Taking July Off

In the spirit of enjoying my last summer before grad school, I am going to be traveling around Europe for the month of July! So you won't hear from me again until August, so I fully intend to be back in business once I am back in the country with some posts about the new cities that I've visited. Have a nice summer!

This Is Beautiful: Not Working

Honestly taking a break from my job before going to grad school was one of the best things that I've done. I could sleep in, go do tourist-y things that I never had time for, and hang out with the people I wanted to say goodbye to. It was some well-deserved rest and relaxation.

I think stay-cations are awesome to be honest. Vacations have just been co-opted into the working mentality with the idea that you HAVE to take time off and HAVE to go somewhere else and HAVE to do all of these other things. But what if you didn't and just had a low-stress, stay-where-you-are-and-chill kind of vacation? Honestly I would highly recommend.

Summer is now here officially, so consider just taking it easy and taking some time off to just relax at home! Travel is a hassle, just stay put and appreciate what's around you.

Charleston, South Carolina

Just got back from visiting my sister in South Carolina for a couple of days! It was nice to get a bit of a break and spend some time with her. Charlestown isn’t a bad little city, it was my first time to South Carolina and I thought it was a lot of fun!

We visited Folly Beach, which is the big beach in town that everyone goes to. It is free to visit, which is super cool, and it’s a really nice beach. Then there is also the Angel Oak, which is the oldest and biggest oak tree in SC, really cool spot to see and take pictures. That is pretty close to North America’s only tea plantation, which features a free tour of the factory and a nice tea sampling area. (It has both hot and cold tea, very nice.) Another historic plantation is the Magnolia Gardens, which used to be a rice plantation, but now boasts beautiful gardens and nature.

One fun fact about Charleston is that it has the highest number of historic buildings besides Rome. A lot of it is very old! There are historic house tours that you can go on, I haven’t been on any, but my sister had a lot of fun on one of them.

My main complaint about Charleston was that there was not very much in the way of public transportation there. I saw a couple buses, but other than that it looks like everyone just drives everywhere. Which not only seems annoying, but it is bad for the environment around there.

So Charleston is a lovely city to visit and relax at the beach, while taking in some history and nature. Would highly recommend as a getaway!

This Is Beautiful: Museums

Having a little vacation in DC has been awesome! In my opinion, the best part of the city is all of the free museums (and even the not free ones) tucked all over the city. It has been wonderful to take the time to visit the ones that I've been wanting to see again.

Even though many of them are free, I rarely took the time to go check out a lot of the museums. Having the time now to do this has been wonderful! I've seen most of them before, but it has been so nice to just wander around the museums and see the highlights, check out what interests me, or to just wander. Learning is good for you! Take advantage of it!

“Resilient: How to Grow an Unshakable Core of Calm, Strength, and Happiness” by Rick Hanson

Another self-help book recommended to me by my counselor. Hanson here takes 12 different aspects of resilience (compassion, mindfulness, learning, grit, gratitude, confidence, calm, motivation, intimacy, courage, aspiration, and generosity) and goes through each one giving explanations of how they relate to resilience as well as exercises to strengthen them. This produces a well-rounded view of resilience itself, and clear ways to try and cultivate it within ourselves.

I did quite like a lot of his advice, but I will say that each chapter could probably be spun off into a book of its own. It felt as though we were just scratching the surface of what could be discussed and explored. My other comment is that a lot of his exercises boil down to his practice called HEAL: Have a good experience, Enrich it, Absorb it, and Link the positive and negative material. In this way we can both cherish happy moments as well as repair old wounds. It is a great practice, and while variations of it can be performed for all 12 of these aspects, it did seem as though we were rehashing the same material at points.

Still, there is a lot of valuable advice in this book about building up your own strength. I found it useful to peruse, so if you are considering starting a self-help journey or whatnot, do consider this!

This Is Beautiful: Beaches

Got to spend part of last week in South Carolina with my sister (post incoming on Charleston) and it was just really nice to be at a beach again, I think it's literally been years since I had a beach day. I forgot how nice it was to be there.

Partially it's the stopping and relaxing and reading yes, relaxation is very important. And lounging around is something I tend to skip out on since I can be pretty high-strung.

But what I really find beautiful about the beach is the water and the sun and the waves and the sand. It is so unlike anywhere else with nature so close to you and yet it is all so relaxed. So you can hunt for hermit crabs and snorkel with minnows, all without any real planning beforehand. It's incredible!

And yes there are plenty of man-made beaches, and lifeguards are all over the place to keep people safe. But it is still such a unique environment in this day and age. I don't know, spending time at the beach is nice, I need to do it more often.

“Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why” by Bart D. Ehrman

What fascinated me about religious nuts is how convinced they are in the holiness of the objects involved in their religion. For example, Christians insisting that the Bible is straight from God to us. Which is ridiculous, the amount of time that it’s been around and the fact that it was written by HUMANS means that it is definitely not totally divine.

This book is about exactly that, the origins of the Bible and how and why it has changed since then. In the days before the printing press, scribes would copy the Bible by hand, word for word. And that means that mistakes entered, both accidentally and on purpose.

The great thing about Ehrman’s work though is that he puts it all in a personal context. The book opens with him talking about how he came into the church and became fascinated by Bible studies. And how he eventually learned to reject his religious training that the Bible was the direct work of God through those. This book is basically what he’s learned through his research over the years.

He starts with a historical overview of how the Bible has been used throughout the years. It starts at the beginning with how Christianity was one of the first religions to use a text as a central focus of its practices. Then he covers the various sources of texts, and how we didn’t even solidify the texts that make up the New Testament until several hundreds of years after Jesus’ death. He also goes through translations of the text and how experts have tried throughout history to determine what is the “original” text of the Bible.

Having done that, he goes through reasons why scribes would have changed the text of the Bible. Primarily, the different controversies that existed at the time within Christianity such as the role of women or the treatment of Jews. He also discusses a couple of passages that are in most Bibles of the modern era and why they might be incorrect.

I also particularly liked the ending of the book. He brings it back to a personal level and actually shows some understanding of the scribes transcribing and altering the earlier texts. Because really, it’s hard to interpret the Bible, so it makes sense that they would try to make it clearer. And if we all could read a text and get the same message from it, then we wouldn’t still have these controversies thousands of years after the Bible was written. And that would be pretty boring to be honest, we would have nothing to gain from discussing it with others.

This is a great take on the history of Christianity and how the past still resonates in the religion today. I thought it was written with a lot of attention to nuance and detail, as well as great research. Ehrman covers all sides of the controversies, and I thought his personal touches were a great addition.