Pics of Galena, Park Farm Winery, Downtown Dubuque & Karaoke Ngt

GREEK IS OVER.....THANK GODNESS!!!

Well....I've gotta be honest, I REALLY am happy that Greek is over! This was the most stressful, emotionally draining class I have ever taken! I am praying that this was the worse of my seminary days, but something tells me.....I'm in for a lot more. Besides....I still have to take Hebrew!!!

The Greek final was a take home exam. We were allowed to use all our helps...the Greek Lexicon, our textbook and lots of charts with verb tenses...one was even laminated. It STILL look me about 7 hrs to complete!! It was difficult, but I did take a few breaks just to remain sane! I left the main building after turning it in and yelled in the main quad! I dunno to who....I suppose just to Marty...the statue of Martin Luther that's in the main quad....who didn't answer...Thank goodness! We had a little get together last night to celebrate....I was the only one who wore a toga! Complete with a gold halo I made with ribbon!
Don't know what I made on the final yet...but I know I passed.

My prologue starts next week. I'll have 7 classes this Fall. My registration is on Tuesday. I actually already have homework for Prologue...but it's just a long article to read...not bad. My Greek professor will actually be my Christian History professor this Fall. I'm actually looking forward to her class; although she did require 6 different books for her class, so perhaps I'll be swallowing my words mid-term!

So I have posted a lot of new photos here. One is of a few students from my Greek class. The older gentleman is Don. He is from about an hr from here. He's a former FBI agent...so he has some cool stories!
The first set of pics are from the city of Galena, IL. About 25 minutes from campus. REALLY neat little town with a lot of history. The old little cabin is the birth place of one of our former president's,....Ulysses Grant. The red brick house with Green shutters is the home he actually lived in. The little trolley car is how I took a tour of the city. The White stone church with the red door is the church Grant used to attend when he lived here. The long stairway is the 2nd longest set of stairs in the United states and the cobble stone stairway is the longest and oldest road in the United states. Then the following pictures were from last weekend and this week. All the beautiful flowers were taken at Dubuque's Arboretum and a few shots I took downtown yesterday at the Riverwalk and then the cable car pics are from the Felenon Elevator; the story is the first Mayor of Dubuque in the 1800's wanted to be able to go home for lunch/dinner at noon everyday, but the problem is he worked downtown as a banker and lived over the high ridge. But it would take him over an hour by horse and buggy so he'd only have time to eat and have to head back...not giving him enough time to do his favorite thing after lunch/dinner...NAP! So he came up with the idea of building something that could take him over the mountain. THUS...many prototypes and years later people started paying to go over the mountain using his lift and the Felenon Elevator Company was born and is still used today; Mainly just for tourist now!

So I have a few more days of break before classes start. Plan on doing a few more cool things. It's been hard having this break not being able to go home to Dallas. Chatting online with my webcam to my best friend, Julie HELPS. More students have been arriving on campus. My neighbor moved back in today. His name is Rob, married, nice guy. I also met a few people from my Synod back home....but I'm terribly home sick! So...till next time, enjoy the pics. Peace and many blessings to all reading!

Aorist passive particple, with the future subjuntive in the active voice= MUCH confusion in Greek!

Greeting all you happy readers!
So I am FINALLY in the home stretch of my Greek class. Al things considered, I've done pretty well..especially since it's been MANY years snce I've been in school. We take our Final next week. It's a take home exam, where we have to translate about 10 verses out of the Greek New Testament. So I guess if I start memorizing the entire New Testament, I should be fine! It's actually not been that bad. Most of it is making sense to me....I know, I can't believe it either! Every Sunday in church, when I read the Gospel text, I find myself trying to translate it to Greek! So I guess SOMETHING is sticking up there!
Had some fun this past weekend. Friday night, I went to Buffalo Wild Wings to watch the Cowboys Preseason Game....I was just excited that I actualy found somewhere that was actually showing the game. But as soon as the game started, the bar cleared out! Most everyone there was watching the Cubs game! I sent a text message to my buddy Jeff Voight at FSG, since Buffalo Wild Wings is one of his national accounts, and told him he should strongly consider NOT shipping any lamps to that store....since the manager refused to raise the volume for me to watch the game! Cowboys won....but it IS still preseason!
Weather here has been gorgeous.....I'll have to continue this later....looking at the time, gotta get back to class. Peace and blessings to all!

NOW this is getting hard....

Greetings everyone reading!
Sorry for my delay. Been a tough week of Greek. We are now into dissecting Participles....I.E...creating sentences direct from the New testament...part of which the words aren't even there! This process is quite difficult for me since, I am a VERY visual learner! If it's NOT ON THAT PAGE...I'M NOT GOING TO TRANSLATE IT!!!! But it's all a process and I've only got 3 more test (other than tommorrow's) BEFORE I'm all done! THANK GOD!!! I have started discussing to several of my classmates, that we ought to have a celebration...a party at the end of everything. I was thinking TOGA, TOGA...seems to go with the Greek theme, but all I got were "deer in the headlights" look when I mentioned it!!! So I may just drag a few people who hang around on the weekends and have a smaller get together in a few weeks. We'll see!
So. Last Friday, I invited everyone in my class to come join me for a cookout to celebrate being half way through Greek. Only 3 of us were there; my classmates, Shannon, Lee & I. Lee had bratwurst, while Shannon and I grilled steaks and had some baked potatoes and even grilled some asparagus. It was quite the feast! It was the closest I felt like I had to a REAL home cooked meal since I'd been here...so I enjoyed EVERY BITE! We then hung down there and played my favorite card game, Phase 10, until a few other students came around and then we just started chatting about Greek and school stuff. So we all sat around just chatting about our homes and drinking a few beers. It was fun.
Saturday, slept in and really didn't do much of anything. Went to swim at the Y and just relaxed most of the day. I did start working on my Greek vocabulary for the this week. Then I got a text message from Darrell & Julie back home that my precious God Daughter started walking, but of course, they couldn't get their web cam to work, so I haven't seen it LIVE, but Julie did send me a video of her walking that I have watched over and over again. Just makes me want to drive home now to play with her!
Sunday, I went to the last of the 5 ELCA churches in this area. I went to St. Peter's Lutheran. The church is beautiful, has some very friendly people and the important thing...they have coffee after the service (If you're Lutheran - you UNDERSTAND how important that is!!!) The Pastor's sermon was very good and I really enjoyed it. It to me was the closest to "feeling" like home, so I'll probably be going back. NOT to mention, they have a few corn farmers who are members there who sells the corn after the service...once he found out I was a student at Wartburg, he allowed me to take 2 huge bags home. So I cooked me some corn for dinner on Sunday. IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!! I can still taste it. I think I still have some more downstairs in the kitchen (in the dorm basement). It really doesn't need much butter or salt. It's just so naturally good!
Thanks to my home church, I was able to buy my books for this Fall. Quite a different experience from the last time I was in school!!! My campus closed down its bookstore, so you have to order ALL your textbooks online. I found a few websites where pricing was better than the suggested Amazon site, so I decided to do that. But then the bank thought someone had stolen my credit card since I had all these charges hitting at once....so that was a quite a mess to clear all up...but I should be getting all my books before my Fall semester classes start.
My Fall semester looks pretty cool. I'm actually looking forward to everything EXCEPT the Greek...yes, I'll have 2 hours of translating in the Greek New Testament this Fall....YEAH! (that was sarcasm in case you missed that!) The rest of my classes seem quite interesting. Spiritual Practices & Foundations of the church just to name a few. And the best thing about this Fall...NO CLASSES ON FRIDAYS!!!!! That is AWESOME! That means a long weekend, every weekend! So I am pretty excited about that!
My part time job at State Farm is going ok. It's not all that exciting, but the schedule is quite flexible, I can wear what I want and it is literally 7 minutes from campus. I can actually see the Campus Tower from the office at State Farm PLUS I am getting a discount on some insurance for working there, so I may switch insurance companies.
My eyes are doing ok. My vision is definitely NOT better, but the haziness, fogginess is gone. My vision just seems to come and go; where I just have occasional blurred vision. I actually go tomorrow for a follow up appointment. I'm just glad they were able to figure out what it was before it got worse.
So I think that's about all I have to report for now. I am venturing off campus this weekend to explore a few new places that my former associate Pastor Jill told me about. I've started making a list of a few places nearby to go check out. So I'll let ya'll know how all that goes. I will post my pics from the Retreat Center and hopefully some new ones this weekend. Peace, many blessings and LOVE to all reading.

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HALF WAY there......

Greetings from pleasant 75-80 degree temps here in Dubuque today! I hear it is 100+ down in Dallas...NOT missing that, but man I do miss being home; especially on the weekends!

As of tomorrow, I'll be half way through my Greek classes. They say what we have learned in the last 3 weeks is equivalent to ONE SEMESTER of Greek....so NO WONDER WHY MY HAIR SEEMS TO BE GREYING FASTER....and I am n0w officially going INSANE! I can't help it....now when I read something, my brain starts analyzing whether I know the words in Greek and starts parsing it! (Parsing is what we do to figure out the tense and case of nouns and verbs...to figure out how to read it!) Each Summer Greek class have T-shirts made usually with something Greek on it to remember going through all this. As a class, we decided, to write in Greek, "If you can read this, you feel my pain in Summer Greek!" One of the guys in my class came up with the idea and is designing the shirt, which I will proudly wear once I get through all this.....which I am feeling more confident that I will. They say Hebrew is much worse, which is not till Spring semester. Not looking forward to that either!

I started my part time job yesterday at State Farm. All I'm doing is making phone calls asking people if they'd like a free auto insurance rate quote. Some people hang up on me, some say they already have State Farm, some actually want a quote. It's easy money and literally 2 minutes from my campus, so I can't complain. While the pay isn't great...its better than nothing.
It's actually nice to get off campus and do something OTHER than studying Greek which is all...or at least it feels that way. I'll kind of be glad when Fall semester starts so I'll have some other stuff to do.

Summer Greek ends on September 2nd, then I'm off until September 8th. On the 8th Prolog starts and then classes start on September 11th. I will be taking 7 classes this Fall, with no classes on Friday and I also won't be working on Fridays....which is SWEET! Nice long weekends to recuperate from the weekend and just relax. Makes me wish I lived a tad bit closer so I could go home on the weekends; Many students do that. Unfortunately, don't have that luxury! I will be going back to Texas for sure in December to attend a Candidacy retreat; it's required by my Candidacy committee, but I'm just glad I get to be home for Christmas and New Years with my friends and church family. I wouldn't want to stay up here for 2+ weeks during the holidays. I do hope to go home to see my family in North Carolina for Thanksgiving. But we'll see.

Speaking of family, my baby sister, Myra is getting married on April 17th, so I have another wedding to be in. Not looking forward to the expense, but I'm glad I'm in her wedding. Argelia, my former SLAVE DRIVER is also getting married around that same time, but she and her fiance haven't made any real concrete plans yet.

Well...gotta run back to class. Many blessings to all! PEACE!

Continuing.......from earlier today....

Got my second test back and I did improve from last week. My instructor told me I was the ONLY STUDENT to improve from last week, so that's awesome....but felt bad for everyone else....but I also did study pretty hard. I was just determined to do better!

Saturday...while should not have been driving, since my vision is pretty bad right now, I decided to venture off campus to visit an Abbey in Wisconsin right over the border. You have to know that am 10 minutes from Illinios and about the same to Wisconsin. My Greek Instructor, Dr, Leeper, had told us about it, It is a Dominican Catholic Order that houses about 150-200 nuns, It is also a retreat center and I've heard some students, to get away for the weekend, have been known to go stay there. This abbey is pretty self sufficient in that they sell alot of the items they make there. They are MOST famous, in this area, for their bread....which I smelled as soon as I walked in, I just followed my nose down to their little bookstore and was just mezmorized by the smell of their fresh bread. I bought some dinner rolls, which I shared with my classmates this morning for breakfast and some fresh cinamon bread. It's aroma has been all in my room since this weekend. I am trying to control myself in only allowing myself to have 2 slices for breakfast a day...but its hard....as the bread is SOOOO GGOOODD! Even the dinner rolls...you don't need any butter on them. They have a natural sweetness, but not too sweet to make them quite enjoyable to snack on.
I also toured the center. Their Rosary Chapel was quite beautiful. got VERY lucky, in as arrived, some of the sisters were gathering for some rehearsal in there and I got to hear them rehearse as I walked in. The acoustics were amazing. The stain glass windows were beautiful. I did take some pictures which I will post later this week. The ceilings had a very unique design which added its acoustical design. And of course, I had to check out the lighting, which was done quite well. Along the outskirts to the chapel lied several smaller prayer rooms, I sat in one that had these beautiful, quartz like stones in the wall that went to the outside, allowing the light from outside to shine through them. I sat there and meditated just stunned by its beauty. I then walked around the outside. They have a cemetary for the nuns who have passed. The Abbey itself originally dates back to the 1800's, so some of the tombstones were back from the late 1800's. I stopped as I got to the 1920's....it was cool, but it started to rain. So I ran back to my car for a bit, then when the ran subsided, I drove down to their Labyrith. I spent some time walking that and videod that...I'll try to post that later too; I did that one on my phone and sent it to a few friends. My sister Tamara thought it was cool. Then I left there and drove into Illinois. There was a "WingFest" going on in East Dubuque, Illiniois, but I'm NOT a huge wings fan PLUS the crowds were a bit much for me, so I headed back to campus....but drove around downtown a bit.
Sunday, I attended another ELCA church...St. Matthews. This church currently does not have a Pastor, so actually, one of the Ordained professors from my school, Gwen Sayler, preached. I hadn't met her until then, but I will be taking one class by her this Fall. I thought her sermon was quite insightful and enjoyed the church. I took my dormmate, Lisa with me. She's a young MA student who lives on the first floor of the dorm. She and I have hung out a few times, she's pretty cool....but a lot younger than me, so a bit harder to relate since she just got out of school last year, having already studies some theology.

I rearranged my room this weekend....got lots more space in my room now and also finally finished hanging things on my walls. It feels a bit more like home....but I still miss TEXAS!

I got a part time job last week. I start this Wednesday working at a State Farm agency right down the street from my campus. Just making some phone calls. I got the job through an employment agency. I was rather impressed with how quickly they placed me. I suppose it could have been worse. But a little paycheck is better than none at this point.

Have to buy my books for this Fall soon, as have to order all of them online. Feels weird doing that, but actually, a lot of emails are constantly being sent out by last year's students trying to sell their books. I hope to snag a few and save a few bucks.

OK...so I've gotta go work on my vocabulary for this week. Not too bad, but I do have 2 test this week. Please keep me in prayer...for my eyes. I go back for a follow up next week. So we'll see. Many blessings to all readers....Peace!

Future Past Indicative, Middle passive voice...etc...

Yeah...if you can't understand that above then you feel my pain! Here I am the beginning of WEEK 3....the good news is by the end of this week, I'll officially be half way through...AND THAT is something to celebrate!

Had a tough week last week. Things are continuing to get harder, but the good news is I am starting to recognize things right away in sentences that is making translations a little easier. We will actually be reading, by the end of this week, out of the Greek New Testament. Hard to believe...even as I type this!

Getting to know my classmates better and my "dormmates". The few of us living in the dorm hung out Friday night, drinking wine and playing board games....needless to say, I had a HUGE headache Saturday morning, but it was fun! AND the inevitable has happened, one student has decided he couldn't deal with the whole transition to going learning Greek or being back in school, or living in a dorm and has already dropped out. He wasn't a student here at Wartburg, but of course, most everyone knows about it.

In case some of you haven't heard. I actually have been struggling a little extra due to my eye issue I had a few years ago. It decided to just come back...my doctor doesn't know why; except to say that perhaps the eye issue was never fully healed and due to stress came back. Either way, it has caused a few issues with my studies so I went to see a Cornea specialist and NOW I had medication that should get my vision back to normal...eventually. Still not correct now.

Well....lots more to share...but I have to head back to class. Will write more later. Blessings to all!

Peace out!