in Europe

but not of it

It occured to me today that my time in Europe will be a good opportunity to think about how a christian should interact with society. Back home, I feel as if I'm a member of Canadian society--as if I partly belong to it. I end up asking how I bring my relationship with Jesus into my relationship with other Canadians. My personal preferences--which is how other Canadians would see the outcomes of my walk w/ Jesus--have as much validity as those of other Canadians because I am of Canada. I am Canadian.

But I'm not Italian. It is not my country, I don't belong there. By watching myself, I'll hopefully be able to find out what it means to in a place, without being of it. In Canada, I belong to Christ and (sort-of) to Canada, or canadian society, anyways... Now the tension is gone (temporarily) b/c I certainly don't belong to Italy. The trick is to pray and learn throughout the experience to become fully Christ's when I do go back to Canada.

moving to europe seems too easy

except that I forgot every shred of rain gear I was supposed to bring

oops. I hope it doesn't rain.

it doesn't feel like you're leaving

until your room is empty.

Then you say goodbye to your friends and leave the house--which is funny because normally after you say goodbye, they leave your house. Now everything's upside down and all your stuff is packed in your Dad's minivan.

And you wonder how bad the rest of the goodbyes will be.

So as far as I'm concerned, going to new places is all kinds of fun, but leaving your friends is quite the opposite.

do structural engineers iterate?

or do they merely repeat themselves?

It seems to me that the civil engineering body of knowledge includes precious little knowledge of how to take on new design challenges. Respected senior engineers develop a "feel" for how big structural members should be--which can be an advantage when designing the similar structures with similar materials, but a hinderance when breaking new ground, and by the way, this is a run-on sentence.

Of course, I've spent a total of one undergraduate degree and 4 months of paid work in the engineering profession, so what do I really know? (not much) I still suspect that an aversness to change is going to frustrate me a lot if I do end up working as an engineer.

there was an ibook party...

and I missed it.

Today was the annual Christine-is-in-town CDA meeting. We seem to have outgrown our "cliquey" stage because there were many faces that were new to the CDA, which is exciting. Anyways, one of those faces was Elissa. I looked up from the couch to see her carrying not one, but two ibooks. It turns out she was having an ibook party with Mike, who who had also brought his.

my ibook, however, was sleeping at home. So I couldn't join the party. All I could do feel like a cool kid as I watched Mike make exclamations of desire concerning the two-fingered scrolling capability of Elissa's new ibook. "yeah, that's right, mine does that too"

oh boy. it's just a computer, dave, it's just a computer...