Days 10-13

I am shamefully lazy about updating this. Oh well.

Day 10: holy

Oh, hey Mt. Sequoyah. It reminds me of the church camp I went to.

Day 11: steadfast/steady

"Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott" literally translates to "our God is a steadfast fortress."

Day 12: hope

How can someone not have hope while knowing such beautiful places exist?

Day 13: justice

This building which looks like Gregson is a court of some sort.

Days 8 & 9

Day 8: wisdom

The Greek theater at the University of Arkansas. It reminds me of the knowledge I gained there, which will hopefully resolve itself into wisdom one day.

Day 9: delight

Pure delight is imitating The Sound of Music with some of your favorite people in Salzburg. The summer of 2012 was one long exercise in delight.

Days 6 & 7

Day 6: awake

It's difficult to stay awake all evening when beautiful sunsets like this one are happening around 4 pm. By 6 it feels like the middle of the night...

Day 7: ready

My dinner is ready! (Or was a while ago. It's 11pm. Dinnertime is long over.) This took a while to make, but it was much more satisfying to know that I took the time to try a new dish.

Day 5: flood

Every third time I go to watch a YouTube video, this is the ad I get. It's about the flooding that happened near where I live in Germany last summer.

ADVENT PHOTO-A-DAY

Oh my goodness! I was wishing that there was something like the Lenten photo-a-day for Advent...and today I found out that that is a real thing! Huzzah for Methodism!

As with Lent, I've got to catch up on the first few days, so here they are!

Day 1: go

This is the main way I go anywhere this year - with the Strassenbahn!

Day 2: bound

Through the power of flight, we're not bound to the same city or even the same continent where we were born.

Day 3: peace

Okay, this statue of bleeding Jesus is pretty creepy, but it's from the most peaceful church in Erfurt - St. Severi. It's right next to the Dom, but it's not as fancy so it's usually empty. I like going in there.

Day 4: time

I have a countdown going on my laptop to remind me that my time here in Germany is fleeting. Time's also relative, which is shown by the fact that it's almost 4 here, but it's only 8:47 am in Oklahoma.

And, of course, time isn't linear:

The Magicians

On a whim, I checked The Magicians by Lev Grossman out of the library. (You can check out e-books from anywhere. Yay Kindle!)

It was really good, but really dark. I didn't quite expect the darkness. The book is about Quentin, a young man, who one day is invited to take a mysterious exam. The exam turns out to be an admission exam for Brakebills, a magical college in New York. Since Quentin is obsessed with Fillory, a Narnia-like land from an unfinished book series, he's really excited to learn that magic is real.

Unlike many other books I've read that deal with magic, the magic in this book is rather sinister with little to no redeeming qualities. I'm glad I read this book - it has a good message about being content with your life because having a picture of perfection in your mind is a way to go mad.

I don't really have anything profound to say about this book except it scared me. When the group's evil adversary shows himself towards the end of the book, I actually threw my kindle down and avoided reading it for a few hours. I considered locking the door to my bedroom last night. I'm not entirely sure when the villain struck me as so creepy, but it did. I wish I hadn't read the end of this book right before going to bed because the thought of a creepy magician sneaking in kept on popping up in my mind.

I think there's a sequel, but it's not available as an e-book so I'm probably not going to read it anytime soon. I'm not sure if I'd read this book again, but I'm glad I read it once.

VSFS Internship & the Shutdown

I'm trying to start working on my online internship with the State Department's Office of the Historian this afternoon, since I'm done with school for the week and need to get started. I'm also excited to work on this project since I'm researching diplomatic ties between the US and Germany before and during World War I, which I already know a bit about due to a course I took last spring. I'm starting out by looking up resources to further investigate, but when I tried to look up a source from the Library of Congress, this is what I got:

(Yes, all these tabs ARE necessary. I've got a different search result open in each one.)

I guess you could say the LOC website is...LOCked.