lukesoliver.com

Well, it’s been a while since I’ve written anything of substance on here and as it turns out, this is not going to be the time to break the silence (I mean, honestly, does anybody really want to hear my rants and raves?).  But I thought I’d post a little update for all of you who were curious/skeptical of my continued existence…

I’m back in Alaska!  I made it…actually I made it a week and a half ago.  I made the drive north again and this time I was alone.  Very alone.  Alone for FORTY-FIVE HOURS OF DRIVE TIME…THREE WHOLE DAYS!!!!  I was having some good conversations with myself by the end.  I also ran into (not literally) a herd of buffalo and several reindeer…so check ‘em off the Alaska Wildlife Checklist!

But I made it…only to find that the housing that I thought I was moving into is not going to work out, i.e. the cabin currently consists of only exterior walls with little hope of being finished before winter.  So, I’ve been looking around for others options and I think that I’ve found a nice, cozy little cabin just a mile away from the school.  Should be just enough space for me…a loft to sleep in, a little kitchen/living room downstairs complete with a gas fireplace.  I’ll be moving in later this week.

I ran a race on Saturday: the Lost Lake Run.  It was a nice mountain, trail run…about sixteen miles, nine up and seven down.  Next up, Kenai River Marathon on September 26.

I’m currently spending my time trying to prepare courses, working on the spiritual life component of the year, and generally getting settled and revved up for when students show up in a week and a half…woah.

Anyway, that’s all the news for the moment.  I’ll be in touch again before too long…but now I need to get to work.

I taught my last class of the semester today.  Thank God.

Teaching at ACC has been a…well, I guess the best word is “educational”…experience.  I mean, I have learned a lot.  It’s been up and down.  I’ve certainly enjoyed the experience and the opportunity to spend some good time really digging into the subject matter…but it’s left me wondering if I am really desiring/cut-out to do this.

I’m really good at having information and talking and being able to sound like I know what it is that I’m talking about…yep…certainly got that going for me.  But my problem is that I’m not (yet) a good teacher.  For the couple of students that are from a more “Western”-style school system (we’re talking Greco-Roman-philosophical kind of “western” here, not high-noon-shootout, by the way) I think I’m good; those who are used to long lectures and note-taking have done well.  But there are very few of them.  The majority of my students tend to not respond well to this sort of teaching, as evidenced by the glazed-over looks that I receive after about the first ten minutes of each class period as well as the mad rush to the door the moment I give even a hint of wrapping the class up.  I’ve tried to incorporate more teaching techniques to communicate in different ways, but I think that I’m certainly going to need to do more of that in the future.

Ethics worked well for me.  It was a discussion-oriented type of class.  I could bring in different elements to help break up the monotony.  It was also more concrete.

New Testament and Deuteronomy are much more information-oriented (thus my lectures) and abstract subjects.  I didn’t have the resources available for as much video usage and all that.

I’m glad the semester is done.  I feel as though I’ve been trying to coast to the end…or maybe claw my way…I’m not sure which.  In one class I felt as though I was running out of things to say; in the other I felt like I had plenty to say but that my class’s brains were all full.  Neither is a good situation.  But I’ve made it.  Now I can go about figuring out how to do it better…

Wow.  It’s the 31st.  Crazy.

It’s been another negligent blogging month.  But hey, I’ve been working hard.  Things are a little nuts up here in Alaska.  Teaching two classes from scratch has proved to be a good challenge.  I’m finally getting to the point where I have a little breathing room between my planning and my teaching.  But only a little.

In other news, it’s sunny!  I mean, there’s actually daylight!  Hours of it!  Yes, there is a drastic difference between mid-December in Alaska and end-of-January in Alaska.  I mean, it was getting light at 8:30 this morning.  And the other day, I was out skiing until almost 6pm…with no headlamp!

We could use some snow up here.  I have to say…I’m a little disappointed in Alaska.  I’m starting to believe that it doesn’t exist. I thought back in November that I was really in for it.  But things just haven’t panned out to be as intense as they initially seemed.  I mean, temperature usually sits around 20-25 during the day and then drops to around 5-10 at night.  But seriously, I thought Alaskans were supposed to be these Xtreme folks.  And the snow?  We’ve got about a foot and a half or so…Where’s the heaps and heaps and heaps of the stuff?  Fortunately it’s enough to ski on, although right now we really really need a fresh six inches or so because it’s basically like an ice rink out on the trails…and I’m only exaggerating a little bit.

But in exciting news, I signed up to do the Tour of Anchorage.  It’s a 50k ski marathon.  Should be fun.  It’s five weeks from today.  So I’m trying to get strong again.  The good news is that that’s more time than I gave myself back in September…and I have a better base now.

Well, that’s the exciting news.  Except that yesterday I came home and climbed out of my car and there was a mommy and baby moose standing in front of my door…blocking my entrance to my house.  But they moved.  So I don’t actually have an exciting story related to that occurrence.

I was talking to a friend here at the Canby House (I’m still in Portland for my Christmas Break) the other day and he was commenting on how 2009 was an eventful year.  I proceeded to think to myself, “Wow.  2009 was a pretty boring year for me!”  I mean, it’s not that nothing happened, but it really was kind of just a normal year (whereas the last several have been quite eventful).  Moving to Alaska was kind of the only big momentous thing.  So here’s a list of the top ten small but meaningful things that happened to me this year.

10.  The Canby House community garden project was a success!  Though I wasn’t there to reap many of the fruits of my labor, it was a great experiment that taught me a lot and allowed for

some great time and conversations with great people and plus it felt good just to spend a lot of time outside and getting dirty.

9.  Spent a day with Cousin Shannon hiking around Multnomah Falls and having lunch at McMenamins Edgefield.

8.  I spent a lot of good time with Cousin Jesse and Now-Cousin-In-Law Jen…two people who are great and who I hadn’t seen a lot within the past decade/hadn’t really gotten to know well at all.

7.  I won a marathon.  Granted there were only about 25 people in the race.  Granted my time was twenty-seven minutes slower (that’s one minute per mile) than my previous slowest time…but I WON!

6.  I traveled into the Alaskan Bush to the village of Shaktoolik…a very eye opening experience.

5.  I took on a job that I actually enjoy!  Let’s hear it for jobs with intellectual stimulation!

4.  I got to spend several days with my whole family in the Methow back in April.  I hadn’t seen my brother Ben’s family in almost two years and it had been three years since we had all been together.

3.  East of Eden entered my list of the best books ever written.

2.  When I was driving up to Alaska with my cousin Jesse, somewhere near the Alaska/Canada border at about 3am, we pulled over to the side of the road to look at the northern lights.  It was pretty cool.  But then it got even better when meteors were shooting across them.  Spectacular.

1.  Lots of good time spent with great people doing nothing particularly special but just enjoying wonderful fellowship.  Thanks everybody!

1. Sunrise was at 10am this morning.  Certainly, dawn arrived much earlier, but I still tend to get this feeling that I’m in some sort of ethereal time-warp.
2. Yesterday was the winter’s first ski.  It felt good.  I’m about to head out for the winter’s second ski.
3. Healing takes time.  One of the advantages of being up here at ACC is that I get to take advantage of professional counseling from the counseling center.  So I’ve been going.  And I’ve been realizing that some scars still run pretty deep.  But I’m also starting to see that maybe the point isn’t to get rid of them but to be shaped by them.  After I got a stress fracture in college from overtraining, I had to learn how to run again, how to train again…I couldn’t go about things in the same way and expect to not get hurt again…and even now, when I start training hard, that same spot, the left tibia, sometimes acts up and I have to be careful.  Maybe emotional injuries work the same way.  Be careful, learn from it, be shaped by it, but never forget it, never act as though it isn’t still a deep part of me.
4. My application to Duke’s Ph.D. program is all submitted.  Now I get to wait around for a couple of months to see if I’m even in the running.
5. N.T. Wright is a phenomenal thinker.  I’m getting close to finishing Justification and though it’s a pretty heady book, I’d recommend it to anyone who wants to believe that maybe the message of Jesus is better than even we imagined.  I never used to like Paul much…but Wright is convincing me that I need to give him a new, better, more informed reading.
6. Somehow I’ve found myself “in charge” of organizing worship at the new The River Covenant Church plant here in Soldotna.  Challenging.
7. The semester is coming to an end.  Ethics was discussing food last week.  I ended on this topic because it ties together a lot of the other issues and shows how they are connected.  We are going to watch a documentary tomorrow, Food, Inc. I recommend that you all see it.  It will change the way that you think about what you eat and it demonstrates those connections to many other ethical issues.  Final exams next week.
8. I’m headed home in less than two weeks.  And by home I mean Portland and then Winthrop for a little while and then back to Portland to fly back here to Alaska.  Hope to see many of you then.