I saw the most epic thing today, which restored my faith in humanity.

Jesus Painter (actually his partner) was here again. UMBC's drum circle also happened to be practicing in the same place. I think you can see where this is going.

Now, first for a little background. Jesus Painter is a fundamentalist preacher that comes by on campus, often with his associates. He preaches how Muslims and Hindus are going to Hell (often to their faces), preaches about Evil-lution in front of the Biology building, and- well, never mind the gay students. His church brought in little kids one time to proselytize and tell people about Jesus.

Most of the time people get very upset with him. I've seen a woman crying because of him, and Muslim students screaming at him. Atheists get into shouting matches with him. A good number of people will mock and insult him, and usually there's at least one, "Hail Satan" or "Raptor Jesus, Hallelujah!" or something like that. It gets very ugly and sometimes security has to come.

This is not what happened. By the time I got there, incense was burning, two girls were dancing with hula hoops, and the drummers were pounding one hell of a rhythm and making it difficult to hear the preacher. One of the drummers picked up a reggae tune, his voice carrying over the sermon to the crowd around him.

"Preacher mon, why do you say I'm goin' to hell?"

The preacher carries on, trying to keep the attention on him. The crowd takes the cue. It starts clapping to the drums.

"Heaven is where my heart is, and my heart is here." The drummer begins to dance with one of the hula girls, who doesn't seem the least to mind.

The preacher is petrified. It's the first nice day in September, and people are having fun despite him.

The singer gives up his stage for an aspiring freestyle rapper. A middle-aged office worker in a shirt and tie walks out of the admin building, maybe on lunch break, and stands there a while, eying first the preacher, then the revelers, looking confused. Finally, he sits down by a djembe and started tentatively accompanying a punk kid drumming away in a tree. By the time the first singer picks up his song again, joined by a second tenor and an improvised beatboxer, most people have forgotten about hatin'.

I don't care if any of them were philosophy majors or not, it was the most extraordinary theological debate I've ever seen.

(Letter to my mom after campus move-in, senior year)

Hello,

I've been ok here. Something of a shock to be living with and around a lot
of people constantly when I was pretty much by myself back home. It's
actually kind of exhausting. I put up some posters after you left but the
apartment is still pretty empty-looking. So far one of the textbooks I
ordered online has arrived, so I've returned the one I bought at the
campus bookstore. I am still waiting on the other.

I have been making an effort to eat breakfast. So far it is going pretty
well. A new eating place opened in the Commons which serves
Mediterranean-ish food, to replace the old fried chicken place which I
never went to. I haven't actually eaten there yet though, because anything
that looks good enough to eat is too expensive for my meal plan. I had a
delicious shepherd's pie on Friday at a frat barbecue. Everyone on campus
is sick of me telling them about how good it was. So now I only have to
say, "Did I tell you about the shepherd's pie I had on Friday-" and
everyone starts to groan. But it really was delicious, so I feel I should
tell you too.

School got closed in the afternoon on Friday because a water main broke,
maybe due to all the rain, and flooded Wilkens Avenue. I hope Dad is
feeling happier now that he no longer has to water the grass, because
before I left he'd been waiting for it to rain for like two weeks. I went
to Patapsco State Park with Jeremy on Monday to hike around the nature
trails. I went wading in the river and he taught me how to skip rocks, but
we had to leave because it started raining (and also, honestly, because I
got tired and he got hungry). It's actually been raining hard here all
day. It got so swamped that I saw a plumbing truck come by to pump water
off the walkways. Some of my books got pretty wet and now the edges of one
book's pages is bright pink from my notebook's dye. Oh well, it's still
readable.

First day of scuba was on Sunday, but we don't go into the water until
next week. On the first day we will be diving in the lap pool but on the
second day we will be diving in the diving well.

So that is what I have been up to.

Say congratulations to Uncle Jim for me,

Angie

Oscar Berninger! Fix the ice cream machine,
ruiner of hope and dasher of dreams.
Dining hall lord on your dining hall throne,
I pine for my frosty desserts in a cone.

So!

School is great... I moved into an on-campus apartment, which is very nice. It actually feels homey, unlike that one room which is a dorm, and the common room which nobody uses. I got myself a foil poster of one of those ostentatious 17th century world maps to plaster across the wall, and a pre-Raphaelite is going on my door. Jose has a giant Middle-Earth map on his ... ceiling... which makes for great staring at when you're lying on the floor. His walls are covered with his favorite artist.... Salvador Dali.

As given to abstraction as Jose is, I really should've guessed.

I actually have female friends this year. It's pretty fun actually living with girls. One of the downsides to being a nerd is that... it's hard to meet girls. Amber is sick and went back to So.Co. though. :( She and Katie are pretty awesome. Karissa is quiet and is always talking to her fiancee over webcam/voicechat, so it's like she's never around. Katie says Karissa says the same thing about me...

I'm trying to start a sci-fi and fantasy club on campus, if I can ever wade through the paperwork... I already have enough members to start out with.

My classes:

Roman Empire
Greek Life and Thought
Applied Statistics for Business and Economics
Household Economics <-- not to be confused with Home Ec
Theory of Public Finance

It's a little embarrassing that I don't know who my suitemates are. Oh, I know who they are because I know their names, and being that I have two suitemates, I have a fifty-fifty chance of calling one the right name. But it's problematic when I'm bringing back the mail and don't know who to give it to. And who wants to tell people they live with that they've forgotten their names?

Involvement Fest today. It was fun people watching. Unfortunately, the Political Economics booth I was manning was sandwiched with the Baptist Ministry, the Catholic frats, and the Mormons, so people basically walked by quickly, trying very hard not to make eye contact. If I had wrangled in the Republicans' Club member dressed like a giant flip-flop, I could've made it Conservative Alley or something.

Moved the booth next to the quiet heavily-trafficked College Democrats and Habitat for Humanity tables, and got quite a bit more traffic after that. As a bonus, I now have gimungous John Kerry for President sign which I'm displaying at my dorm room window.

Hey, did you know that there's a group going to Florida to campaign for Kerry? Man, that takes dedication.

Have moved into my dorm, at Harbor North, 342. My roommate seems sociable but not in the cheerful, party girl breed of outgoing that was characteristic of my last two roommates. Weird getting into the hang of things, especially when you look at old dorm buildings that you reflexively think of as your or your friends' dorms, but of course you don't live there anymore. My roommate has a webcam, which she says is basically her only way to see her boyfriend in New York. Will M has one too, one of the fancy ones that tracks his motions. I think this is a good idea for me and Jeremy, seeing that I might as well put my T1 (or T3, is it?) and his cable connection to good use. Also, I'm reminded of Jeremy a lot more than I was at home; I keep thinking I see him out of the corner of my eye, and oddly enough, certain smells remind me of him, though I can't really pin down what they are. Just certain hallway smells (not the Sus smell, mind you, which is still even after that building was renovated). He may be coming to visit me this weekend, God willing. Conflicted as to whether I'm happier around him or no; I mean, it is a lot harder to find things for two people to do than one person to do on this boring campus, as I by myself am pretty easy to please entertainment-wise. Give me the net and peer 2 peer.

Have spent my time after move-in unpacking and decorating. My room is smaller than the one at Chesapeake or Jeremy's room in Erickson, but it does have its own common room and a bathroom that is, unlike Chesapeake, bigger than a closet. Both the bedrooms, the common room, and the bathroom are invadvertantly accessorized in pastel shades, down to the lamps and shower curtains. It looks nice, but I think my Aragorn poster ruins this effect.

Pat and Biting Chris (who should not be confused with Malfean Chris, or Chris K, aka "Brian's Chris") happen to coincidentally share an apartment, so I helped them unpack also, and move furniture around to optimize space in the apartment singles. This is like squeezing blood from a stone. Tagged around after Jose and Brian K, who share a room in Erickson, like some sort of heirs to the Kay-Niall-Jeremy Ericksonian throne. It is, of course, not the same room, but since all rooms in one building look alike, it certainly feels like they've picked up where Kay, Niall and Jeremy left off. Have made various other social calls, including to Will M and On My Hall Andrew (He no longer lives in my hall this year, but this is a name I've given him to distinguish him from Andrew D and P).

A funny story goes here; I was keeping Pat company as he was working the cashier at Late Night, and this girl came in, panicked to the point of hyperventilating, that she had accidentally taken bread from the dining hall, and wanted to pay us three dollars, (I suppose to salve her guilt over accidentally stealing). Pat reassured her by invoking the unwritten truce between the resident student body and the dining hall, passed down though oral tradition, generation to generation, from a time immemorial; that unless anyone saw her stealing, it wasn't actually stealing. I don't think she was very convinced even then, very desperately wanting us to not think her some sort of criminal. Eventually, we persuaded her to keep her three bucks.

Ahhh... freshmen.

Will go now: have class at 8 am tomorrow.

My classes tomorrow are Roman history, Intermediate Macroeconomics (which I've read ahead by about four chapters on), and Advanced Exposition. Tuesdays and Thursdays, I have Women in Ancient Greece, Creative Essay Writing, and Ancient Greek History. I'm majoring in econ, stealthily. Well, until I've got Intermediate Micro and Macro, the prereqs for the advanced classes, out of the way, there's not much I can do in that subject anyway.

Ancient Studies is my declared minor.