Day 1

I know that I said I wouldn't write every day, but I thought that I would share some impressions from my first day.
1)  8:00 AM is really early for your brain to comprehend systematic theology.  Not impossible, but difficult.  My professor is Dr. Metzger, who is considered "The Hard One," out of all the people who teach the introductory class.  I found him passionate, and fascinating.  I won't bore you with all the class notes, but I will share 2 quotes from class that I thought were interesting.

1) "Because iron sharpens iron doesn't me cream-puffs sharpen cream-puffs

and more seriously

2) Theology, or the study of God, is not divorced from practical application. Just because we study "God" and the scriptures, it doesn't excuse us from not applying what we learn and know.

I am finding a common trend here that we had at Portland Christian, and that is Biblical Integration.  Seeing every subject with God at the center of it.

I found my Foundations of Christian Counseling and Practicum rather droll,  but maybe that was because it was the first day.  We watched a Chuck Colson video, and that was pretty interesting, but it had nothing to do with counseling, so I am not sure why we wasted the 40 minutes on that.

I enjoyed my last class of the day.  It is called Foundations.  It is taught by Dr. Redman, the Academic Dean of the Seminary.  I find him approachable and knowledgeable. (Emily and I were guests in his home last Friday evening. He told me today during a break that after we left, because the baby needed to get to bed, that several people were playing his piano and singing.  He said that they even broke out the Schubert Lieder books, and that I would have been a good edition to that part of the party.  He invited us to come over again and sing some with them.)  The class is a Multnomah Live class, which means that students in Portland, Reno, Anchorage, and Seattle all interact with a pretty amazing teleconferencing system, as well as students can stream the lectures live anywhere in the world (without the interaction.)   The camera follows the prof around the room because he wears this lanyard with a transponder in it, and when we ask a question in class, we push this button on our table, and the camera focuses on us, so everyone can see it.  ROBO-CLASSROOM!!

I am glad that I have no classes tomorrow.  I have a hefty chunk of reading to do.  I need to read all of Genesis by Friday, plus a lot of other readings from my texts.  Emily and I also hope to go grocery shopping and keep unpacking from the move.

SIDE NOTE:  I looked around for the guy who gave us the money and he was no where to be found.  I asked a guy who lives 2 houses over and he said he didn't know of anyone named Jason in our complex.  There are 31 Jason's in the Multnomah Directory, but I am not going to go through each one to try to find the guy.

DANIEL-8-27-2012