The things I'm thankful for today...

1) Having Krisanna here...


2) The beach...everytime I go I think, "Why did I live in Iowa?"



3)Great bones... seriously... I should have broken at least two or three by this point in my life.


4)Moments where I can't help but be amazed at the beautiful creativity of my God...

Excess...

too much. an over-abundance. full. stuffed. unable to contain more.
Or... my closet.
Seriously. Nothing is more depressing (and embarrassing) as realizing you not only have enough stuff to completely FILL your closet... you also have so much that you BREAK your closet.
Yup.
Sometime in the morning I awoke to a booming "SNAP!" Because I had earplugs in (yes, I sleep with earplugs...every night), I figured the sound must have come from the people above me. Not so. Unfortunately as soon as I awoke and opened my door to see what to wear...I realized exactly what that noise was.
How do I accumulate so much stuff? I made a decision two months ago not to buy anymore clothes. I don't need them. I need to enjoy and wear what I have. Today confirmed it.
And nothing is more embarrassing and humiliating than having to tell Cal (which is why I told Joyce) that I had so much stuff that I snapped the closet. This is made even more embarrassing when you realize he thought I would only need ten or so hangers when I first got here...I'm not even telling you how many I have now...
BUT... He came.. He fixed... (and He said nothing.) ;)
I'm thankful for someone who knows how to do about everything. I think every girl should either live close to their dad... or to Cal. :)

:)

Krisanna and Jess arrived. :)
I can't really tell you how incredibly amazing it is to have people from HOME come and stay for an extended period of time. It's such a huge blessing... one that I know I don't deserve--but one for which I am incredibly grateful (awkward sentence wording... but I was reminded today not to end a sentence with the word "for"... so I figured I should at least try).
The night before they arrived I could barely sleep...It felt like the night before Christmas... :)
I love having them here.

I've begun pouring my energy (and by "energy" I mean exorbitant amount of extra time that I'm not sure why I have so much of here...) into creating a book study guide for my class. I'm so excited about teaching it. It's one of my favorite books regarding the Holocaust. So...home-made deodorant is going to have to wait for some time...I'm only nine chapters into twenty-seven. :) (Did I just hear a collective sigh of relief?)

Language is going well... for the most part. I still can't say that I fully understand why God has wired me to LOVE it so much. It's like this key to a door that holds a whole new world... and right now... I'm still trying to get the key to turn. I feel like I should be so much further than where I really am. I so desperately wish I could just converse with people... people outside of my "world" of school and home. Hopefully someday...

I do finally feel like I have my own place here. I don't know if I can adequately describe it... but I just feel like I'm finding where I fit for however long God has me here. And more than once I've caught myself feeling very much at home.

On a random side note...
I shocked myself yesterday when I opened a package my mom had sent with Krisanna. It was a zip-lock bag with four shirts that I had left and wanted. I opened them and threw the bag and shirts on the bed when suddenly I smelled it. I quickly snatched up the shirts and buried my face into them to see if it was really it. Sure enough... they smelled like home. It was odd. I sniffed the shirts for about five minutes and then ripped open the other bag of shirts to see if they smelled just as familiar. It was weird.... how smells can be so intimately connected and intertwined with memories of places and people. While I love being here... it was so nice to smell there for just a few minutes.

Judges....

To Whom It May Concern:
Thank you. Your words convicted, but left me desiring more. Sometimes it wasn't even the words you said. It was just your life. It left me hungry, realizing you had something that I didn't have.
You inspired. You encouraged. You pushed.
And more than anything, you left deep within me the desire to be for others what you were for me. So--to the "judge" God used in my life-- I thank you. You have impacted me far more than you realize.
Because you followed hard after Him... I wanted to know Him more.
Because you showed me His love for me... I didn't go looking for it in other places.
Because you taught with your life... I knew what it looked like to love Jesus.
Thank you.



This month I've been working through the book of Judges with my students. We've studied Ehud, Gideon, Deborah (one of my favorites), and many others. Today the challenge was to think about the "judges" God has used in our lives to redirect, remind, and refocus us on God. Our challenge was to write a thank you note for the person God used in our lives. This was mine. I've said it so many times before... but I've been blessed. I'm eternally grateful for the people God put in my life to speak His words to me.

Productivity abounds....

when you get rid of Facebook.
Here's my list...
I have:
made my own coffee creamer
learned how to make sour cream
found thirty new recipes to try
researched and switched savings accounts
made granola bars
budgeted all spending
learned how to cook a whole chicken (haven't done it...but I will)
washed the windows
cleaned my purse with vinegar and oil
made my own body scrub
made my own shampoo
made my own conditioner
made my own facewash
debated making my own deodorant...still thinking about that one...
learned that vinegar is my new best friend (seriously, did you know you can clean just about anything with vinegar?)
learned how to make vinegar (no...I haven't done it.. but you never know when that knowledge might come in handy...)
learned just about anything can be made from scratch
created a stock market game with my class
stopped thinking in Facebook status updates
read Jane Austen
read John Piper
cleaned my closet
cleaned my shoes
decided to go on a shopping fast

Whew... and that's been in two months...
We'll see what the next two months bring. :)

Giraffes, Legos, and Hello Kitty....

Laura and I decided we would venture to our first get together with the adults from our church. We both were feeling as if we were learning more Portuguese and comfortable enough to attempt it.
As hard as I tried, I just felt out of place. I think it just reconfirmed that I've got so far to go...and because I wasn't expecting that...it was just extremely discouraging. So, sitting on the hearth of a fireplace, trying not to look like I just wanted to burst into tears... I found my place.
Two little girls came over and began playing with legos. I tried to converse with them, asked them their names, and tried to engage them in conversation, but even they looked at me with disapproval and caution, trying to figure out why I was talking to them. So I quietly kept playing with them, trying to help them build a house, or put Hello Kitty on an elephant...and gradually, they began to warm up. They started talking to me as if I understood everything. I asked them the names of the animals and inwardly laughed at their perplexed faces (they did NOT understand why I--an adult--did not know the name of the giraffe). They began to engage more with me, and I asked again what their names were. With a look of slight distrust, they ignored my question and kept playing with me. They quickly realized Laura and I could not tell them what to do and began fighting over legos and Kitties... and we tried to figure out how to tell them to share...but were unsuccessful.
Finally, about five minutes before we had to leave I asked one more time if they would tell us their names. One girl looked at us, grinned, and said, "Maria."
Trust.
What an interesting thing... and figuring out how you earn it in a different place is so frustrating. Maybe much of my struggle is due to language... but I couldn't help but wonder at the similarities of how these girls related to us and how I feel others relate as well...

I used to hate reading. In fact one time I was sent to my room for something (probably hitting Jon), and my punishment was to start reading a book.
I remember looking at the cover and telling my mom it was the dumbest book ever. To which she replied, "How would you know if you haven't read it."
"Fine. I'll read it. And then I'll tell you how dumb it really is," I thought.
I opened the cover, thumbed through a few pages, and solely for spite's sake started reading.
Somewhere between chapter one and chapter two I was mesmerized. The kids were playing with pig guts wrapped in cloth for toys, their dolls were made of corn husks, and they churned their own butter. What kind of world was this?
I devoured the book. Laura Ingalls Wilder became my hero. I read every book I could get my hands on, including the four additional series about her children as well as her adult newspaper articles.

The other day I sat down to my computer to see what other things I could attempt to make for supper. Somehow I stumbled on different home-made ingredients. Instantly I was fascinated. Who knew you could make your own brown sugar, or baking powder, or even ricotta cheese?

So I wrote down some recipes and started making the first one on the list... sour cream. It flopped. Apparently I didn't let my milk sour with vinegar for the appropriate time, so I tried again, and what do you know? Homemade sour cream, just like AE's (ok...not quite...but much better than the stuff here).

So, I moved on to my next item: flavored coffee creamer.

It just doesn't exist here...unless you know a woman named Joyce...in which case she can find some at a magical place that only she has access to... but seriously, does she really need to know how much coffee creamer I consume? And what if God called me to a place without coffee creamer or Joyce?



So... I made my first batch, and despite lacking two ingredients, it turned out decently. Tonight I tried again with a few new additions, homemade syrup (it calls for maple syrup...which we don't have) and a tea strainer to get rid of the chunks of cinnamon.


It's ridiculous, but somehow in the midst of living in the biggest city I've ever lived in...I feel like Laura. And I like that. Now...to churn my own butter. No...seriously, that's next on my list.
:)