Terminal 4 is harder to find than you might think.

Dear friends,

It has been noted that I have not updated for 17 days. My apologies. [Insert comments about how the last 2 weeks were busy]. I certainly have much to say now, though, and I will try to do it in a post that is less than a mile long.

I am home. In Rockford, Iowa. Which I might add has gotten 10x trashier since I left (the town, not my house). Has the town gotten trashier or have my standards gotten higher? Nevertheless, America is the best thing in the history of ever. And when I say America, I mean my comfortable bed, my parents, and the food that my parents give me. I want to come back to America every day of my life.

The travel home went more or less without a hitch. Getting through Heathrow turned out to be the easiest thing ever. Who would have thought? However, there was a minor discrepancy with where I needed to get off the bus. You see, I took a bus from Oxford to Heathrow terminal 5. Then I had to get on a new bus to take me to terminal 4. So I got on said bus and hoped I would know when to get off. So we drove for awhile and then got to this stop called Stirling Lane. It sure didn't look like an airport entrance but some sign vaguely referred to terminal 4 so I thought, "crap, I think I need to get off here. I better just do it!" So I dragged all my luggage quickly off the bus and disembarked into what looked like a vacant parking lot. I stood there for about 5 seconds, scanning the vacant parking lot, wondering how the bloody hell to find the Northwest ticket desk. "Hmm," I thought, "I really wish I had common sense." At this point, a kind lady ran out of the bus and said, "Are you sure you wanted to get off here?" I said, "Is this terminal 4?" She smiled and informed me that the vacant parking lot was indeed not teminal 4. Thus, I made a walk of shame back to the bus, having to haul my suitcases back on while everyone watched the idiot girl who didn't know what she was doing. The lady then proceeded to make kind small talk with me (very abnormal for a Brit). She asked me why I had been in England. "I was studying at Oxford University," I told her. I'm sure she had quite the time computing how that had gone for me, seeing as how I couldn't get off at a proper bus stop and all. Oh well, something of that sort was bound to happen.

So I reckon that the last 2 weeks wrapped up fairly well at Oxford. Well actually, the second to last week was pretty dreadful. I was writing a very dumb essay on Darwin and religion and whenever I was writing dumb essays, I always wanted to come home. Thus, that whole week I only thought about coming home. As soon as that was over, though, I could finally focus on my long essay on the non-canonical gospels. This long essay was supposed to be some huge project, showing off our ability to do serious, independent scholarship, but let's be serious, I only worked on it for about a week and didn't even read half of my primary sources. In the end, my essay ended up being fairly bad, because I had the broadest question in the history of ever. Nonetheless, I hope Albus likes it.

I went and talked to Albus two days before I left. It was absolutely glorious. He had missed me, I could tell. I said, "Albus, can we be best friends forever?" He said, "I was hoping you would ask." Then I gave him a friendship bracelet as a token of our time together. Then, in real life, he said that he had enjoyed teaching me and shook my hand. Awesome.

I have one last library story that is fairly enjoyable. I was in the library researching for my long essay, and on the top of my hand, I had earlier written "milk" in blue sharpie, because, well, I needed to remember to buy milk that night. Also that day, the lecturer in Angst class had used the word "manifesto." Since that word has special meaning for my friend Brittnee and me, I added "manifesto" in blue sharpie to my hand. Later, in the library, I was really very tired while reading, so I fell asleep on top of my hand for awhile. When I woke up, tattooed in blue ink across my left cheek read "milk manifesto." "Milk manifesto!!" Ridiculous!

In other news that is very important in my life right now, I have to retract an official decision I had made. I earlier told you that I had officially decided to go to Princeton Seminary. Well, I have now changed my mind. I am officially going to Duke Divinity School. BooYah. They came through with the money after all, making the price almost comparable to Princeton and so I said, "Hell yes, Duke, I'll see you in the fall." Actually I think I said, "It is with great pleasure that I accept this scholarship," but the sentiments are the same. I feel so much better about this decision. I had been unsettled about Princeton, but now I feel very excited about Duke. If there's one thing I learned at Oxford, it's that if academia is going to be one big mess of pretentiousness, with pretentious people being pretentious all the time (you get it, I know), then I don't want any part in it. Now Duke might be just as pretentious of an area (apparently the area has one of the highest concentrations of master's and PhD's in the country), but I figure that it's the SOUTH. People will be nice there. I used to want east coast pretentiousness and want people to just leave me alone so that I could be anti-social, but that is the absolute last thing that I want anymore. All I want to do is go somewhere where people will be nice to me. Is that a dumb request? Also, I think I thrive more in an environment where people are more conservative than me. I thought that I would more likely find that in the South. Needless to say, I am very, very excited.

So, if you can remember back to my first post ever, I started out with 3 goals:
1. View Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus in the British Library
2. Not eff up my GPA.
3. Learn to enjoy a good pint.

Unfortunately, I don't think I fulfilled even one of these goals. I definitely did not view the manuscripts, which was really stupid on my part. I didn't take the initiative to plan a trip to London, which I should be kicked for.

I'm not quite sure whether or not I effed up my GPA, as I didn't receive a single grade the entire time I was there. I imagine that I effed it up a little bit, but I don't think things could have turned out too terribly. I feel good about my potential Albus grades, unsure about my Angst class grade, and most fearful about my Greek grade. I later joked with Albus Jonathan that the hardest part of that class for me was that I had no one to be better than. Since I was the only student, I was consistently at the bottom of the class. Bummer. I'll be anxious to see if I maybe did better than I'm expecting.

In terms of the pints, I visited far fewer pubs than I ever thought I would. This was perhaps largely because my house was 40 minutes out of town, so it wasn't too convenient to head back into town to the pub. Plus, I generally turned down people's offers to do fun things, as I was studying.

This brings me to another point: I would say that my social interactions at Oxford were nearly a comprehensive failure. I did very poorly in this regard. I never met my "kindred spirits" so I was a floater the whole time. I don't like being a floater. It is not my preference. However, at the end of it all, I very regretted not spending more time with the majority of people. That was a large mistake on my part.

In turn, I feel as though whereas other people regretted not putting more time into their schoolwork, I do not have regrets about that. So I guess that's good, seeing as how Oxford is supposed to be the academic semester and all. I will never have an experience like this past semester again, where I have no jobs and so few obligations. Oxford was the time in my life where I could study unabashedly with few interruptions, and never in my life will I have that again. Thus, I am glad that I left without a lot of regrets about my academic performance.

Interestingly though, I do not feel like Oxford was the most intense semester I have had. By no means, actually, was it my most challenging semester. In fact, I found it rather relaxing. I don't think that all my Oxford peers would agree with me, but let's be serious, all we had to do all day was study. It was a cakewalk.

Thus, the areas in which I grew the most involved more practical things, like learning how to live in a city. That was initially very hard for me, but I eventually figured it out and even learned to enjoy it quite a bit. This will be very good for me next year, I think, as Durham will be much, much bigger than Orange City. Learning how to use maps, cross streets, and ride the bus isn't that hard after all. Who would have thought?

Well, this isn't going to be my last post here, as I know that I have forgotten things that I'd still like to write about at least once. I am heading back to Orange City very soon, and it'll be interesting to see how things go there. Thus, I will definitely update you again.

Until that time,

Best,
Sara

"I could spend every night in a different parking lot"

Dear friends,

Happy "when I wake up tomorrow, I will be flying home in 2 weeks and 1 day" day! Actually, as the number of days keeps decreasing, I'm kinda getting angsty about leaving! I just think it'll be weird. Because then I will be graduating. And then living in my car.

Speaking of living in my car, I have spent the better part of today thinking about whether I could feasibly live in my car this summer. I have considered where I could shower, what I would eat if I didn't have a refrigerator or a stove, and where I would do my laundry. I have concluded that it would not be the best summer of my life, but that I could do it, and it would be very adventurous. Orange City would definitely be a safe town for such an adventure so I hopefully wouldn't die every night.

I also began thinking about how to incorporate my dream summer into my living in my car summer. You see, my dream summer would consist of travelling around America, visiting all the different churches and church events that I possibly could. "Wow, Sara. You are so spiritual. I wish I could be as godly as you." Error. I would not be doing this for spiritual purposes. I would be doing this for "observe the crazy evangelicals" purposes. As it happens, the thing I am perhaps most obsessed with in my life is Christian culture. Everything about it fascinates me. I love bad Christian literature, bad Christian music, bad Christian merchandise, Christian colleges, etc. One of my favorite activities in the world is typing 'rapture' into the search box on youtube. Or 'evangelical.' I spend hours doing these things. Hours. I highly recommend searching for 'the Lord's boot camp' or 'jesus camp' on youtube. I never tire of watching these things. I also once planned to send notes to hundreds of campus mailboxes that said "Ready or not, here I come! -Jesus."

"Wow," you say, "I wish I had those sick fascinations. That is awesome."

Anyway! My roommate pointed out to me that if I'm going to be living in my car, I may as well do it while I'm travelling around living my dream summer. I, however, had not been swift enough to figure that out. I had instead been thinking that my car would remain parked in Orange City, and I could try to do a mini-version of "scaling the area churches" right in the land of God that I know and love. Basically, I was trying to think of ways that I could get people to feed me, and I figured, "I should go to church!" I could join a local Bible study and say things like: "God has really been laying this thought on my heart lately." Or, "I've been praying about it and I think..." Then hopefully area families would scoop me into their homes for a game of hearts and a casserole. That would be AMAZING. So if I don't have jobs or a house, I will see if I can make this happen. Then maybe I can write a book about it and be cool.

In other news, I spent 35 minutes on skype earlier with a kind admissions lady from Duke. I had emailed to withdraw my decision to attend Duke, so she had emailed and wanted to talk to me about grants, stipends, and scholarships. She told me that I have been nominated for a scholarship (which I've known for about 5 months now), and the committee is meeting for the final time on April 13th. I've obviously fallen through the cracks the other time the scholarship committee has made decisions, but apparently there's still a chance for me. It was really nice to talk to a real person about the school, since I haven't talked to a real person at either Princeton or Duke. She obviously tried to sell the school to me. I said, "Really? Remember I told you I didn't have enough money to go to your school? Now you're trying to get me to buy the place?" Hahaha...I'm so clever. I mean, she tried to make the school really appealing to me, which kind of worked, so if I do happen to get a decent scholarship, I would be very conflicted about what to do. I might have to withdraw the official decision that I made to you all that I was going to Princeton. I just want to tell these schools to "[cue Nsync] quit playing games with my heart."

I've been really conflicted about the Princeton decision, though, just because everyone and their dog from Northwestern is going there.

And that is all I have to say about that.

Today, I tried to figure out the post office again. I was determined to figure out how to buy stamps. However, as it happened, I couldn't figure out how to do it. So, I left defeated. Someday I swear I'll learn how to use a post office. Maybe while I'm living in my car.

Well, this post could be longer. (It also could be shorter.) But time is short, and I must go to bed! Cheers!

Best,
Sara