Speaking in Tongues and Breaking Codes

This last week was the freshmen's orientation week, while simultaneously, Conventiculum.  Conventiculum is a week long Latin intensive, where you speak only in Latin to your counterparts who are taking this course.  Now, to preface all of this, it isn't unusual to be walking down a hallway in NSA, and hear an impassioned dialogue taking place in Latin.  That being said, it is unusual to run into more than two or three students that are involved in such conversations.  But now, if you walk anywhere, you are bound to run into hordes of raving students who are muttering, arguing, and laughing in Latin.  (I don't know how they laugh in Latin, but after speaking it for nine hours a day, you definitely experience a change.)

Anyway, this is all happening at the same time that I have been wading through the murky prerequisite course for the Hebrew class that I'm taking this year.  (Thankfully, I am not taking Conventiculum this year.)  So, you can just imagine the possibilities of heightened casualities around school.  It almost feels like Babel at some points.  Here I am, just trying to wrap my mind around Hebrew, while all around me, Latin is being spoken as if it were the mother-tongue, and then English is thrown in there as an after thought.

An example of how confusing this can be, is when I was trying to unlock my bike from it's place on the rack the other day.  I could not for the life of me get it unlocked.   I knew that I was using the right code, but I couldn't crack it.  I stood there a couple of minutes trying to unlock it, but it wasn't until my friend tried it that it finally released my bike.  I looked at it, confused, and then realized that he had entered the code from left to right.. like a normal human should.  But, I was actually attempting it from  right to left.  I think Hebrew is having it's way on my life.

All that to say, this is  how my life has been going.  It's a transition from one season of life to another.  And unlike some transitions that are smooth, I feel that I'm in for a shock this time.  I've stopped working at one job, moved into a new apartment, been working on Hebrew, and have also been meeting all the new freshmen.  When I write it out like this, it doesn't seem like there's that much going on, but it sure feels like it.

I guess this turned into a bit of a life update, but I think that I've learned that God has a sense of humor, and maybe He makes transitions slightly uncomfortable, so as to jar us awake, and that we don't get too complacent.  And in this instance, trying to communicate has been a bit of a jarring experience.