Mid-Freshers Week

What does 'fresher' mean? In the States, one would answer by saying, 'an adjective describing the quality of being more fresh, i.e., being more recently grown, born, said, felt, etc.' Here 'fresher' has a similar meaning but is actually treated as a noun and signifies 'the verdant sapling of a first-year student who waters his roots with much alcohol and fertilizes it with drugs (and who does so as a social activity with other young saplings).' Such is the life of a fresher-or at least from what I've seen of it.

Fresher week is actually not that bad. I've had a lot of fun learning how to be a freshman all over again and have the favorite, 'what do you study,' 'where are you from,' 'where do you live' conversations. I should stop being sarcastic. I started this paragraph trying to explain how it wasn't bad, and the next sentence was dripping with sarcasm about how bad it actually was. Back to fresher week not being bad. I've enjoyed meeting lots of new people-it's incredibly how many people you can meet when everyone is still making friends. And the drinking isn't too ridiculous for most people, I did exaggerate the previous paragraph a bit to round out the sapling metaphor. Most people here (especially the few Christians I've met!) are sensible about drinking and don't get drunk. I tried some cider (mildly alcoholic) the other day. Tastes just like the sparkling apple juice we drink on New Years.

I had a blast with the Snellers, the family with Agape (CCC in the States), who are working with Agape at King's College. Their four kids are hilarious, and their church is great! I look forward to an amazing semester working with them to spread the gospel at KCL. I went to the Christian Union (Intervarsity in the States) meeting today, and thoroughly enjoyed meeting some other Christians who live near me! I feel like it would be hard to live a firm Christian walk here as a Fresher just starting college, but it was awesome to meet some Brits who did.

Word of the day is 'manky' meaning 'ghetto.'

I had just under a 2 hour break today, so I walked from school to the British History Museum. Right on the ground floor, the first thing I bumped into was the Rosetta Stone.

I nearly fell over backwards. In all the pictures, it gives the impression of being the size of the tablets that Charlton Heston holds in "The Ten Commandments", but this thing is almost 4 feet tall, and over 2 feet across. I was impressed.

Some of the other highlights are seeing the humongous Pharoah head and fist (the fist reminds me of that poster of Travis and I). It's gargantuan. I'm currently reading Chesterton's, "Everlasting Man" and he talks about the genius of the Egyptian civilization. No wonder. I have to say that people back then could make far more impressive sculptures than what we make today.

The lady below also fascinated me. She was the work of a Roman artist from the 3rd-4th century A.D., if I remember correctly. Some lucky wanderer unearthed the thing in the late 1700s just like that. Would you believe it? It looks as good as new. I was mid-way through my first-floor tour of the museum, all the while muttering 'amazing,' 'holy cow,' and 'sweet mama,' when the guards shooed everyone out for closing time. I'll just have to spend more of my school breaks soaking in thousands of years of history (for free!). What a chore.

The Facade of the British Royal Museum