So the past few weeks have been kind of demanding and stressful. I have spanish at 8 in the morning and its getting harder to wake up every morning. And then I have a G.E. class, political science on Monday and Thursday which is kind of difficult to understand and follow since I am not too into politics, some days we have interesting discussions though. And then I am taking two religion classes. The first one is History of Christianity, supposedly our class is the best class my teacher has had because we talk a lot and help with the discussions, however, I hear that the professor grades really hard, actually he has told us so, so I am worried about how the tests will go but for now it isn't too bad. And the second religion class is Acts of the Apostles. It requires so much reading. I am stressed out just thinking about it. I have 4 grad. students in my class and it is kind of funny because all of the undergraduate students in there are intimidated to talk in class because the grad. students are so knowledgeable about the topic. It is hard but I try to force myself to ask questions in class, hopefully the teacher will now I am trying. Those are my classes.
This past weekend I had to go to this Coptic Orthodox Church for my History of Christianity Class and it was interesting to say the least. The girl that set up the place to go said that it was only 2 hours long so we decided we would go there, the Coptic Church. However when we got to the liturgy we learned that it was a special service that was honoring the cross so it ended up being the whole 3 hours we were trying to avoid. And they stand the majority of the service, probably like 2 hours and 45 minutes of it actually. The priests and deacons chant all of the prayers and hymns and it was really funny but I had to hold in my laughter. It was tough to stand the whole time, my feet began to hurt. We had this hymnal book and we were trying to see how much longer the service was going on by flipping through the pages but it was in English/Coptic/Arabic and they kept jumping around the book which made it difficult to follow along. Part of the service was in Coptic, some form of Egyptian or something and it was really odd. The priest gave a good sermon though which was very practical, I found it to be easy to understand. I expected him to give a very theological sermon and I was happy when he didn't. When we did have a chance to sit down I was almost falling asleep, it was hard to stay awake because the liturgy was so long, and the hot building didn't help. At the beginning of the liturgy the priests walked about with this thing filled with incense and at the end the priests threw water on people in the congregation, it was entertaining. After it was over we exited the auditorium by rows starting with the front. We were sitting in the back and the woman we were sitting with the whole time answered some of our questions, she was very nice. The priest handed us homemade bread at the door for the people that didn't take communion and it was really good. It was a very weird but good experience.
Two weeks ago my grandfather died and I wasn't able to attend the funeral because I couldn't miss any of my classes, it made me really sad because my family is really close. I made a video for the funeral of pictures of my grandfather and his grandkids. And everyone really enjoyed watching it. I was glad they liked it because I worked on it for a long time. I loved him so much and I am glad he is free from pain on this earth and am happy he is with Jesus. My family knew I really wanted to be there but understood that I couldn't; they sent me these flowers on the day of the funeral. I love my family so much!
