Finis--for now

i have successfully (i hope) completed my first semester of teaching.  it has been long, difficult, and humbling, and i don't know how "rewarding" overall it was, but i thoroughly enjoyed it.  i fully expect that after this much needed respite, i will be able to gird my loins and leap into the thick of it again at the end of january.  it is always good for ideals to meet reality and thus be duly tempered.  i confess i was discouraged when, for the final, three of my students wrote how homosexual adoption is a-okay because all that matters is that people love each other.  i would be interested to know how they define "love", if they are able to define it at all beyond feelings.  one of them really surprised me--a baptist girl who said that it was "rubish" [sic] that a homosexual couple cannot be "saved" Christians.  reading her conception of Christianity, though, i was enlightened.  again, it's all reduced to feelings.  i prefer a religion based on something a little more substantial.  ah, c'est la vie.  not much more news:  waiting, waiting, waiting, and very excited to be seeing my family in michigan over Christmas, for the first time in almost eight months!  and also, thesis is coming along nicely.

That's all, folks!