Things and Things

Thing 1. This was our Thanksgiving evening.

Thing 2. As of November 27th, as close as we can figure, Aswan and I have been dating for one year! I spent the whole day working on my TESOL final paper. Seventeen pages, baby! Turning it in today. Anyways, unbeknownst to me, while I was working on my paper all afternoon, boyfriend went all the way to Semarang to buy me a pizza from Pizza Hut because a) he wanted to do something to celebrate our anniversary and b) he knew I was a little homesick because of not being able to be with my family on Thanksgiving.

Thing 3. I just found this bug outside the girls bathroom. At first it seems insignificant. But then it begins to seem like some kind of mutant scorpion bug. So I took lots of pictures.

Boxes

I have this tradition of sorts that mandates that any package received after Thanksgiving must be saved for Christmas. Usually it's only my mother who mails such packages, but I know a couple other people have recently sent things as well (HOORAY!), so I just want to check and see if there is anything in the aforementioned packages that needs to be extracted immediately. This might include things that will break down into a puddle in extreme humidity or might otherwise go bad and/or melt if left to sit for a month.

So if you mailed me a package recently, could you kindly comment and let me know? Terima kasih banyak (many thanks)!!

Holidays

My five favorite holidays are:

1. Fourth of July

2. Thanksgiving

3. New Year’s Eve.

4. Pi Day

5. Idul Fitri

I’ve only ever spent three Fourth of Julys away from home, but this will be my fifth Thanksgiving overseas. It’s hard to feel like it’s really the Thanksgiving/Black Friday/Christmas season when you wake up sweating at 6 AM to this:

It was so bright and sunny out! My room just filled up with curtain-filtered sunbeams, and it was all but glowing when I got up this morning. I like waking up on sunny days.

On a side note, remember how my camera broke? Well, I gave it to Hotjaga, because he is the master of fixing everything broken (even the Christmas lights that my cats chewed through). It took him about 4 days, but he was finally able to fix it completely! Good as new! He gave it back to me yesterday morning when I was on my way to school. He had originally told me that he was giving up and giving it back to me, so I thought it was still broken. Then he told me to open it up, and it worked!! So I took his picture and almost gave him a hug before I remembered that he’s a married Muslim man and I probably shouldn’t, even if he is my good friend.

Indonesians hardly ever smile with their teeth, but when I took this picture, he was laughing at my reaction to my camera actually being fixed, so I got a real smile! He must have taken a few pictures himself while he was working on my camera, because I found a picture of my apartment on it, taken from the vantage point of the jaga post at the gate.

See what I mean about it not feeling holiday-ish? It’s so GREEN!

Anyways, happy second best holiday of the year, everyone!!!

The Spot. I am on it.

There is this one worship leader at my church who really likes to sing songs 8 times in a row. And I'm not even exaggerating. Verses, chorus, bridge... all of it. Over and over and over. Sometimes it drives me nuts. This morning we were on the 6th round of "Dimuliakan, ditinggikan", when I started to feel really queasy and short of breath and my vision started going black around the edges. So I sat down and lip-synced the next three rounds. At least that song isn't a long one. Then pastor got up front and burst into a rendition (in English - I have no clue why he does this, because most people in my church don't understand or speak very much English) of "Jesus, I believe in You" as he does EVERY TIME HE PREACHES. So I sat through that too, and by the end of the song, I was thinking I was going to throw up (not because of the song, though I am pretty sick of it) and had a pounding headache. So pastor finished his super emotional rendition of the song (three times through), and then started preaching.

The sermon was on the power of thanksgiving. Right as soon as he said that, I remembered that I was supposed to call my family while they were at Thanksgiving dinner at gramma's house before I went to church. I must have been starting to be sick last night because I left a candle burning all night long on accident. I get really forgetful when I don't feel good. Anyways, right then, I grabbed my phone to text dad to ask if they had already left gramma's house. As I was texting, I felt Aswan jab me with his elbow. I looked up and realized that everyone in the congregation was looking at me expectantly, including the pastor.

Know how even when you're not paying attention to something, your mind kind of backlogs everything that's going on around you, and if you think for a second, you realize that you actually did just hear what was going on? Well, I am happy to report that just in the past couple months, I've been able to do that in Indonesian. It used to be that I had to really, really focus on everything that was being said because the second I spaced out, I would miss everything. But now I can kind of be half focused and still keep up. So anyways, I realized that pastor had just asked me what the population of the US is. Uhhhh.... I have no clue, and I told him so. So he asked me again. Yeah, I still didn't know. Not even ballpark. So he went on with what he was talking about (which was how all Americans have a whole holiday for giving thanks). Aswan whispered, "How can you not know the population of America?" So I replied with, "Do you know the population of Indonesia?!" He said, "Of course." And then he told it to me, but I forget.

Dad replied to my SMS saying that they'd already left, so then I had a stomach ache, a headache AND was feeling bummed that I forgot to call my family for Thanksgiving dinner. Laaaaame.

Pastor was still talking about how about 250 million Americans (he made up a number and went with it) celebrate Thanksgiving every year and how great that is that they all love God enough to have a whole holiday just to thank Him. I'm thinking, "Mmmhmm... That's what the holiday is about these days... The whole population of the US thanking God. Riiiiight..." And of course, right at that moment, he said to ME, "Can you please come up to the front and tell us about Thanksgiving? In Indonesian, please". And he stands there, smiling, holding his microphone out to me expectantly. I asked if I could do it from my seat, but he told everyone to cheer for me to get me up to the front, so you know I had to go to the front then. Peer pressure and all that. So I'm thinking he's asking what Americans do for Thanksgiving. But no, I get up to the front, and he says, "Tell the people the history of Thanksgiving!"

So I did. And I made it through explaining how people came from England and lots of them died because of how cold winter was and because they didn't know about the crops and animals there. And I talked about the Indians and how they helped them and there was a great feast and all that. There was one other white person there too, and I got her to come up front with me and feed me information. Because like I said, when I'm sick, I forget stuff. And I'm not fluent in Indonesian. So it was a lot easier to have this girl (who is new here and doesn't speak much Indonesian) feed me stuff in English that I could just translate instead of having to remember the story and form translatable thoughts on my own. She's studied a lot more history than I have too, so through her, we got to share about how George Washington made it a national holiday, then Abraham Lincoln reinstated it as a holiday after the Civil War.

When we finished, I asked Aswan if he understood it, and he said it was really clear and that we'd done a great job.

So today I had my first experience speaking to a congregation in Indonesian. The funny thing is that I don't get nervous about speaking in front of large groups in Indonesia the way I do in America. You'd think I would, Indonesian being my second language and all. But it really doesn't bother me so much. So there's an up-side.

So This is Still Happening

Went outside to take some pictures of all the red ants that have moved into my front yard. I am praying for hard rains today.

Oh, what’s that last one, you ask? Well, that is the picture that my camera somehow took by itself when red ants started going inside my boots and I accidentally dropped it. It broke.

(Don’t worry, dad, it wasn’t the Nikon.)

Bugs

1. The red ants are still out there. All over the sidewalk and the yard. I guess I didn’t sweep their nests far enough away. I feel like I can’t leave my house. Also, they are doing military exercises with a helicopter over my house. They do this a few times a year. It kind of weirds me out, because the helicopters fly over really low 5 – 10 times.

2. I happened to find THIS picture on a website last night, so I spent some time today trying to track down what on earth kind of bug that is on the right. I found one in my bed (see photo below) when I lived on Sumatra last summer, but nobody knew what on earth it was.

Anyways, through a long (5 minute) tedious process, I found THIS website. Apparently, it’s a Malaysian Orchid Mantis, the most sought after mantis in captivity. Gee, I missed my chance to make money off the stuff I find in my bed. Awesome internet searching skills come in handy once again…

So This is Happening…

So in case you can’t tell from the pictures, a red ant nest fell out of the tree in front of my house. I walked home in the dark. And I got ants in my pants. LITERALLY. Red ants in my pants. My legs are burning.

So of course I attempted to take a flash light out there and take pictures of them all, but they are swarming the entire sidewalk area, the lawn chairs, the LAWN, and everything else in the nearby vicinity, so I quickly aborted mission. Then I came back inside and tried to think of a safe way to get the ants away from my house. And I decided that maybe if I could sweep the fallen nest off the sidewalk, the ants would also leave the sidewalk. I didn’t want any ants getting in my pants again, so I found the shortest pajama shorts I own and put those on. Then I dug out my green rubber snake boots that I haven’t worn in forever and I cleaned them out real good and made sure there were no scorpions living inside. I donned those, grabbed a broom and a camera, took exactly one picture, and flung the nest out into the yard. While screaming and hopping from one foot to another, violently shaking whichever foot was airborne in order to knock off any ants that might be on it. All that, and the ants still made it to my thighs. I am such a martyr. I just hope the jaga didn’t see me.

Prayers for Cousins

Last night, I was getting ready for bed when a Muslim friend texted me and asked, "Did you go to sleep yet?" I replied that I was reading my Bible but was going to bed soon. He replied, "I have to drive to another city right now and it's about to rain. Can you please pray for me so that it won't rain?"

Maybe he meant nothing by it and I am way overthinking it. But it was significant to me for two reasons. One, just because he asked me to pray for him. He's never done that before. And two, because the concept of prayer is so different between the two religious. Muslims pray 5 times a day in the mosque with prayers memorized in Arabic. Allah isn't exactly an approachable god for day-to-day needs. So it's odd to me that a Muslim would ask me to pray for something so seemingly mundane.

But he did. And I did. And it didn't rain at my house until after I went to bed. I don't know about the rest of his trip though. I'll have to ask him later.

Pictures!

I wrote a story earlier this week about how I learned some new vocabulary while teaching English in the desa (village). And just now I remembered that I took some pictures last time I was there, so I decided to share them here!

This is the main road through the village. It’s just big enough for the car to get down! They don’t have a whole lot of cars come through there…

The room of the village elder’s house where we teach all the children. We get upwards of 40 kids K – 6 in here during the hottest part of the afternoon, and I can feel sweat dripping down my back as I teach! It also gets REALLY loud with that many kids, but we do what we can with the space we have!

I don’t have many pictures of the kids because they are still pretty shy around me. They don’t know any other white people besides the ones who come teach them – me and one other man! I did take this picture of three of the girls after English class – first thing, they ran outside and up the guava tree for a snack! The one at the top was shaking the tree so the two underneath could pick up the fruit.

A traditional Javanese village house. The houses aren’t really attached to the ground too much. They have wood walls, windows with no glass (just shutters), and dirt floors. The village leaders’ houses are usually the exceptions because they are more well off – they probably have some kind of tile for the floor.

The village mosque. There are no Christians in this village.

You Know You're Not in America When...

...students miss several days of school due to dengue fever.

Time Flies

I've been going to bed later and later lately, and I haven't really been able to figure out why. So tonight I sat down and wrote down all the extra things I do after I get home from school. Things outside of regular engagements like teaching piano and guitar, choir practice, teacher meetings, church, Bible study, etc. Here is the list I came up with...

1. Practice guitar. I've been working on some new songs. Ready to take this show on the road! Or maybe not... But I lead worship fairly regularly for one fellowship and sporadically for other churches and things, so I like to keep my skills up.

2. Crochet. I'm teaching myself how, and it's been an arduous process. But I'm getting there, and I think it's a skill worth having, so I've been putting time into that.

3. Exercise. Granted, I don't do a lot of this, but I've been trying lately. I might go for a walk or do some stretches or just do 50 situps before bed.

4. Read. I am always reading something. It might be a good book or a devotional, or it might be something totally lame like a stack of out of date US Weekly magazines that my friend gave to me. This is probably the only 100% relaxing thing on my list.

5. Learn language. Trying to add to my vocab. I might read a book or the Bible in Indonesian, looking up and making lists of all the words I don't know. Or I might just peruse the dictionary to find new words to learn.

6. Dinner. A girl's gotta eat. Sometimes I go out, but most times I just reheat whatever my helper cooked earlier in the day. This usually involves cutting the chunks of fat and bones out of it (because Indonesians are not at all discriminating about what they eat), heating it up with whatever method works best, and steaming rice to go with.

7. Clean up after myself. I know I have a house helper, but I try to make a point of not leaving a huge mess for her to have to clean each day. She does the dishes, laundry, and cleans the floors, but I pick up after myself, keep everything where it belongs, wipe up spills, throw dirty clothes in the hamper, rinse/soak dishes, and the like.

8. Shower. And even that doesn't happen every day. Sometimes it takes some work to get the hot water to work and who has the time?

9. Boyfriend. Spending time with him is definitely important. But no, I don't see him every day. In fact, we hung out Sunday, but that's the only day I've seen him since last Wednesday. Sometimes I forget we live in the same town.

10. TESOL. I will be finished by the end of this month! Working on two massive papers that need to be turned in by the 30th in order for me to receive my certification.

11. Online. I have a rule that I'm not allowed to be on the computer after 10 PM. This means I need to go like now. But I just want to point out that when you live 12,000 miles away from half the people you know and love, it does take some serious internet time to keep up with them all. Also, I have a tumblr, a pinterest, a blog, a facebook account, AND a twitter account to peruse as often as possible...

Now I guess it's no mystery why I can't go to bed early!!

Finally

Do you remember right before I went home to America at the beginning of June? And something really bad happened to our community here right at that time? And I couldn't really talk about it because not everybody knew about it because nobody was really supposed to know? Well, partway through the summer, the affected family released details about what happened and gave their permission for the event to be known. I've just really never talked about it because I haven't wanted to. I still don't want to. Because I don't know how to process it, so I haven't. And I cry like a little girl every time it gets brought up. But I found something today that I want to share with you, and in order to do that, I need to explain what happened here at the end of May, so here it goes.

My (former) boss is an amazing guy. He lived and served in Indonesia for 13 or 14 years before deciding two years ago that he would move his family back to America this year. They have three children, all of whom I have taught, and their second graduated in May. Their reasoning was that by then, 2/3 of their children would be in America, so it was time to return. Only things didn't go as planned. During her junior year, their oldest daughter, Lainy, got extremely sick, but nobody could ever explain why. She saw doctors in various countries, but not a single one knew what was causing her illness. It got to the point of where she would be in bed with a migraine and throwing up for days. Other days, she would be fine, but then would pass out randomly, falling and bruising her body. She came to school on crutches regularly and often had black eyes. She basically looked like she was being extremely abused. She was only able to come to school one or two days a week for most of her junior year and had to retake some of her classes as a senior. By her senior year, she was on medicine that helped control some of her symptoms, but still nobody knew what was wrong. She was on the basketball team, but rarely played because she was too weak. She couldn't even stand for long periods of time. She also lost feeling in her arms and legs. She did manage to graduate and she went back to America with plans to start college at a small Christian school in Indiana. But she was just too sick, so her mom (our science teacher) went back to be with her in October of 2010. They stayed there together, seeing various doctors and trying different medicines, until December, when they both moved back to Indonesia. During that time, doctors discovered that all her symptoms were related to a type of parasite that is transmitted by snails (who knew?!). So she was being treated, but the healing process can and will take years.

At the end of May, the family had 3 weeks left in Indonesia. They were planning on going to Australia for a family vacation before heading back and settling in to their new home in the States. One day, during our finals week at school, Lainy was home alone and feeling good, so she decided to go for a walk near her house. While she was out, two Indonesian men attacked her with a knife, forced her off the road and raped her. In broad daylight.

Three weeks short of the completion of more than a dozen years of service to this country. This.

There are people in this community who have known Lainy since she was in Kindergarten. That's how old she was when she moved here. We have all seen what she has gone through the last three years, and we have all heard her amazing testimony. She hates being sick, but she knows that God is doing something big in her life. But to see her have to go through this was almost more than we could all bear.

Anyways, I'm writing this because I found something today that I thought was really, really neat. Lainy's younger sister, who graduated high school two days after her sister was raped, recently wrote and recorded a song dedicated to Lainy. I just happened to come across it online. And you should listen to it. This song alone is a great testimony to Lainy's amazing faith. Click HERE to listen.

New Vocab

On Saturdays, I go with some friends into two local villages to teach English to the kids there. The first village is smaller and has two or three Christian families living there. Only 5 - 10 kids come to learn English in that village, and we teach them in the tiny one room church they have. One time I asked the kids how many people come to that church, and they told me 11. The second village is 100% Muslim, and we usually have 30 - 40 kids come - all elementary age! Depending on how many teachers we have, we split them up into groups by age/grade and teach them on the floor of the village elder's house.

Last week, we were teaching them family words. Father, mother, sister, brother, aunt, uncle, cousin, grandmother, grandfather, niece, nephew, etc. I had the third and fourth graders. We learned all the words, talked about how to spell them, played some games, worked on memorizing the words, then worked on a little bit of simple present tense. We still had some time left, so I taught them how to ask, "How many ___________ do you have?" (filling in the blank with a family word) So we took turns asking each other, "How many sisters do you have?", "How many grandfathers do you have?", "How many cousins do you have?" and so on.

We ran into a problem though. It all started when I asked each of them in turn, "How many fathers do you have?" Of course, they all said "I have one father". I made a joke about how it would be weird to have two or three fathers. Very seriously, they answered, "Yes, but lots of people have more than one mother!" So true in Muslim society. Later on, when I asked, "How many sisters do you have?", the first little girl got confused and asked, "Anak kandung?" Anak means child. Kandung means uterus/womb/fetus. So I thought she was asking me if I wanted her to count an unborn baby as a sister, like if her mom is currently pregnant. I wasn't sure though, so I asked her what she meant. The explanation she gave me went something like this, "You know, anak kandung. Like the kids in your main family. Not the kids that you take from the road or anything like that." OK, I was really confused then. I ended up telling her that she could count however she wanted.

Later on, I asked one of the men to explain to me what it means, and he told me that anak kandung means children from the same womb or mother. So if a man has two wives, and the first has 3 kids and the second has 2 kids, if I were to ask a child from the first wife how many anak kandung siblings they have, they would only count their mother's two other children as their siblings. But if someone were to ask them how many children were in the WHOLE family, they would count all four siblings from the same father.

Good to know. And strange that I live in a society that has such language for multiple wives with multiple children.

Walt Disney Wants Me.

Following is an email I opened less than 5 minutes ago. I'm posting it here, because it is all kinds of crazy. Disney? Education? China? Where did they get my name??

Hi,

During a recent recruiting search, your resume came up as meeting our criteria. Based on your qualifications we would like to inform you about career opportunities with Disney English.

Disney English, the Education segment of The Walt Disney Company, is looking for the best and brightest educators to instruct children ages 2-12 in an intensive program at our Language Learning Centers throughout China.

Foreign Trainers will follow an innovative and immersive Disney inspired program, leveraging state-of-the-art technology as well as Disney's beloved characters and stories to provide students with a highly engaging and effective premium learning experience.

Language Learning Directors are responsible for managing the foreign and local trainers, ensuring consistent excellence in our overall program delivery and ensuring that Disney English is a highly effective and unforgettable classroom experience for our young language learners.

Please reply to this email with an attached resume if you or someone you know is interested in our program. To qualify, candidates must:

Have a Bachelors degree
Have 2 years or more after graduation work experience (at least 1 year must be teaching)
Be a native English speaker

Regards,
Asha Bates
Consultant, Disney English

GRANOLA!

I got hooked on granola when I lived in Kenya. I didn't have a house helper there, but my neighbors did. Their helpers would make granola and they would share with us. There wasn't a whole lot of milk or yogurt available (unless you like camel milk sold in a plastic bag), so I learned to just eat it plain. When I got back to America, I found that granola is stinkin expensive, so I never really ate it there other than the occasional granola bar on the go. Then I moved to Indonesia. And I got a house helper. And I found out that she can make granola! So I have her make it from time to time.

Apparently, I got Aswan hooked as well, and a few weeks ago, he wanted to learn how to make it himself. So we made a batch ourselves during fall break loosely based on a recipe I found on the internet. It came out not very crunchy and a little odd tasting. I chalk that up to the fact that my brown sugar had fermented and the honey was 3 years old. We still ate it all.

Wednesday, boyfriend came down with a nasty cold. Thursday he had to get up at like 5 AM to drive some people to a conference in Surabaya - the second biggest city on the far East coast of Java, about 7 hours away. So what did he do Wednesday night? He drove his bike to my house. In the rain. And asked if we can make some granola because he really wanted to eat granola. Apparently granola is now his comfort food. He was so wet and sounded so sick, so of COURSE we made some! He wanted to make his own, and since we had made it once before and knew what was good and what needed improvement, we both made our own batches, no recipe involved. He wanted his crunchy. It ended up turning black and tasting kind of burnt because he left it in the oven for like an hour. But mine came out great! Boyfriend was gonna take his to Surabaya with him so that he would have something to snack on while driving, but I put my foot down and made him take mine. There was a little that didn't fit in the container, so I ate that much. And it was GOOD. So Aswan was like, "You need to write down how you made that so we can make it again". So I wrote it down the way I remembered it, and here is my recipe for really good granola. It's easy!

Ingredients:
1/4 kg oatmeal
1/2 a stick of melted butter (real butter)
3 giant spoonfulls of brown sugar
quite a bit of cinnamon
a tiny bit of nutmeg
several squirts of vanilla extract
a handful of flax seed
a handful of sesame seeds
1/10 kg dried shredded coconut
the rest of a bottle of honey
like 5 spoonfulls of sunflower seed oil or any other vegetable-type oil

Turn the oven on to some arbitrary temperature. Mix up all the ingredients in a bowl then press them onto a cookie sheet and bake until it smells like it might start to burn soon. Take it out and let it cool. Then you can cut it up into bars or crumble it up in chunks.

Alternatively, you could just dump the mixture onto the cookie sheet and spread it out fairly evenly. Get it out and stir it up every 10 minutes so the bottom doesn't burn, and then you'll have cereal-type granola. That's what we did last time and what boyfriend did this time. He just kept deciding it wasn't crunchy enough and putting it back in for 10 more minutes. As it cools, it tends to get crunchier though...

I like granola because you can throw in just about anything you want. Dried fruit, sunflower seeds, chocolate chips, nuts, a brisket. The possibilities are endless.

Quote of the Day

After reading a quote by Voltaire written on my chalkboard...

11th grader: Who is Voltaire?
Me: A French philosopher who lived in the 1700s.
11th grader: Oh. Is that who they named Volt energy drink after?
Me: Uhh.... I don't think so.

Before you read the conversation below, you should know that pretty much all Indonesians take two baths a day - once when they first wake up, and once in the afternoon. But never after dark, because you will get sick and die. It may be a third world country, but you can rarely accuse an Indonesian of being dirty. In fact, all my friends think I'm gross because I only bathe about three times a WEEK! I say if you're not sweaty and dirty, why waste water? Bathing twice a day every day seems excessive to me. But anyways...

Boyfriend: What time are we going to Val's house tonight?
Me: Whenever, no set time.
Boyfriend: Good, because I want to take a shower first.
Me: OK.
Boyfriend: I didn't mandi (bathe) yet today.
Me: WHAT?! Are you even Indonesian?!? No mandi this morning?!
Boyfriend: Yeah, I haven't mandi-ed in the morning for a long time. One mandi a day is enough for me.
Me: Seriously?
Boyfriend: Yeah, I'm turning into an American. I mean, if you mandi at night, it's useless to mandi in the morning too, because you didn't get dirty since the last mandi.
Me: Oh my goodness... Finally, somebody understands me...
Boyfriend: Americans. You people are pretty smart.

Idul Adha

Today is Idul Adha, the second biggest Muslim holiday of the year. It is the day on which they commemorate the time God sent a ram to Abraham so that he wouldn't have to sacrifice his own son. Of course, they believe that son was Ishmael, while the Christian Bible states that it was Isaac, the son through whom the blessing was to come. They mark this day by staying up all night the previous night having parades and marching around town chanting, "ALLEHU AKBAR!" It's pretty loud. Then on the day of, they go to the mosques and sacrifice goats and cows and pray a lot, then after all the blood has been drained out of the meat, they cut it up and divide it between themselves, any other friends who have come (including white people who are there watching) and enough to give the poor. On this day, everybody eats meat.

Anyways, I want to ask prayers for one man. He's the friend of a friend, an older Javanese man, and he recently became a believer. They don't call him a Christian, just a believer. He's been reading his Bible a lot lately, and he's really felt convicted about the verses about feeding the poor and also, "what you did for the least of these, you did for me." So on this day, he, as a believer, is going to butcher several goats himself, then take the meat to some different parts of town and give it all away to the poor while sharing his testimony and the fact that he didn't have to sacrifice these animals to Allah, because his God already sent the ultimate sacrifice.

Telling people about Jesus in the biggest Muslim country in the world is never easy. In fact, proselytizing is illegal. And through his actions, he could very easily face persecution on a large scale. Pray that his words would fall on open ears and ready hearts and that God would protect him! He's already put his plan into action as I type this, so as soon as you read this post, get praying! : ) Thanks!

Seriously?

Apparently the language school next door is either building a house or possibly just pounding lots and lots of nails into a piece of wood. 10 feet from my bed. At 7:30. On Saturday morning. Guess who's awake and cranky about it? Yes, that would be me.

Updates, Because I am Generally Bad at Them

1. They have still not caught the Afghans running loose around here.

2. My friend is still kidnapped by pirates. She was able to get word somehow to her org in Denmark that she is alive and well. That's all that we know though.

OKTHEEND.

600th Post!

Our school orchestra, which is made up of people ranging in age from 5th grade to 40s, wants to play Vivaldi's Gloria for the school Christmas concert in December. They asked for people willing to sing. So I joined choir?

The practices are only one hour a week, and now that rainy season seems to finally have settled in, it's usually raining after school, so I might as well stay an extra hour on that one day anyways, right? First practice yesterday worked out well - it was pouring when we started, but the rain was over when we finished. So practice was especially beneficial to me since I'm not yet in the habit of bringing an umbrella with me to school.

So now... I teach piano and do math tutoring on Mondays, give guitar lessons on Tuesdays, have teacher meetings and choir practice on Wednesdays, lead worship for English language fellowship on Thursdays, and work at the coffeeshop on Fridays. Now I have a matching set of full evenings, thank goodness. My Wednesdays were feeling naked.