This past weekend was absolutely wonderful. On Friday, we took our last field trip to the beautiful cathedral of York Minster. As opposed to Durham Cathedral, you walk into York Minster and are flooded with light. The stone is white, and there are windows everywhere. I think there are something like 100 stained-glass windows in there. It was cool. Friday evening when we got back to Durham, everyone got dressed up and went to a dance club where they all drank miscellaneous green drinks. I stayed in and worked hard to finish my journal for the week because the next morning I was waking up early to head to the Edinburgh International Festival.

On Saturday, I was walking through Durham at 7:00 am to catch my train and there was nobody around. I stopped at an ATM on my way to the station. My bills had Charles Darwin on them, which I did not think boded well, as I was on my way to the debate about atheism! Fortunately, the event went very well, in spite of the bad omen from the ATM. I was sitting next to this friendly old man with whom I got to talking about Fixed Point, Richard Dawkins, Alister McGrath, etc. The debate itself was very interesting. Christopher Hitchens was more engaging than I found Richard Dawkins to be last October. His opening statement was mostly rambling and was not actually on the topic (which was that "The New Europe Should Prefer the New Atheism") but rather about Islam. Still, I thought he was very funny and certainly very smart. Dr. Lennox, as always, was brilliant. My favorite part came during the rebuttals. Hitchens said something about how ridiculous it was for Christianity to have a God who sees you 24/7 like Big Brother and even condemned you for things that you thought. Dr. Lennox came back and said that there are two sides to having a God like that. He compared it to marriage and said that you could think of it as, "Oh, there's this woman in my house and she follows me around watching everything I do," whereas Christians are comforted by knowing that God knows all things and that there will be justice in the end for what happens in this life.

I wish that the two of them could have had a bit more discussion besides their 5-minute rebuttals because the question and answer session was quite unusual... Most people made statements instead of asking something, or their questions were unintelligible, or they were just really disrespectful. I mean, maybe it's the Southern in me, but I don't see why people have to behave like that. Overall, though, I was so glad to be able to go to the debate. Every Fixed Point event that I go to is an inspiration to me, and this one was no different.

After it was over, I had a great time walking around Edinburgh with Mr. T, Ben, and Zach, and I was sad to leave, but it's not time to go home quite yet. This European Studies program still has 10 weeks to go, and our stay at Oxford is only beginning. We got here yesterday evening, and all we had time for before dinner and bed was getting settled in our rooms and taking a tour around our home for the next 6 weeks - Lincoln College. Today, we had a couple orientation meetings and a city walk with an Oxford tour guide. We went to Christ Church College, where I got to geek out about Harry Potter, and also walked around the city centre to get a feel for where the important places are here. Tonight was our first high table dinner, which we have every week. I got to meet a couple of the tutors for our courses here - one with whom I got into a conversation about Cary Grant because she teaches in Bristol, where he was born, and another I talked to about one of my favorite tv shows, Friday Night Lights, because she watched the movie recently when she was staying with a friend in Tuscaloosa, which led into a discussion of my favorite football team (Roll Tide). So, this was a very good day. I got to talk to Mom and Claire on iChat after dinner, and now I'm off to bed so I can get a good night's rest before my first day of classes.

Miss y'all.