begin, I'd like everyone to know that my left bicep is twitching uncontrollably. I think it's because I slalom skied (yes, that is the correct past tense . . . according to Wikipedia) for about 15 minutes straight yesterday which was more than my body could handle.

Okay, now to the wonderful explanation. First off, I'd like you to take a look at the picture at the very top of this page. Well, almost the very top. Ignore that bar across the top of the page. The picture at almost the very top of this page is, if you'll look closely and maybe squint your eyes, a city skyline. Which city? Chicago. Why? Because Chicago is probably my favorite big city in America and I think that it has an awesome skyline. Now, to get the picture of Chicago's skyline to look like that, I used a simple online program called The Textorizer. This is a great little application that allows you to turn any picture into a text-based outline or cloud or that picture. Just go to the website and do some trial and error with it. If you're looking for a place to upload pictures on the web (which you have to do before you can run them through Textorizer) I suggest ImageShack. Once you upload your picture, just go down to the very bottom of the page and copy the address labeled "Direct link to image" into the box on the Textorizer website.
Next, let's take a look at the top right of the screen where what is called the sidebar begins. Well, it would be the top right if you're using Firefox as your web browser. If you're using IE then, because IE doesn't read normal CSS coding very well, the sidebar begins sort of level with the frame of the post. Anyway, at the top of the sidebar you'll see my profile; it's labeled "About Me." Nothing really interesting here except that it says that my name is Reggie Smith. Why Reggie Smith? Well, in my junior year of college, Facebook started getting very popular. A lot of my friends were on it and I was not. I thought it was lame, but being as inquisitive as I am (my friends call me "Whisker" because I'm curious like a cat), I decided that I wanted to see what kind of lame stuff they put on their profiles. So I made up a fake name and created a profile with nothing on it. Soon, however, I had been sucked into the infinite procrastinatorial abyss that is Facebook and I had a full profile with all of my most personal secrets laid bare for the world to see. At one point I even changed my name on Facebook to Chris Martin, but it was boring so I changed back. All of that to say, that's where Reggie Smith came from: me being a cynical and arrogant stalker on Facebook.

Just beneath my profile, you'll see what I consider to be the most important thing on my blog: a link to download Mozilla Firefox. Why do I consider it to be of utmost importance; important enough, in fact, to label it "First Things First"? Because Internet Explorer is the bane of my existence. Not only is it the absolute worst choice for web browsers (if you'd like to read a comparison of IE 7 and Firefox 2.0 then read this article on CNET) but Microsoft essentially dupes almost all of the users of Windows PCs into thinking that IE is the only worthwhile browser since it comes preloaded on your computer. So, please read that article on CNET and download Firefox. It's free, and like the image on my blog says it's "like Internet Explorer . . . except Firefox actually works."

Moving on. Below you'll see another picture that has been run through the Textorizer. As of now, the picture is of me wearing my backpack right before I left to go to Switzerland in May.

Below that picture you'll find a list of books that I'm reading. If you click on their links, you'll go to their pages on Amazon.com. Some of you may have noticed that Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was only up there for about two days. That's because I ripped through all 870 pages in about 12 hours total. It's a good book. The other book I've been reading lately is called The Language of God, and although the title might suggest a frilly Max Lucado book, it's actually a book written by the scientist who heads the Human Genome Project. He's a Christian and he is arguing for two things: the existence of God using as proof some of the things he's discovered while studying the human genome; and also a closer interaction of faith and science. I'll try to keep my booklist updated as I read different things.

The next two sections of the sidebar are filled with links to the sites that I frequent at least on a weekly basis. There are blogs, MySpace pages (for musicians), and some normal websites. I highly suggest the blogs on the list: Le Seul Mot Juste, A Broad (Patrick McQuinn), and A place that has to be believed to be seen (Dave Libbon).

Okay, we're close to the end now. Beneath the list of links, you'll see a little strip of video frames. This is called a Google Video Bar and I have it set up to link to my four favorite videos that we made while I was MC for CRU at USC. The videos are (in order) the ninja video, Deep Thoughts, my graduation speech, and Dolls Pt 1. If you click on the image the video will start playing at the top of the blog. Watch and enjoy.

Beneath the videos are two ways to browse through my past blog entries. First you can browse by label which is the subject of the blog. Second, you can look through the blog posts chronologically. I'm not sure what my favorite posts have been, although other people seem to have enjoyed "American Happened Tonight" and "But, what is it?" so perhaps if you want to look back you can start there.

Okay, I've been typing for way too long. I hope that you've enjoyed learning more about my blog and me, and that you will keep reading and tell all of your friends about it (although, there is admittedly very little on this blog that would interest anyone who doesn't know me).

Good night and good luck.

Happy America Day!

2007-07-04T11:10:00.001-04:00

Cuz beards are tough!

2007-07-02T14:49:00.000-04:00

Hey guys. So, ever since I've been back from Switzerland I've been abstaining from cutting off any of the hair on my face. I haven't been shaving. I think I shaved one time before I went up to Delaware for the family reunion, but that was mainly because we had to have a bunch of portraits done. Come to think of it, I'm not even sure I shaved before that. At any rate, I'm not shaving now and here's the proof, a beautiful picture of me doing my best model face:

So as you can see, I haven't shaved for awhile. I know, I know. Most people would look at this picture and think that I just hadn't shaved this week. I'm used to comments like that so it doesn't bother me. For those of us who are facial-hair deficient, those comments come as no surprise. In fact, I have not shaved for almost three weeks.

Many people, including my mom on several occasions, have asked if I'm trying to grow out a beard or, even worse, a mustache. They all seem bewildered when my response is, "No, I'm not trying to grow a beard or anything. I'm just not shaving for as long as I can take it." By their logic, "not shaving" and "growing a beard" are the same exact thing. Until sometime yesterday, I had no response to their objections except to say that it's just not the same thing. Yesterday, however, I came up with an analogy that I think explains my position in this matter.

Let's say that you buy a house--or, better yet, inherit a house--and on the grounds of the property there is a small garden. Understanding that flower gardens are all the rage nowadays, you decided to try to grow something. Unfortunately for you, the soil won't sustain anything except for weeds. Anytime you try to grow flowers, nothing happens at all. So one day you decide just to let the weeds grow and grow and grow because what else are you going to do with the tiny spot in the yard very clearly designated as a garden? So you start to let the weeds grow, and slowly but surely they begin to sprout in tiny patches all over the small plot of soil.

One day a friend stops by for some tea. As you meander around the grounds of your inherited home, he asks you about your garden: "Oh," he says, "are you trying to grow some flowers?" "Of course not," you reply courteously. "I can't grow flowers in that soil so I'm just going to see what it looks like if I let it grow over with weeds. Who knows, maybe I'll get something presentable after awhile." "But you do understand that weeds are ugly don't you?" he presses. "Yes, yes, I know that weeds are ugly, but what if, after months and months of growing weeds, my garden starts to look, well, kind of cool?" "But weeds don't look cool. They're weeds!" "Listen, I know they're weeds, okay? I'm just saying that maybe, just maybe, once I let the weeds grow a little bit taller and fill out a little bit more, my plot of weeds might add a little street cred to my otherwise unassuming house here." "But don't you know that . . . " And then you punch the guy in the face because that's what guys with gardens of weeds do to people that keep questioning. Guys with gardens of weeds punch people all the time because they are so hardcore. You don't even know.
Anyway, that's what I'm going for here.

After letting my face-hair grow for awhile, however, I have noticed some problem areas. I'll now outline the main problem so that you can keep it in your prayers:

The problem is an obvious one. I have almost a complete lack of hair coverage in the quadrants of my face tangent to the bottom of the corners of my mouth. This represents a major difficulty for two reasons. One, this is an area of my face that must have full coverage to achieve that Perfect Storm/Deadliest Catch kind of ice fisherman beard of which I would love to be an owner. Unlike less important areas of the facial hair grid, such as the underside of my jaw line, I simply do not feel that I will be able to have successful facial hair without the cooperation of these crucial areas. The second reason that the lack of hair in these areas results in an impediment to a notable array of whiskers is that in the absence of hair in those sectors of my face, I am left looking like I'm trying to grow out a white-trash facial hair pattern. For those of you unfamiliar with the facial-hair habits of white trash, I invite you to watch the movie Joe Dirt. Here's a picture of exactly what I'm talking about:

This is absolutely not what I want to look like. Ever. In my life. Unfortunately, if the areas of my face that have sprouted hair continue to fill in with no new growth then this is exactly what I'm heading for. Don't worry friends, I'll shave before it gets to this point. I will not be the entertainment for kids with disposable cameras having competitions to see how many people with a trash-stache they can find. No sir. Not I.

So in conclusion, I'll be going for at least another week without shaving, in the hopes that at some point, I'll look awesome.

In other news, Kate and Marcus came down this weekend and I completely forgot to take pictures. So you'll just have to take me at my word when I tell you that it was awesome and fun.

Good bye.

Don't worry . . .

2007-07-02T09:36:00.001-04:00

I'll post again later on today with something a little bit more substantial but for now check out this video that my friend Will sent me from YouTube. It has one cuss word in it, and actually, the place where they use it isn't even very funny, but I don't think it takes that much away from the hilarity of the video. Yes, I know that last one was a run-on sentence. I don't even care.

By the way

2007-06-29T09:33:00.001-04:00

I think I said something about this, albeit in a very passing way, in one of my posts yesterday, but I don't think I've come right out and said it yet on the blog: on August 13th I'll be leaving to go back to L'Abri for the full Fall term which lasts until December 4th.

When I went to L'Abri at the beginning of the summer, I was pretty confident that unless I hated it I'd be going back for a longer time. Of course, I didn't hate it when I got there so I'm going back for at least one more term. I'll be going back as a student again. I decided not to go back as a helper (like a student, but you work a lot more and get to be there for free) because I'd like to have more time to study. For awhile I was thinking about going to England L'Abri, but things started going really well with my tutor about halfway through my stay and that was enough to make me want to come back to Switzerland. Obviously the scenery doesn't hurt any either.

Since I won't be here for about four months I decided to end my lease in Columbia and move all my stuff back to my parents' house in Conway. So for the last two or three days I've been trying to find someplace out of the way for all of the crap I brought back with me from Cola.

As far as what I might do after I get back from Switzerland in December, I have no idea. That's a point too far in the future, and over an expanse of time in which I'm very likely to change a lot, to think about it in specifics. Generally, I guess I'd like to look into graduate school for philosophy or theology. I'd like to see about moving to the west coast. I'd like to do a ton of things, but what actually happens only time will tell. At least I know what I'm doing for the next six months. That's good enough for me.

In other news, Kate and her boyfriend Marcus get here in about an hour and a half so I need to finish cleaning my room.

Polls! Yay!

2007-06-28T15:58:00.000-04:00

So Blogger added this new "Poll" feature and as someone who is constantly on the cutting edge of groundbreaking technology, I decided to try it out. Over to the right you'll see a little poll I created. The question is, "How often do you check my blog?" Now, this site only gets about 20-25 visits a day so I'm not anticipating a ton of responses, but if you're reading this, why not go ahead and punch in your answer.
The main reason I'm doing this is to see how often I should update the blog. If most of you only check in once a week, then I'm not going to stress over posting everyday. But, if most of you check it at least once a day then you deserve to have at least one new post every single day.

In conclusion, if you love me, you'll answer the poll.

Let's try this out

2007-06-28T14:28:00.000-04:00

Okay, I'm going to try to upload that video (see post below) of Peter and Andy playing pipe and piano, respectively. Now, I'm not sure if this Blogger video upload is going to work, so if you can't see the video don't be angry. By the way, these guys aren't taking themselves seriously in this video. They're just having a good time.

Well, I tried to upload it using Blogger and it took forever so in the meantime I uploaded it to YouTube. Here you go:

There you have it. Amazing musicianship from Minnesota and Colorado via L'Abri.

You think you know . . .

2007-06-28T13:34:00.000-04:00

But you have no idea. Well, maybe it's not as dramatic as seeing a day in the life of some star on MTV's show Diary, but here's what an average day at L'Abri was like while I was there. I assume some of it changes during the different terms, but I won't know that until I go back for the fall term. So, here's an average day during the summer term:

Each day I woke up around 7:45 am. At least, that's the time that I set my alarm for. We only got two showers a week because water is so expensive in Switzerland so I never needed more than two minutes to get dressed and go downstairs for breakfast. With that in mind, I would snooze my alarm one time each morning, delaying my complete awakedness another nine minutes. So at 7:54 am I would get out of bed, get dressed, and head downstairs to the dining room for breakfast at 8 am. We had breakfast together every morning. On Thursdays, our day off, you could skip breakfast if you wanted to sleep in, but breakfast on Thursday and Sunday was already pushed back to 9 am so I never had need of more sleep. For breakfast we would have cereal and toast just about every day. Our cereal choices were pretty limited: Corn Flakes or Rice Krispies. I usually opted for Rice Krispies and two slices of toast with some sort of berry jam on it. Now, I'm not a huge coffee drinker so for the most part I would just have a glass of water with breakfast. About halfway through my time at L'Abri, however, I decided to get crazy and I started having a cup of hot tea with breakfast. Just one spoonful of sugar and it was perfect. There were three days a week on which we didn't eat cereal for breakfast. I don't remember which days they were, but one day we had oatmeal and another day we had Muesli. On Sundays we usually had something really big for breakfast like pancakes and eggs or bacon or something like that. It was a treat every time.

So, after breakfast we had until 9:30 to do whatever we wanted. If it was a nice day, I'd usually grab a book and sit out on the balcony that was right outside my bedroom door. Here's a picture of some of us sitting outside one morning. That's my roommate Jeff playing the harmonica and Peter playing the pipe. The other guy is Andy and he's one of the best piano players I've ever been around. I've got a great video of he and Peter playing the piano and pipe together at a talent show we had one night. I'll put it on here sometime soon.

At 9:30 everyone split up to do whatever they were assigned for the morning. Each day was divided into two sections: morning and afternoon. During each section you were either assigned to work or study. For the sake of this blog, I'll describe day on which I was assigned to work in the morning and study in the afternoon. I was usually assigned grounds for my work. You could also be assigned to help clean Bellevue (where the students lived), cook lunch at one of the workers houses (the students split up for lunch and eat at the workers' houses), or do laundry (they do your laundry for you everyday; it's wonderful). On grounds crew we would typically mow grass because there was a ton of grass to mow and that stuff grew faster than anything I've ever seen. You could probably spend about 9-12 hours a week just mowing and weed-eating around the grounds at L'Abri and that's just what we did. I really didn't mind mowing or weed-eating because I'm young and hip and I have an iPod that I could just put on and zone out while I worked. On the unfortunate occasion that there was no grass to mow, you were stuck weeding by hand all around the grounds. That was like being in hell.

At 12:30 in the afternoon everyone quit working and studying and would come back up to Bellevue to get ready for lunch. Four days of the week we had what were called Formal Lunches. This just meant that when you got to lunch at one of the worker's homes you would all sit around a table and wait for someone to raise a question to be discussed. The questions could be anything. While I was there we talked about sports, animal ethics, whether or not the Bible is inerrant, and politics just to name a few. The discussions were moderated by whatever worker you were with that day, and I don't think I ever heard a question raised that a worker hadn't heard before or didn't have a response to. The great thing was, though, that even though the worker probably already knew exactly what avenues we were going to go down in our response to the questions, they never just said "Well, this is the answer." The atmosphere at formal lunches was, for the most part, an open and honest one where you could say whatever was on your mind without having to worry about people thinking you were a heretic or idiot. Most people that go to L'Abri are there because they have some problem with their understanding of Christianity or God and are there as a last ditch effort to salvage their faith and so there really is a culture of spiritual and intellectual honesty there that I haven't been around anywhere else.

After lunch which usually got over at about two, we had another little bit of free time until three o'clock. During this free time almost everyone would go outside to hang out and either play or watch people playing ping pong. Right outside of the main living room/lounge in Bellevue there is a big patio overlooking the valley and mountains, and they've got a ping pong table along with some table and benches out on that patio. Here's a couple pictures:

At three o'clock we would split up again and do whatever it was that you didn't do in the morning. So if you worked in the morning, you studied in the afternoon or vice versa. In my study time I did a lot of different things. Some days I would read a book that my tutor assigned me and some days I'd just listen to a lecture or read a book that just seemed interesting. By they way, I'm not sure if I've explained this yet on the blog, but if you go to L'Abri for more than a week you're assigned a tutor, one of the full-time workers. You meet with your tutor once a week just to talk about how your studies are going, why you're at L'Abri, what you've been learning, to ask questions and discuss things, and whatever else you feel like doing. The tutors usually help you narrow down what you want to study and point you towards some books or lectures that they think might help you out some. My tutor's name is Greg Laughery and he's the director of Swiss L'Abri. He is, from what I can tell, a super genius. Anyway, after the afternoon session everyone would meet back up at Bellevue for dinner at 6:30. After dinner the rest of your night was free. Most nights some people would either go up to Villars (a ski resort town about thirty minutes up the mountain from us), play some sort of game like Risk or Scrabble, or read and just hang out. By midnight everyone was tired and went to sleep.

There you have it; a rather long and detailed post about what an average day at L'Abri is like. If you have any questions about any of it just post a comment and I'll answer them.

In other news, my friend Kate Nelson and her boyfriend Marcus are coming down to Conway from North Carolina to hang out this weekend. Should be fun. I'll take some pictures and let you guys see.

Thanks for reading such a looooong post. I'll think of something short and exciting for tomorrow.

But, what is it?

2007-06-27T10:00:00.000-04:00

I realized sometime yesterday, as I was trying to figure out what I should post about, that I haven't said much about L'Abri since I've been back home. So, I think that today I'll write a little bit about what L'Abri is. This may turn into a series of posts because there is really a lot to say and explain.

Today I'll start with a very short history of L'Abri. In 1955, Francis Schaeffer and his wife Edith were living in Switzerland with their children. I think at that point they had two or maybe three children. The Schaeffers bought a chalet in the tiny town of Huemoz (pronounced "Way-mo") right before their visas were going to expire and moved in with only a vague idea that they wanted to open their home for people who were questioning spirituality. Soon after they moved to Huemoz, one of their daughters started to bring friends home on the weekend from her school (I forget if it was a boarding school or if it was a university), and Francis Schaeffer started to talk to them about what their spiritual beliefs were and about what Christianity said about the world. As those girls found a lot of their questions answered, they began to tell other people and word started to spread that there was a place up on a mountain where a man would talk to you about philosophy and theology. Soon people started showing up to stay and talk about spirituality and philosophy with Schaeffer. At this point, the visitors were simply sleeping on any empty floor space around the Schaeffer's house.

Schaeffer started to lecture on various topics with the emphasis always being that Christianity is not simply a spiritual truth, disconnected from the practicalities and complexities of daily living, but that it is an all-encompassing lens through which we can view and respond to everything we encounter in our lives. At some point a chapel was built to house L'Abri's growing library and to give the students at L'Abri a place to have church on Sundays. Also, other chalets were purchased around the original chalet in order to house more students and workers who came to work full-time at L'Abri.

Currently, L'Abri consists of seven chalets. Chalet Bellevue is where the all of the students live and eat most of their meals. Four other chalets house workers and their families, and two chalets are reserved for visiting lecturers and non-traditional students (eg married couples). L'Abri also owns a good-size chapel called the Farel House which is used as the meeting place for church on Sunday mornings, the space for the two lectures that take place each week, and is also used for housing the library of about 1500 books and 1200 tapes of lectures given at L'Abri.

Below is a quotation, taken from the L'Abri website, that explains the emphasis of the teaching at L'Abri:

First, that Christianity is objectively true and that the Bible is God's written word to mankind. This means that biblical Christianity can be rationally defended and honest questions are welcome.

............................................................................................................................

Second, because Christianity is true it speaks to all of life and not to some narrowly religious sphere and much of the material produced by L'Abri has been aimed at helping develop a Christian perspective on the arts, politics and the social sciences etc.

............................................................................................................................

Third, in the area of our relationship with God, true spirituality is seen in lives which by grace are free to be fully human rather than in trying to live on some higher spiritual plane or in some grey negative way.

............................................................................................................................

Fourth, the reality of the fall is taken seriously. Until Christ returns we and the world we live in will be affected by the disfigurement of sin. Although the place of the mind is emphasized, L'Abri is not a place for "intellectuals only".

............................................................................................................................
We are as concerned for living as we are for thinking and from the beginning the concern has been that the truth is as much exhibited in everyday life as it is defended in discussion. We do not do this perfectly of course but depend on the Lord to bring forth a measure of reality in our daily life.

Today, there are branches of L'Abri in England, America, Canada, Korea, Sweden, and Holland, all of which operate under those principals but with different results depending on the types of workers and students that come to each branch each term.

If you're interested in learning more about L'Abri, I suggest going to their official website: http://www.labri.org. Or, if you're really interested, you can buy Edith Schaeffer's book, L'Abri, which chronicles the beginnings of L'Abri and how things worked out for the first decade or two. Tomorrow, I'll post about what an average day at L'Abri was like so stay tuned for more.

In other news, I received most of my recent order from Amazon.com yesterday. I got a 120 gb external hard drive, a new wireless mouse, and a system for learning French. Big day!

3hive

2007-06-26T10:49:00.000-04:00

Sharing the sharing. That's the tagline for the site 3hive. 3hive is a site devoted to bringing you, the discerning listener, the best of free music available on the internet. They go around the net pretty much everyday and link to the different band sites that have free downloads of a few of their tracks. It's great! Now, don't expect every band to be fantastic (there's a reason they aren't discovered yet), but take a listen to a bunch of the tracks and I'm sure you'll find something you like. Check it out: 3hive.

In other news, today I've got to mow the lawn, fill out the paperwork to get my very first credit card, buy the fifth and sixth Harry Potter books, and finish organizing the mountains of junk that I migrated from Columbia to Conway. Also, I'll be coming up to Columbia tomorrow. I think I'll probably try to get up there by 6 or so, and I've got a meeting for my trip to Argentina at 7. I don't know where I'll spend the night. Maybe Alan's. Who knows. Anyway, if you're in Cola and you want to hang out, give me a call (843-455-4167).

Lata homes.

The times are a-changin'

2007-06-25T17:16:00.000-04:00

Something I've found myself asking over the last week or so is, what is the point of this blog now that I'm not in some faraway place? Now that I'm back home and I'm not just using the blog to let you guys know what's going on in my life, why do I still have a blog?

Some answers to that question. First, there are still people who don't live anywhere near me that want to know what's going on with my life; so I'll still talk about my life so that they can know what's going on. Second, I spend more time on the internet than most of you so I have found some things out there that I think may interest you or help you waste some time during the day. A good example is that Microsoft Surface video I posted earlier. I don't know if any of you liked it or not, but I did; so I posted it. Hopefully someone out there who would never have seen that video watched it and laughed. I'll also post about things that I've read or listened to that may interest someone. Thus this blog may become a link in the long chain of the passing on of information in our global village. Third . . . I don't know if there is a third. Maybe this blog is just giving me some sort of practice learning how to do some random web design stuff.

Anyway, I just kind of felt like I needed to explain to myself why I keep posting on the blog and explain to you why you should keep reading.

In other news, I got four new books in today! They are (in no particular order):
--The Fall of Interpretation by James K.A. Smith
--Who's Afraid of Postmodernism? by James K.A. Smith
--Introducing Radical Orthodoxy by James K.A. Smith
--Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Yeah, I know, three books by James K.A. Smith might be overkill, but I heard a lot of good things about him from the workers at L'Abri and I'm interested in all of the topics that the books are exploring so I think I'll make it without overdosing on James Smith. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek is my roommate Nate's favorite book I think. He loves Annie Dillard, and this is her most acclaimed book (it won the Pulitzer Prize for non-fiction in 1975).

Finally, I'd like to fulfill the second of my blog's stated goals before I conclude this post. I will do that by referring you to one of my favorite sites on the internet: Woophy. Woophy could possibly be one of the most amazing travel photography sites on the internet. The way the site works is simple: users can post pictures of the places that they live or visit and they site displays the pictures in groups based on the city in which the pictures were taken. When you get to the site you're presented with a large map with little dots all over it. Zoom in on an area and click on a city of your choice to see pictures from that city. Very easy. Very fun. Great way to procrastinate. So, go check out Woophy and enjoy looking at all the random places in the world.

Good bye.

Photostream Test

2007-06-25T00:45:00.000-04:00

Well, I just wanted to try out this slideshow on my blog to see if it worked. It does. Or at least it should. If you're using Internet Explorer (shame on you), you may have to refresh the page if it doesn't show up the first time. Let me remind all of you that there's a nice link to the right that you can click on and download Firefox to use as your internet browser for free.

Anyway, I wanted to try out this slideshow so that when I finish uploading all of my Switzerland pictures to Flickr, I could use this to display them on the blog. In the meantime, here are the pictures from my final project in my medium format photography class. The series is affectionately titled "Sunshine and Stardust: Life without a seatbelt." All of the pictures were taken within 15 minutes of my home in Conway between the hours of 11 pm and 3 am using existing light or the headlights of my Toyota Matrix. I hope you enjoy.

PS - If you put your mouse near the top or bottom of the slideshow some controls will come up to navigate through the pictures.

Epistemology

2007-06-24T17:34:00.001-04:00

Well, I promised it a long time ago, and here it is. Finally, here is my post--or maybe posts depending on how long this is--about epistemology. I'm not sure if I can do a great job of explaining what I learned about epistemology at L'Abri. All I know is what I learned from listening to four lectures about it by a professor from Calvin College named Lee Hardy, and even what little I know will be hard to convey through a blog. But, we'll give it a go anyway. I need to say at the beginning that much of what I write will be directly from my notes and so a lot of it will be directly from Dr. Hardy's mouth. I can't remember what I wrote down verbatim from the tapes and what I paraphrased so some of these words may not be my own.

A basic definition of epistemology is that it is the study of the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge. So, if that's the definition, then a good starting point for thinking about epistemology is to ask yourself, "How do I know what I know?" In other words, how do you get your knowledge? Here are some of the main ways that most of us would answer that question:
--perception: we use our senses
--memory: we remember what we did or what happened in our lives
--introspection: we look at our feelings and interpret them
--testimony: we listen to and trust what people tell us
--reason: we use logic to make sense of the world around us
But the question that philosophers dealing with epistemology raise is, "How do you know that you can trust the faculties that you listed to produce beliefs which are true?" How do you know that those faculties--in particular your senses and reason--are giving you accurate information? Those are the questions that philosophers have been asking for a really really long time, and, as of yet, there's not really one universal answer to it. How do we know things? And how do we know that we know?

If epistemology is the study of knowledge, then we should define "knowledge." Knowledge is a form of belief. It is true belief that is justified (e.g. just because you guess that the card picked out of a deck is going to be an ace of spades--and it turns out it is--doesn't mean you 'knew' that). So we study epistemology to discovery a theory of knowledge. From a theory of knowledge we should expect a theory of truth and a theory of justification, a theory that will tell us under what conditions a belief is true and under what conditions we are justified in accepting that belief.

At the time of Descartes (Rene Descartes 1596-1650, regarded as the father of modern philosophy), most of the philosophers accepted the Correspondence Theory of Truth. This theory of truth stated that a belief is true is it corresponds to the way the world is. So, the statement "The sky is blue" is true if the sky actually is blue. The theory of justification at the time was called Strong Foundationalism. Let me try to explain this:
We all walk around with a system of beliefs that are interrelated; we believe A based on B. For example, we believe that we live with humans because our friends and family are humans. But, there must be some beliefs that are not based on any other beliefs; beliefs that we're entitled to right off the bat and which will serve as a basis--or foundation--for all the other beliefs that we have. Strong Foundationalism states that the only beliefs that can be in that foundation are beliefs that are absolutely certain and that everything we believe must be built on that foundation using logic. We should be able to trace all of our beliefs back to that indisputable foundation.

Now, Correspondence Theory and Strong Foundationalism had existed in one form or another ever since Plato and Aristotle; so then what marks the difference or change from Ancient to Modern philosophy? How did we get started down the road to the postmodernism that we are in today?

The answer is the Representational Theory of Consciousness. Whereas in Ancient philosophy the major point of interest was in being or ideas, in Modern philosophy there was a shift to focusing on consciousness as the foundation of human knowledge. The ancient philosophers were interested in being or the thing itself, but the modern philosophers are interested in the consciousness of being or the consciousness of the object. When the focus turns to our consciousness then we must ask ourselves, "Is the thing perceived (a tree, for example) the physical external thing (the actual tree)?
Modern philosophers would say no. They say this because they see no evidence that our consciousness of an object must necessarily mean that the object exists in reality. This new (and by "new" I mean new in Descartes' time) turn in philosophy and new line of questioning means that we have no way to prove that we have any direct contact with the world. We can know about things, but we can't know the thing itself. Think about it. How do you know that what you perceive--what's going on in your mind--has any correlation at all to the real world around you? How do you know that there even is a real world around you? Can you prove it? Think of being in one of those big 360 degree theaters that's like a sphere around you. You see things on the screens and it sure looks real, but how do you know that the world outside of the sphere corresponds to what you're seeing?

And this is the question that all of modern philosophy tried to answer. Postmodernism has kind of given up on trying to prove that we can have any kind of meaningful knowledge of objective reality, mainly because modern philosophers tried too hard to prove that we could have absolute knowledge of objective reality and in the end couldn't prove a thing.

I had some more typed out here. I still have about 20 pages of notes that I haven't told you about. I decided that I should probably leave it at this and let those of you who may want to know more ask me or look it up yourselves and those of you who didn't want to know anything won't have to worry about reading any more boringness. I hope I told you something you didn't know. I hope I didn't screw any of that stuff up as I regurgitated it onto this blog. Thanks for listening.

-------------
In other news, I've got all of my stuff moved back down to Conway now. So, my apartment is pretty empty of all of my things. They are now all down underneath our house waiting for me to sort through them. I'll make a list of things that I'll be getting rid of and post it on the blog so that if you guys see anything you want you can give me an email and you can probably get whatever it is for free.

One day . . .

2007-06-22T21:20:00.000-04:00

"One day, your computer will be a big-ass table . . . "

So begins a hilarious parody of the Microsoft Surface technology. If you don't know what Microsoft Surface is, you can watch Microsoft's introductory video about it here. The technology is pretty freakin cool, I must admit. But, this parody of it is just too hilarious to ignore. Check it out:

Also, here's the tributary picture of my old flip flops that I promised (not a promise made to you, but a promise made to my Rainbows), and a picture of the new Crocs that replaced them:

So there they are. Old and new. A faithful friend saying a sad goodbye and an intriguing stranger bidding me to come in and stay for awhile. Rainbows, you will be missed.

Cake

2007-06-22T09:59:00.001-04:00

Just to let everyone who reads this know, I left my cell phone in Switzerland. Right now it's probably somewhere in a shipping center the US, but it's not with me. My roommate back at L'Abri mailed it to me sometime last week, but I haven't gotten it yet. In the meantime I'm using my Dad's phone. The number for that phone is: 843-455-4167. Some of you may recognize that number. Yes indeed, it is the very first cell number that I ever had. Somehow it has stayed in the family. Anyway, if you want to get in touch with me that's the number you should call. I don't have any of your phone numbers so you'll have to initiate contact.

Also, I haven't charged my camera batteries so no pics of my new kicks yet, but they're on their way I promise.

Bonus points for whoever can guess why in the world I named this post Cake.

One more thing

2007-06-21T17:17:00.000-04:00

Well, this post may encompass more than just one more thing, but I remembered one more thing about my trip home from Switzerland that I figured I should write here for all to hear.

I flew from Geneva to Newark in the lovely state of New Jersey. Now, if you've never flown into Newark (and I would assume it's the same at any other airport) the drill is this: if you're flying in from an international location you have to go through immigration and customs. The way that immigration works at Newark (and I would assume it's the same at any other airport) is that you have to wait in a long line and then you go up and talk to either an older-looking man or a younger-looking woman who seems tougher than the old man. In this particular instance, I was sent to the old man. He looked at me for a few seconds. He looked at my documents for a few seconds. Then he asked me what my occupation was. That was a question that I hadn't really thought about since I graduated from college. What is my occupation now?
Some options that ran through my head were: "Former unpaid campus ministry worker," "Untrained quasi-almost-professional website designer/photographer," and "Commune inhabitant." I eventually just said "minister." I don't know why I said that. I'm not a minister. I'm unemployed. Really really unemployed. With no plans for employment in the near future. Apparently it took me too long to make up my mind though. In the eyes of the old man, I was as good as guilty (of what, I wouldn't find out for another little while).
The man told me to walk to the police officer that was quickly making his way towards our desk. I guess the old man had press a panic button or something. After I was handed a small plastic envelope with my passport, driver's license, and plane ticket in it I was escorted to an elevator in a corner. The officer got the door opened and pressed the button for the floor below the floor we were currently on. I was given my instructions ("Get out when the doors open") and the officer let the doors close with only me on the elevator.
When I got out at the bottom, there were two or three more officers waiting for me. They took my documents and walked me to a sitting area which, although built to seat over 100 people, was currently only playing host to two Hispanics. I asked the younger-but-tougher-looking lady cop what was going on, to which she replied "How would I know? I wasn't up there with you. Just sit down."
So I sat. Both of the Latinos were helped and I was left just trying to figure out what was going on. After about 15 minutes I was called to a desk with a guy who sounded more New York than anyone I've ever met in person. The conversation was simple:
--"Where have you been?"
--"Switzerland. Why?"
--"Have you ever been to Jamaica?"
--"Nope."
--"Do you have any relatives in or around the Brooklyn area?"
--"Nope."
--"Okay. Here's your stuff back."
And he just gave me my stuff back like nothing had just happened. Now, I consider myself to be pretty relaxed and easy-going but at this point I had peed more than once in my pants. I was being held without my passport in an airport police station, and they weren't even going to tell me what was going on?
So I asked. Apparently someone named Christopher Allen Martin had smuggled a bunch of drugs in from Jamaica and sold them to people "in or around the Brooklyn area." So that means that I can add drug dealer to the list of awesome career choices that other Chris Martins have made. The list, in case you haven't read any of the other posts, includes photographer, media designer, international rock star, and if you count me, "minister."

In other news, I am back in Conway now. To keep myself busy I've been reading Harry Potter books. Right now I'm on the fourth book and I'm knocking out between 50 and 100 pages a day. The book is 700 pages long so this puts me at about a week-and-a-half pace, at least for this book. The next one is friggin 780 pages. Hopefully I can get it from the Horry County Library.
Also, something monumental happened today. I bought I new pair of flip flops. I guess it's been a long time coming, but it was really hard to pay for a new pair. I kind of felt like I was betraying my five-year-old Rainbows. I got a pair of the new Crocs flip flops. They're nice I guess. It'll take some getting used to. In honor of my old Rainbows, I'm going to post a picture of them as soon as my camera batteries are charged.

Stay tuned.

Back in America

2007-06-14T07:52:00.000-04:00

Well, I made it back to America. It was a rough trip from Huemoz to Geneva to Newark to Charlotte to Columbia, but I'm doing alright. Should I tell you about my travel back home first? I guess I will.

I left Huemoz and L'Abri on Tuesday night. Everyone gathered around and said goodbye as the bus pulled up to take me down the mountain. It was sad. Very sad. I left L'Abri and headed down to Aigle to catch the last train that would get me to the Geneva Airport before they locked to doors for the night. As soon as I got down to Aigle, however, I realized that I had left my cellphone at L'Abri. Big time bummer, but I called back up there and told them to mail it to me the next day. So, hopefully I'll be back in communication with all of my American friends in the next week or so.
Anyway, I got the train to Geneva Airport without at problem and promptly found my way to a payphone to call L'Abri again. I was lonely and there was literally no one around me in the airport for the longest time. I called L'Abri and talked to Katie and Tara for awhile. It was nice. I was going to talk to Peter, but something happened to the connection and the phone hung up. Peter, if you're reading this, I'm sorry I didn't call back. It's not you. It's me.
After the phone call, I read for a little bit and started to fall asleep in the chairs near the payphones. I did, in fact, find the blue couch that everyone told me to look for, but it was in such a lonely spot that I just didn't feel like sleeping there. I was woken up by the sound of computer speakers after about 20 minutes of sleeping, and when I looked around I saw two girls watching what I thought was Spiderman 3 on their computer. Of course, I had to see if that's really what it was so I walked over and said "Hey, I'm sorry to bother you but are you watching Spiderman 3?" Although they were obviously not America I knew that they spoke English because I heard them talking to each other, but apparently I was talking too fast. They thought I was angry at them for watching their movie too loudly. Once we got it all figured out, I found out that they were not watching Spiderman 3; they were watching 10 Things I Hate About You. The girls were from Brazil and Korea and they went to a hotel management school in Switzerland called Les Roches. They said it's one of the best schools in the world for it, and they seemed to know what they were talking about. Anyway, I watched the rest of the movie with them and then we split up to try to get some sleep around the area we were in. Here's a picture of me trying to sleep on the ground for awhile:After awhile of trying to sleep on the ground, I got up and slept in the seat of an arcade racing game. That lasted until about 4 am when I made my way upstairs to the lonely blue couch. I slept there until 7:30 am and then made my way to my plane. On my way to the plane, I passed a bunch of these very interesting signs that appeared to be guidelines for terrorists and military combatants to follow should they decide to take over the airport.

Very interesting. I really have no idea why they were there. There was another sign that actually said something like(although I didn't get a picture of it, so you'll just have to trust me) "Civilians: The goal is always zero civilian casualties, but this is not always viable."

I got the plane to Geneva and got back to Columbia safely. Last night I just hung out with Alan Davis and watched all the episodes of The Office and Heroes that I had missed. They were all good, but I gotta say, I don't really think I missed anything huge by not watching TV for the last five weeks.

Today I've got to take care of some errands: get my haircut, pay my internet and phone bills, burn the final copy of my grandparents' anniversary DVD. Then at about 12:30 this afternoon I'll head to Florence to meet my parents and go to Delaware for the next four days for my grandparents' 50th anniversary. Should be fun.

To all of my friends at L'Abri: I miss you like the deserts miss the rain. I'll call you guys soon to see how things are going. You should all email me so I have your email addresses and your last names so I can add you on Facebook and have an easy way to stalk you.

PS All of my pictures are on Tara's computer so if you want any of them, you can just grab them from her.

Less than a week

2007-06-06T16:19:00.001-04:00

Hey guys. I'm in the final stretch. That's right, I leave in six days, next Tuesday. I'll be sleeping in the Geneva airport that night and my flight leaves at 9 am on Tuesday. I'll let you know how it goes. I really don't have anything else to say right now. Hmm.....

I finished reading Suburban Nation. I'll give a review on that and some other books I read here when I get home. Also, the epistemology post will be posted when I get home. So......be excited.

I am.

So you say it's your birthday

2007-06-04T15:26:00.001-04:00

Sup everybody. I am now 23 years old. I know, it's awesome. Being 23 is kind of meaningless except that I feel like I need to be a real person now, with a real job, etc. It's a lot of pressure, but as long as I have a blog, I can't take myself too seriously and that takes a little bit of the burden away.

There's so much to talk about guys, I don't even know where to start. I guess I'll start with birthday-related things. First off, we went out to Villars (ski resort just up the mountain from Huemoz) last night to celebrate my birthday and to have one last night out with a bunch of people that were leaving today. It was a ton of fun. There were about 20 of us there and we didn't talk about theology or philosophy once. It was very relaxing. The best part was that I didn't have to pay for any of my drinks, not so much because I was the birthday boy but because people owed me money. Either way, I drank for free. The beer here is pretty limited and light. They have this beer called Carlsberg which is like Budweiser sort of. It's not very good. But, a girl here named Steffi bought me one of the most amazing shots I've ever tasted (okay, it's only like the third shot I've ever had....I'm normally just a beer guy). It was Vodka, Cointreu, and peppermint licquor and it was like drinking heaven. If it wasn't so potent I would have drank (drunk, dranken?) 30 more.
In other birthday-related news, I got a package today from Mr. Patrick McQuinn. Inside said package was a nice bottle of Lemon Fanta. To understand why this gift was so amazing, you have to understand that ever since I got back from Italy my junior year in high school, I've been telling people (or at least Pat) about how great Fanta Lemon is and what a ripoff it is that you can't get it anywhere that I've ever seen except for Italy. Seriously, I've looked everywhere. Somehow, though, Pat found it and sent me a bottle of it. I haven't drank (drunk, dranken, drunken?) it yet, but I plan on enjoying every sip. Also, my roommate Jeff wrote me a nice poem today to celebrate my birthday. In so doing, he unknowingly kept alive the two-year-old (as of this year) tradition of people writing me poems for my birthday. So, that was nice.

Now, about non-birthday-related things. A bunch of us went down to Ollon (about 10 minutes down the mountain) on Saturday night to the annual Festival of Bread and Wine. It was great. Ollon is a wine-growing area and so every year (maybe twice a year) they have this big festival to eat bread and drink wine. So, we went down and ate bread and drank wine. Lot's of wine, for next to nothing. And it was amazing wine. I'll put some pictures below.
Also, we had a talent show last night. For the most part it was incredibly talented people doing stupid things. There's a guy here that has a Native American flute and can play it like a madman, so he did an improv with another guy playing the piano. A guy named Micah can beatbox like somebody from a crazy video on YouTube and he did that while another guy who can freestyle really well freestyled about random people at L'Abri whose names we would call out. I sang harmony on a couple of goofy songs written by one of the helpers here, Josh. Combined with going out later on that night, it was probably the best night I've had here so far.

Now, I realize that the pictures I put on the blog probably take awhile to load. At least they do on the computer here. At first I didn't think there was anything I could do about it, but now I've just found an online image resizer, so the images below are resized to hopefully not take forever and ever and ever to load. I'll fix the other ones when I get home in a week, and I'll also post all my pictures somewhere online. Until then, here's a few:

Here's a picture of the traditional Swiss band and dancers at the Festival of Bread and Wine in Ollon. They really weren't very good. If you're going to do a really simple dance and wear a costume, then you should at least be completely synchronized.

This is Jo, Jeff, and Vicki. Jo is from South Africa originally but now lives in Australia. Jeff is from San Luis Obispo but now lives in Charlotte. Vicki is from Manchester, England. Just a word about Vicki. She went to Oxford and studied theology and is probably the smartest student here. She knows everything about everything. It makes me wish we did school in America like they do in Europe.

Here's a shot of the dining room from an adjacent lounge area. I know, you don't really get an idea of what the dining room actually looks like, but I really like this picture, so you'll have to deal with it until a put up all the pictures when I get back.

Finally, here's a shot of the moon over the mountains that my balcony overlooks. I thought it looked awesome. So should you.

Doppelgangers

2007-05-31T16:09:00.000-04:00

There are people at L'Abri that look like other people. Famous people. Here are two examples:

People say that in these pictures Jeff doesn't really look like Siler from Heroes, but in real life they are mirror images. Jeff is my new roommate. He's from San Luis Obispo, California, but get this: for the last year he has lived, worked, and studied at Camp Lurecrest on Lake Lure, NC. If you'll remember, Camp Lurecrest is where Campus Crusade for Christ at USC goes for their Fall Retreats and Jeff worked the Fall Retreat this last year. I don't think we met that weekend, but it would have been pretty hard for us to not see each other at some point. So, once again I am somehow connected to my roommate. He's a nice guy.

Here's another example of a doppelganger and I think that this time the resemblance is uncanny:

On the left we have Matt Barton from Jacksonville, Florida. And on the right is Mr. Russell Crowe. Does anybody else see this? I'm sure if you're honest you'll say yes.

In other news, today was our free day and I, along with Josh and Thomas (a helper and worker here, respectively), went to this place called Les Bains. I think it means The Baths. It was a big bath/spa complex with a couple huge pools, saunas, Turkish baths, and aromatherapy rooms. It was great. Very relaxing.
Also, my birthday is in just four more days. Soooooo, celebrate. In the last five years I've celebrated my birthday in Conway, Branson (MO), Beirut (Leb), and now Huemoz (Switz). Booyah.

Taylor Mali

2007-05-29T15:46:00.000-04:00

Ladies and gentlemen, I'd like you to meet Mr. Taylor Mali. He's a slam poet. Wikipedia (no, I don't use it to get important information) defines slam poetry as "a postmodern performance poetry, a form of spoken word performed at a competitive poetry event, called a 'slam', at which poets perform their own poems (or, in rare cases, those of others) that are 'judged' on a numeric scale by randomly picked members of the audience." Taylor Mali was the first person I was exposed to in the world of slam poetry and he remains my favorite poet. This is one of my favorite poems of his, and it is entitled "What Teachers Make." I dedicate this to Ms. (Kate) James.

In other news, it was freezing cold here again today. For work today I was on grounds duty which entailed raking all of the branches that fell during the freeze yesterday, weeding around a garden, and chopping up a small tree that fell down. After being outside for those three hours, I was cold for the rest of the day. I just took one of my two weekly showers and I'm finally starting to thaw. I don't really have anything new to post today, and I still don't have time to write about epistemology. I guess this is it.

It snowed again

2007-05-28T15:10:00.000-04:00

Awhile ago I posted and said that it had snowed a little ways up the mountain. It was cold that day. Today it was colder. Today it snowed at our place. Here's a picture of the snow coming down. It snowed (mixed with a little bit of rain) for about four hours or so. My brain could barely comprehend what was happening outside. I think at one point my nose started to bleed because my brain was working overtime to create some sort of matrix that would allow me to process the fact that it was snowing at the end of May. The snow didn't stick so I didn't get to make snow angels or snow men or snow balls or snow anything else. All in all though, it was nice to experience some snow. It added a little bit of excitement to my day.

I'm sorry I haven't been posting here lately. The internet in Switzerland is ridiculously expensive and I've managed to work up a 50 franc ($45) internet bill in the two-and-a-half weeks I've been here. In light of that, I've had to cut back some. To make up for it, I brought some pictures with me today. Here we go:

Here's me and Pat in the kitchen in the hostel in Boenigen (it's a little town right outside of Interlaken). I left L'Abri and Huemoz at about 7 on Wednesday night and got to Interlaken at about 10. Pat met me at the trainstation and we just chilled at the hostel that night and spent some time catching up. I have a bad habit of not staying in touch with people (even my best friends) if they aren't directly in front of my face and disrupting my inner monologue on a daily basis so Pat and I haven't talked really since I visited him in December. Our hostel was nice. Not much character but like everything in Switzerland, it was clean.

Interlaken wasn't a very fun town in my opinion. Everything was super expensive and I think the mountains are more striking at L'Abri than they were there. However, Pat was in Interlaken so it was a lot of fun just to hike around. This is a picture we took on the riverside. The water is coming from a glacier somewhere and is as blue as PuttPutt water. Pat looks high in this picture, but that seems to be a common theme in most of my pictures of Pat. I have a farmer's tan. Also, my hair has gotten long enough that I have to part it sort of down the middle now. Some people like it better like that. I prefer it shorter.

In other news, I finished reading Sophie's World and He Is There and He Is Not Silent over the weekend. I highly recommend Sophie's World. The subtitle is "A novel about the history of philosophy" and that's exactly what it is. It's kind of like an idiot's guide to philosophy from Plato up to modern naturalistic materialism, but the philosophy lessons are within the context of a fiction story about a girl. The plot isn't much; it's mainly used as a vehicle for the philosophy lessons until you get about half-way through the book. Even so, it's definitely the most accessible intro to philosophy book that I've seen.
I didn't like He Is There... at all really. It was very general and too simplistic. It's Francis Schaeffer's book on a Christian epistemology and it just isn't written very well. In fact, because it was written so poorly, I decided to scratch True Spirituality by Schaeffer off of my reading list as well. My new reading list is there on the right. I'm reading all three of those books and once and I'm enjoying each of them immensely. Well, I just started A Primer on Postmodernism today, but I like it so far.

In conclusion, I'd like to give a big lame-o to whatever Chris Martin bought the domain name iamchrismartin.com. Oddly enough, he's a photographer. Still, I was going to buy that domain name when I got home and now I'll have to come up with something else altogether. In another odd coincidence, www.chrismartin.com is owned by a Christian photographer/media designer. In both instances, I think I'm vastly more talented than the other Chris Martin's.

I'll see you guys in two weeks!

I spy . . .

2007-05-22T16:11:00.000-04:00

Pat McQuinn! I'm going to see Pat tomorrow in Interlaken. I don't know anything about Interlaken. I just asked a girl from Switzerland that's sitting in the computer room what Interlaken is like. She said it's a ritzy ski area. I'm dropping big bucks to go see him (156 francs) but I figure it's worth it. How many times will I get to hang out with Patrick McQuinn in a Swiss ski resort town?

I can't really say much tonight because I had to do a bunch of other stuff on the internet before I posted, but hopefully I'll have some pictures by Friday of my time with Pat in Interlaken.

Too tired for knowledge

2007-05-20T15:51:00.000-04:00

I want you all to know that I had every intention of sharing what I've learned about epistemology with you on my blog today. However, right after chapel I was talked into going on a short three-hour hike with a bunch of people. What was supposed to be three hours turned into about five hours, and by the time I made it home I was completely worn out. Luckily, for dinner tonight we had sausage and there was plenty to go around so I got enough protein to keep my muscles from completely deteriorating. Unfortunately, I am just too worn out to write about epistemology tonight. Tomorrow or sometime soon, however, I promise I'll write as much as I can explain.

Tomorrow I'm going to start reading Francis Schaeffer's book entitled He Is There and He Is Not Silent. I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, "Chris! You're not supposed to capitalize the not-so-important words in the titles of books." Believe me, I know. But, that's how Amazon.com has it and if it's good enough for Amazon it's good enough for me. My tutor, Greg Laughery, told me to read the book and think about a critique of Schaeffer's epistemology. I am also supposed to be thinking about how things become real to people. Not just true, but real. For instance, Christianity is at least True, but it is so much more than that. It is real and it is true for me.
Don't freak out. I don't mean true for me in the same way that apathetic thinkers say that whatever works for them is true for them. What I mean is that it's more than just factually true in your mind; it's how you see the world. It's emotionally true. It's spiritually true. But what I'm trying to figure out is whether or not being spiritually and emotionally true feels very different or should be thought of as very different than just being rationally true. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but as I figure it out a little bit more and think through a few more things I'll let you guys know what I'm thinking. Hopefully my thoughts won't bore you.

In other news, Lebanon's fighting again. Big surprise, right? The fighting is in Tripoli which is a city that we went to last summer. Nice place. Apparently home to some dodgy figures.

It's been a long time . . .

2007-05-19T16:47:00.001-04:00

I shouldn't have left you, without a dope beat to step to. Step to. Step to. Wicky ah.

I thought I'd start out with a little bit of Aliyah to make up for my two day absence from my blog and your lives. Let's see . . . . what to say what to say . . . .

Vegan happened tonight. Super vegan. I had kitchen duty . . . hold that thought. First let me say that for the past two days it has been fantastically summer here. That means clear skies, sunny, and about 80 degrees. We played volleyball after dinner tonight for about two hours. My team won.

Anyway, I had kitchen duty tonight and we cooked roasted veggies (peppers, broccoli, cauliflower, eggplant, zuccini, and corn) which took me about an hour to cut up. We also had mashed potatoes and mocha brownies. It was good but not very filling compared to the meat the other night. The dinner went over pretty well with everyone here.

Also, I have a new roommate for the next three days. His name is Ashnafi and he's from Ethiopia. From what I can tell he's a genius and also good at ping pong and awesome at volleyball. I would guess he's an amazing runner too. The one thing he doesn't have going for him is his nocturnal nasal habits. He snores. Loud. All night long. This morning he asked me if he kept me awake last night and I told him not to worry about it, I put my iPod headphones in last night and slept fine. That's only about three-quarters true. I did put my iPod headphones in and listen to Nickel Creek and Mikey Mew and the Lovely Few, but I only slept for about five hours last night. Oh well. He's a cool enough guy to make up for it; plus he was the main reason that our team dominated at volleyball today.

Today I finished listening to the tape series that I've been listening to for the last week or so. It was five tapes by Lee Hardy entitled, "Belief in God and the Problem of Knowledge in Modern Philosophy." They were about epistemology (the study of how we can know things and how we are justified in saying we can know them) and I took about 25 pages of notes on the tapes. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to hop online and explain a little bit of what I learned.

There are a lot of people in line for the internet so I'll be going now. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

America happened tonight

2007-05-16T15:57:00.000-04:00

Yes, America. To give you the full force of what happened tonight at dinner, I need to tell you about our diet here at L'Abri. It's hard to cook great meals for 30 people on a budget. If there are any mothers of 30 that are reading this, then you know what I mean. We eat mostly potatoes, rice, granola, and other forms of pure carbohydrates. An average dinner will consist of some sort of soup or rice with beans and other assorted veggies accompanied by fresh-baked bread and perhaps a brownie or cookie. Rarely do we get meat. Very rarely. There are exceptions such as tiny pieces of beef that were in the borscht soup we had yesterday or tiny pieces of bacon on the bread with cheese and peppers we had at lunch today. On the whole, however, protein in the form of animal flesh is lacking in our diets. I sometimes feel like a pregnant lady. Not so much in the sense of having a human inside of my tummy area but definitely in the sense of being able to smell minerals or other things that my body is lacking (I've heard that some pregnant women in Mississippi have an irresistable urge to eat clay because it has iron in it).
All of that is what makes what happened tonight the most amazing show of America's cultural might since Japan after World War II. Tonight we had dinner at George and Eileen's house. George and Eileen are two of the workers here and their house just down the road from Chalet Bellevue which is where we live. I had been working hard all day long and was thinking about how many pieces of bread and glasses of water I would have to consume to mitigate my manly hunger. As I arrived at their home, I noticed the distinctive smell of grilling which made me think veggie kabobs. I walked up the stairs, removed my shoes, and walked into the kitchen. Immediately I was met with an exuberant double-five by Josh Farrar who told me that tonight for dinner we were having cheeseburgers and hotdogs. Cheeseburgers and hotdogs. Cheeseburgers and hotdogs. Dinner tonight was like having a Fourth of July meal. Cheeseburgers, hotdogs, and RiceKrispy Treats for dessert. I couldn't believe my taste buds. Who knew that the cooked flesh of our animal cousins tasted so great?

I did. But I had forgotten. Now I remember. And I will never forget again.

With vegetables you kind of have to add a bunch of other things like herbs and spices to make them savory. Meat, however, is good right off the bone. No spices necessary.

We dined and talked and talked and dined. George loves AC/DC so we talked about that and listened to the best of Dire Straits. Neither band is from America, but nonetheless, America happened tonight at Chalet Melezes.

In other news, we had our first lecture today. It was a little bit more of a discussion than just a lecture. We discussed postmodernism and its effects in the debate about truth, knowledge, God, and the church. Maybe tomorrow--my free day--I can expand on that.

It snowed today . . .

2007-05-15T16:52:00.000-04:00

And let me remind you, it's summer here too. We aren't in the southern hemisphere. Today it was really really cold all day long, and at about noon a thick fog came over the mountains around us. When the fog cleared a couple of hours later, there was snow on the mountains across the valley. Okay okay. It didn't snow on our mountain, but it was freakin cold. I would say about 50-55 degrees.
Luckily today was one of the first days that I haven't had ground duty. Today I was working in the kitchen all morning making fresh butterzopf, which is a braided bread. So now I have the recipe and you can all have awesome fresh homemade bread when I get home.

In other news, my roommate leaves tomorrow morning. I've made a ton of friends here, but he's probably been the guy I've gotten along with the easiest. Sad day in Switzerland.

My roommate and pictures!

2007-05-14T16:22:00.000-04:00

My roommate here is from Georgia, Augusta actually. I actually just met a guy who he's friends with the other day before I came over here. His friend's name is Gabe and he does YoungLife in Columbia. Also, get this: Jonathon (my roommate here) dated McKenna Jones when he was a junior in high school. Jonathon got here the same day I did so we've been able to spend some good time together. He went hiking and paragliding with me and two other guys (Matt from Florida and Ryan from Greenville, SC). Oh and just in case you were wondering, it's not all southern boys here. There are guys from Chicago, Texas, Missouri, California, Pennsylvania, and Canada (no, I don't know where in Canada. To me it's all just one frozen tundra).
Jonathon's a cool guy and we've gotten along really well, but he's leaving on Wednesday. I think I'll have a room to myself for about two weeks before another person get's here on the 30th of May. I'm looking forward to having a room to myself but it'll be sad to see Jonathon go. As close as we live to each other, though, I'm sure we'll hang out some back in the States. My plan is to make enough friends here to replace all my friends back in Cola and Conway.

I'm just kidding.

Good news guys!!! As you can probably see just below this text, I got some pictures up!!! They're being hosted on a friend's site unbeknownst to them but I'm pretty sure they won't mind and won't be bothered by it. Let's start with the pictures now . . . .

This is me on the plane ride over to Geneva. I'm not sure if I said it or not but Continental Airlines rocks my face--in particular, Darlene at the check-in counter in Newark. She got me an aisle seat with an empty window seat beside it. It was wonderful.

Here's me, Matt, Ryan, and Jonathon out for our hike last Thursday. This is about a 10 minute walk from our backdoor.

PS--I'm not intentionally doing a model pose.

Here we are after having eaten lunch on the side of a huge hill. You know how when you work out too hard you feel like you're going to puke? That's what I felt like by the time we made it up to the top of this hill.

This is paragliding. Jonathon and Ryan went first and me and Matt waited behind on the hill for about 45 minutes until they came back up and we floated down. Obviously, I couldn't get any pictures of myself taking off so this is Jonathon after he ran off the side of the mountain.

Here's me with my helmet on. Safety first of course. You wouldn't guess it by looking at me (or maybe you would and nobody's ever said anything to me about it), but I have a huge head. I mean huge. The helmet barely fit on my gigantic cranium.

Just so that I could prove that I actually did this, I lifted my feet way up and took a picture with my feet in it. So, if you didn't believe me before, then boom shaka laka.

Here's a shot of Matt I took while we were flying. I've been on the computer forever and I'm getting tired of writing so the rest of this will be kind of rushed.

Here's me where we landed. On a tiny strip of grass on the side of the road.

So there's some pictures and some info about my roommate. I hope you guys enjoy it. I'll talk to you soon!

PS-I'm going to see Pat in a couple of weeks!

Weather and maybe etc

2007-05-13T06:52:00.000-04:00

It's Sunday here. My first Sunday at L'Abri. We had a chapel service this morning in a little chapel that's on the main floor of the chalet that houses the library. The service was pretty boring honestly. It was just pure exegesis of James chapter five, and if you haven't spent some time thinking about the chapter before you sit through an exegesis it can be pretty hard to engage with. One of the workers here spoke.
By the way, the way things are set up here as far as the hierarchy of people goes like this: students are people that come for a certain time to study and learn; helpers are people who were students once but decided to come back and take on more responsibilities and spend less time studying--there are five helpers this term and they're mostly 23-30 years old; workers are people who probably have some connection with L'Abri (ie came here as a student 20 years ago or something like that) and have come here to work full-time being lecturers, tutors, writers, artists, philosophers, etc. All of the workers except for the artist in residence have Ph.D.'s in their fields. Most of them taught at big universities for awhile and then decided to do something a little more personal. The various disciplines represented here are biology, philosophy, psychology, art and art history, and pretty much all of them are very well-versed in theology. They are, without a doubt, the smartest people I've ever met.

I've been asked to tell you guys about the weather here. Today is a very very nice day. It's probably about 75 degrees outside, maybe a little warmer. Visibility is near perfect which means you can see about 12 mountain peaks around the grounds of L'Abri. Most days since I've been here have been a pretty good mix of weather. Usually in the morning it's a little chilly (maybe 50 degrees) and by 10 or so it will drizzle off and on until a little after noon. After noon the sun usually comes out and it gets up to at least 70 degrees. Last Thursday when we went hiking and paragliding it was probably 85 degrees. The coolest weather-related thing that happens here is when a low-lying cloud will just kind of run into the side of our mountain. You can see it coming through the valley from a ways off and it will slowly creep up to the side of the mountain over the course of 15 minutes or so. When it hits the side of the mountain it looks really crazy because a perfectly clear day will all the sudden become fogged over by a massive cloud and the craziest thing is that as the cloud works its way past us, it moves upwards over the mountain. So, if you look out at the sky you just see fog seemingly going straight up into the air.

Since today is so perfect, a bunch of people are playing volleyball down the hill on our court. I'm going to go play with them. If I keep playing as much as I have so far, then by the time I get back home I'll be able to destroy almost anyone at volleyball and also ping pong--although, once I get a little bit better, I'll start calling it table tennis.

One last note, I think I've figured out a way to let you guys see some pictures. I'm going to try to host them on a friend's site so that you guys can just click a link and check it out. I just have to make sure that he doesn't mind if I use some of his bandwidth. So maybe stay tuned for the chance of some pictures possibly.

Amazing

2007-05-11T16:58:00.000-04:00

This could potentially be a long post, but I'm going to try to keep it as short as I can. I need to tell you what I did yesterday. I went paragliding in the Swiss Alps. It was amazing. Amazing. Amazing. Paragliding, in case you don't know, is where you strap yourself into a harness and hook up to a huge parachute (and in my case, an instructor as well) and run and jump off of a mountain and float around until you get to the ground.
Thursday was our free day and so me and three other guys took off from L'Abri and hiked up the mountain for about 3 hours until we got to a high spot where we rested and got some lunch. Then we hiked down to this town right above Huemoz called Villars. It's a fancy ski resort town. There we were met by the paragliding guys who took us to a field where we jumped off of a mountain and floated in the air. I can't describe how beautiful it was around us. It was like being in a fairy tale or something. This place really looks like something from a Hans Christian Anderson story. I'm going to try to post some pictures on this blog right now to show you what it was like. Let's see if I can get it to work (my pictures are big since I don't have Photoshop here to shrink them and it might take too long to upload) . . .

Okay........That was taking way too long. I waited about five minutes to try to upload the first picture, but it just wasn't happening. I'm going to work on a way to get pictures on this blog. Maybe we'll just have to wait. I'll have to figure out a way to shrink them down.

Anyway, I guess since I can't put up pictures, this post is pretty much over. I don't want to talk about too much in one post because then I'll run out of subjects when it comes time to post later. So, things to look forward to me talking about (I don't mean that to sound prideful if it does): epistemology, yardwork and protein.

My First Real Day

2007-05-09T15:33:00.000-04:00

This is going to be a short post, but I kind of feel compelled to post all the time on this thing. I figure that if I post everyday for a little while then you guys will start checking it everyday and then even when I don't post everyday you'll still check everyday. . . I won't really gain anything material from that, but my pride will be fed.
Today was my first normal day here. It went something like this:
7:45 am--wake up
8:oo am--breakfast of homemade granola cereal
9:30-11 am--clean the chalet with a few other people
11 am--tea break
11:30-12:30--more cleaning
1 pm--lunch then some free time during which I took a nap on our balcony overlooking the Alps
3:30-6:15--study time during which I listened to two tapes and took a bunch of notes. I'll spend more time talking about stuyding at a later date when there aren't people waiting to use the computer
6:30 pm--a wonderful dinner of chili, cornbread, salad, and fruit salad
the rest of the night--free time. They are watching a movie right now. It's French and it didn't look too good so I just sat around with some guys talking.

I'll keep you posted as my time here develops, and later on tonight I'm checking out that girl's USB cable to see if I can show you guys some pictures.

I made it!

2007-05-08T15:14:00.000-04:00

Hey everybody. I made it Huemoz (pronounced 'Way-mo'), Switzerland this morning (Tuesday) at about 11:15 am. The place is gorgeous. I wish I could upload pictures for you guys to see, but I didn't bring my camera's USB cable because I imagined the computer being some little old piece of junk. Actually, I'm sitting in front of a gigantic flat-panel monitor and a very nice computer. Oh well.

The flight over here was nice and easy. I got switched last-minute to a US Airways flight from Charlotte to Newark instead of the Continental flight I had booked, but it turned out okay. After flying US Airways overseas to Germany earlier this year, I swore never to support their business again, but the service this time wasn't toooooo bad. It still wasn't great though. Continental, on the other had, rocked my socks off. The main way that they rocked my socks off was by obliging my request for an aisle seat and then going the extra mile and giving me a seat with no one else sitting beside me. I put aside my dignity and curled up into a little ball on the seats the whole flight here. It was wonderful.

As far as L'Abri goes, it seems great so far. The people are nice and easy to get along with, and the scenery is out of control. It looks like something from a fairy tale up here in the mountains. A girl just came into the computer room and said that she had a USB cable so I'll try to upload pictures sometime soon. If you want to get a little glimpse of what it's like, you can check out the photo gallery on the L'Abri page. It's breath-taking.
There are about 25 people staying here tonight, but I think some are leaving tomorrow morning and some are leaving later in the week. The workers here said that we'll probably stay around 25 people through the summer. Everyone seems great. Mostly Americans, Canadians, Brits, and Aussies. I need to go now, though, because I think the internet is pretty expensive. So, I hope you enjoyed this amazing blog post.

Good bye for now

2007-05-07T11:26:00.000-04:00

I'm officially running late for leaving, but here's a final parting picture for all of you to cry over while I'm gone. See you guys in five weeks!

Stupid Church Tricks

2007-05-07T00:29:00.000-04:00

I'm about to start packing everything I think I'll need for this trip, but before I do, I thought that I'd add one more post.

I ran across this article called Stupid Church Tricks awhile back (like a couple of years ago), and I thought it was interesting. In light of the fact that I have at least two friends (one of whom promised me she would read this blog) that are becoming youth pastors in the next month or so, I thought that I'd introduce this article to the world. Here's an excerpt:

What do teenagers learn from these youth group activities? Christianity is stupid. Status-conscious teenagers know that those who are so desperate to be liked that they will do anything to curry favor are impossible to respect. Young people may come to off-the-wall youth group meetings, but when they grow up, they will likely associate the church with other immature, juvenile phases of their lives, and Christianity will be something they will grow out of.

I'll spare you my own personal commentary; as if I could add any points to the article anyway. But, I will tell you this short story that I think illustrates the point that this article is trying to make:

There is a cult retreat center in North Myrtle Beach. It's called the Meher Spiritual Center and it's situated on 500 acres of untouched land that is bordered by Hwy 17 and the Atlantic Ocean. One day some of my friends and I decided to go check it out and see what it was like there. We had heard that the land was beautiful and that they would let you hang out on their property if you would just take a tour of the facilities and listen to their spiel. So we went and listened and met a few people before we enjoyed the land (if you disregard the constant feeling of spiritual oppression, it really is a nice place). One of the people we met was a guy who had been in the cult for awhile. We asked him how he came to be with this group and he said something that was incredibly sad to me because it seemed to be a very true statement and his life seemed to be a very real testament to how screwed up people can get if we try to mix worldly philosophies and entertainment strategies with the gospel. He said, "I grew up in the church and I really liked it. I read the Bible and I loved what I read about Jesus and about God's whole story for the earth. But when I went to youth group as a kid, all anyone wanted to do was to play volleyball or go skiing or play some other crazy game. No one seemed to want to talk about Jesus or God and so I went to try to find somewhere where they took God seriously. And that's how I found Meher Baba."

Hi, I'm a Marvel. And I'm a DC.

2007-05-06T09:49:00.001-04:00

Okay okay okay. I admit that I am a huge dork, but this video is hilarious to me. Whoever made this is a genius. And the best part is there are four other videos just like it. Here's a link to the YouTube page with all of the videos on it. I highly recommend watching every single one of them. Just embrace your inner dork.
***The video may take a little longer than normal to load. I'm not sure why, but it seems that when you embed video on here it lengthens the load time. If you don't feel like waiting just click on the link and go straight to YouTube.***

Also, Heroes final three episodes (of the first season) are starting this week. If you haven't seen it, it's the best show on TV (besides maybe The Office). Go to the Heroes page on nbc.com to watch old episodes or go to Fanpop and search for episodes there although it seems like NBC has been cracking down on people posting full episodes on that site.

In other news, I just realized that Blogger automatically cuts down the spaces after a period to one space even if you type in two.

Tomorrow's the big day

2007-05-06T09:06:00.000-04:00

So, tomorrow is the big day. I leave for Switzerland for five weeks. I'll be at L'Abri for all five weeks, studying and doing whatever else you do there. I'm not really sure what to expect. Okay, I was trying to just do one space after each period, but when I learned to type, they told you to put two spaces after each period. Nowadays it's unnecessary because fonts have a little bit of extra space built into the space after a period, but I just can't break the habit. So from now on, or actually from about two sentences back on, I'll be putting two spaces after the periods. I hope you don't mind.

Anyway, I don't know if I'll actually ever write anything on this blog, but I figured I would give it a try just so if I did decide to do a blog, I would already have one made up. Yesterday I spent about four hours trying to get this thing to look different than every other blog out there. Now it just looks a lot like one blog out there: Between Two Worlds. It's a blog I read a lot and I copied a lot of the code from that site when I was arranging this one.
***BY THE WAY: If you're using Internet Explorer and this blog looks kind of mushed around, it's because Internet Explorer sucks at reading normal CSS code in HTML. The solution is easy: Look to the right of the screen; find the button that says "Download Firefox;" click on it and download the Firefox browser. It's waaaaay better than IE and it's free. It won't mess your computer up and it's not just a browser for people who know a lot about computers or the internet. Try it out and free your mind.***

I'll probably post another blog before I leave. Until then, here's a map of Switzerland for you to look at. The arrow is pointing to Huemoz (well, 'Humeoz' but that's a misspelling) and that's where I'll be for the next five weeks.

This is my first time

2007-05-05T15:13:00.000-04:00

Here's another test post. Let's see if I can get the margins right on this thing so that it doesn't look so crowded in. I'll just keep writing a little bit and we'll see if it works. Keep writing and writing and writing. Maybe I'll go find some Latin text now to fill up the rest of this. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Donec mollis purus ac dolor. Sed interdum, augue sed egestas aliquet, purus odio vulputate augue, at semper lorem mi tincidunt mauris. Praesent ullamcorper tincidunt lacus. Aliquam sed dolor quis leo pulvinar congue. Quisque et libero. Nunc non ipsum sit amet diam ultrices rhoncus. Vivamus auctor dolor et ipsum. Nulla convallis, nisi et adipiscing viverra, orci neque scelerisque ante, porta dapibus pede sapien quis ligula. Praesent tortor neque, fringilla ac, tempus ut, pretium sit amet, justo. Integer rutrum risus sit amet nisl.