the wheels keep on spinning

Today I received a package in the mail from Rhodes House reminding me to hurry up and apply for my second masters degree if I want to stay on next year. It is truly incredible how time passes: just a couple weeks away from finishing my first term at Oxford and I'm already scrambling to sort out a second course of study. I have no idea what I'll study. Management science? Anthropology? History? Do I really feel like taking the GRE, buffing up my CV, and tailoring my writing samples in the next two weeks? Yeah, maybe history would be a good choice....

I've spent a couple minutes staring blankly at the computer monitor trying to figure out what to say. It's difficult because on the one hand I feel like there is so much going on that to even try and describe things here would be futile. On the other hand the student life feels very much the same as it always has.

The nagging question of purpose keeps coming up. I have friends who are publishing lecture series for UNESCO, co-authoring briefings for the national security council, running development NGOs, and working to push legislation through congress that would create a national public service academy. The pressure to do something grand, or at least to appear that way, is great. Yet when you dedicate yourself to one cause you by default exclude yourself from others. There are plenty of things I could take up, yet I still haven't found that core passion that I can grab a hold of as a springboard into action. So I keep broadening my base academically, building relationships, traveling widely, and questioning constantly. I spend quite a few days in a state somewhere between being restlessness and distraction, enjoying myself as I bounce from rowing, to the gym, to classes, to conferences, to fellowship, and to the pub, but wondering if this flurry of activity isn't just forestalling the identification that going to help me put this whole deal into context.

I'm excited for Rwanda. This winter I will spend the majority of my time an hour or so outside of Kigali volunteering with an organization called Umuryango, which means "family" in Kinyarwanda. Umuryango reaches out to orphaned street boys through coursework, job training, and spiritual counseling. I'll be teaching english, guitar, hanging out with the boys, and helping to build a basketball court. Though I'm not tired of Oxford by any means, I miss travel--the freedom of the open road in an unexplored country, the sense of separation from all the distractions you left behind that comes when walking alone through new places, and the daily joy of discovery. This past summer was the first time since the end of my freshman year of college that I haven't crammed a pack full of anti-malarial tablets, some clothes, a water filter, U.S. consular information, a few other things, and headed south. I'm under no illusion that the people I'm going to work for need guys like me around for three-week stints of volunteerism: my goal is simply to learn about Rwanda from the Rwandans, and if possible to reciprocate their enormous generosity in hosting me by making myself as useful as possible.

So there's an update. Rowing is also going well--since my last post I've been bumped up to a better boat, and will likely be rowing stroke, the first position, in the Christ Church Regatta next weekend. Though I'm still debating whether or not I'll continue with this sport, I love the training, team camraderie, and early Thursday mornings on the Issis. In statistics I alternate between feeling triumphant and completely hosed, but lately it's been more of the latter. The good news is this puts in the same position as the majority of my peers! I'll be writing up my first assessed practical this weekend, so prayers that that goes smoothly would always be appreciated.

And as always, updates from abroad make my day. I'd love to hear how you're doing.

God bless,
Aaron