SchneiderWeb

I really needed this week off. I purposely did not bring any books from my upcoming spring classes, although I was sorely tempted to do so. I spent much of the week watching Sandy watch Korean TV,  hanging out with the dogs, and practicing my Korean with KoreanClass101.com--a pretty neat site. (Alright, I did a little bit of reading for the spring via e-reserve, but it was assigned--I didn't take the initiative.) I've gotten used to it on the weekends, but since I was home all week I was reminded that we've rented out three rooms in our house. All the rooms are rented to Korean men, two of whom are about 50 while the other is 24. The 24-year-old lives on the first floor and is rarely seen or heard. The two ahjushi (older men, for all you Cauc-asians) live on the third floor with us (each has his own room). I'm most aware that we're living with strangers whenever I open the refrigerator. The ahjushi both have Costco memberships and shop as though they're buying...

This is a draft of an article I wrote for the church newsletter. I thought I'd post here as well. I can still remember the discipline I received from my father for marking up the kitchen cabinets with a full palette of magic markers when I was four years old. This is one of those incidents that lives on in family lore even though it happened more than 35 years ago. I don’t know what was going through my four-year-old brain—maybe I couldn’t reach any drawing paper—but I decided that it would be a good idea to treat the kitchen cabinets as my artist’s canvas. When my siblings retell the story, they always cite how the incriminating squeak of the magic markers on the cabinets was audible above the TV playing in the living room. That was the sound that drew my father’s attention. He stormed into the kitchen, only to stop in his tracks as he took in the full scope of my destruction. The spanking I received has largely faded from memory, but the red-faced wailing that followed is still ...

Today was the last day of class for the 3-week short term fall semester, which followed the 12-week long term. In 3 weeks of Christianity's Cultured Critics, which was actually shortened to 12 and a half days because of the MLK holiday, one snow-day cancellation, and another half day due to snow, we covered 10 critics. Blessedly, there were no exams or long-form papers. Rather, we kept a critical log of our response to each critic (recommended 250 words, maximum 500) and participated in a group presentation for the last two days of class. My group presented John Dominic Crossan and the Jesus Seminar. More on this class to follow in a separate post. Thirteen credits down, 65 to go [sigh].

What a presumptuous question! But this is a blog, after all, and presumably someone is reading it--that's what the blog's statistics indicate, anyway. I haven't posted at all since Christmas because during my two weeks "off" for Christmas break I: prepared the children's Christmas sermon with my pastoral partner, Dan Yang; wrote the senior high curriculum for the winter youth group retreat; and prepared a seminar for the retreat on the Old Testament. All that took place the first week. The second week was spent at the retreat, from which I got back just in time for the New Year's service. So going back to school on January 3 was actually a welcome break from my break. Since I've been back on campus I've been immersed in my readings for Christianity's Cultured Critics, my course for the fall short term. The readings are not light (Hume, Kant, Schleiermacher, etc.), and I have to keep a daily critical log and prepare a group project for the l...