i'm back!

got back from England on Friday night. let's see... picking up from where i left off:

the second meeting with Nolland went very well. i'm really encouraged... my next step is to learn a little bit more about research methodologies. then i'm going to be exploring the book of Acts, and see how it provides a hermeneutical window on the book of Luke, and its depiction of the miraculous. looking like my dissertation is going to focus on the meaning/significance of miracle in early Christianity.

after Bristol we caught a bus to Birmingham, and then on to Holyhead, where we picked up our ferry. on the way out of Birmingham our bus clipped another bus, so we ended up waiting there for about 45 minutes before we got underway. then we encountered a ginormous (gigantic-enormous) traffic jam on the way to Holyhead, and ended up arriving over 2 hours late! needless to say, we had missed our ferry, so had to catch another. ended up arriving in Dublin at around 10pm.

Dublin is *CRAZY* on Saturday nights, especially in the Temple Bar area. not sure if i've ever seen quite so many people packed into a few square blocks. wow! our hostel was right in the middle of it, literally next door to one of the more popular pubs. our room was tiny, and packed with 10 beds (5 bunks). i was very disappointed at how small the room was... but that wasn't the worst part; we must have been in the noisiest street in Ireland. i kidd you not, at around 1am in the morning there was someone smashing beer bottles right outside our window, for about 30 minutes. he must have been recycling or something. then at 6am they were stacking metal beer kegs right down the street.... not even ear plugs can block that.

we did some sightseeing around Dublin... the zoo, Trinity College, St. Patrick's, etc. after a couple days of this it was time to leave. headed back to Bristol to spend the night, and then off to London.

London was fantabulous. my favorite city in the world. we arrived in the afternoon, and our first task was to ride the London Eye... a gigantic ferris wheel (kind of). that was a lot of fun... great way to see the city. after that we headed to Leicester Square, where they do all the movie premiers. got to see Tom Hanks (from about 50 yards) for his premier of Polar Express. then we went to go watch a movie... this is funny; we wanted to see 'After the Sunset', the new Pierce Brosnan movie... we got confused and ended up in 'Before Sunset' by accident, an independent film with Ethan Hawke. the entire movie is a single dialogue... i kinda enjoyed it, but was definitely not what my dad was looking forward to. oh well.

the next day my dad and i headed out to Wimbledon. he's a huge tennis fan, so it was cool to see Center Court and all. then we stopped by the British Museum and saw a cool 3-D presentation on a mummy... very nice... i love that museum. ate lunch at a nice pub. then off to St. Paul's Cathedral. this was the highlight of the day... we climbed over 800 steps to get to the top, and had an amazing view of the city. i can't believe they built this thing 300 years ago... Unbelievable. people are amazing. after the cathedral we tried to make it to the Tower of London, but we were too late... it looked really cool... next time i guess.

the flight back was OK. i had exactly the same seat as i did on the way over. watched 'Little Black Book', which sucked. read a lot of an N.T. Wright book i'm working on.

hello from Bristol

...well, here we are, in Bristol.

the plane flight over was long, but not terribly bad. my dad and i were able to get emergency-row seats, which meant a bit more legroom. we flew on an airbus (i think A300) that was pretty big, but not like a 747. each seat had its own video display, so you could watch whatever you wanted at any time.. pretty nice... i watched 'the bourne supremacy', which i liked a lot. i had a feeling that some good stuff (gratuitous violence) was edited out, but still made for a great flick. later on i re-watched 'the anchorman', which was great, even the second time around. the lady next to me was, er, generously proportioned, so i didn't have a lot of elbow room, but at least she didn't snore. the flight was quite bumpy, but not too bad (i guess the plane is too big to really get thrown about). i was surprised to see that we had a 120 mile tailwind. i guess the wind really gets going at 37,000 feet! our ground speed was something like 700 miles per hour... not shabby... and we arrived about 40 minutes early.

after the plane, we had a 3.5 hour bus ride to Bristol. the bus was quite a bit more comfortable than the plane, and we were practically the only people on it. then in Bristol we had to find which local bus to take... took us about 1.5 hours to actually get to the college. so overall a good 21 hours of travelling, from airport to college. by the time i went to sleep, i had been awake for almost 40 hours.

slept like a log last night! i think i slept for about 11 hours or so. in the morning i went to use my electric shaver, which i thought would work here because it said '~250' on it, which i thought meant 250 volts. i'd used a hair-dryer from home in the past, which worked just fine here. well, i plugged it into the adapter, then into the wall, turned it on, and it died in about 2 seconds... smelled burning plastic after that... i tossed it in the garbage can. i'm thinking it wasn't rated for 250 volts after all. went and bought a good ol razor this afternoon.

we had a 'continental' breakfast... cereal and toast. then i met with my advisor at around 11am. the meeting went well. he had read my thesis, which he said he enjoyed. he said it was 'well organized' and that i was a good writer (apparently a lot of people who do graduate work have to really improve their writing skills first). after those nice words he went on to tell me that while it was a good paper for what it was (a master's thesis), it was not to the level i'll need for a successful Ph.D. dissertation. he then went on to tell me why: basically i made too many implicit assumptions in the course of the work. in my dissertation i'll need to write for both a secular and religious audience, so have to be careful about that. he also said i pulled some ideas from sources without taking full consideration of their overall context. also that i too often assumed that the texts were transparent windows into history, without taking enough consideration of the author's motives... also that i need to figure out what kind of research i'm doing: history or biblical theology, or both... that i need to be careful that i have 'methodological clarity' when i pull from such a wide variety of sources. you can't pull something that takes a sociological approach then something from a historical approach and then something from a theological approch without making sure they form a coherent unity. also that i neglected the role of the cross & resurrection in my discussion of miracles... how does jesus' suffering and death impact my understanding of the miraculous.

all these were very good points, and i'm not surprised or discouraged that my thesis was a far cry from what my dissertation will need to be. i'd actually be a bit depressed if it wasn't, since i wouldn't have to learn much in that case. it also means that i can pretty much focus on the same topic for my dissertation, since nothing i wrote thus far can be taken over directly (you can't use the same work to fulfill two different degrees). i meet with nolland again tomorrow morning at 11, and hope to hammer out the direction of my work in the next year or so.

well, that's all for now... i'll write again soon.

England, here we come!

well, i'm heading out this evening for London with my dad. my flight leaves at 9:30pm this evening, and i arrive in london at 10:05am their time, wednesday. i usually don't get any sleep on flights, but i'm hoping to break that pattern... it makes for a really long day otherwise (basically awake for about 40 hours straight... ouch!) i think it's going to be a total blast hanging out with my dad. i'm going to miss julie a lot, but hope she has a good time with friends while i'm gone.

We'll first head to Trinity Theological College where I'll be meeting with John Nolland, my advisor. After Bristol, we'll head to Dublin, where we'll stay at Barnacles Temple Bar House. Then it's back to London, where we'll be staying at YHA City of London. Hoping to see lots of fun things!