Smells, Bells, and at least three kinds of Hells

Well, it has been a while since I updated the old blog, so I figured it was time to bring everyone up to speed on things here in Alexandria...so here goes:

First, everyone in our family is doing OK. We've all sort of gotten used to the routine of having 75% of us in school. Even the dog has gotten used to napping about 12 hours a day (yeah, rough life).

Over the past couple of weeks there have been some significant events in which we have participated. Mostly, however, these are about what I'm doing since I'm the one writing this blog and I'm pretty self-centered. (The truth can set you free...and hurt you.)

So, two weeks ago our Junior class got on a bus bound for Catholic University of America's campus in D.C. to go to the Washington Theological Consortium's kickoff event--a 45 minute prayer service followed by dinner at one of the seminaries on CUA's campus. What happens when you put 45 seminary nerds on a bus for any length of time? Camp songs, that's what. Yes, I said it--camp songs. Then, since we have a couple of seminarians from the deep south it turned into southern rock songs...which then progressed to songs that you know if you've lived in either Alabama or Mississippi. This lead to an ever decreasing number of singers (thank you Jesus).

So we get there and head to the chapel--we were the last ones to get there due to traffic, so the only seats left were--you guessed it--right up front. Sweet. There were about 200 new seminarians there all wondering why in the world we HAD to be there....did I mention that the chapel isn't air conditioned? Yeah, so it is about 120-degrees, we're all sweaty from trying to get to the chapel quickly and packed in like sardines. Great. I was rather interested in what the preacher had to say--he's our New Testament professor, John Yieh--has more degrees than I have fingers (he, along with 10 other smarty-pants did a 10-year-long study of "Q" and pretty much wrote THE work on the subject...amongst other things). 28 minutes into his dissertation I wondered if he would wrap it up before I died of dehydration. Luckily, he did, we peaced it on out of there and went to dinner...with the seminarians from St. Jehosaphat's. Ukrainian Orthodox.

That is a whole other story for another time. It was good, however. Learned lots. Have to wrap this post up for now...Bengals are on in a couple of minutes and I can't wait to watch them destroy the Cleve-burg whoever they are.