Today, after breakfast, we had Morning Prayer at the Chapel.  It’s been awhile since I’ve done Morning Prayer.  It’s not a service many Episcopal churches (at least those I’ve attended) regularly do on Sunday, as Holy Eucharist has become the norm since the new (1979) prayer book.  It’s not totally unfamiliar to me, but I will be getting plenty of practice with it here at VTS, as it’s the normal service of morning worship.  Along with Morning Prayer, I will get some good practice with the Apostles’ Creed.  The service of Holy Eucharist uses the Nicene Creed.  In past generations, I believe, many had to memorize both creeds as part of their confirmation.  I didn’t.  But using the Nicene Creed on a weekly basis, I know it pretty well.  Not so with the Apostle’s Creed.  Of course, it doesn’t help either that it’s very similar in some ways to the wording of the Nicene Creed, except it’s shorter.  Anyway, the Morning Prayer service was nice.  With Morning Prayer we get to sing Canticles (which are songs taken from biblical texts other than the Psalms, e.g. the Magnificat, which Mary says in Luke 1:46-55).  I don’t know that I’ve sung Canticles before, but the Hymnal 1982 (and its supplement Wonder, Love & Praise) actually has music to most of them.  So that was sort of neat.

After Chapel, at 9:15 a.m., the first classes began:  Hebrew and Greek.  As noted previously, Dr. Stephen Cook is teaching Hebrew this year.  He’s a very neat, interesting, and witty professor.  He did his Ph.D. at Yale, where actually many of the faculty at VTS received their advanced degrees.  He has taught at VTS since 1996, and he keeps a blog about teaching Old Testament and Hebrew named Biblische Ausbildung (Biblical Training).  The Hebrew class also has a teaching assistant, Elizabeth Farquhar, who has been a special student and teaching assistant at VTS for awhile.  In addition to helping with study sessions, Elizabeth leads the class in singing fun songs in Hebrew.  For the first day, she taught us how to sing the round “Shalom Chaverim” (which translates as “Farewell Comrades”).  Dr. Cook then talked about the Semitic language family and the origins of the Hebrew language.  He also talked about the development of the Hebrew alphabet and showed us this interesting web page.  Then he went through each letter and showed us how to write and recognize them.

The Hebrew alphabet (or alefbet/alephbeth) has 22 letters (cf. Greek, which has 24), beginning with aleph and beth (and ending with tav).  None of the characters in the alefbet represent vowels.  Some of the unique letters in the Hebrew alefbet include aleph, which is essentially a glottal stop (and sounds like the break separating the syllables in the interjection ‘uh-oh’), often transliterated as ’ (a closed apostrophe); ayin, which is a pharyngeal approximant (and sounds like a gulp—it’s the initial sound in the name Gaza and is often heard as a ‘g’), often transliterated as ‘ (an open apostrophe); and chet, which is a voiceless velar fricative (and the final sound in the German name Bach or Scottish ‘loch’).  Halfway through the class we had a coffee break, and then the class ended around 11:45 a.m.  Two and a half hours is a lot, but it’s only an intensive course during the Autumn Term and will be shorter (and have less homework) during the regular term.

After lunch, we had another orientation session, this one focusing on learning styles.  This session was led by Dr. Amy Dyer and Ms. Jan Sienkiewicz, who I hadn’t met yet, although I had talked with her via phone and email.  To learn about our individual learning styles, we each took a multiple-choice survey, the Kolb Learning Style Inventory, which then categorized us based on whether we were more inclined to experiencing, reflecting, thinking, or doing while learning.  I evidently learn best by reflecting (reflective observation) and also by thinking (abstract conceptualization).  This is considered an assimilating learning style, which means I like to plan, create models, define problems, develop theories, and be patient—I think this describes me pretty well.  Supposedly assimilators enjoy best classes in ethics and systematic theology (I believe) at seminary—so next year (when I take those courses) should be enjoyable for me.

After thoroughly discussing learning styles and feeling plenty orientated for the time being, we finally received some free time for the rest of the afternoon.  I took the time to try to make some phone calls home and to see about locating my missing wallet and replacing things.  I use the word “try” because cell phone reception on the hill is very bad.  I have T-Mobile and it’s not very good here, but I don’t think too many other cell phones are any better here.  I can get a bar or two in the Grove (grassy area with trees between the campus and Seminary Road)—it’s better nearer the road, but of course also harder to hear with the traffic.  Some of the staff have told us that the number one item on their wish list for the seminary is a cell phone tower, and I think all the students totally understand why.  It really makes me think I should have thought more seriously about a landline.  But that wouldn’t particularly help with the long-distance situation, unless I got rid of the cell phone altogether and got a long-distance package for the landline.  Anyway, dealing with dropped calls got really frustrating when trying to file a police report on my lost wallet which meant giving an initial report to the dispatcher but then having to the police department call me back to take a detailed report (I didn’t get  that accomplished until over a week after I initially called).  I can sometimes also get a couple of bars in my room near the window, but when making calls they often get dropped there.

The only other excitement today was playing ultimate frisbee after dinner.  Ultimate frisbee is a popular sport at VTS currently, and last year they had a team go to a tournament in southern Virginia.  Some students had played last night as well, but this was my first time to participate.  We had a pretty good group of about 14 players, which made for sizable teams and a moderate amount of running.  It was a good game and a nice way to get some exercise.