Back in Class

Well, classes started up again. So far, so good. I'm taking a counseling class called Social and Cultural Foundations, and a bible class called Epistles, where we'll be studying Acts through Galatians. It looks like the classes should be pretty interesting. My favorite thing about the bible class is that the professor has been to Israel several times, and as we read through the bible, he shows pictures of places I've been! It's pretty neat. So I decided to share some examples with you. :)

Acts 1:5 - for John baptized with water
Me getting baptized in the Jordan (where John baptized)

Acts 1:12 - Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet
A garden on the Mount of Olives

Acts 1:13 - When they had entered the city, they went up to the upper room
The upper room

Acts 3:1 - Now Peter and John were going up to the temple at the ninth hour, the hour of prayer.
The wailing wall (where the temple was before its destruction)

Acts 9:43 - And Peter stayed many days in Joppa with a tanner named Simon
Simon the Tanner's house

Acts 10:1 - Now there was a man at Caesarea named Cornelius, a centurion of what was called the Italian cohort.
The hippodrome at Caesarea

Acts 12:19 - Then he went down from Judea to Caesarea and spent time there.
The theater at Caesarea, where Peter preached (and Paul, too)

Pretty fun, huh? I may post more later. So... school is good. :)

Semester's End

Monday was the last day of the semester, and I am tremendously excited, and relieved, to be done. I am still loving school, it is stretching and challenging me in many ways, but wow was I ready to be done with these classes. For one thing, class from 7:30 - 5 every Monday was a bit exhausting, not to mention that the end of that long day was spent with an hour of having to focus and listen to a classmates concerns, and an hour talking about my own. I discovered that being a client is much more challenging to me than being a counselor. I haven't written much about school in my blog lately, which is mostly due to the fact that blogging is another form of processing things for me, and I felt like I had reached the end of my rope on self-analyzing this semester. Why do I want to be a counselor? What is my motivation for helping people? Why is it hard for me to be a client? How did my childhood shape who I am as an adult? How did I process my identity as an adolescent? How did I develop spiritually throughout my life? What are my goals? How will I achieve them? Who am I, really? Aaaaaaahh!! I'm starting to wish that some small part of me could remain a mystery. :) But it's been really good at the same time, and it's exactly what people are expected to do in counseling, so if I'm going to talk the talk, I should walk the walk, right? So, anyway, I'm really enjoying a break from school until May 4th, when I return, and begin fresh classes and new forms of self-discovery. :) Luckily, I am only taking 2 summer classes, and one of them is a bible class. God is infinitely more interesting than I am. Sometime soon, perhaps I will share with you all some of the things I processed through this passed semester, but for now, I am too exhausted with it all. But I want to emphasize, after all that, that I still love school in a major way. If it wasn't challenging, I would be bored, and would likely gain very little.