For Aslan!

Time to resuscitate the tateblog. I just learned how to spell the word "resuscitate." Awesome.

Learning. The reason the tateblog has been somewhat non-existent the past few months. It's good learning though. I survived my first semester of seminary, and as much as I complained about being busy and stressed out, I'd say it was worth it. And now I just want to keep learning. Weird, right? I have a list of like 10 books I want to read this summer now that I don't have homework. Granted, half of those are books from the Chronicles of Narnia, but whatever.

NARNIA.

For those of you that don't know, I have a slight obsession with The Chronicles of Narnia. I seriously love it. There's just something about it that I can't really put into words, but C.S. Lewis is a genius.

I was not one of those kids that grew up reading these books. I just read the Berenstein Bears, duh. My first reading of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was in my sophomore year of college, but I just thought it was another children's book. Then the movie came out in December 2005. I remember it well because I saw the midnight showing in Olathe, KS with Micah Thomas, Alan Fogleman and Linsie Eriksen. That group alone would obviously be memorable, not to mention it was like 10 degrees outside and Alan's windows were freezing on the inside. It was intense. The movie AND the whole situation.

I did like the movie, but my obsession didn't come until later. I think it grew when I moved to Colorado and started snowboarding in the mountains and I felt like I was in Narnia. Seriously, go in the snowy mountains sometime and find a quieter place and watch the snow fall and look how much it looks like Narnia. It's awesome.

So granted I was pretty pumped when the second one was coming around. When I first saw Prince Caspian a couple weeks ago, I liked it, but as I kept thinking about it for the following few days, I loved it. And now, I can't stop talking about it.

Just looking at that picture makes me smile. I mean yeah, it had a couple lame moments, but the incredible story was not lost. And I must say, I LOVE Edmund.

And I don't mean I love him the way 13-year-old girls might love him. I mean he is just all-around amazing. Yeah, he was a dummy in the first movie, but he was by far the best character and overall best aspect of Prince Caspian. If you haven't seen it, you should, and you'll see what I mean.

So now I am just trying to figure out why I love this movie so much. I don't usually love fantasy-type movies, and I'm not that into children's books. But I think two words sum it all up for me: adventure and power. Narnia (and the Bourne Identity too, but we're not talking about that here) brings out this desire I think I have for like great excitement and adventure in life. Legit? Maybe. And also I really do think the power that I see in that movie is such a vivid picture of the power of God. And for the sake of not wanting to sound too cheesy or overspiritual, and because I have a difficult time expressing my thoughts on this topic more, I'll leave it at that.

And my final thought is that Peter looks like Micah Thomas and it weirded me out the whole movie.

I meant for all of that to be a short lead-in to the fact that I am still trying to learn things this summer by reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in Spanish. Then I'm gonna read the rest of the series in English. Also, Kristen and I plan to watch English movies dubbed over in Spanish in preparation for Peru. We started with Friday Night Lights and that's as far as we've gotten.

But we better get moving because we leave for Peru three weeks from today!!! I'm so pumped.

I think in this blog I also meant to write more about the fact that I'm in Chicago (ish) right now hanging out with Angie and the Van Rossums, but that will have to come later because this is for sure long enough.

For Aslan!