The other things I do...

Since starting classes I constantly run around and seem to exist in a perpetual state of chaos. It's not a good feeling, but I suppose that's what happens when there's literally no time for me to catch my breath. I quickly wanted to record what else I have been doing for the last few weeks since school started.

**Sept. 6th I ran a 5k. And not to sound overly boastful I was pretty impressed with myself for doing (haha hows that for not being overly boastful). I had only ran a handful of times since giving birth, and not at all for the month leading up to the race, but I managed to finish, (with 12 minute miles so it wasn't fast by any means) but that's beside the fact. I was just happy to be running again, and to know that despite the bedrest and the babies I could still actually do it.

I'm away from the pack of runners because I went slightly off course so I could go say hello to Marcus and the babies who were off to the side cheering me on.

**I started my internship. I'm in my final year of my degree program and we're required to do fieldwork. Last year I interned as a community organizer and this year I'm a pastoral intern at a local UMC church. I'm primarily in charge of the campus and young adult ministries, and every tuesday evening I lead a discussion and dinner group for the undergraduate population. In addition each Sunday I have a role in the service, next week I'm preaching...

**As part of the above on the 1st and 3rd Tuesday I also work at the downtown soup kitchen, which is always an interesting experience.

** Finalized my class schedule. I'm taking 5 classes 3 boring required classes that I've put off until my last year and two more exciting ones.

• Principles and Practices of Preaching (required)
• United Methodist History, Doctrine and Polity (required and boring)
• Practicum (the class portion of my internship)
• Metaphors of Evil (amazing and taught by my favorite professor) To give you an idea of the awesomeness the course description, "This course is an examination of the ways in which metaphors function at the intersections of the various forms of oppression that coalesce into lifestyles of misery to produce social patterns of domination and subordination." 
• Walking Gently on Common Ground: An introduction to Inter-religious Engagement.
• This is a seminar class that I had to apply to be in. As part of the class we'll be traveling to Melbourne Australia in December for the World Parliaments of Religion. An amazing opportunity that I couldn't pass up on. So after much thought and conversation with Marcus I applied and will be traveling there in Dec. I'm both ecstatic about the opportunity to engage in global interfaith work and sad about leaving my babies for a week.

** I've also been dealing with the murder of another grad student on campus. The story has gained a lot of national press and I have been deeply affected by the murder of Annie Le. The president of our university been great about giving us details as they happen, so as not to be misled by the media and press, but for me the horror of this crime is sometimes to much for me to even conceive of. A woman, my age, at my university, went to her lab and never left. I don't understand, because it's just senseless, and a reminder of the fragility of life and as the president of our university said, "The darkness of the human soul." I could probably write a lot more about this as it's been weighing on my mind, but I'll leave it at this. 

**And of course the babies. They are getting bigger, Eli is feeling somewhat better today after sleeping pretty much all day yesterday. It was so sad, when he was awake he just whined and then went back to sleep. His fever is gone now and he seems to be in better spirits.

As a result of Eli being sick we put them in separate cribs in hopes that we could prevent Emerson from getting sick. It's sad for me to see them in their own cribs for some reason so I might put them back together in a few days. We'll see.