The first few weeks of this semester certainly caught me off guard. First of all, we had a week of training for our Spring Recruitment at AOII, and then a week of actual Recruitment when we were inviting girls to come up and see our home. I got to meet so many amazing young women! In that way the whole experience was incredibly rewarding, but I was exhausted when it was all over. On the Wednesday of Recruitment, I left my dorm room at 8am in order to get breakfast before my 9am class, and I didn't get back to my room until 11pm. That was a very, very, very long day. Not to mention I caught a nasty cold just as Recruitment week was beginning. HOORAY FOR GOOD TIMING! Just kidding.
Other than that though, life has been quite exciting. I absolutely love my Latin class. My teacher is a third-year doctoral student in the Classics program and I am one of her only five students. I'm going to repeat that: five students. We have class four days a week from 9-10 am, and I look forward to that class every single week. I still can't believe how much I've learned already! Here are some of my favorite little Latin tid-bits:
- v's are actually pronounced as w's in Latin - so Julius Caesar's famous Veni Vidi Vici (I came, I saw, I conquered) is, in reality, Weni Widi Wici. Not quite as intimidating - am I right?
- Latin has different endings for nouns as well as for verbs. A noun will take a different form depending on whether or not it's the subject of the sentence, or the direct object, or the indirect object, etc.
- Notice how I used "etc." at the end of that last line? - ALSO LATIN! it's short for et cetera, literally meaning "and other things"
- Latin has practically no word order in its sentences. The subject of the sentence is usually the first word, but the last word is almost always the verb! Weird right?
- My favorite practice sentence that we've had to translate so far - "Fīliās nauta habēbat, sed nōn fīliōs. Namque nautam dī nōn amābant." It means "The sailor had daughters but not sons. For in fact, the gods were not loving the sailor." Different times, different times.
- Latin is such a violent language. Some of our first vocabulary words were bellum (war), ferrum (iron / sword), and servum (slave).
- It's so fun to learn where a lot of our English words come from! For example, "video" is just Latin for "I see" and the Latin word "esse" means "to be" and is where we get our words "essence" and "essential"
That class is just so much fun. I would love to continue to take Latin in my next couple years at Berkeley. Maybe I'll even try for a minor. Who knows?
I'm also enjoying my Intro to Roman Archaeology class. My professor is a professional archaeologist and leads excavation teams in Italy over the summer! The more that I learn about archaeology, the more I think that I'd love to keep that career option open. I would to get the chance to travel to far away places and take things out of the earth that have been there for thousands of years! So many possibilities for amazing adventures! :)
On a deeper level, my heart has felt a little bit heavy the last few weeks. I think that after Winter Break it really started to hit me that my life is so different now than it was six months ago. I didn't get to see my best friend at all over the break and I might not be able to see her again until June - or maybe even later. That is so incredibly hard to wrap my mind around! There are no more guarantees that I'll get to see her or any of my other friends, even when I am home. Don't get me wrong, I fall more and more in love with Berkeley all the time, but it's weird to say goodbye to the first seventeen years of my life when things were a lot more predictable.
I feel like I could be more sad and nostalgic about everything, but honestly, I don't have time for that! I definitely keep very busy just like any other college student, which is why I find myself sitting in my building's study lounge on a Friday night with the intention of doing homework for a while before I eventually go to sleep. That's my life now, but I have to admit that I love it and I love everything that I'm learning. I love Berkeley and I love that this is the place where God wants me to be. That's all for now folks. Farewell :).
"May the Lord bless you and keep you. May He make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May He turn His face towards you and give you PEACE." - Numbers 6:24-26
Sincerely,
Olivia
