Hooray for a healthy and beautiful niece! Eliza Grace is home and doing great - and so are her parents. Andrew, my nephew, apparently likes to run by her, touch her nose, and walk away singing "na na na na na." (He's 2, can you tell?) I really wish I could see them, but I guess this is what comes of our choices to live on opposite ends of the country.
Grandma seems to be doing better, and, according to my mom, is a little disappointed in that. :) She's no longer on morphine and the pain has subsided, but the general consensus is that while death may not be imminent anymore, it also may not be far off. Grandma just wants to go be with God - she's not enjoying her new nursing home, which I can imagine. Mentally, she's always been incredible, but she just can't live on her own physically speaking anymore. But it sounds like a large majority of the other residents aren't in the same boat. They do, however, have Packer parties there, so...well, it's Wisconsin. :)
In other news, Jeremy and I started classes again on Monday. I'm realizing that this will be our first full year as Fuller students. With the start of the quarter came the start of Greek, for me. This will be interesting. I'm not sure my crappy high school Spanish program counts as experience studying foreign languages, so I'm not sure if I'm good at learning foreign languages. But, as my prof reminded us, the goal of this class isn't to communicate with Greek-speaking people. We don't have to hold a conversation in Greek or write papers in Greek, or even construct brand new sentences in Greek. Everything we need to know and interact with is already written in the New Testament, and we just have to know enough to work with that material. That made it feel a whole lot less daunting to me. Also at Fuller, I'm taking a class on the Gospels with a woman who is supposed to be one incredible Gospels prof, so I'm excited. I really love New Testament Biblical Studies classes, especially the Gospels. So, this will be great.
Also, I was accepted into Fuller's choir - or Vocal Ensemble, as they like to be called. There was an audition, and I could tell I was very out of practice as far as classical singing goes, but I made it. I think I would've been a little embarrassed to not make it. The choir is pretty good, but not incredible, and after singing in some pretty awesome choirs at Calvin, it would be sad to be rejected from this little number. But, I wasn't, so hooray! Anyway, our first rehearsal was last night, and I was surprised how much I missed it. I realized that the past year (and then some) since I've been out of college was the first time in my life that I wasn't part of a choir since I was about 6 years old. So it was nice to be at it again. Yes, I know, I am a choir nerd.
Another self-revelation came to me in Greek. The letter "O", which in Greek is "omicron", which is the symbol for the short-O sound. (Aren't you impressed with my extensive alphabetical knowledge? And only after one class and about three I-don't-know-how-to-do-this-I-can't-do-this freakout moments!) In class, the professor was helping us through the alphabet and the pronunciation of each letter (similar to a kindergarten class exercise), and when he got to "omicron" and said it was a short-O, like "aw" (sort of), I thought to myself...that's not a short-O sound. But then I thought back to my singing diction classes and remembered that yes, that is the short-O sound, but why does it sound so weird to me when it's spoken? And I realized, I learned how to talk in Wisconsin, in which the short-O is more like a really nasally "ah." Oops.
Anyway, back to my attempt to read and pronounce various Greek words. I will not freak out...
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