Fog

"Has anyone seen the sun lately?"

This was a comment a friend made today. I laughed, and think its extremely appropriate. I borrowed my boss's camera today and took a picture of this horrible fog we have had for the past 5 days. This picture was taken at 3pm...it shouldn't be this dark....but it looks like this all day...and worse at night. And driving in this...horrible!

I am ready for the sun again.

Randomness

I sometimes try to come up with a title to my post before I start, for I often think I know what I will talk about. The problem is, it usually goes in a completely different direction once I start typing away, and then I have to go and change the title.

(I love the Northern Irish accent. Random comment, yes, I know. I am watching CNN international right now. I didn't know anyone from Ireland before I moved here, so I didn't realize how fun of an accent it is.)

Okay I was about to say that I have realized I am a very random person lately, and therefore the change in direction while typing away...and I have proven myself by the comment above. For some reason, most of my thoughts while typing end up on the screen. I seem to sometimes have too strong of a filter of what comes out of my mouth, as I do not make many comments in spoken conversations (now I did say sometimes, for at times they do slip out). It is completely the opposite in my written words. I can ramble on for ages...and end up no where. For those of you reading this...I hope you don't mind. If you do, you probably just won't read my updates again, so no worries.

Its cold in my flat. I just got home about 30 minutes ago, and I thought I wouldn't be up long enough to need to turn the heater on. I was warm from unloading the car and felt fine. Now that my body has cooled off...I am cold. I guess this post won't last much longer - I don't type well when shivering. I need to buy a wood stove. I have been meaning to do this for awhile, and now I am getting desperate. The problem is that I am never free my when landlord is, and I don't want to go buy a stove on my own. Hopefully in the next couple days my flat will be nice and toasty with a pretty fire blazing.

I had a great Thanksgiving day in my old city hanging out with old friends. I miss the international family that we have there. My day started out busy, as I woke up early (for me), threw some boxed brownies together and baked them before heading out for a quick coffee visit. Then I picked up some friends and we headed west driving across the country (a 1 1/2 hour drive.) I brought my friends to their parents house and drank some more coffee. When I got to the house where we were having Thanksgiving I jumped into set-up mode....and kept going until the festivities ended at about 10:30pm Somewhere in the midst of the afternoon I realized I never e-mailed my family or talked to them in order to set up a time to call or anything. I was not in my flat, so I did not have access to my American phone...and the Internet wasn't working where I was. The holiday came and went, and I did not talk to my family. At the end of the day, that made me sad. But I am happy to know that I will spend Christmas with them....then I will be missing all my friends here. And because of this, I am thankful today for technology. I love my work here overseas. I know without a doubt its where God wants me to be. But some days are harder than other to be away from family and friends. I can not imagine what this would have been like 20 or more years ago. I am thankful that wherever God leads me I will be able to stay in contact with those I care about.

And on a final random note: I went to a large store tonight and while sitting at the cafe drinking coffee with a friend (yes I spend most of my time here drinking coffee) I noticed Christmas decorations were already up. I was amazed. This is a Muslim country, so this usually isn't the case. It brought a smile to my face - I love the Christmas season. The wonderful thing is that it was not overly commercialized, just a bit of garland, some red and green boughs, and a decorated tree. Nothing big and gaudy. No Santa Clause. Now I am going to go listen to my Christmas music.

Happy Thanksgiving!

What to write on here....This week has flown by, I guess because its only half of a week. The power was horrible this week, so its been a bit frustrating to get anything done. (It was at least better when I realized the schedule was 3 hours on/ 3 hours off.) Then my company e-mail is not currently working, which is a nice excuse not to get company related things done. Now its Wednesday night and I am headed to my old city for a small Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow.

I don't know how it happened, but all the sudden I have too many friends. No, its not good to say too many. But it is a problem when they all want to go out at the same time. You see, most people here don't plan their schedule, and so I end up having three coffee visits in one day, and none the next day. Why does it always happen that way? And then sometimes I make a mistake and mess up my schedule and forget what I had planned and have to cancel on someone. No fun!

Truly I am blessed that I have a couple good friends here in my new city. I have been here for 9 months, and just now feel that I have real friends in this city. Today, as it is the beginning of Thanksgiving, that is what I am thankful for. God is good - all the time!

And now that its 12:30am and I have a cold and should try to get some good sleep tonight... Naten e mire!

American Education

“This is a personal investigation of why school is a dangerous place. It’s not so much that anyone there sets out to hurt children; more that all of us associated with the institution are stuck like flies in the same great web your kids are. We buzz frantically to cover our own panic but have little power to help smaller flies.”

“We live together, you and I, in a dark time when all official history is propaganda. If you want truth, you have to struggle for it. This is my struggle. Let me bear witness to what I have seen.”

These are two quotes from the prologue of a book I just came across, The Underground History of American Education, by John Taylor Gatto. My cousin, who homeschools her children, sent an article to me about this guy and his view on the American education system. I found the article interesting, and continued to read about what this guy had to say. Now the education system here where I am is appalling, and often the topic of my thoughts, anger and frustration. I do not believe that the American education system is great, but it certainly is compared to what they have here. At the same time, I have recently realized that American schools have been forced to change a lot recently and are more and more forced to focus on standardized tests. I am completely against that. I wanted to write something interesting or thoughtful about this, but its late and my words are gone. Still I will post this and let you all read about this book for yourself and form your own thoughts. Any comments are appreciative. Maybe I will have more to say on this topic later….but usually I say that and never add anything else, so no promises.

You can access this whole book online. Or read the first article my cousin sent me.

Naten e mire.

Here is a picture from my recent conference. Our hotel was right on this lake. It was beuatiful!

(I love being able to steal pictures off other people's websites - Thanks Randy. Especially now that my camera is non-functional. Its strange that I have not been able to document my life since this summer. At least I have a few pictures here and there when other people are around with cameras. I never realized how dependent on my camera I was.)

God is good

Last Sunday I was stressed with all I had to get done before I left Monday morning. I stayed up until about 2:30am, woke up at 6am, then drove for 4 1/2 hours to a conference. Truthfully I was not looking forward to this conference. I do not know many of the other internationals working in this country, and I do not always enjoy meeting new people. Typically I put on a good act, but its hard. I guess thats really it, I am not a very talkative person, so getting to know new people takes a lot of work.

Thankfully, God took care of me and surprisingly I had a good time at this conference. It was a nice time of fellowship, encouragement, and learning. One interesting part of the conference was that there were people from all over the world there (all who work in this country). It was a blessing to fellowship together with all these people. Two random things I learned during this conference: 1) even though I enjoy traveling, I am horrible at geography - especially when it comes to Africa and South America. (Learned this during the quiz night, but we still did come in second!) 2) I have forgotten the strategy of Spades and currently am a horrible player (but I did have a good comeback even though the second game was cut short!)

(Random venting: ahh, I hate my internet...or maybe just the cable. I was supposed to change my internet connection this week. But the company is not ready to set it up yet. I think I found out tonight that there might be a different problem. I believe there is something wrong with the Ethernet cable that runs from the first floor up to my apartment on the second floor. This cable was recently "built" into the house as it was insulated, painted and tiled, so I can not see it, and can not look to see exactly what the problem is. I know that when I plug in my wireless router to the cable downstairs it works (but I only get a signal once in awhile). When I try to plug in the router upstairs, it doesn't work. I have tried everything. Maybe tomorrow it will be better.)

My dear laptop

The bad thing about having a laptop is that it is easy to throw. I tend to want to throw things when I get upset or frustrated. I don't think I often actually throw things (besides paper balls and Reeses), but the desire is often there. Since my laptop is about 4 years old, it doesn't always work very well. This week it has been really bad, for some reason. I don't know how many times I had the desire to just pick it up and throw it. That would solve all its problem, right?

Well, for awhile now my laptop screen has been broken, or actually as I found out today, the hinges are what is broken. I always have to have it leaning on something, which gets slightly annoying. Today I did not have a lot of work to do, so I finally brought my laptop to a computer store nearby. They took the laptop apart...and bad news...they could not fix it. They do not have access to Toshiba parts. They took out one of the hinges that was broken in two pieces, and said the other was stuck (like it was glued). They swore to me that someone else had opened up my laptop and tried to fix the problem before and that a few things were in the wrong place. As much as I can remember, I have never had my laptop fixed before, so no one should have ever taken it apart. Strange. The good news, they put the misplaced pieces back where they are supposed to be, and now my CD/DVD player works better. (It was making a horrible clanking noise every time I attempted to play a DVD. I say attempt, for it got so bad that it would not even play the DVD.)

So for now I still have to lean my computer screen against something, but at least I can play DVDs again - which means I can start having movie nights with the projector again. Very good! And I will try to refrain from throwing the laptop anytime soon....hopefully.

Election day and chicken poppyseed casserole

It is election day and I am in Europe. This morning I watched CNN and felt like I was being a good American and staying on top of current events. Tonight I will watch it again and see how things are going. But I am a bad American because I did not vote. I used to not pay much attention to politics, so I never registered to get an absentee ballot here. Lately I have started paying more attention, but I will just wait until the next presidential election. Strange to think that I will actually be in America for that.

Tonight I made dinner for some friends. I love cooking and I love chicken poppyseed casserole. I learned to make this dish in Jefferson City, TN, New Year's Eve, 1997 (going into 1998). I was visiting a friend I had met the previous summer while I worked at the Grand Canyon. I enjoyed the dish, and have been making it ever since. Its so good, and so easy. Little did I know at that point that I would eventually move to TN and go to restaurants that serve chicken poppyseed casserole. That's when I found out how much of a southern tradition this dish is. I could go on about food and cooking...but I have lots of work to do tonight. Maybe I will share more another time... for example about my first introduction to Skyline chili...here in the Balkans... Random I tell you!

Let its snow

..Let it snow, let it snow!

Yes, just one week ago I was walking outside in a t-shirt commenting on how warm it was for this time of the year. Well now I am commenting how we already have snow, and its just the first week in November! The wind is bitterly cold and I have decided that I am going to stay inside for the rest of the winter. Good plan, right? I guess its time for me to get my sweaters and long underwear out of storage and start putting them on. I am hoping I will get used to this cold weather again soon. Right now I have no desire to go outside unless I have to...especially at night.

This week I plan to buy a wood stove. Then at least I will be warm, actually hot, inside and more willing to go out. Its hard to want to go outside when you know its not even that warm inside.

Help please

Right now I am in the middle of planning the lesson for my English class tomorrow. While searching online for a good icebreaker to start the class off I came up with an idea. I am going to make a "Bag of Questions" or something of the sort. This is where I need your help. I have a list of questions, but I would like some more. Please leave a comment and tell me a random question that would be good for an icebreaker in a class of university students in cross cultural setting (don't make it American).

Thanks! I will let you know how this turns out. Since I am also about to start a few conversation courses, and I have been reminded recently that I am not very good at keeping a conversation going, this should help those 7 minute silences.