Well,
I arrived in Massachusetts today. My
leaving Raleigh was quite an event. I –
the unemotional, even-keeled, level-headed, down-to-earth Valerie – started
crying before we left the house. I guess
everything seemed to be kind of happening at once. I felt overwhelmed by the prospect of going to
another state alone, where I don’t know anyone except though email and maybe a
phone call.
I
calmed down pretty easily before we got to the airport. When we got there I entered the e-Ticket
line, thinking I could hand the people there my receipt, get my boarding pass,
and be on my way. Yeah, right. I was informed that the travel agency had not
paid for my ticket. It cost us $111 more
than it would have been, since dad had to pay for it right there. My internship program was supposed to spend
up to $500 on relocation, and now instead of a $407 ticket, we had a $518
one. I don’t know what happened yet, so
I don’t know whose fault that whole mix-up was.
Either
way, I started crying once again. (I
guess I was making up for all that time I was so calm and optimistic about
everything.) I was glad my whole family
was there. My little siblings are so
sensitive whenever I’m upset. I had a
whole crowd of 5 little sisters, my little brother, and two neighbor kids
hugging me (not to mention mom and dad).
I sure felt loved :-). Actually,
another lady in the airport started crying because she thought my family looked
so sweet. We got a group picture while I
still had some tears in my eyes, then I headed off to my gate. Once I got on my plane, I struck up a
conversation with the lady in the seat next to me. It really helped to get my mind on something
else. My flight left at 3:10.
At
4:50, I got to Hartford, Connecticut (which is a lot closer to Amherst than
Boston). I used a service phone to call my shuttle, then I called home. Mom picked up the phone and told me she’d
cried all the way back to the car after seeing me walk off alone. I had the chance to tell her that everything
was going smoothly and I was ok. This
girl from California who goes to school in Northampton was using the same
shuttle. She was really talkative, and
she chatted with the shuttle driver the whole way.
I
noticed some differences between NC and MA on the way. For instance, instead of the pine trees of
NC, they have almost all deciduous trees here.
And I noticed that baseball is a big thing here. The shuttle driver and the girl from
California talked for 45 minutes about different teams and who’s rivals with
whom and what this team is doing at that time.
I didn’t understand their talk much more than I get the football talk at
home. It was interesting anyway to hear
them talk about which seat was best (the CA girl liked to sit high up so she
could watch the pitcher). Oh, and how
about the weather! At home in Raleigh
I’ve been sweating like crazy in that muggy 90-degree weather. Here it’s more like late fall weather. The high is usually in the 70’s and the low
in the 50’s. Right now the room I’m
renting feels like 55.
When
I got to my house at 7:00, I met my housemates, Robin and Brendan. They showed me around and then we had some
dinner. They are vegetarians, so we had
some home-grown salad with veggie burgers.
I love it, because I like health food a lot. After dinner we walked downtown for some
ice-cream at a local place called Bart’s.
It’s cool that I can walk just about anywhere.
Well,
not a whole lot has happened since last night.
I slept well, though it was a bit cold, so I piled up the blankets! I got up at 8:30 and had some breakfast, and
now here I am. Brendan is going to show
me the way into campus from here.
Brendan
showed me how to walk into campus today.
It was a kinda hard to remember because he
uses this shortcut that goes through a neighborhood. It’s a pretty long walk, and I was warmed up
quickly (the high is in the 70’s here, but inside the house is between the 50’s
and 60’s). Man, UMass has some HUGE
buildings! The science research building
is like a skyscraper in downtown Raleigh.
It’s pretty intimidating. 25,000
students go to this university.
Twenty-five thousand! That’s
insane! They have huge dorms that look
like major apartments or big hotels.
They certainly make the biggest dorm on Western’s campus (Scott) look
tiny.
The
Computer Science department has their own building. That’s a lot more than I can say for
Western’s CS department – there are 3 rooms to teach and maybe 6 offices. Brendan’s into Robotics, so he brought me to
his lab. The robotics lab at UMass is
working on independent movement of arms and hands mostly. I learned about “degrees of freedom” which
indicate how much dexterity a certain appendage has. For instance, your arm has 7 degrees of
freedom. Your upper arm can go up and
down, forward and backward, and rotate.
That’s 3 degrees. Your elbow can
only bend in one direction. That’s a
total of 4 degrees. Then your wrist can
go up and down, side to side, and rotate.
All of that adds up to 7 degrees of freedom. To construct a robot arm that mimics a human
arm, you have to give it the same 7 degrees of freedom. That’s not even bringing the human hand into
play. I’m guessing your hand has about
20 degrees of freedom, 4 for each finger including the thumb. Most of the robots in the lab only had 2
fingers and a thumb. http://www.robotics.utexas.edu/rrg/learn_more/low_ed/dof/
ßThat’s more info on
degrees of freedom if you’re curious.
After
we got back from campus, Brendan and Robin decided they wanted to go rock
climbing. They invited me along with
them, so I changed clothes, grabbed my bug repellant and sunscreen and came
along. They apparently really like the
outdoors, so they have a supply of climbing materials and everything. We parked in a small neighborhood and hiked
into the woods. I noticed a lot of
people out with their families. There
was one mother planting flowers with her son, and some sisters playing on a
hammock. I guess they really appreciate
the warmer weather since it gets so horridly cold here in the winter. I’ve seen a lot of people at work in their
gardens in my neighborhood. I heard that
there’s an annual “plant exchange,” where the neighbors have a cookout and trade
plants for their gardens!
Anyway, it was quite a hike to the rock face. I felt pretty out of shape, because I was
panting when I got there. When we got to
the climbing spot (which wasn’t higher than a climbing wall) I sat down to
relax a bit. Then multitudes of monster
mosquitoes materialized and fought fiercely for my feet. Ok, well technically they battled over my
legs, but that alliteration was too fun to give up :-). That’s when I decided I should bring out the
bug spray. Robin had tried this natural
stuff that smelled of citronella, but it wasn’t working. She gave in pretty soon and used mine.
Meanwhile, Brendan climbed up behind the rock and set up
the rope. He was the first one to climb
up, and he scampered up pretty easily like a monkey or something. I was next.
It was hard as anything to get off the ground! Somehow there just didn’t seem to be any good
footholds. Finally, they suggested that
I start on a ledge, and that helped me out.
I’ve never done climbing like that – only a climbing wall a couple of
times and the spire at Western. Also
there was this one time I did a weird sort of climbing with Summer Ventures,
where the rock is really sloped and you lay on your belly and push yourself up
with your hands like a seal or something.
That was strange. Anyway, this
sort of climbing really, really, really hurts your fingers. Rocks are rough! My poor fingers were peeling at the end. And the footholds are obviously not so
obvious. Haha
I like how I said that. What I mean is
that on a climbing wall, it’s either flat, or there’s a knob or handle or
something to grab onto and stand on. But
here, you have to judge for yourself whether you like your handhold or
foothold. And man, my arms hurt. Mom and I kid about my not having “upper body
strength” (hee hee), but I
have to admit, it sure is true. I’ve got
these skinny little (long but skinny) arms and I can’t pull myself up a rock
wall. As long as I could use my legs I
was fine, but if I didn’t have a good place to stand, I would slip right off
the wall. Well, after all that, I just
couldn’t get to the top. I got maybe
halfway at the best. I tried my hardest,
and I slipped up lots of times and came right back. However, it was too much for me. Oh well.
Much fun was had anyway.
After
Robin climbed (she got further than me, but couldn’t go all the way), I went
around the wall with Brendan to see how the rope was tied in. It was kinda scary,
but not that bad standing near the edge.
I hugged a tree and looked down at my stuff…then remembered I’d left my
camera down there! Well, Brendan and
Robin worked out this plan to get my camera up.
They used one of the ropes and tied the camera in its case to the rope,
then hauled it up. I got a picture of
Robin from the top of the rock :-).
And,
that was Monday.
Of
course, all this time, during all the fun and games I realized that I was here
for a reason. I had emailed Dr. Clarke
(my mentor) on Saturday, asking for some specifics on my “internship.” Well, I thought she may have been out during
Memorial Day weekend. So I expected to
get some information today.
I
woke up at 9:30 and called the LASER lab using the number that was posted
online. The secretary, Leslie, picked up
the phone and told me that Lori Clarke was still out and wouldn’t be back until
Thursday! She took my phone number and
said she’d call me back when she found out more.
A
couple minutes after I hung up, the phone rang again. It was Leslie again; she told me that Rachel
Smith (the girl who had been helping me to find my housing) would be able to
help me settle in at the lab. The
secretary told me to come in when I could and I would get a cubicle and
everything.
After
I got ready for the day, I started on the trek to the lab. I must admit, I’m not always the best with
directions. I did pretty well overall,
but I forgot a turn one time on the shortcut.
Thankfully I found my way. It’s a
pretty walk. I like all the houses
around here. A lot of them are old-fashioned,
and lots of people have beautiful flower gardens. So, even while I was getting lost, I
appreciated the scenery! :-)
Thankfully
I already knew where LASER (“Laboratory for Advanced Software Engineering
Research.” Now doesn’t that sound important?) was, because Brendan brought me
up there on my first walk to the CS building.
It’s basically located in a wing on the third floor. The main lab is on the end of the hall. I crept in there and asked for Rachel. I was so glad to meet her in person. Earlier, when our only contact was email, she
had seen my signature at the end of my emails.
She asked whether I was a Christian, told me about the church she goes
to and even offered me rides to church if I needed them. It was just cool to finally say hi to the
only person I “knew” (if only by email) in Massachusetts. Rachel then proceeded to introduce me to all
of the other lab people. Three of them
are international students, and I couldn’t really remember their names that
well. One of them was Bin and another
was Jin Bin or something like that (online it says his name is Jianbin). I also met
Jamie (Rachel’s fiancé) and Sandy (the lab assistant basically – if something
goes wrong with your computer you ask him for help). Everyone smiled and was really nice to me,
but I was pretty overwhelmed meeting all of them at once. Then I went to my own cubicle which was in a
separate room. Across from me was Yao, a
girl from China. We had some difficulty
talking (she still has some problems with English), but we tried our best.
Next,
Rachel sat down with me and asked if I had any questions. Well, I wanted to know what happens in this
lab, and what would I be doing? Rachel
explained to me what she does – she looks for ways to represent properties of a
system. The example she used was an
elevator. One property of an elevator
system is: “if you push the close door button, the doors will close.” The problem with this sort of statement is
that it’s unclear. There are a lot of possible
interpretations of that statement. For
instance, does pushing the button mean the doors will close immediately,
without stopping for a person who may be entering the elevator at that moment? Does it mean that the doors will close
someday, maybe after the elevator changes floors? Does it mean that if you get impatient and
push the button repeatedly, the doors will close repeatedly? Does it mean that the doors can’t close
unless you push the button?
There
are already formal ways (one is called Linear Time Logic) of representing this
sort of statement with more precision, but the problem is that these
representations aren’t easy for your average person to understand. And if a system gets to be really huge, even
someone who understands Linear Time Logic would have trouble seeing if the
property is correct. Rachel has been
working on a tool called PROPEL (Property Elucidator) that uses graphical
representations (called FSA, “finite-state automata”) alongside English phrases
(called DNL, “disciplined natural language”) to help average people to
represent properties. The hope is that
there will be more understandability without loss of precision. http://laser.cs.umass.edu/tools/propel.html
Once
Rachel finished describing her work in the lab, she brought me around to help
me get registered. That way I got an
account on the LASER network so I could sign in on my computer and use a local
email account.
Rachel
handed me a stack of papers and told me to read them and take notes and ask
people in the lab if I didn’t understand anything. This was so that I could get an idea of what
everyone was up to. The papers weren’t that
hard to understand on a basic level, but they were extremely dry. I must admit, I had a hard time staying awake
while I read them. My room is empty
except for Yao’s cubicle, and it was completely
silent. I can’t ever focus in a silent
environment. To keep myself awake I
started drawing a German shepherd from my purse. Then I alternated sketching with reading and
taking notes. When I finished the
shepherd, I looked up “cat” on Google Images and drew a kitten hanging onto the
end of a rope and wrote “Hang in there!”
This has always been my way of coping with a boring situation – start
drawing. I draw in class because it
keeps my mind awake and active so that I can hear the important parts of the
lecture and write them down. Some people
think it means I’m not paying attention, but I’m usually able to pay better
attention when I’m sketching.
After
a while of slowly working my way through the papers, I headed on home. I was excited because I already had some
plans for the night. I had emailed the
Navigators, a campus ministry up here, and I got an invitation to dinner at one
of the students’ apartments. I called
Janet Lenze, who is the wife of the Navigators
leader, Don, and asked if she could bring me to the dinner. I didn’t know how to give directions to this
house, so I asked Robin to tell her how to get here. Janet came by a little before 6:00, and after
I met her we left for the dinner. On the
way there we picked up a girl named Allie who was walking to the dinner.
When
we got into the apartment, the first thing I noticed was a red guitar in a
stand by the wall (see mom, there are people with guitars up here!). I met the other girls: Claire, Beth, and
Sarah (there were 6 people total, including me). They all asked me lots of questions about my
life and my family. They were amazed
that I would be brave enough to go alone somewhere where I didn’t know
anybody. I spent so much of dinner
talking that it took me a long time to finish.
Dinner was exquisite, by the way.
There was soup with butternut squash and potatoes and this spice that is
apparently more expensive than gold. (I
have been informed by my great aunt Ann that this spice is called
saffron.) We also had homemade bread and
spinach salad. We ate it all by
candlelight too! It seems like people
are into gourmet food up here. I heard
them talking about these fancy food terms that I haven’t heard of. Without fail, baseball came up once
again. Allie was saying that she didn’t
have cable at her apartment and that she “missed her Red Sox.” Of course I wondered why she loved her red
socks so much and what they had to do with cable. Ah, ignorant me.
After
dinner, we discussed whether or not we wanted to watch a movie (and I played
around on the guitar a bit). We finally
agreed to watch John Grisham’s The Client.
It was pretty suspenseful. I
liked it. I got back home around 11:00
and went to bed after reading more of To Kill a Mockingbird. Somehow I was never assigned that book in
school, so I decided to pick it up. I
like it a lot!
Today
I woke up at 9:30 again. I decided I
didn’t see any point in going to the lab until I knew I had some clear
questions to ask. So I stayed at the
house and ate breakfast and lunch at the same time (Winnie the Pooh would call
this “brunchfast” :-) ). I had Nutella on
toast along with some leftover dinner.
While I ate, I studied Rachel’s paper on PROPEL and wrote down specific
questions that would help to make it clearer.
I also tried outlining the paper by summarizing each paragraph in the
margin beside it.
I left
for the lab at 12:15 and got there at 12:45, while people were still out to
lunch. I started looking more closely at
a paper about FLAVERS, another project that people at LASER are working on. Thankfully, I thought to bring my CD’s and it
was much easier to focus. This project
is not as easy to understand, but I tried to get a general idea of what the
purpose of FLAVERS was. While PROPEL
helps people to express properties, FLAVERS examines properties and verifies
whether they hold or not. I’m still not
fully clear on that.
Rachel
popped in a while later to see what I was up to. I asked her for a demo, so we went into the
lab and she showed me her PowerPoint presentation. I stopped her at different times to ask
questions, but in general it wasn’t that hard to understand what she was
explaining. After the PowerPoint, Rachel
showed me how the program actually works.
We went through an example involving an elevator (who would’ve
guessed). She said that I was catching
on pretty quickly. I do think I’m
getting the hang of defining properties – as long as I’m not dealing with the
diagrams. So far the English part helps
a lot to clarify what I’m saying. Which
is a good sign, because that’s the purpose of the program all along!
Once
we finished the demo, we went back to Rachel’s cubicle and she loaned me a CD
of Australian people singing songs from a musical production of the Secret
Garden. Yeah, it’s just the slightest
bit random. I liked it, though. The only thing that bothered me was that Dickon, who is supposed to be a 12-year-old kid, is played
by a 30-year-old man. Yeah, it’s
slightly strange. I guess there aren’t
enough children in theatre.
I
spent the rest of the afternoon reviewing the rest of the papers, focusing
mostly on the two about FLAVERS and a language called Little JIL. By the time I felt like I sufficiently
understood these papers to ask questions, it was 5:00, and almost time to
leave.
I’m
trying to do one drawing a day now, so my cubicle will be full of sketches by
the end. So far, I’ve done that German
Shepherd, and a cat hanging on the end of a rope. Today I drew an eagle in flight and wrote
part of Isaiah 40:30-31 – “Even youths grow tired and weary, and young men
stumble and fall, but those who hope in the Lord will renew their
strength. They will soar on wings like
eagles, they will run and not grow weary, they will walk and not be
faint.” I only wrote “They will soar on
wings like eagles.” So far, this is my
favorite drawing, so I posted it in the most conspicuous spot :-).
Today
I tried to get in the lab earlier than before.
Instead of waiting till lunchtime to head in, I left here around 9:15
and got in at quarter to ten. Actually,
hardly anyone was there at that time, but it gave me more time to review the
papers. Once again, I was prepared with
CDs, so my work wasn’t so tedious as before.
I
forgot to mention that yesterday a man came to my cubicle and introduced
himself as George. He is one of the
people in charge, along with Lori Clarke.
He came in yesterday and made sure I understood how the lab works. He assured me that we were not on a clock
schedule and I shouldn’t have to worry about being in the lab from 9 to 5. Nice.
Anyway,
George (I feel so weird to call my superiors by their first names, but I don’t
remember his last name, and that’s what all the other students call him), as I
was saying, George was walking past my room today, and through my headphones I
heard him say, “Yes, she’s in here.” I
took off my headphones, and George introduced me to my mentor, the legendary
Dr. Lori Clarke! I stood up and shook
her hand and she quickly made sure I was settled in ok and everything. She’s pretty busy because she’s been away at
Scotland since Friday or Saturday and she has 300 emails to sort through and
tons of meetings. So I asked if we could
make a meeting to discuss my assignment here, and we agreed on 9:30 am Friday.
After
talking to Dr. Clarke, I went into the lab to ask for some demos. They told me it was time for lunch, so I
headed outside with them. Silly me, I
hadn’t packed anything but an apple.
Rachel and Jamie were worried about me.
There wasn’t any bread at the house for me to make a sandwich though, so
what was I supposed to do? Besides, I
don’t tend to get that hungry early in the day.
They gave me a couple of Triscuits anyway.
While
outside, I met some of the other CS people.
The only person’s name I can remember is Emily, but she did the most
talking, so I guess that’s why. Her
parents are hiking the Appalachian Trail.
Apparently they call her only when they need something. They ask her to send food or shovels or
whatever to these remote post offices.
“I’m tired of being the parent! I
wish my grandparents would take care of them!”
Interesting situation there. She
was eating out of a bowl with a four-legged duck painted on the bottom of
it. Her boyfriend made it. Yep.
When I came back in, Jamie showed me the demo for
FLAVERS. Like the paper, this was less
intuitive than PROPEL, so I had to stop him a lot of times to ask him to
clarify. Mostly I was asking things
like: “Why did you do that?” “How does
that change things?” “Why don’t you do
this instead?” (See, Mr. Felder, I did
learn something from your classes! :-) )
Sometimes he had to back up and go to an earlier point in his
explanation, but it helped me to see what was going on a little better. I think this is the kind of thing I’d need
more than a couple of hours to really understand though…
After Jamie, I asked who would be able to give me a demo of
Little JIL. I was recommended to Sandy,
the “lab guru.” Sandy was quite excited
to show off Little JIL. This language is
his baby. He described to me how he came
up with the idea for this language a while back in a meeting. They were modeling a process in another
language called JIL. Everyone was
getting annoyed because JIL was really large and cumbersome. Sandy suddenly had an epiphany (out
loud! He’s not a particularly quiet
person :-) ) that he could write a better language in a week. Of course, he had to meet the challenge. Needless to say, it took more than a week,
but now he has his darling Little JIL.
They’re using this language to model the steps that are followed in
hospital processes. Apparently this
hospital is paying LASER to help them find problems in the blood transfusion
process as well as the way that emergency rooms are run. This presentation was easier to understand
than the FLAVERS one. Of course, Sandy’s
enthusiasm about his subject helped to make it interesting :-).
After I experienced these enriching demos, I went back to
my cubicle and started drawing my next sketch.
This one was a picture of my right hand holding a pencil. Since I’m left handed, this wasn’t such a
great feat as you may be thinking. I’m
sorry if I disappointed you. I’ll let
you know the day I’m able to draw my left hand with my left hand. Then I’ll feel like Escher! Nah, I guess it won’t be complete unless I
draw my left hand drawing my left hand drawing that first left hand. If I ever manage that, I’ll frame it
and feel important, except it wasn’t an original idea, so I don’t know if it’s
really that impressive. Oh well.
While I was absorbed in this hand-drawing, Dr. Clarke asked
if I would still be at the lab at 4:30 for a meeting. I said sure.
I finished up my drawing, and headed to her room at the appointed
time. She was still busy with another
meeting, so I just waited outside the room.
Who should come along at that moment but Anastasia, the only other girl
in this DMP program with me at UMass.
Anastasia is originally from Russia (in Siberia!), but she goes to
school in Alaska. I bet it feels warm
here to her. Actually, she said the
weirdest thing here was the fact that we don’t have a midnight sun. She’s used to constant daylight in the
summer. Pretty cool. Anastasia has an accent, but she has
wonderful English skills. She’s a very
interesting person to talk with, considering her different background.
Next, Dr. Clarke (maybe she’d prefer to be called Lori, but
as I said, I’m not used to that), George, Anastasia and I all had a
meeting. Dr. Clarke and George asked if
we were well settled in our housing arrangements. Let me tell you, I am thankful for the place
I have to stay after hearing about where Anastasia is staying. She has to share a bathroom and a kitchen
with 14 people! The housing is in a
Jewish synagogue, so you can do only kosher cooking. And her rent is higher than mine! I only have to share my bathroom with two
people, and they go to bed before me and get up before me, so our schedules
don’t collide at all. They cook for me,
too. (Don’t worry mom, I do my share of
the dishes.) Good, vegetarian meals…mmm. Not to mention
I have internet access :-). Well, thankfully
Anastasia is getting a microwave from Dr. Clarke. After the meeting, I walked with Anastasia to
her place, which is on the way back to mine, and bade her farewell (doesn’t
that sound nice? I hope it’s correct).
When I got back to the house, I was glad because I had some
plans again for tonight! But, I think
since it’s getting late, that will have to wait for another email…
Here it is! The
Long-Expected Other Email! Unlike the
Long-Expected Party of a certain book, this does not include food. I would send some if I could do so
electronically, but alas, all I can do is make a digital ice-cream cone:
<OO Wow, that’s pitiful. At least it’s a double scoop. Or maybe this can pass for a digital pie:
[} Or a coffee mug: C[_]
Or a tomato: (*)
Ok, enough of that.
Well, Thursday night I was planning on going to a Bible
study with the Navigators. If you
remember, on Tuesday I met some of the girls from the group for dinner. When I got back to my room, I called Beth to
make sure I could get a ride. She asked
me if I minded being picked up early. I
was fine with that, so she came by a little after 6.
Beth first brought me to her apartment. I met her husband, Leon. Leon is very nice, but fairly quiet, like
Beth. He’s leading the Bible study. Beth and Leon live in a basement, but it’s
more like a full apartment because it has a kitchen, living room, and laundry
room. It’s a nice little place. They had an awesome picture of a lion on the
wall in their living room. Also, this is
even more awesome, they had the most beautiful cat I’ve ever seen. And get this – her name is Eówyn! She’s a young
Maine Coon that they got from a breeder.
Grey with white paws. Really, she
was a very pretty cat. Maybe if I get a
camera I’ll take a picture of the White Lady of Rohan
and put it on my site :-).
I helped Beth and Leon load the food into the car. This Bible study includes dinner! What better way to spend your night than
filling up with both physical as well as spiritual food? We drove to the place where we were meeting,
which is a house that Allie is “house-sitting.”
When I came in, I was introduced to Jeff and Andy (wearing an old Back
to the Future shirt), who are both apparently CS people too. Allie, Sarah, and Claire were already
there. We hung out and had some small
talk (at some point another guy named Shawn came) while the food was being
finished.
Once again, the food was fairly fancy. We had make-your-own chicken salad, with
hand-grated parmesan. Mmm… Hey, this is
the first time I had meat in almost a week!
I don’t miss it, but maybe I should take some supplements to make sure
I’m not missing out on anything by eating vegetarian food.
After dinner, we started the Bible study. During the Bible study, I noticed that I was
one of the main contributors. I’ve
always liked discussions. Shawn is kind
of a clown, so he joked around a lot.
Jeff is a more intellectual type, and he added lots of philosophical
comments. Leon told us that this summer,
we will focus on the parables of Jesus. I
learned that parable comes from two Greek words. The para- part
comes from a word meaning alongside. The
-ble part comes from a word meaning life. So parables are something that can be
juxtaposed with situations in our lives, to help us to see our situation more
clearly. Cool, huh?
For quite a while, we discussed why Jesus taught in
parables. It seems at first glance that
He would use them to make things clearer.
Well, this is pretty quickly disproved by John 4:11-12:
He
told them, “The secret of the kingdom of God has been given to you. But to those on the outside everything is
said in parables so that, ‘they may be ever seeing but never perceiving, and
ever hearing but never understanding; otherwise they might turn and be
forgiven!’”
Why would Jesus make things more confusing on purpose? That seems cruel to “those on the
outside.” Well, Jeff suggested that
perhaps this was a way of making people need to draw close to Him. It says that after Jesus told the parable of
the Sower, some people stayed after along with the
disciples and asked what it meant. Those
who stayed and asked for an explanation received in full what Jesus had for
them. It was a conscious decision to ask
for more. Well, I’d never looked at it
that way. Of course, we mentioned some
other points, such as the fact that stories are easier to remember, once you
know what they represent.
After our Bible study, people hung around for a while. We started joking about Harry Potter,
of all things. Some people were planning
on going to see the movie that was coming out this weekend. Shawn, who had been previously joking around
so much, got pretty serious about Harry Potter. He claimed, and I agree, that our culture
makes light of the occult too much. I
did enjoy the first couple books and movies.
Still, I think they just get darker, and closer to the real thing, as
the stories progress. I don’t think
someone is a sinner for watching them, but as a personal choice, I’ve decided
not to read the rest of the books.
Thankfully, everyone was very civil and mature about this topic that has
made some people go so far as to burn the books. I think that’s going way to far.
During the whole meeting, it’d been raining and icky
outside. At the end, the sun came out,
and what should appear outside but the most gorgeous rainbow I’ve ever
seen! I’ve never seen one as clear or as
complete. There was even a faint second
rainbow encircling the first! You could
see the whole spectrum in the brighter rainbow, and the spectrum repeated
itself 4 or 5 times in smaller rainbows right below it. It’s hard to explain, and I’m so sad I didn’t
bring my camera. It was still amazingly
beautiful!
Today was my first
LASER meeting. We all got into a
conference room and sat around a long table.
Dr. Clarke and George and another in-charge-type guy sat at the head of
the table near the door. I sat by
Anastasia. The students were beginning
their conference as usual by going one by one around the table and explaining
what they had been up to this week. Dr.
Clarke stopped them before the second student had finished talking.
“Wait, we have new
people in this room! Please introduce
yourselves and explain what it is you’re working on.”
The first student began again, and each person gave a brief introduction.