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Maxwell 57: Planning Mary's Wedding


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20 hours ago, HereticHick said:

I went to a BIG-TIME basketball school, and one year I lived in the dorm where the team lived, and during fire drills my floor (all women) had to evacuate through their wing on the first floor, and they'd all make fun of our sleepwear. I'd have negative flashbacks about this for years after when I watched NBA games.

And here I was in an adjacent dorm to the football dorm at my college, and so whenever we got hauled out by fire alarms in the dead of night (it happened several times), my friends and I would always find football players to give us piggy rides back into the building. 

Very fun memories.

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Fortunately, no one ever set off the fire alarm on purpose when I was at college. It's a "rusticating" offence (i.e. you are suspended for the rest of the term) and fined. A lot. I think it was the fire department who issue the fines, as the alarm goes straight to them, and the college porters have to phone and confirm/deny a real fire. College would also fine you- and you couldn't graduate until you had paid the fine. No other real rules, but that (along with no candles, no parties > 6 people, no walking on the grass, and no cycling/skateboarding in college). I guess you were supposed to sign in overnight guests/sign out if away overnight for fire safety reasons but no one did.

We had a lot of false alarms from the toasters though - you had to phone to the porter to cancel the alarm, but everyone still had to evacuate. Fortunately, I was always the last person to go to bed, so never had to appear in my PJs in the middle of the night. Breakfast time was a different matter though! In my last year, I lived in one of the oldest buildings; it was 17th century, and we had no kitchen areas. The inside was all wood, so they were terrified it would all go up in flames. I did have an illicit coffee machine in my room, though...

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@Zebedee 17th century? So your dorm was built in the 1600s?! 😮 WOW. That is amazing. I'd love to see any pictures. Here (New England, US) anything built in the 16th century is a museum or a very least has a sign on it. And it would never be used for college kids for fear that they would destroy it.

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@anachronistic well, the bit I lived in in the first year was a hideous 1950s  "tower block" (by the standards of my city - it wasn't really that high!). It had lovely rooms though. I was at a poor college in Oxford, which meant that we had really nice rooms, since we heavily relied on the income from hosting conferences. My friends at rich colleges lived in some equally ugly buildings, but with tiiiiny rooms, and mouldy bathrooms. In our subsequent years, we went into a ballot for our rooms, and I was right near the top and bagged a room in our front quad.  It wasn't really a dorm though, most of the buildings were tutor's rooms, but if you were lucky, you got a nice one! My college is actually very small, so after the first year, you normally lived off site. In bigger colleges, lots of people got to live on site for two years plus.

The pic below is the front quad - the LHS is 17th C, the building in the middle is the chapel, the rhs is the oldest bit, where I was. And the ugly tower behind is the staircase to the very ugly buildings! Most of the pics online are at such an angle as to hide the ugly buildings. (our fine art prof wanted to paint it pink, and make it an enormous penis, strangely enough the college decided not to...) There were two of them, which face each other. I got the ugliest view in my first year, lol. Some people got the view over the city, which was beautiful :)  Our college bar was in the quad, I spent many happy hours smoking and drinking on that well!

Fun fact: our college library is a 12th C church. The graveyard contains a large mound, which is a plague pit.

quad.jpg

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On 4/27/2023 at 1:47 PM, anachronistic said:

@Zebedee 17th century? So your dorm was built in the 1600s?! 😮 WOW. That is amazing. I'd love to see any pictures. Here (New England, US) anything built in the 16th century is a museum or a very least has a sign on it. And it would never be used for college kids for fear that they would destroy it.

so normal in the very old British universities! But then a lot of British towns are very very ancient and have a fair number of buildings going back to medieval times - so I think in general we are more used to living in/around them, and they are not rare outliers as they would be in the US. The house I grew up in was 17th century or earlier. And the branch of Borders in the town where I grew up was in what was once a great Tudor house: it had an amazing carved staircase from that period. Obviously it was beautiful and unusual, it must have been listed and I'm sure they had good insurance, but otherwise it was not protected in any particular way. Just there. 

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On 4/27/2023 at 8:47 AM, anachronistic said:

@Zebedee 17th century? So your dorm was built in the 1600s?! 😮 WOW. That is amazing. I'd love to see any pictures. Here (New England, US) anything built in the 16th century is a museum or a very least has a sign on it. And it would never be used for college kids for fear that they would destroy it.

Does Harvard have buildings that old ( or about that old) still in use?

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On 4/29/2023 at 4:12 PM, kpmom said:

Does Harvard have buildings that old ( or about that old) still in use?

Can’t speak for Harvard or other private universities, but the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill has the oldest public university building on their campus- Old East Resident Hall, first built in 1795.

image.thumb.jpeg.7fd88767db160e81dd97f39cfdd5d6f0.jpeg

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The Wren Building on the campus of the Collee of William and Mary is the oldest college building still standing in the US. It was built between 1695 and 1700. I've always wished I'd gone to W&M; every time I walk around Williamsburg I mentally kick myself in the arse for not doing it. :my_dodgy:

I had to look up Harvard's oldest building; the university itself is the oldest in the country, founded in 1636, but it's oldest building, Massachusetts Hall, dates from 1720. Not quite in Oxford's league, age-wise, but a respectable 300 + years for both it and the Wren building!

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Oh, and apparently freshman do live in this very old building in Harvard, but I never noticed, despite passing it countless times on foot. Just goes to show how little attention I pay to Harvard history. (maybe when they start paying taxes or do something about the housing crisis in Cambridge.)

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Honestly, the very old buildings look stunning, but are very often not so nice to live in! I am not sure how it works in the US, but very often, the more beautiful the exterior of the building, the crappier the room was. There are very limited changes you are allowed to make for plumbing etc, even with lots of money. Which is why most "old" rooms were Tutor's offices - they can pop outside for the bathroom (to their nice clean common room, not the toilets used by the bar!) in between teaching, which is fine. If you live there, having to shower, go to the toilet in the middle of the night etc, it is far less pleasant! There were people in my college in the older parts who had to exit the building and run through the quad maybe 50m to the toilet or shower. Not far, but given british weather, very unpleasant for a lot of the year - esp.as we were away from beginning of June to the beginning of October, so it was pretty cold and wet most of the time you actually lived in college. (Also, you could lock yourself out of your room, if you forgot your key to go to the toilet; not really practical, for us drunken half-asleep types...)

I got lucky - I shared a bathroom with one other person - and it was a *bath*room (with a shower attachment, but really just a bath). The ceiling was really low - about 5 ft 7-8 inches, so boys who wanted the other historic rooms just chose the rooms where they had to run outside for showers and back, lol! I also really hate showers, and would rather just clean a bath before use than shower - something about feeling like I am being rained on, I guess, I just really hate it! Again, I got lucky with being in a poor and small college - the few old rooms went at a high premium for conference guests, so all possible upgrades were made; the building is small enough that you can't shove bathrooms in for *one* student room, but *two* was clearly economically viable, and three was one too many for the space on the staircase. Panglossian I guess you could call it. (Every room had plumbing, of sorts, we all had sinks, so I think it was really lack of space that determined toilets and showers.)

All the "old" rooms had ethernet though (pre-WiFi days) partly for conference guests, partly because when I started (1997) was when everything really switched over to internet - how science students booked labs, etc, even though back then we still communicated with our tutors by pigeon post (i.e. sending messages on paper between colleges/departments - collected and delivered twice a day by a student on a bike).

For the 99.9% of my fellow students who preferred a shower with 1-2 others, and wouldn't want to bathe, even if they could be arsed to clean a bathtub, just walking through the nice old quad to the very ugly building was better. Shared - but massive - shower blocks and kitchens, huge and warm rooms, not my wonky floor with draughty windows, lol - and huge rooms with balconies was just far preferable. And we have a bunch of 19th C buildings for dorms in town (though I am lazy - we had to pay for a certain amount of dinners every term, if I lived off site ~ 1km ~ I would have wasted a lot of money! I have a weird nocturnal lifestyle, living on site was the only way I would ever eat in halls, and not lose all that cash!). They are also nice, but the building regs meant they could be changed to be far more comfortable.

@front hugs > duggs that is a really lovely building, it also looks like it would have nice rooms! Though, I have to ask - does that front door go all the way up, lol!I am guessing it doesn't,but on my phone I can't tell, I am just imagining a really long thin door! I guess it was built as a dorm too? Rather than repurposed?

And, I mean, I found my college beautiful - but I grew up in Cambridge. There were any number of 13th C upwards sandstone buildings wherever I looked. But it was part of why I chose my college - I didn't know anything about various colleges, but so many looked the same. My little college looked unusual by all the standards I was used to, so I find it pretty. Kind of like a cotswald village building, rather than a huge imposing college. (Also, most of the physics tutors had slavic names, so I knew they could pronounce mine. There are not many real and pressing reasons to choose one college over another, but we all get terribly attached to the one we end up in!) IRL, I actually much prefer modern architecture to most old buildings, once I get past the "oh, how quaint" feeling. It is probably a reaction to living in too many old buildings with 1000 layers of gloss paint on everything, wonky floors, crappy plumbing, and windy windows. At least modern architecture, when done well (unlike the 90s/00s stuff my mum and brother live in - well insulated, but ugly, and the interior is made of cardboard, I swear; I will outlive all those houses!) is (to me) aesthetically pleasing, easily changed inside, and everything works, or is serviceable.

The horror of my 2nd year living out (in my time, we had no exams in the 2nd year, so no college provided housing, we lived out, so, getting ripped off by dodgy landlords) has never left me - me and 4 boys, in a 19th C old terraced house, 3 br house adapted to 5 br - with the outside toilet built into an (uninsulated) extension (the laws at the time were 5 beds and one bath) God, the snails and slugs, the non-existent insulation, yet permanent and persistent mould! The insanely high bills, the condensation - really changed my mind about living in old places. (I have, however, developed a love of 1950s suburban housing - yeah, you need to insulate, double glaze etc, but those interior walls block all sound; they are basically solid concrete! In my family's places, I can hear every breath anyone takes. And also, my step father pissing  - it carries through 2 walls, and the linen closet. There is no sound insulation at all. No mould or slugs, so that's a plus!)

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1 hour ago, Zebedee said:

@front hugs > duggs that is a really lovely building, it also looks like it would have nice rooms! Though, I have to ask - does that front door go all the way up, lol!I am guessing it doesn't,but on my phone I can't tell, I am just imagining a really long thin door! I guess it was built as a dorm too? Rather than repurposed?

I believe it is a normal door with windows going up, but I definitely went to check it out to be sure! I found this YouTube video that gives some history and includes some older pictures- looks like it was originally built as a multi-purpose resident + classroom building.

Spoiler

 

I loved my campus, but when I was looking into Post-Grad programs in the UK, I was blown away by some of the uni campuses there (had been looking at Royal Halloway, as an example). Whenever my husband and I go back to England to visit his family, I always joke about how the stone walls on the side of the road are older than our entire country :D

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@front hugs > duggs thanks for that, very informative. It looks like lovely accommodation inside. I have long had a hankering to visit the Carolinas; the Carolinas (sorry if that is offensive to anyone, as a Euro, we just think of them like the Dakotas - North and South, and you go to both, and never really know what's what...) have taken a bit of a battering in my mind, thanks to Lindsey bloody Graham. (As has TX, but that's another kettle of fish!) Bring on sanity, Gen z (and better exchange rates for us Euros, lol) and Chapel Hill is at the top of my go-to list...

 

1 hour ago, front hugs > duggs said:

Whenever my husband and I go back to England to visit his family, I always joke about how the stone walls on the side of the road are older than our entire country

Sometimes I joke with my (German) partner about how everything in Oxford is older than his country (I mean, 1871 is practically yesterday, right?!). But he is Bavarian, so it doesn't work as well :( 

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ABC graduation is this weekend. Sam's graduating, right?

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1 hour ago, HereticHick said:

ABC graduation is this weekend. Sam's graduating, right?

Yes. It looks like Anna was the only junior in student council this year and her friend Alex is a senior. I wonder where he will go after graduation. 

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17 hours ago, HereticHick said:

ABC graduation is this weekend. Sam's graduating, right?

Notable pictures from the senior class program 

Spoiler

IMG_2128.thumb.png.562c3d497a2a1c71516a15022051e4d7.png

 

 

Spoiler

IMG_2127.thumb.png.fcab64c147161e98d30fd7d9677813e9.png

 

Edited by Zee
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In a recent bulletin, the KS church that the Maxwells attend announced that Sam Hock will be starting there as a missions minister:

SamHockasMissionsMinisterinLeavanworthKS.thumb.png.225e7465a6925736747ba545962a76c5.png

So, will Sam & Mary be living in the Leavenworth area? Can Mary do remote learning to finish her degree?

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Wonder what a Missions Minister does?  
i know Mary and Sam are getting married in Kansas, but was hoping they would return to college so Mary could finish degree and continue experiencing a nice more normal life living away from Steve and Teri.  Worst case scenario, Mary and husband  live in Kansas with S  and T ( rent free in that big, sad house) while Sam works at the church and Mary tends to mom and dad.  Living with Steve would certainly be an eye opener for Sam!

Edited by Hellothere
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Maybe the church has a parsonage for Mary and Sam to live in. At least that way they have some distance from the Mothership.

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Yeah, it sounds like they will settle in Kansas after marriage until they enter the mission field. 
 

I’m disappointed. I was hoping Mary could continue at ABC. Maybe she’ll finish her degree remotely, but it’s not the same as having the “at college” experience.

And if they do settle in Kansas for awhile, where does that leave Anna?  Were she and Mary acting as each other’s “accountability partners”?  I’m hoping she continues at ABC. She looks so happy there. 

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I'm curious whether Steve could actually shock Samuel. Samuel's family is probably closer to Steve than we think. He comes from a missionary family who probably spend most of their time thinking about Jesus and trying to convert people.

I also don't understand why the church needs a "church planter". Church planting as far as I know is usually means to start a new branch of established church or a new church. Does this mean the church is moving or they're branch off to a new church?

3 hours ago, kpmom said:

I’m disappointed. I was hoping Mary could continue at ABC. Maybe she’ll finish her degree remotely, but it’s not the same as having the “at college” experience.

Getting married and having a baby would change the experience anyway. I expect Mary will have be pregnant (or have a child) before she graduates, so the college experience would be drastically different anyway.

Edited by Bluebirdbluebell
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I’d be surprised if Mary wasn’t finishing her degree somehow. Not finishing something you started and invested time and money in seems very un-maxwell to me. 

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I’m guessing Anna will again spend the summer as a camp counselor. But this time she won’t have her sister on campus with her. 

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I found this announcement in the bulletin of Sam Hock's parents church (link)

Quote

Montevideo is now the most expensive city in Latin America yet 1 in 10 adults in Uruguay suffer from addiction.

Good Friday was a day of fellowship with other churches. Then Saturday our church held a children’s class in the park where a 6 yr old girl made a profession of faith. Please pray that she will be able to attend kids classes at the church. For Easter, we made breakfast for our church family and enjoyed the beautiful weather.

Our church is getting more visitors lately. They have come from previous contacts, our church sign, online presence and our church family intentionally evangelizing. Some are taking a training class led by pastor Pedro.

Please pray our upcoming furlough starting on April 27th. We’ll be visiting several churches, attending Samuel’s graduation from Appalachian Bible College and then Samuel’s marriage to Mary on May 27th.

Thank you for your fervent prayer and providing financially. God works through you.

 

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Cute graduation photos, from a public Facebook page. image.png.e8d503dda886fbddf7103dd434e477d6.pngimage.thumb.png.525488e154be913db656b29d2ee3e1b8.png

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