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A Mid-Summer Update - that mostly just covers this week...
Well, I guess this will be my attempt to start back up with updating the blog with what is going on in my life this summer. Yeah, I know that it isn't the middle of summer just yet (considering that that season just started), but it's the middle of my summer, so that's how I got the title. (That is something I am going to have to work on - the titles of my posts are sometimes pretty boring.)
As you probably saw, we got back from vacation about 2 weeks ago, and since them I have been working at Titan and doing Spanish. The Titan job, which I did last summer, goes from 7:30-4:00 (with a 1/2 hour lunch break), and so far has involved lots of paperwork/filing/spreadsheeting as well as the occasional audit of something on the plant floor. Not terribly interesting stuff, but it's a job, so there you go...
Spanish, on the other hand, has been more challenging. First a little background: I spent two years (2010-2012) at John Wood Community College here in Quincy. During those years, one class that I took was Spanish 101. In this class, back in 2010, I got an A, but that was only because I managed to do pretty well through the first half of the class (due to the little bit of Spanish that I remembered from high school), and in the second half of the class I basically aced the quizzes and other activities (most of which you could retake until you got 100%) and, well, didn't ace the tests. Let's just say that I squeaked by and didn't learn very much. Well, fast forward (almost) 3 years, and I find that I need to have another semester of Spanish to graduate from Marian. So, I decide, that since my schedule is so packed, I'll take Spanish over the summer and knock out that class when I don't have the other classes to worry about.
Well, class started 2 weeks ago, and I am not quite done with the first two weeks of assignments. I work on the stuff every evening for a few hours and got about 4 hours in on Friday, but it is just such a struggle. I basically use brute force to get through everything - arduously translate everything - word, after word, after word... This gets even more time consuming when I have to listen to a recording and then answer questions about it. Most times I am left trying to pick out words and make an educated guess... So yeah, there you have it, I'm pretty sure that I have less free time over the summer than I do during the school year.
Of course, I have still managed to have some fun - one example being this weekend. This weekend the family (and I) drove up to visit my grandmother near Rockford, IL. We got there late Friday night, and spent all of Saturday, and Sunday morning, visiting. I spent a little bit of time looking at my Grandmother's book collection on Saturday. She owned a Catholic bookstore for many years, and thus, along with other reasons, has a superb collection of Catholic books. Kreeft, Belloc, Sheen, Hardon, Ratzinger and many, many, more appear on innumerable subjects. Grandma, extremely generously, gave me several philosophy books (some, I'm sure, irreplaceable), as well as some old (as in pre-1900!) books on other topics. I also enjoyed some family-famous cole-slaw for lunch. Thanks Grandma!
On Sunday, we went to Mass at 6:30 AM, at a Church called Holy Rosary (which I hadn't been to before), and it turned out to be a beautiful, reverent Mass. Father (of whom I didn't catch the name) gave a wonderful homily wrapping in the challenge to overcome concupiscence and our own desires and replace those things with Christ and His desires. It was a great homily, of course my summary/paraphrase of one of his points leaves much to be desired... Anyway, it reinforced in my mind how the Mass can still be reverent, beautiful, solid and all that sort of thing even when the building (in this case) leaves a bit to be desired. I don't want to complain about church architecture, but some churches are definitely more beautiful (in my mind) than others - and I'll leave it at that...
After Mass, before processing out, Father led one decade of the rosary for the protection of Religious Freedom and the Family. In my previous post with that video from the USCCB about the Fortnight, I had said that we all should do something to support these immensely important parts of our culture and country. I thought that father's leading of these extra prayers (at the request of the Bishop) was a really great way to "do something". You really can't beat prayer, especially to Our Lady. Fantastic!
After Mass we went over to an all-you-can-eat buffet, which had an astonishing amount of different foods. This place has a multiple types of french toast, a chocolate fountain, and a steak bar! (My kind of place) Of course, I now have to skip dinner if I don't want to fall into the whole gluttony thing - something that Father specifically mentioned (to avoid) during the homily... hmmm.
I spent the afternoon hanging out with 2 cousins playing some cops-n-robbers and such. (It was pretty hot, so we wore out after maybe an hour or so.) Quite a fun time!
Now we are in the car to go back home and I am attempting to get some Spanish done. We are also listening to some Lighthouse Catholic CD's (St. Joseph = awesome!). It would be great if I could write up a post on some of them, but I have a felling that Spanish will be taking all my free time this week. I haven't finished the stuff I needed to for the last two weeks - catch up time...
OK, well that is all I've got for the moment. I'm going to have to figure out how to do Spanish more quickly, so I have more time to blog (and, more importantly, hang out with the family.)
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