Some Reflections on the Egyptian Revolution

I have spent much of the past several weeks glued to the news about the situation in Egypt (and am still following the continuing protests throughout the Middle East and North Africa). It has been astonishing how quickly the revolution succeeded in its main goal of ousting Mubarak, and it is a testament to the power of popular protest, especially in an age of social media and global awareness. What has struck me just as much as the success of the protester's main goals, however, is the nature of the protest. Despite the claims of some conservative American opponents of the revolution that this will be bad for Egypt's Christians, the protests seem to have done more to foster unity between Christians and Muslims in Egypt than any event in the past few decades. The BBC has an insightful article about this here. Earlier in the protests someone in Tahrir Square reported that members of the Muslim Brotherhood had begun chanting "Allah Akbar" (God is great), a common enough cry among Muslim protesters (and one heard often in Iranian student protests last year), but were drowned out by other protesters shouting "Muslim, Christian, we're all Egyptian!" Already one of the most iconic images of the protest shows Christians protecting Muslim protesters from attack while they pray:





























In addition to promoting religious solidarity, the people involved in the protest have done some remarkable organizational work in a country plagued by inefficiency and corruption. Another BBC story features an interactive map of Tahrir Square during the protests. Clicking on "street clinic" reveals an ad hoc medical clinic set up to help injured protesters, and the caption reads: "Since Egyptians do not typically have access to free medical care, some say the clinics in the square are an improvement on what they are used to." Clicking on "Rubbish bins" reveals a recycling system set up by some of the demonstrators. While this may not seem like much to those of us accustomed to well-organized recycling systems, it struck me as astonishing given the state of Cairo's trash system when I lived there. Cairo is a very dirty city: there are basically no trash bins, and people tend to just throw their trash on the ground. That the demonstrators would set up a *recycling* system illustrates, I think, how different these protesters are from the previously ruling regime: they are much younger, much more globally aware, and much more conscious of ecological and social concerns.

It's not all over yet, of course. Presently the army is in control and many in the army have benefited from the old system and will be reluctant to cast it aside. But most Egyptians know full well that there is a risk of their hard work being undone, and they will continue protesting if the army tries to stand in the way of genuine democratic reforms.

Of course, some worry that those reforms are themselves the real danger, because they risk bringing to power people we do not like--i.e., the Muslim Brotherhood. While it is obvious to anyone not wearing ideological blinders that the MB did not start and was not the main driving force behind this revolution, they are at present the most organized opposition movement in Egypt and it is probable that they will have a significant role to play in any genuinely democratic government. There are several things to note here, though.

First, the MB are not Al-Qaeda. Most Americans know little or nothing about the MB, but find the name scary and so assume that they must be violent extremists. In fact, though many of the MB's goals are certainly not what we might like, they have repeatedly denounced violence in the service of them, and have made public commitments to democracy and the protection of religious minorities. Of course, it could be that these commitments are mere political posturing--but then, one can say that about all political parties' statements. I certainly don't relish the prospect of an Egyptian government led by the MB, but it's not the doomsday scenario some are portraying it is.

Second, as noted above, the protests themselves are nationalist, not religious, in nature, and most of those involved in them do not want to live in a theocracy. If the MB were to move the country in that direction, they would face a great deal of opposition.

Third, I think it can be predicted with virtual certainty that if the MB were to govern in an extremely conservative fashion, they would lose much of even the support they presently have. People support Islamist parties for many reasons, and not all of them involve agreeing with their overtly theocratic aims: for instance, Islamist parties tend to provide good social services, and they are seemingly credible alternative to corrupt regimes. Supporting autocratic regimes is about the safest way for the West to increase support for such movements in the Middle East and Muslim world. If we really want these groups to lose their popularity, we should give them a chance to govern. Then moderates will withdraw their support, and regular citizens generally will see that their policies simply don't work--and once in power, Islamist parties can no longer blame all their problems on the corruption of the ruling autocrats and on Israel and the West (or, at least, more people will see through such scapegoating).

So, I think that most of the possible outcomes of a genuine democratic transition are, in the end, positive:

(1) We get a government dominated by a secular party or parties.

(2) We get a government dominated by the MB, but the MB governs in a comparatively secular and moderate fashion.

(3) We get a government dominated by the MB, and the MB governs in a conservative and theocratic manner. As a result, they lose much of their support and are booted out of power.

The worst outcome, I think, is as follows:

(4) We get a government dominated by the MB, and the MB governs in a conservative and theocratic manner. They also undo the democratic reforms that brought them to power and make it impossible for the people to kick them out through legal means.

But even in this worst-case scenario (which I find unlikely, given the nature of the revolution), it's only a matter of time before we have another revolution, and when that happens, the Islamists will have practically no support. Even in Iran, touted as the analogue that is supposed to show that (4) is what will happen, I am confident that this will happen--Islamic fundamentalism is not popular among the ordinary citizens of that country today.

Given these outcomes, I can think of no credible reason for us to not support democratic reform wholeheartedly. Propping up more autocratic regimes would only foment more anti-American and pro-Islamist sentiments. The same goes for other Middle Eastern/North African countries. If we really want to defeat Islamic extremism, we should be supporting democracy all across the Muslim world.

Not all the news of the revolution has been positive, unfortunately. While the protests were primarily anti-Mubarak and not anti-Western, there was paranoia by some in the crowd of foreign influences, and there were several reports of attacks on foreign journalists (the most infamous was the attack on CNN's Anderson Cooper, but that was by pro-Mubarak thugs, not anti-government protesters). The night after Mubarak stepped down, Lara Logan of CBS was attacked and sexually assaulted. (Some have suggested that she was also attacked by pro-Mubarak forces, but that's not obvious to me.) Unfortunately, sexual harassment and assault, like inter-religious conflict, has been and continues to be a serious problem in Egypt. There are other aspects of Egyptian culture that are also seriously troubling: anti-Semitism and racism against black Africans, for example. (There's no point in pretending these aren't worse than in Western countries or drawing false equivalencies: these are serious problems in Egyptian culture that need to be dealt with.)

But I'm confident that all of these problems will have a better chance of being solved in an open democratic environment than the repressive autocratic one that has existed until now. In a free media, hopefully these issues will be discussed more openly and people who engage in such acts as religious intolerance and sexual harassment will be more openly condemned. This revolution demonstrated what the Egyptian people--Muslim and Christian, male and female, black and white (I haven't read as much about this aspect of the revolution, but saw several blacks--probably mostly Sudanese refugees--in pictures of the protests)--are capable of when they come together as one rather than defining themselves in opposition to each other. I'm hopeful that Egyptians will learn that lesson and overcome not only their political but also their cultural problems.

Thoughts on evidentialism and faith

Many Christians talk about the need for a “leap of faith” when it comes to religious matters: no, we can’t prove that God exists, that Jesus Christ rose from the dead, or what have you, but we can make a leap of faith when it comes to these things. Let’s call this “anti-evidentialism”—where evidentialism is the claim that we ought to only believe in proportion to the evidence (what exactly this means is clearly up for some dispute, but I think we have enough of an idea to work with). Anti-evidentialism doesn’t necessarily mean (as it apparently did for Kierkegaard, although I have not read Kierkegaard, and so this is only my second-hand impression) that our faith ought to run contrary to the evidence—that if we have very good reason to think that (e.g.) God does not exist, we ought to believe that he does nevertheless. It might be much more modest than that; it might just mean that reason can’t get us all the way to the certainty we have in faith, and that we need to take a leap of faith to get there. (William James thought that we could let our passions decide in matters like religion when the evidence was not conclusive either way. C. S. Lewis too, from what I understand, thought that there were many good reasons to be both a theist and a Christian, but that reason wouldn’t get you the whole way—eventually you needed to choose to make that leap of faith.)

I find this a somewhat tricky issue. I am quite sympathetic to evidentialism as a philosophical thesis, but the idea that there must be more than just reason to religious faith seems clearly right in some way. What I want to do here is suggest a way that I think it is right, but without undermining evidentialism.

What might motivate anti-evidentialism when it comes to religion? I think one motivator is that reason cannot make us certain that (e.g.) God exists; no matter how good an argument we have, there will always be some room for doubt. I think this is true—ontological arguments aside, we’ll never get an argument that can show the probability of God’s existence to be 1. But how is this any different than any other non-logical or non-mathematical proposition? We can have practical certainty of plenty of things in life without being bothered by the fact that there’s a logical possibility of our being mistaken. I have practical certainty that my senses don’t systematically deceive me, even though it’s possible that they do; outside of philosophy thought experiments, the negligible probability that I’m mistaken in my belief that my senses are accurate has absolutely no influence on my practical decisions or deliberations.

Maybe, though, the anti-evidentialist doesn’t think that reason can even get us to practical certainty about religious matters. But in principle there’s no reason to think an open-minded assessment of the evidence can’t get us this kind of certainty. Of course, it might well be the case that it won’t, but this seems a rather disingenuous reason to reject evidentialism. Is it really fair to say that we don’t need to have reasons for belief in a certain manner simply because we can’t find any (or can’t find enough)? Of course, most anti-evidentialists probably wouldn’t put it in this way, but I must admit that I suspect that this is the subconscious motivator for the thesis for many. And I think that just such a suspicion is what leads so many atheists to deride talk of “leaps of faith.”

I won’t take a stand here on whether the evidence really does merit practical certainty regarding (at least some) religious propositions. (I will note, though, that it’s not obvious to me that such certainty is necessary to be religious.) But I think that the belief that it doesn’t is a bad reason to be an anti-evidentialist. It certainly seems disingenuous—many Christians seem quite willing to use arguments to bring others over to their side when it serves their purpose while insisting that true religion rests on faith, not evidence (meaning that they get to ignore philosophical challenges to religious belief). And if there are other good reasons to be anti-evidentialist, I honestly can’t see them. But let me say now what I think is correct about the “leap of faith” idea, and what I think might mistakenly motivate some to anti-evidentialism. Evidence—empirical, conceptual, or whatever—can only get us to belief or disbelief in propositions. And that’s not religion. It may be a necessary condition for religion (though I think that’s debatable), but it’s not itself religion.

Take the resurrection. It is, pretty clearly I think, an empirical and historical question whether or not Jesus of Nazareth came back to life after dying—went from being dead to being alive—after his crucifixion. Either he did or he didn’t. But this isn’t yet the resurrection, not in the full religious and theological sense of the term. I could, in theory, accept the historical event of Jesus’s coming back to life but not be a Christian. To be a Christian, something more is required. I need to construe that event in a certain way: as a salvific event, one that I should be awed by and deeply grateful for. Similarly for the existence of God. Belief in the existence of an all-powerful and infinite being who created the world and wants to be in a relationship with the intelligent beings who have evolved in that world is not faith in God. Faith in God means viewing and approaching that being in a certain way—as God, an appropriate object of religious worship and adoration. I could construe this being differently: as someone to be angry at, or to resist or ignore. As James (I think) says, “Even the demons believe—and shudder.” This is the leap of faith: the choice (and I think it is a choice) to have a certain attitude towards certain facts—the existence of a creator, the death and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, and, for that matter, one’s own life and circumstances.

This distinction between belief and attitudes applies to our ordinary mundane beliefs too. I can believe that my birthday is coming up, and view that event either as an exciting time to celebrate, a depressing reminder of how old I am, or as completely irrelevant to my life. I think that the reason that at least some Christians are anti-evidentialists, and talk about the need to take a leap of faith when it comes to belief in things like the resurrection, is because of a failure to recognize this distinction when it comes to religion. If one really believes that God exists, it doesn’t seem like a live option to ignore or reject him in the same way that it’s a live option to be indifferent about my birthday. It’s simply much harder to step back from a religious proposition the way it’s possible to step back from another kind of proposition and say “what other ways might I look at this,” or “what other meanings might this have for me”? Most, and certainly most religious, people’s natural inclination is to treat God’s existence as being of overwhelming significance—usually positive significance, although there might be some who see God primarily as someone to be feared than anything else, or an even smaller number who see him primarily as someone to oppose. Viewing his existence in any other way just doesn’t cross our minds.

So, for most people at least, in the case of religious propositions, it’s much harder to separate the factual claim involved from the attitude one ought to have regarding that claim. Then perhaps one of the motivations for anti-evidentialism is a conflation of religious attitudes with theistic beliefs. The anti-evidentialist sees, rightly, that a cold examination of “the evidence” won’t get us to that appropriate religious attitude, and, confusing that with the belief that the attitude regards, thinks we need a leap of faith to get to the belief. Really, though, where the leap of faith comes in is how one chooses to react to the propositions affirmed by the Christian (or any other) faith, if one believes them true or at least probable enough to take seriously. Hopefully, too, recognition of this would lead to seeing faith as more directly connected to works than in much current Protestant theology. If faith isn’t fundamentally about beliefs but about attitudes, then it’s easier to see how faith in God ought to lead directly to action—if Christian faith (as I think it does) invariably involves a commitment to living one’s life as a follower of Christ, then of course this ought to culminate in action (even if it won’t always—that’s where sin comes in).

So, that’s my attempt to be reasonable about religious beliefs while nevertheless recognizing what I think is an important insight of Christians wary of reason as a ground of faith. What do you think? Am I on to something, or do the anti-evidentialists have something valuable to say that I’m missing here?

Update on my life

And now, for a more general update on what's going on in my life, with apologies for not posting so long. Ali and I moved into our new South Bend apartment a month and a half ago. She started classes at Notre Dame a couple weeks ago, and I started at Western Michigan University this week. We're both in two-year programs--me, a Master of Arts in philosophy, her, a Master of Theological Studies. I'm taking two classes this semester--Probability and Action & Perception--and T.A.ing for an Introduction to Philosophy class.

Although I've only just started, I've been quite happy with everything so far. Our apartment is small but perfectly liveable in, and I really like the feel of my department at WMU. My main qualm right now is that I have to commute from South Bend to Kalamazoo (where WMU is), which is about 80-85 minutes, give or take (depending on the day, and the route I take), but all things considered this is something I can live with, given that (a) it's only three times a week, and there are other people who do longer commutes more often for a longer period of time, (b) this lets Ali and I both go to schools we like while still living together, and (c) I really ought to be thankful to have a job (i.e., my teaching assistantship, which is currently our main source of income) at all right now. So all things considered I don't think I ought to complain. (Incidentally, if anyone knows of a place online where I can download books on tape for free--the phrase "books on tape" obviously being used figuratively here--let me know. I'd like to get some for the drive but am not really sure where to start, and don't really want to pay to download.)

Well, I ought to finish preparing for my Intro to Philosophy discussion sections tomorrow. Hurray for my first time leading a class section!

BBC article on Nazi war deserters

Although I would like to post, hopefully sometime soon, with a general update on my life, for the moment I just want to share this BBC article which I just read. I'm no expert on WWII, or on Germany, but this really shocked me. Although the human proclivity towards nationalism combined with the general universal condemnation of conscientious objectors to war probably ought to make me less surprised; still, I really was quite surprised to learn that Nazi sentences on "war deserters" were still in effect until so recently. Actions and attitudes towards conscientious objectors in general bother me, but it nevertheless seems astonishing to me that those who had the moral clarity and courage to desert what almost everyone agrees was one of the most evil aggressors in history continued to be treated in this way until so recently. I'm also surprised I'd never heard about this before. There are still "Nazi hunters" trying to "bring to justice" people involved in the Nazi war machine (most of whom are now in their 90s or late 80s), and one hears about them all the time on the news. Why have I not heard more about efforts to bring justice for Nazi war deserters until now?

Yes, I am alive

And active, too. Last month I graduated from Messiah College. In a month I get married, in two months I (we) move to South Bend, Indiana, and in three months I start studying for my M.A. in Philosophy at Western Michigan University (Ali will be starting a program in Theology at Notre Dame at the same time). I also start work as a Teaching Assistant, which I suppose will make me a breadwinner.

My last semester went well. I enjoyed all my courses, and while I could quite contentedly have spent another year at Messiah, I do feel like I am ready to be graduated, and move on. The fact that moving on means more school may help in that regard. I am looking forward, though, to being able to focus more solely on philosophy—not because I don’t enjoy the other areas that I’ve been studying (if I did I wouldn’t have studied them), but because I think I’ll be able to really delve deeper into particular areas of interest when I’m able to focus on them more exclusively. I’m only taking two courses most semesters, so I think I ought to be able to go more in depth in the areas I am studying than I’ve been able to in undergraduate work. I’m also looking forward to TAing, which should take up about half of my school time. I think it will be a good experience and a nice break from doing schoolwork all the time.

In other scholarly news, I just got my first journal publication. My paper on John Hick’s theodicy, which was also the subject of the talk I gave in Philosophy Club last fall (mentioned in my last post), has been published by The Interlocutor, an undergraduate philosophy journal that publishes just a few essays a year. You can see my essay in the latest edition here. God willing, this will be the first of many. I wrote another philosophy essay for my ethics class that my professor thinks is publishable, so I may look at trying to publish it at some point, and my Senior Honors Project advisor has talked with me some about the possibility of publishing the essay that I wrote for that (on the role of religion in an Israeli-Palestinian peace process—this being more related to my Peace & Conflict Studies major than to my philosophical studies). When I apply to Ph.D. philosophy programs in a couple years, these will hopefully make my CV look a little more impressive.

Speaking of the Arab-Israeli conflict, one big recent news item is Obama's speech in Cairo to the Muslim world. A few minor qualms aside (primarily the lack of a stronger endorsement of democracy—which can be promoted in ways other than war—especially in a country with as autocratic a government as Egypt’s), overall I was impressed by the speech. Certainly it's not something one would ever have seen from the previous administration. If you haven’t read or listened to it, you should.

There is, no doubt, much more I could write about, but I think I'll end it there for now.

This and that

Well, it has been a while. For those of you who have been living under a rock, a number of significant things have happened in my life in the past few months.

I am engaged! Alison and I got officially engaged a little over a month ago. We are going to be getting married July 11 next summer.

As for what we will be doing after that and where we will be living, that depends on what school(s) we get accepted to. Inshaa' Allah (if God wills) we will be accepted into either the same school or schools nearby each other (and get funding, too). She is applying to Master's programs in Theology, and I Doctorate programs in Philosophy. I am applying to Notre Dame, Yale, Northern Illinois University, and Western Michigan University (the last two are M.A. programs, but are well-known as good schools to go to en-route to a Ph.D.). She is applying to ND, Yale, Catholic Theological Union, and Catholic University of America. Hopefully something will work out for both of us between all of those. I'm pretty confident that something will--we should both have strong applications, and I just took my GRE a little over a month ago and did well. We'll be finishing our applications in the next month or so.

More recently, I was proud to cast my vote in what I truly do feel is a historic election. I hope and pray that our president-elect will capitalize on the hope and good will that his victory has engendered.

This semester has been going well. It's been busy, and it will continue to be busy until the semester is over, but it's been good and I'm doing well in all my classes. And although I could do without some of the homework, I've found all of my classes this semester quite interesting. As per usual my class schedule is somewhat of a smorgasbord, with six classes in five different departments. It keeps things interesting. Right now I'm reading a very interesting book for my International Relations class on the failure of Western aid to do much about third-world poverty. It's called The White Man's Burden, by William Easterly. It's a bit depressing to read just how ineffective many of the highly touted poverty reduction programs have been (and continue to be today), but if we really care about helping the world's poor we do no good in deluding ourselves into thinking that well-intentioned but ineffective programs are working when they're not. I won't rehearse Easterly's argument here (maybe in another post), but I recommend this book.

Another fun activity this semester has been Philosophy Club. We've had more participation this semester than in the past, and we've had some interesting speakers and discussions. A couple weeks ago I had the privilege of presenting in it; I spoke about the problem of evil and John Hick's theodicy (the subject of a paper I wrote in Oxford). Because we were able to get alternate chapel credit for the event (Messiah students need to attend a certain number of chapels throughout the semester, and some of those can be "alternate chapel" events in evenings, which are often student-organized), a lot more people than usual came, meaning that our usual classroom was very crowded, with more people than there were chairs (in retrospect, we ought to have foreseen this and used a bigger room that week). The talk went pretty well, I thought, although because some people were there pretty much just for the chapel credit not everyone really seemed to be listening. This is not really surprising--in our common chapel many students do homework or other stuff rather than listen to the speaker. In my talk, there were a few students who were definitely doing homework, a couple who were texting on their cellphones, and one who was blatantly sleeping (it's not that he just fell asleep accidentally; he had his head down on the desk on his arms as if he meant to be sleeping). Now, most people weren't like this, but those who were could be very distracting. I now know what our common chapel speakers feel like.

We just got back from our Thanksgiving Break, which I spent at Alison's house. Not quite as exotic as places certain people went over the break, but relaxing nevertheless. And very fattening. Or it would have been if I were actually capable of gaining weight. I think I ate enough for about three weeks over the last week, though, and I ate enough Pumpkin Pie to last me until next Thanksgiving. Not only did I have all the Thanksgiving food (times two for both sides of the family, plus the Thanksgiving feast my apartment prepared just before the break), I also had birthday food (I turned 22 a week ago) and general "my daughter and her fiancee are home so I'm going to make them lots of food" from Ali's mom.

The semester is almost over now. We only have a week and a half left, and then exams. I'll be at Ali's house for a few days and then flying to Manitoba with Vaughn a couple days before Christmas. I will, however, be staying in Steinbach for a few weeks before coming back to school because I want to get to my friend Janelle's wedding in mid-January. I'll be missing the first week and a half of January-Term, but that's okay because I'll be working on my Honors Project that term rather than taking a formal class, and I can do my work for that as well at home as I can at school (well, maybe not quite as well, but I can do some work at home, at least).

That about does it for goings-on in my life. I leave you with an encouraging news story about where our society is headed. I just hope our new machine overlords are kind.

What I've been up to

I see it's been awhile since my last entry. I've been rather busy--it seems that the most time-consuming stuff in my summer was all in the second half of it. From June 29 through July 19 I was working for Camps with Meaning, Mennonite Church Manitoba's camping organization. They run three camps throughout the province, and after staff training week at Assiniboia, outside of Winnipeg, I spent two weeks counseling at Koinonia, which is in the west of Manitoba, quite close to the International Peace Garden, and about a four hour's drive from Steinbach.

My first week at Koinonia was a little different--it was an "AD-Venture" week, meaning that the campers were Adults with Disabilities, rather than children. I had never really done any work with the mentally handicapped before, so this was a new experience for me. It was at times very stressful, especially because the cabin that Chris, my co-counselor, and I were counseling contained some of the highest needs campers. Even so, I found it very rewarding, and am glad that I did it. I could have done without the tornado warning on the last night, though, where we had to wake up all the campers and get them into the Lodge basement until we were sure we were safe. Thankfully the tornado didn't touch down anywhere near us.

The week after that was Junior week, meaning the campers were aged 7-12 or so, with most being in the 8 to 10 range. My cabin that week was pretty good, with the exception of one camper who was, to put it politely, a little hell-raiser. At least I got some satisfaction when he lost his voice near the end of the week, which was not surprising given that he been yelling literally all week (yelling was his primary form of communication). That one trouble camper notwithstanding, however, all in all it was a good week.

Incidentally, one of the things that I really appreciated about working at Camp Koinonia was the emphasis that Camps with Meaning places on values that are dear to me, from peace to environmentalism to social justice. They are very intentional about creation care and teaching the kids to love and care for creation, which I think is a wonderful thing. And they really would go the extra mile to make sure that they were practicing what they were preaching, such as making sure that their staff t-shirts were not produced in sweatshops. This may seem like a small thing, but so many Christian organizations simply don't even think about these things, and it was nice to be working for a camp that really tried to put them into practice.

At the end of Junior week, then, I came back home to Steinbach. There is, of course, no rest for the weary, and so only two days after getting back, I started in on my Greek course at Prov, giving me practically no time to unwind or process my time at camp, or blog for that matter. I am now halfway through that course, meaning I have now finished the equivalent of one semester of Biblical Greek. It's been tough, but I am amazed at how much I have learned in such a short span of time. One might think that four weeks is way too short a period of time to cram two semesters of a language into, and while in a way it really is, there definitely is an advantage to studying a language like this. Since I am not taking any other classes right now and don’t have any other major commitments, I can (even if I don’t always) invest considerable time in studying outside of class, and so always stay focused on learning the language. Since we are doing everything in such a short span of time, everything that I’ve learned is relatively fresh in my mind, even if it was on one of the first days of class (which is only a week and a half ago!), meaning that I don’t forget rules from earlier in the course by the time the mid-term rolls around. Because I’m constantly doing Greek, and building off of everything that I’ve done earlier, it really does stick better than it might otherwise. Of course, the real question is whether it will stick after, but that will depend on me, I suppose.

On Friday we had our mid-term exam for the course, and I think that I did pretty well. We do get a little bit of a break this weekend because Monday is a Civic Holiday, so we don't have class. But I've still got plenty of exercises to do and vocabulary to learn before Tuesday. My mom's brother and his family are here to visit us this weekend, so I've been spending some time with them too. Then after this weekend I've got two more weeks of Greek, and then just a few more days before I'm heading back to Messiah. The plan looks to be to fly to Toronto on August 20 and drive down to Pennsylvania with Vaughn the day after. I'm going back early to help with the international student orientation--classes start at the beginning of September. I'm sad to see the summer finish so soon but I'm looking forward to this next semester. It'll be a little weird, too, finding that I don't know most of the people at the school--given that there will be a new First Year class, I don't know any of the upcoming Sophomores, and many of the Juniors (and a few of the Seniors) I know will be studying abroad themselves now that I'm coming back. It will be nice to see many of my friends again, though, especially those that I have not seen this last year on account of being abroad. There will be much catching up to do, I'm sure.

As for now, I have Greek to do, and relatives to visit with. I believe they are watching Canadian Bacon downstairs.