What I Did Over the Break

It's kind of funny that the more free time I have, the less I blog. Even if I have just as much to blog about, it's as if I often blog as a stalling tool. :D Haha. Well, so lets have a summary of the dry period:

I swam a few more times in the lake. :D
I saw Christmas come and go, with a bit of angst.
We went to Branson and had some unseasonably warm weather.
My Catalan class was cancelled, which I was not at all happy about.
It's 2009 now, hurrah!
I went to Arabic Church once, but they don't do food anymore (losers), and I caught up with Olivia there.
I've studied a bit of Italian and a bit of Norwegian, but otherwise haven't used my time wisely.
I may have a nice new penpal (though Liisa is now and forever first and foremost :D)
I didn't get the R.A. position, but I'm not horribly upset about that.
I'm excited about next semester, especially starting Journalism classes, and learning a bit of Thai from Kanchana and Chaowalit.
I'm excited to meet the newcomers to Laws.
I'm worried about German class.
I'm peeved at Jorge for writing on almost everyone's walls except for mine during the break.
I'm angry with my own dreams - why are my conscious and unconscious warring?
I didn't make a New Years reflection over the last year post, so I might do essentially the same thing come my birthday.
Lucia and I beat Bjarki and Alberto on Geochallenge. :D
Stephanie told me all about her new boyfriend, Jack.
It's about 75% sure that we're going on the cruise this summer.
The recession is scary and is leading to more crime here at home.
We're weathering it okay so far.
I failed at sending Christmas cards, except a late one to Liisa, so I'm now planning on groundhog day cards.
Lucia and I got way ahead of ourselves planning a trip to South America when we're twenty one.
I have really, really neglected Faroese. :(
I discovered that I can concentrate and get a lot more done in Mizzou than here. Oh well.
I had a wonderful evening with Stephanie, Smith, and Lucia. :D
I had some seriously cool moments where I intuited languages.
I read a very interesting and funny (no, seriously) book on the history of English.
I read Lucky Child, essentially the sequel to First They Killed My Father.
I spent a lot of good time with dear little Tidbit. :D Who is doing very well, btw, though she's gotten very white around the face and paws.
I worried about the Costa Rican earthquake, which happened right by my family, though they seem to be safe.
Sra. Altadonna showed me a clip that came up on one of the instructional CDs in Spanish class one day, where a boy looking very much like Jorge, and was named Jorge, introduced himself and his friend Miranda from the United States. Which was too funny, except that she doesn't know that the two of us aren't going out any more. Well, I guess we're still friends. I guess. Except that his old and new girlfriend is being about 90-100x more friendly than Jorge.
I got together with Laura T. here in St. Louis, and I ran into Phil at the mall.
I bought two pairs of jeans, ZOMG. (And I found out that for skinny jeans, I wear a size 1 petite. Not a size 0. ZOMG I need to become anorexic lol)

And that's... about all... for a whole month. Not very good. XD

Church

This morning my mom and my sister were tired, so we didn't go to church. I was kind of relieved. It's not that I don't love God... but I haven't been back to my own church for anything other than the occasional service project or multicultural dinner for a while now, and I've come to resist it.

It's pretty, I'll give it that. Enormous and as ancient as any church this side of the Mississippi can claim to be. Rows of beautiful blonde children and american-blonde teenagers line the pews. We have a preschool choir, a kindergarten choir, an elementary school choir, a middle school choir, a high school choir, a purple choir, and three or four specialized choirs singing barbershop style or springing from the extensive Drama department. We have too many ministries to name - from Scrapbooking to Puppets, each with a healthy membership.

And there are good people in the church, don't get me wrong about that, either. But every clear voice seems drowned out by a cacophany of 'christians' yelling at their parents and sneaking out of Devotional to meet boys. It's not just the teenagers, quite often it's their parents as well. Backstabbing is rampant at church functions. There are cliques in the sunday schools. There are five fake smiles for every real one, like a glint of richly golden tinsel hidden under a mound of cheap yellow.

You forget about those, after a while. They're background noise. Almost white noise. You concentrate on the good. You must...

Until you start going to a little church, a little Arabic Baptist Church. And it's filled with ex-missionaries and refugees, and no one is left out. You're greeted by hugs and translated 'love you's' instead of fake smiles. The children don't look like ornate, fallen angels but like children.
The food is not mass produced spaghetti from an industrial sized kitchen but a miniature feast composed of a dish from each house. And the background noise is singing.

How can I go back? Is it any wonder I've begun to resist?

This Weekend

This Weekend I'm running like my feet can't bear to stay on the ground.

Friday, Racquetball game. Immediately after school. Opponent's a sour natured girl, who won't shake hands properly and frowns and whines and tells all her friends I'm cheating for having good positioning. I go from this to Babysitting, no time to change. They jump on me and want to play tag and have milk and dinner and the little baby wants to poop and scream and run around and Grace wants to jump from furniture to furniture, that's not allowed...

I sing to Nate as I rock him to sleep, I sing "Into the West", it's what comes into my head, and he falls to sleep in my arms and I kiss his little face on his soft cheekbone, and a little eyelash is there. It's dark and long; not from a baby's eye. So the wish is mine, and I wish that someday...

Memory fades out, I dream of the National Vocabulary Competition, and making Sra. Altadonna a ball of stress and nerves, and we get there just in time, and sit together, Laura and Christy and I, as it all begins, and up on the stage there's bright lights and dry ice and a noise like thunder and the first girl goes up, and it's not even Vocabulary but Geography, and I don't know if she even get's it right - what does that buzzer mean, after all?

It means wake up, up I get, I shower, go down and shove a strawberry crepe down my throat and take the highway to work, barely get there ontime, half asleep and with an arm throbbing from Racquetball and Baby-Changing and forty new dollars in my pocket and it's payday and I get a 400$ paycheck, so now I'm rich but I have to shelve books all day...

Home again, it's out the door, to Arabic Church - I've turned it into my Government service project as well. Little kids climbing and kicking and screaming, Alleh, Daniel, Daniela, Eva, Evaline, Mary, and a new little girl, and we watch the service, it's interesting, and we eat some food, and we're home again, the house is cold and empty without Mom or Dad or Melissa or Tidbit.

Asleep - for longer, but not long enough. I skip Racquetball practice to write the Government essay, Angie hasn't even done it, for all that. Due on Tuesday at midnight, I want to get my English essay done tonight, perhaps it will happen. Lovely times at Layla's house, such nice smells and golden colours and a bird hits the window and whirls about with a wounded wing scattering decaying leaves about it.

Dark and Deadly Kaos, Smooth and Simple Peace... I look forward to Thanksgiving, and to Christmas, and to next year being a Senior, and College, and seeing the world, and meeting someone I want to spend my life with, and having adorable little dark haired children, and then quite suddenly I don't want to go forward any more - the tunnel plummets onward to the end of my life. So I sit back, and concentrate on the minute - what do you have to do RIGHT NOW, this very minute. What's due in the next? What's important?

And I decide blogging. :D

War of the News

I've got major major Tidbit-related bad news, so I'm going to clutter up my life with a few points of minor good news for now.

A.) I'm out of my math-science slump. I would call it a grade slump, but I never really slumped in Spanish or German, and I'm still slumping as mildly as before in English and History. But no, I get what's going on in Math, and I went to tutoring*, and studied with Stephanie for the Chemistry test, and hopefully did pretty well on it.

B.) Arabic Church last night was fun. I think I'm actually learning some things! Not much, but a little. I know about 7 words now, and I notice them when they come up, and can sometimes guess the context. And I started learning the alphabet, because right before leaving, I opened my book and learned "m", and then I was delighted to recognize it. Then, as we had to draw thanksgiving oriented pictures with the kids, I managed to write "Shokran" or "Thanks", in Arabic! I was so proud I showed it to everyone.

* - This was fun, as I'm a member of the organization that was tutoring, and I show up and they're like, "Alright Miranda, go find someone (stupid) to help..." and I'm all like, "Yeah... About that...."

To Do List

Yesterday I worked from 8:30-5:00, then had church from 6:15-10:30.

My to do list today? My mom lovingly wrote it out for me.

Sleep in.
Relax.
Install printer.
Install keyboard.
Go to Racquetball.
Shower.
Do Homework.
Clean Room.
Sort School Stuff.
Clean White Crate.
Clean Office.
Clean Bathroom.
Watch Scarlet Letter.

Right... you know, just because a Day is technically empty doesn't mean it's infinite...

So far I've slept in, sorted school stuff, cleaned my white crate, and installed the keyboard. It's four in the afternoon...

First Day of Work - First Day Sleeping In!

Yesterday was my first day of work! Yay! :D

It was so über-official! There are lockers, microwaves, a refrigerator, lots of dishes and stuff you can use if you wash them at the little sink, couches, magazines, a staff boards, and more! I even got a work email address! I'm very excited.

I sort of hit the ground running starting with an 8 hour shift, but it went well. I feel like I've got most of it down. I did 5 carts, which Maddy said wasn't bad at all for a first day. They checked all of them, but my accuracy was pretty good; I got tripped up once by a thin song book that was supposed to be on the left of the one I was shelving, not the right, and once by a label that snuck surreptiously around the book beyond the spine, and I didn't check the six, but other than that, it was all perfect. Yay!

I was a little sore when I got home, but the Mina's weren't going to church, so I got to go more or less straight to bed. Lo and behold, I got to sleep in for the first day in almost a month! I needed it, too... with my trip next week. I can hardly believe it's so close! I am going to take an almost obscene amount of photos...

Sudan

I saw them a year ago, when they had just come from Sudan. They wore nice, warm clothes that looked bulky and missplaced, especially that mild evening. Their eyes and teeth shone white and brilliant against their skin, even across the room. And those eyes lit up when they sang.

They spoke no English, then. Less than a year ago. I saw the one about my age again yesterday. He spoke incredibly, answering my questions almost as easily and fluently as a native speaker. And when he said a little Spanish, which he had learned the same way... merely listening... I was blown away.

So there's my familiar face in the wake of a disaster. He said the most different thing in America was the quiet... I didn't understand what he meant for a moment. He said in Sudan there were always gunshots, always people trying to kill each other... it didn't even wake you up at night.

Kind of makes me feel bad for my exploding water heater and dog barf and mom breakdown problems. Kind of makes me feel really bad.

Iraq

I saw a cartoon once from a dogs perspective, in which a human was lecturing to the poor canine, the speech bubble reading,

"...blah blah blah SPOT blah blah blah BAD blah blah blah SPOT..."

Of course, that's exactly how I feel at Arabic Church, when I go upstairs and listen to the sermon. Usually the only word I can pick up is "Pastor Billingsly", the name of the American Pastor at the Church, who it seems to me is mentioned a hell of a lot simply for lack of context. But tonight there were more familiar words than normal, something to the tune of...

"...qakh, qakh qakh AMERICA qakh qakh qakh BUSH qakh qakh qakh IRAQ qakh qakh qakh AKBAR qakh qakh qakh... "

Well, that intrigued me enough that I asked for a bit of a summary from Mr. Mina. He said they were mostly in favour of the whole operation because it was bringing increased opportunity for Christianity to the region. Interesting. Very Interesting. I'll have to think about that for a while.

At the same time... perhaps it's easier to say that now that they're living here. Before you jump on me and say, "How can you accuse others of being hypocrites when you're ten times more of one, never having endured any sort of hardship yourself!?", let me add that Amelia, who did live in Iraq, narrated the following tale to me in English too broken to accurately reproduce... let's just say that it's a cultural experience in of itself. ;) --

"Water like this... the faucet would be like this, but no water. No water come. Before Iran and Iraq no like, before Bush, water. Then Bush come... maybe water. Sometimes. Maybe... one day in week. Don't know. If water... fill (trash can)... use week, clean, cook..."

Good or Bad? Would you rather have Freedom or Water?

Not as if I'm the first person to ask that question, by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm starting to see it...

Optimism?

I have enough optimism yet to believe things will swiftly return to normal with the return of the father. In retrospect, here's a brief overview of the last few weeks:

Exploding water heaters, exploding soup in school microwave, lack of lunch money, collapsing ceilings, leaking toilets, awful teachers, leaking bathtubs, screaming fights, hot weather, cold classrooms, boring as hell new Spanish class, dog having bad reaction to vaccinations, breakdowns, wicked first day of school, coyote sightings, plastering, dog discovering joys of trash, two day hangovers, dog puking in car, fungus, dead birds, sick friends, losing all over in Racquetball, dog puking in house, misunderstandings, dog needing tooth operation, missed Debate meetings, missed Beta Chi Pi meetings, failed Chemistry Quiz, confused German assignment, failed Spanish speaking test, carpool complications, lost pocky, bleh bleh bleh.

Even then, there was also; Fun government classes, Layla and Billie at lunch, hope for Creative Writing and Book Club, amusing myself with Arabic Food and Freshmen, A few nice days, Christy passing Latin.