Easter Expectations

I've been so wrapped up in anticipating Easter, I almost forgot I needed to write this. Nothing in particular is happening, event-wise, except that, well, God came down to earth and rose from the dead – hardly a minor event, even if Christmas does get all the fame and fortune. But in any case, how was my week?

Well, it was actually fairly event-full. I was really stressed for a lot of last semester, so I said ‘no’ to a lot of things this semester, but then found that not doing anything also stressed me out, in a different way. Besides which, I’m nostalgic about all these things I didn’t take advantage of while I was here. So I’m doing various things now, none of them overly important, and I’m pretty happy.

For one, I published an article in the Baptist Standard; you should go check it out, if you haven’t yet. And I published a new video on my YouTube, so if you haven’t looked at that in a while, you should do that, too! I also helped run a ROTC war games lab. “War games” sounds like it should involve running around in the dirt with the Marines yelling at us, but it actually refers to international relations discussions. I.e. “You’re on watch directing the ship, and a Russian cruiser is heading toward you on an intercept course. What do you do?”

If you’re wondering, usually the answer is usually “be ready, but stay calm, and don’t shoot unless attacked.” We’re always learning about the weaponry aboard the ships, so we have to balance that out by regularly reminding everyone that we don’t actually want to use the weaponry except as a last resort; let’s not start WWIII because you were nervous about an intercept course. Also, keep an eye out for submarines, or whoever is in charge of the scenario will probably invent a sneak-attack and *cough* sink your battleship.

On Thursday I went to the seniors’ going-away party for one of our lieutenants (they only stay for two years, and we only stay for four, so we’re constantly saying goodbye to someone). It was at nine o’clock at night at an Asian restaurant – very far from my normal eating habits – but to my surprise, I actually enjoyed the food, and I (mostly) remembered how to use chopsticks from back in Taiwan freshman year. On the way back, I ended up having a substantive philosophy conversation with my Uber driver. I actually thought we were getting somewhere, but he finished by telling me that Jesus was probably a Buddhist and ‘whatever you believe, that’s what’s true,’ so I guess we didn’t really connect after all.

I went to Good Friday services last night – I’ll have a blog post up involving that soon (on my other blog), so keep an eye out for that. The service was candlelit, which I appreciated atmosphere-wise, but which made it rather hard to sit through an hour-and-a-half service and a full sermon on a Friday night. And of course I’ll head to church on Sunday; fortunately, it’s finally warm enough to wear a skirt, so I can pull those out again. And today I’m heading to the Christian Impact baseball tailgate for a little while before finishing my work for the next few days, so I can spend Easter reflecting and recalibrating my perspective.

What else have I been spending my time on? I finally got back to studying Greek; I’ve gotten much, much less done that I planned, but at least I’ve finished my initial read of the textbook and found some texts to practice with. And I’ve been working out. A lot. Most days this week I’ve actually had two workouts – either weightlifting, or ROTC, and then kickboxing in the afternoon. I’m really sore, but it’s a good sort of sore, and I think I’m in about as good or better shape as I was last semester, which is my benchmark. We did have our final fitness test (the one that counts) for ROTC on Tuesday, and I managed to get my mile-and-a-half run down to 10:33, which is about what it was last semester and far better than it’s been at any other point in my life, so that was satisfying.

And that’s been about my week. It feels good to get out and do things, although a part of me always wants to stay in and can’t relax fully if I’m going somewhere later. For Easter, though, all the bustling will be set aside – another reason I’m looking forward to it. He is Risen!- four years at Harvard, and I'm more certain than ever. (If you want to know why, I will, of course, inevitably refer you to my blog...)

Pictures:

Sunny days are here again. No flowers yet, though. Hopefully some will appear before I leave.

 I just think it's kind of funny that we had to name the days without a special adjective "___day in Holy Week," just to be clear. Then again, my sense of humor is strange sometimes.

Kickboxing can be rather hard on the calves. But it was definitely worth it to have fun with spinning kicks.