library legs

I have just woken from a nap. This is my first day of my three-week summer vacation, and I feel it. My body is crashing fast. It's nice, though. This morning Alison and the girls picked me up to go to the zoo. We met another church lady and her four kids (3 girls and a baby boy). There were 7 kids ages 5 and under, and they were all girls except for baby David. They were really fun and well-behaved, so the morning was a blast. It's wonderful to experience life with children. They are so fresh. I think every scholar should spend a good amount of time with children. If our life is one of inquiry, what better way to keep inquiry fresh, unhibited, and unencumbered. A highlight of the morning was the carousel ride. I got to go on and help Abby who was riding a hippo next to Chara Grace's leopard. It was a very warm morning with an immanent storm, but most enjoyably spent hand in hand with several little girls. Towards the end, I quickly realized that I was exhausted. My legs were not used to such rigor. After months of sitting in the car and sitting at the desk, I do believe my muscles have begun to atrophy! I guess that means I'll just have to go to the zoo more often...

Adventures have been manifold in the past couple of days. On Saturday we went to Natchitoches (pronounced NAH-kuh-tish). This is most of Lousiana that we have seen. It was the first time we had been further than Baton Rouge. We went across swamp, lake and bayou that were part of the Atchafalaya Basin...this is real Arcadiana territory...through Lafayette, Alexandria, Pineville. Then the flat, low Basin land started to give way to rolling countryside. It was very remote, but stunningly beautiful. Natchitoches was a lovely town. It felt like a midwest town. It was clean and quaint. We went for the ordination and installation service of the pastor of the OPC mission work there. That in itself was a wonderful event. It was terrific meeting the folks up there and many people from the Pineville church after hearing about them and praying for them regularly. And the actual ordination ceremony was moving...a pictoral display of the Church. It was worth the 5 hour drive there and back. Also worth the trip was fellowship with Russell, our pastor. Our busy lives have made conversation time rare, and it was fun to sit and chat through everything under the sun.

Sunday we had dinner with the Hamilton's. Chara Grace has really missed me this semester. It was touching. She wrote me a card, where she actually had written out her name and my name! At least I could make out the approximate letters in some kind of order resembling my name.

And yesterday I went back up to campus to finish grading. I've always noted that though the quiet campus immediately following a semester is nice, it's also eerie. I feel like I'm not sure what is real...the teeming campus or the quiet campus? Dr. H. showed me his house and cat that I'll look after this summer. After coffee in the evening, I left for the last time to go home. Joanna and I had a wonderfully cathartic conversation. We've both been hashing through...in different ways...our lives as women scholars, and how remote that makes us feel sometimes from other women/people in the church/world.