WEEKEND BLOGGING

hello, hello. it is the weekend!!! yay! well... the 4 hour anatomy exam is over. after a test that long, it is hard to decide how you did on the test because you cannot remember anything once you are finished, haha. i will say that i think i did the best on the cadaver and palpation lab sections. actually, you know whether on not you did good in the palpation lab as soon as you finish because you either found the muscle, nerve, tendon, artery or you did not. well, that is enough about school.

here are more apartment pictures!






here is a shot of the bedroom. we have a "sheets only" policy because it is just the right temperature at night. we will save the big blankets and down comforters for the FREEZING winter weather that is to come.







this is the hallway into the bedroom. i know it is not a very good shot. i am just trying to piece together the apartment for my beloved readers who have not yet made it for a visit.








just imagine you are sitting on our couch. do you feel like you are visiting? haha













we thought this was most appropriate! come on in!











i just stepped out our door. you can see our mailbox and the door outside to play!












outside out apartment buliding into the court yard in the middle of all the apartment bulidings. this is where all the kids play, and we have grilling parties.











storage unit? it looks more like an animal cage to me. someone give me bananas and peanuts, please!!










speaking of food... i am starving. the menu for tonight is grilled hamburgers by chef jon, and the grand finale will be DAVE AND ANDYS ICE CREAM!!! yay! (by the way, i hear the ice cream truck. too bad i cannot see it!) feel free to stop by for dinner if you are in the area!

LOVE, LOVE, LOVE,
e l i z a b e t h

round 2 (ding!)

howdy. i must say it finally feels like summer. i guess with all the hustle and bustle of the past few weeks i forgot it was actually summer. today's 80 degree temp may have had some influence on this feeling as well. here i am back to deliver more wonderful pictures of the burgh! enjoy my friends...



the kitchen. we are working it in a rather primitive fashion i might add... no dishwasher or icemaker or a/c. it really has not been a problem. i think we use a lot less water, and the dishes are probably cleaner, too, because each dirty dish gets personal attention. i think they like it. except for the small drinking glasses, we are 2 down and have only been here 3 weeks!







here we have, you guessed it, the bathroom! the green wallpaper dates the apartment a little. be sure to take notice of the beautifully hand crafted (by yours truly) matching mosiac toothbrush holder and soap dispenser. you will notice we dispersed crosses all over the apt this time instead of making one huge cross wall. these we dubbed bathroom crosses. haha








more of the bathroom. the craziest thing about pittsburgh; you'll never believe it. the shower and towel racks are upside down. this makes things interesting to say the least!












our book display is overwhelming. somehow they are all packed into the apartment. jon's closet and dresser are in here, too. i am standing on the famous white sleeping couch to take the pic.



i think i am all blogged out. actually, i could stay on here all night, but i must learn more anatomy. the photo tour will be continued at a later date.

love, love, love,
e l i z a b e t h

greek exams, t.s. eliot, and paris hilton

i just got finished with my greek midterm! yay! only two weeks of greek, and we already had a midterm. school is crazy. my final is less than two weeks away. i can now look at a "v" and my mind automatically translates it into a "nu." a "w" becomes an "omega," and an "x" becomes a "chi." there is something disturbing about all of this. if my words begin to look misspelled, please refer to the greek alphabet!

on a different note, i have been reading some t.s. eliot, and it is blowing me away. i have been making an effort to be more attentive to poets and artists. i agree with eugene peterson that they are the modern prophets. their work often points to things that we dare not say or think. it exposes beauty and truth in a way that is stripped of all pretenses. it points to simplicity. any way, i wanted to share a little from the choruses from "the rock:"

The Eagle soars in the summit of Heaven,
The Hunter with his dogs pursues his circuit.
O perpetual revolution of configured stars,
O perpetual recurrence of determined seasons,
O world of spring and autumn, birth and dying!
The endless cycle of idea and action,
Endless invention, endless experiment,
Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness;
Knowledge of speech, but not of silence;
Knowledge of words, and ignorance of the Word.
All our knowledge brings us nearer to our ignorance,
All our ignorance brings us nearer to death,
But nearness to death no nearer to GOD.
Where is the Life we have lost in living?
Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge?
Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?
The cycles of Heaven in twenty centuries
Bring us farther from GOD and neared to Dust.

it doesn't take much reflection to realize we can fill our heads with a lot of things, but we are missing it all if we are missing God. even at seminary, it is a constant battle, not just to know about God, but to know Him on a personal, intimate level. there is a great temptation to study man-made texts and arguments and not be immersed in God-breathed words and filled with God-breathed Spirit. it deeply saddens me to meet intelligent, talented people who are determined, well-intentioned, and have enormous potential but are missing the most important thing. what seems to be an area of a small weakness or ignorance translates into a huge area of incorrect living.

it all begins with stillness and silence. these things can be quite disturbing, since we discover our emptiness and incompleteness in them. paris hilton is finding this out. i am sorry, paris, but you are no different than anyone else. you screwed up, and now you have to deal with the consequence. paris' biggest struggle isn't the danger of prison, however, it is that she is being forced to sit alone in a prison cell for 23 hours a day and think. she has nothing to think about because her existence thus far in life has been utterly meaningless. she has been removed from her worldly identity and possessions, as we will all one day, and there is nothing left. her emptiness is eating her alive. maybe she is figuring all this out. but even in a place that is physically still and silent, there can be great noise. i pray paris finds true stillness and silence and can hear God whispering words of love.

may we all find it.

cheers,
jw

a beginning blogger

hi all! i am so proud to finally make time to do this. the weeks are flying by. you know life is crazy when there is not even time to clip your nails and floss your teeth! all of my blogging goals have taken a backseat... until now. i must make this brief.


what i love about pittsburgh:
1. dave and andy's ice cream!!!!!!!! (apple cinnamon, oatmeal, walnut and wildberry crumble all made in the shop)
2. the bus... and jon walking me to the bus stop every morning :)
3. my school!... anatomy lab and wayne and the remote control wrapped in saran warp
4. our back porch where we spend MANY hours studying
5. target(s) and other wonderful shopping opportunities
6. finding new and exciting places on our saturday afternoon search trip
7. our new apartment
8. highland and schenley parks
9. the ice cream truck
10. different ethnic neighborhoods
11. beautiful churches... the open door
12. grocery stores! (giant eagle and whole foods)
13. the arts center ( i wish to take some type of class in all my free time)
14. the childrens' hospitals i will work at
15. all the kids who play in the courtyard everyday
16. rain and shine all in the same day (we rank just behind seattle in rainfall)
17. musicals (yay for high school musical!)
18. getting mail from people i love!!!!!

what i do not love about pittsburgh:
1. that it is not in alabama (sorry connor)
2. no one from home can come see all this great stuff
3. missing the bus
4. being in the middle of so many great things and not having time or money to do them! (thanks for the tickets, anthony!)
5. getting to know new newscasters and weathermen


love to all from the burgh!
elizabeth

snap shots of home

you are looking at downtown from mt washington. i love all the boats in the river; they are listening to the kenny chesney concert at heinz field.








here are the apt pics as promised. this is the official study porch! studying outside is a good cure for cabin fever.









the spacious living room... couch area and you can see directly into the kitchen. take a left before the kitchen and you go into the hallway to the bedrooms.








this is where we dine. also in the spacious living room. we finally got around to ordering drapes this weekend. they should be up soon. the door to our porch is after the couch on the right. please notice my cute plants! i love them. the window screens are in the corner because they are painting the window frames.




welcome! here is the door. lovely coat closet on the right. what a treat to have such wonderful closets!





whew!!! blogging really takes a long time. especially with all these pictures. this grand tour of the apt will be published in a few doses. stay tuned!

bye for now.
elizabeth

the pittsburgh pigs???

so elizabeth and i are out making a quick trip to a shopping center near our apartment. it has a wal-mart and a giant eagle (grocery store), which is why we were over there, as well as a sporting good store, a tj max, a barnes and nobles, a staples, a cinema, etc. any way, it is a big, nice shopping center. can you picture it?

after we finished our shopping at wally world and the grocery store, we decided to see what time the movies were showing, so we proceeded to drive over to the cinemas. on the way to the cinemas, i'm not paying any attention to anything but the road (in my stellar driving manner), and, all of a sudden, i hear elizabeth say, "is that guy walking a pig?" what? no way! i look back, and sure enough, i see something that i never saw in my 21 years in mississippi - it is a fat guy in overalls walking a big, brown pot-bellied pig on a rope leash in front of durham's discount sports!

what the crap! and they think we are rednecks! by the way, to make the story even better, we had seen an old chevy s-10 truck that was painted camo earlier that evening. last saturday pittsburgh was in a gridlock due to a sold out kenny chesney concert at heinz field, where the steelers play (we are talking 50,000+ people). oh, the times i wished i had my camera... you realize very quickly that, although there are some minor differences, people are the same everywhere.

cheers,
jw

random updates...

i just wanted to mention a few things. first, i have updated some stuff on the blog. i have added mama cooper's blog site to the blogroll. second, elizabeth has officially signed on, so our profile looks a little different now. i am working on getting a picture back up. speaking of pictures, we finished hanging pictures and crosses in the apartment today, and elizabeth took pictures. those should be up in the next day or two. we also got some pictures overlooking downtown pittsburgh from mount washington last night, but that is a whole different story. third, i got a different picture of us and eugene peterson, so i changed that picture with the one in the earlier blog because it was better.

that's about it. elizabeth and i are just getting ready for the week. we are heavy into studying. elizabeth already knows over half the parts of the body, and i am already translating greek from the nt! crazy what you can learn in a week. tomorrow we are going to try to get our cars (titles, registrations, license plates, driver's licenses) taken care of. also, i am applying for some jobs at the apple store, borders, starbucks, and maybe a barnes and nobles.

cheers from the burgh,
jw

p.s. check out bryan daniel's blog! he is blogging from uganda. also, becca warden is blogging from spain. really, you should check their sites out.

p.s.s. go bulldogs. we are still bleeding maroon and white even up north.