The Me Being in London for a Month Edition

Well, time sure flies when you're studying abroad.  My first month here been jam-packed with so many different sights to see and things to do.

Since my last blog post, I, along with some of my new friends, have further trekked through and found some new discoveries near our university, Queen Mary, in East London.  One of the more exciting things we would find was this market off of Brick Lane that opens on Sundays.  It offers great food from around the world including from China, Japan, Ethiopa, and more.  We have now went there for lunch/dinner for the past two Sundays.  I have only had the courage to try the sweet and sour chicken, but maybe in the weeks to come, I will be more adventurous with my food selection there.  Also, there's a great stand that sells amazing desserts and pastries.  It's pretty awesome.

Speaking of desserts, I made my very first cheesecake for my friend's birthday.  Not to toot my own horn, but it was the best homemade cheesecake I have ever had.  It was so good, I momentarily thought of dropping out of college to open up my own cheesecake business.  Although I quickly abandoned the idea, it has been added to the list of restaurants I plan to open up which also includes my Gourmet PB&J business and my I Scream! horror themed ice cream parlor.

A few Sundays ago, I went to church at Methodist Central Hall in Westminster right across the street from the more famous Westminster Abbey.  Although the building was quite large and the sanctuary held over 2,000 people, there were at most around 200-300 people in attendance that Sunday.  The pictures on the website, of course show the sanctuary being completely full with a 100 member choir, so getting there and there not being many people was a bit underwhelming.  Large sanctuaries sitting almost empty on Sunday mornings is a common occurrence here in England as it is in most of Europe for many different causes.  Those reasons will not be explored here on this blog post, but now that I think of it, it would make for a good future post.

Speaking of religion, I stood in the same spot that John Wesley's heart was strangely warmed off of Aldersgate Road.  The historical and momentous spot is now completely surrounded by high rises and the Museum of London.  It was another sight that I could cross of my non-existent list of places I wanted to see.

Although I battled a cold last week, I now feel great and I am ready for the next two months of my vacation study abroad experience.  Tomorrow I head off to Wales for a nice day trip.  Don't worry, there will be pictures.

-Jeremy  

Ello Govna!

Now that I am in Britain for my three month vacation study abroad semester, I have decided to start blogging again so that my thousands of followers can keep up with me in excruciating detail.

My journey began with the 9 hour flight from Dallas to London.  They were playing the movie, Arthur, and thanks to how terrible it was, I was able to sleep almost the entirety of the flight.  Once I got off the plane, I was fortunate enough to stand in a two hour line with my parents to get my student visitor status completed.  After that, to The Tube we went.  Just on the Tube ride to our hotel, we got to see lots of London that isn't the normal tourist scene.  All of the houses we saw looked so English, and I guess for good reason.

The next day, I left to join my fellow study abroad program participants at the Umi Hotel in western London.  This was where I got to meet several students that were studying in the United Kingdom including ten that would be studying at my University, Queen Mary.  The first night, our program  introduced us, for better or worse, to pub cuisine.  If there is one thing that British people do best, it is putting meat into a pie crust and calling it good food. They were offering us pork pies, but I was not brave enough to try it, nor were the majority of the other students sitting around me.  Their fish and chips were really good though, on the other hand as were their onion rings.

The next day, we ventured out to the Tower of London.  The history of the building was impressive with it dating back several hundred years.  It has been home to many different things over the centuries and it included a place where they would torture prisoners with a device called The Rack.  It's not quite the same as the torturous device of the same name that is used in drumlines, but similar in effect.  It was also home to the Crown Jewels, and they were pretty alright.

The following day, we did a walking tour of London that included several sights from the Harry Potter movies.  We got to see different sights like Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and from afar, Buckingham Palace.  It was really cool to get to see so many different sights in such a short span of time.  After having a Turkish dinner, we made our way over to the newly rebuild Globe Theater to see Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing.  We stood in the peasant's section and had a great view of all of the actors and the stage itself.  It was a great day all in all.

So after pretty much seeing everything there is to see (not really), the following day I departed with my parents to move into my dorm flat at Queen Mary.  Although the area surrounding the University may not be the nicest, the campus itself is great.  Lots of modern buildings all close to each other.  I met my fellow flatmates and they're all pretty great especially with their British accents.  I got my schedule timetable this week, so I'm all set for my classes to start next week!  I'm looking forward to a great semester term here in London!

-Jeremy

P.S.  If you're wondering if I will be finishing the blog posts about the book When Christians Get It Wrong, don't you worry.  I will find time over the next month to complete my last posts regarding the last three topics.

My Idea For the Name of the South Campus

A while back, the school district was taking submissions onto what the name of the new 9th and 10th Grade Center in Southern Lewisville should be. On this momentous eve of the school's opening, I thought it would be a good idea to publicly release my submissio that I sent to Mrs. Burns in the communications department. Here it is:

From: Jeremy3416 <jeremy3416@aol.com>
To: burnsl <burnsl@lisd.net>
Sent: Fri, Jan 28, 2011 5:17 am
Subject: LHS 9th and 10th Grade Center South Name

I respectfully nominate that the new 9th and 10th grade center be named after our President, Barack Hussein Obama. This new facility in so many ways captures the essence of his presidency thus far. Similar to many of our President's initiatives like Health Care and the Stimulus Package, this campus is extremely unpopular amongst the members of the community it actually affects as well as being a huge waste of money. This campus also has been shoved down the throats of Lewisville residents just like so many of the liberal policies of the Obama administration without any kind of public input by the people it would actually affect. Similar to President Obama, the school board and the superintendent have been stubborn when dealing with this issue and refuse to listen to the majority voice of the community. That is why I feel that the new south campus exemplifies the administration of Barack Obama and why it should be named the Barack Hussein Obama Lewisville High School 9th and 10th Grade Center South. It has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?

Jeremy Page


I never received a response back from the ISD. Oh well...

When Christians Get It Wrong: Science and Politics

This week at the Brown Bag Bible Study, we moved onto the second chapter of When Christians Get It Wrong which involved how Christians deal with scientific advancement as well as how we incorporate politics into our Christian life.  While these two topics may seem very dissimilar, they distinctly have in common both fear and ignorance.

Growing up in a conservative area, anytime the evolution theory came up at school, it was met with much criticism from my classmates... and myself.  It was derided as a concept incompatible with Christian teaching, and you either had to believe God created us or we were evolved from more primitive life forms, and there was no in-between. Looking back on my days in biology class, I wish there had been a third explanation.  It would have been an explanation that allowed both the Creation Story and the Evolution theory to complement each other instead of forcing them to tear each other down.  An explanation that wouldn't box God into something that limits his powers.  An explanation that wouldn't make Christians seem like we're living in a bubble.

Yes, that would have been nice.  Instead of embracing scientific advancements, many Christians will reject anything that doesn't exactly line up with a literal reading of the Genesis account.  And I think the motivation behind this rejection is not just ignorance, but fear. Fear that the next advancement will disprove God all together.  Fear that science will prove their way of life a sham.  When Christians have these fears, I must question how deep their faith is.

The other topic of the day was how Christians deal with politics.  Once again, growing up in the Bible Belt, I have found that if a church does indeed align itself to a certain political party, it will more than likely be the Republican Party they align themselves to.  However, when I was in DC, I found that many churches align much of their views to the Democratic Party.  What happens again is that we box God into a certain political party making His ultimate wisdom and power only as great as either the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.  That would be a really sucky world if that were true.  Christians use fear and ignorance again by promoting a message that says God takes a certain side in politics.  Adam Hamilton mentions in his book about how it is important for us to be involved with issues of our time.  Our time being the key words.  We must differentiate worldly issues that will at some point come to a close and Kingdom issues .

In addition to last week's descriptions of Christians, judgmental, hypocritical, and unloving, we now have ignorant. We can fix this moniker. We don't have to be the joke of the scientific community. Instead of constantly shooting down any scientific idea, we could instead use it to magnify and glorify our God. Crazy, I know. Only when we are able to identify our ignorance will we as a Christian community be able to minister to an increasingly educated world.

-Jeremy

When Christians Get It Wrong: When We're UnChristian

So I'm leading a bible study at church based on Adam Hamilton's When Christians Get It Wrong, and I thought I would do a corresponding blog post for each week's topic.  The first week's topic is when Christians are unChristian.

The different scriptures Hamilton picks for the first chapter paint a startling picture for today's Christians.  As opposed to many of today's "dynamic" preachers, Jesus didn't constantly condemn sinners.  He condemned the religious leaders of the time, and instead invited the sinners to eat with him among other things.  These religious leaders were so concerned about religious orthodoxy that they forgot how to love one another like God taught us to do.  Jesus had a disdain for these Pharisees, and because of it, we get some of the most beloved stories in the bible.

One of those is the Prodigal Son parable.  The younger son asks for his inheritance early, but spends it all and has to come back to his father broke and hungry.  Instead of rejecting him, the father welcomes him with open arms, much to the chagrin of the older son.  The older son does not like that his younger brother is going to be rewarded with a feast after years of unwise living.  In the older son's mind, he has followed the rules, kept in line, and done everything the father had asked him. 

It is so easy for all of us to be the older brother, constantly pointing out the sins of others without identifying your own, constantly thinking that we are more deserving of God's love because we have done certain things, and constantly refusing to love our brothers and sisters.  The Prodigal Son parable is about us, and it always will be.  We have a choice to either be the jealous, condemning brother, or we can be the loving father open and welcoming to all.  

Christians are called many different things. Judgmental, hypocritical, and unloving are just a few.  And of course, it would be easy for me to say, well, there are some Christians and some churches that are like that, but for the most part we're pretty nice.  But instead, I want myself and the few others that will read this to look at themselves and truly think about and identify ways that they have not been Christian to others. Only then can we become a church that fully reflects the ministry of Jesus Christ because a church that does not love sinners and the least of us is no church at all.

  

-Jeremy

The No Spin Zone: The Debt Ceiling Issue

Note: My ideas are solely mine and do not represent any Senator who I may or may not be working for.


Once again, these politicians on Capitol Hill have kept everyone around the world on their toes waiting for a compromise that will raise the debt ceiling. So far, some of the major proposals that have gained some traction have included the Cut, Cap, and Balance Bill and the so-called "Gang of Six" Plan.  These will be the two that this blog post will be about.

Many of the staunch fiscal conservatives have voiced their support for the Cut, Cap, and Balance Bill that had passed through the House and was up for a Senate vote on Friday morning. Many believed that this was the best plan because it significantly cut spending, capped discretionary spending at a certain percentage of GDP, and called for a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution. Many who voiced their support of this measure, unfortunately have also spoken about their disdain for President Obama. Many of the comments I have seen have been classless and uncalled for. Some believe that he was a liar that should be thrown out of office immediately. And while I can't emphasize enough the fact that I don’t agree with President Obama on many, many different policy issues, I do not believe that this kind of language is acceptable. It was not too long ago that despicable, awful things things were said about then-President Bush by his opponents, and I still remember how disgusted I was that people would say such terrible things about the sitting president. Whether our President's name ends with the label D or R, we as Americans should be above this, but unfortunately it only seems to be getting worse.

I also would have a few questions for these people supporting the CCB Bill like: What happens when the Senate kills the bill (which it did)? What happens when President Obama vetoes it (which is what he promised to do if the bill ever got to him)? While there are many aspects of the bill I agree with, the CCB Act was destined to fail because of the Democratic majority in the Senate, something that these people were either unaware of or just flatly ignored.

The other major plan proposed this past week was the “Gang of Six” Plan. While this bill was supported on both sides of the aisle, it was also derided on both sides of the aisle. While 75% of the deficit reductions of this four trillion-dollar proposal came from spending cuts, many were not happy that the other 25% would come from tax increases on the wealthy as well as the closing of various tax loopholes. The Gang of Six proposal was, in my opinion, a very reasonable plan. It significantly cut spending over the next ten years while only slightly increasing taxes on the wealthy. It was a proposal that could pass the Senate and that President Obama would sign. Even though the Gang of Six proposal had bipartisan support and was much more likely to be enacted than the soon-to-be-killed Cut, Cap, and Balance Bill, it has not stopped many Americans from saying that Republican politicians who support this should be ashamed of themselves.

And you know what, 

if it’s shameful to compromise with politicians from the other side of the aisle

and if it’s shameful to not want the government to shut down, 

then I as a politician would be perfectly happy with being called shameful.

-Jeremy

The Half Way Mark

Now that I'm half way finished with my stint here in DC, a look-back on some of my experiences here:

(Cue retrospective music)

•  I have been to so many museums since I've been here that it's hard to remember them all, but I guess I'll try.  In chronological order, Smithsonian Museum of American History, Art Museum of the Americas, Corcoran Art Museum, the Capitol Visitor's Center, National Portrait Gallery, the African American Civil War Museum.  So I guess that's it so far, I thought there were a lot more.  It also wasn't that hard to remember.
• I have taken part in a great Congressional Intern Lecture Series that has included: NASA Administrator Charles Bolden, Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleen Sebelius, and columnist and Fox News Contributor Charles Krauthammer.  
• Krauthammer: "Many people wonder how I went from being in Psychology to being in Politics.  To be honest, they're quite similar.  I still deal with people who suffer from paranoia and visions of grandeur."   
• I have had the opportunity to hear lots of different views about current issues facing America by watching senators in the Senate Chamber.  Debt Ceiling, DREAM Act, Tax Reform, and Libya have been just a few of the topics that have been (not quite) dealt with since I've started my internship.

So ya, nbd.  Working on Capitol Hill has been pretty much awesome.  Three more weeks to go!

-Jeremy