Brian and I went to his parsonage last night to get off campus and just relax. We went exploring in a creek next to his house; we tried to hunt a beaver (we were going to cook it on his new grill), but it got away. We ended up wading downstream, water up to our chests, for about half a mile. When we got out, we learned that there were giant snapping turtles who lived in the creek. It took us one and a half hours to set up a small charcoal grill (we are so mechanically-challenged that we put it together wrong about three or four times, and I hurt my head and hand). We had planned on not eating anything last night, but we went and got hot dogs to celebrate getting the grill fixed. As we were going to bed, a bird swooped into the house and started flying around. The room was dark and we heard its fluttering wings, and I thought we were being attacked. We used a blanket to fish the bird out the back door (it reminds me of the scene in Black Sheep). This afternoon we fixed homemade mashed potatoes and baked beans with strips of bacon, and ate them alongside grape soda and nice chunks of ribeye steak fixed on the grill... Ah, it was nice!

Being out in the hills of Kentucky last night made me realize how much I want to live in the country. It also showed me how fast time is going by. Brian already has a house, a job, and he might end up getting engaged after the summer. John is getting married in about two months, and Price is already married and owns three businesses from his wife's father. I get too impatient--I want to have a youth ministry job, I want to have a small backwoods house, I want to have a girlfriend with whom I can talk about marriage realistically. "Patience, child, patience."

I've signed up for my classes next semester: Basic Bible Doctrine I, Hermeneutics (how to interpret, study, and read the Bible correctly), Advanced Communication (for dealing with people), Survey of Multi-Cultural Literature, and (with Dyke) Old Testament Prophecy. I will be on campus an extra week in one of Dyke's late classes, "Old Testament Poetry." We should cover the psalms, the wisdom literature, and the various poetry throughout the Old Testament; I'll be commuting from Brian's parsonage, thirty minutes south of Cincinnati.