Wednesday, December 6, 2006
I touched history…
Today was a fairly normal day. I went to Geology at 10am, my American Century class at 11am, I had my third Geology tutorial at noon, then I had an hour break, then I attended my Vikings tutorial at 2pm. The most interesting thing happened at 3:30pm. We had a special lecture scheduled for our Christendom in Crisis class in which we got to learn about Aberdeen University’s Special Libraries and Archives. There were monographs (books) lined up along each side of the room, each of them several hundred years old. We got to take a close look at these books, and they were all so impressive. I had never been so close to books of that age. The ironic thing about this lecture was that it coincided exactly with what I had been doing last night. I was researching for my last Christendom essay, which is about Aberdeen’s history, and I was reading all about the papal bull that founded the university. This bull was signed by Pope Alexander VI on 6 February 1495. Well, today I got to touch the actual document! It was so amazing that I can hardly describe it. It’s just so difficult to say what it feels like to actually touch a piece of animal skin that was written and signed by a pope several hundred years before the United States was even created! That’s what I love about being over here…everything is older than country that I lived in for twenty six years. Maybe it’s just me and my obsession with history, but I find that completely fascinating. Ah well, whether you’re impressed or not, I had an absolute ball today! That’s really about all that I have to write, I was just so excited by the whole thing. I’ve got to do more research for my essay, so I will jet. Byeee.