Rainy Saturday Afternoon

I'm sitting here on a nice, somewhat rainy Saturday afternoon. I just got back from an open house put on by the Transportation Department of Prague. It was pretty cool. See more about it in the photo album: www.thomasfamilyweb.net/photogallery/TransportOpenHouse/index.html
I thought since we've been back in the Czech Republic now for about a month (already?!?), I should give you an update. A lot has been going on, but for some things I'll point you to parts of our website. First, that brings me to a question for you about these updates. (Next, I asked for feedback about whether to set up a blog or not. . .)

Bohemian Paradise

When we first got back here, Jenny taught a class in a town about an hour outside of Prague. We stayed there for 5 days. One day, we took a day trip into a beautiful national nature preserve called Český Raj (Bohemian Paradise). It was an beautiful forested area with some awesome rock formations.
Check out the photo album: www.thomasfamilyweb.net/photogallery/CeskyRaj/index.html

Dissertation: 149 pages

I've been writing. In fact, I'm narrowing in on another milestone: I'm at 149 pages! The plan is for me to submit everything by Christmas, so I can go to California in February to defend it. Why February? All of my professors will be in town that month, and it should be before the baby comes. So now, my word is perseverance.

Seminary

I've attended several academic meetings at the seminary, two this week. It looks like I'll only be teaching the OT Survey class in the spring like I did last year. For various enrollment and program change reasons, they aren't going to offer the Hebrew Texts course this year. I expect that soon, though, they'll start asking me to grade some essays from the Masters Students.

Also, at the end of this month, I'll be presenting a paper at a conference at IBTS on "The Bible and the Practice of Prayer." I'll be talking about scholarship on the Psalms and how it can help us in our understanding of prayer. I may try to record it and even maybe put the recording up here, so you can hear it too. They also plan to publish the papers from the conference in some form.

More about the conference: www.ibts.cz/conferences/dirconf.html (it's the second one on the page)

The Adoption Process

We've both written updates in our Adoption Journal: www.thomasfamilyweb.net/AdoptionJournal.htm

New Phone Number

You probably got the email from Jenny earlier, but we have a U.S. number that rings here in Prague (oh, the wonders of internet technology). The number is 909-758-8497. Remember, please, that we are in a different time zone. More (including a time zone chart) on our Keeping in Touch page: www.thomasfamilyweb.net/KeepingInTouch.htm