Some More Christmas Spirit

-Sarah just handed me a Christmas CD - how wonderful. I just now picked up a big thick book (looks like it came from CostCo) called 'Ideals Christmas and Holiday Cookbook' with big festive photographs. oh i love Christmas all year round. I love the smell of apple cider with cinnamon simmering on the stove. I love Celine Dion playing so loud you can't hear the phone ring. I love picking off the pine needles on the tree that look too dead to stay on. I love the funny mornings with Mum, Dad, and Cathy. I love the cherry crèpes, i love the raisin tarts, i love all the hugs and tears and chilled atmosphere. I love the 'traditions' that have entwined themselves into my Christmas every year.

-I am so full of joy.

-The other day i walked into Shopright and they were playing English Christmas Carols... so loudly! like you know when you're closing everything down in a store and you turn up the music super loudly so that people will get the hint and leave? that's how loud it was, only the store wasn't closing. And there was a man stocking the shelves and he was singing SO loudly in his Malagasy pronounced English carols, so many people were laughing hysterically and he knew it and looked like he was having the time of his life.

-I love laughing, i love life.

-I love Christmas.

MERRY MERRY MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

nov 20th - teacher teacher teacher

November 20th, 2008

Teacher, Teacher, Teacher!

Last night I was uncomfortably awake for the majority of the night, tossing and turning because of the nausea, after throwing up heaps early this morning I am feeling much better. It helps that I ‘called in sick’ today, and am staying at home in bed making up stories in my mind and relaxing.

One of the things my class is doing today (sadly without me) is watching James and the Giant Peach (the one co-produced by Tim Burton), I finished reading it to them on Monday. I enjoy Roald Dahl’s writing very much. I don’t know how many of them understood what was going on in the book. Because for all of the students, English is either their 2nd, 3ed, 4th, or 5th learned language, so their English comprehension is quite different from the average 4th grader in Canada.

We often learn new words that come up in subject work, books, etc. After we discuss the word I encourage the children to try and incorporate that new ‘word’ into their oral and written communication with one another and myself. They often use a new verb as a noun, or don’t fully comprehend the word so it is difficult to understand what they are trying to say, but they get props for trying : )

This week, one of the new words was ‘influence’. This came up the other day when we were learning about the 7 year old king Joash in the Old Testament, and discussing how important good influences would have been in his life. Every single student needed to give examples of who had been a good influence and a bad influence in their lives… some of it was hilarious, some of it was sad. Unfortunately not everybody understood how to properly use the word in a sentence. For example ‘A bad guy bad influence devil.’, or ‘She is a stealer influence’… my oh my, my frustration with the difficulty in ‘teaching’ the English language peaked months ago. However I still have many frustrations, and days when I feel like I’m drowning in inadequacy of trying to help someone to grasp a concept. Although I no longer feel as rushed. Regarding lack of understanding, I can usually smile, sometimes laugh and think ‘this is cute’… but when it’s the same question for the 100th time from the same student, I need to practice my deep breathing skills I learnt back in grade 5. Seriously, for anybody praying for patience, I strongly suggest you look into teaching for at LEAST 6 months. You would be a changed person; more patient, little more fulfilled, and exhausted, or bitter, cynical, and exhausted.

Teachers, I love you. Kids of all ages, cultures, languages have a huge variety of learning difficulties, and attention disorders, not to mention a whole whackload of unstable homes to add… Imagine being the primary caregiver (8 hours a day, 5 days a week) of apx 20 children for 10 months out of the year! I greatly admire people who work passionately in their career choice of being a teacher. Huge thank you’s to my past teachers, with whom my respect for escalates on a daily basis. Imagine… teaching for 25 years! Agh, I’m sure I’d die after 3 of stress. Some people say it gets easier as the years go on, and I don’t doubt that in certain areas of teaching (preperation, methods of teaching, subject material, organization, etc). However what I consider to be heart of teaching, children, is constantly changing. Imagine a work environment where the heart of your career is CONSTANTLY(I don’t just mean week by week, but minute by minute) being stretched and poked and prodded.

Money can NOT be the reason teachers become teachers, benefits perhaps, but not money. I believe the majority of the teachers choose this as a career because it is their passion to make a difference in the life of a child. To plant seeds of wisdom and true education into the minds and hearts of the future leaders of our world. Yes, I know this sounds cliché, and maybe even a bit lame, but I am just thinking about how the elementary and high school teachers of Barak Obama must be feeling right now. I wonder how many lives doctors have saved, how many grass roots peace organizations have been started, how many writers have inspired new hope… none without a small seed of one of their past teachers. So for you teachers, I wish I could give you a hug, ten GOOD Educational Assistants, a paid holiday once every month and a half, a work environment free of gossip and malice, and a super booster injection of patience, energy, love, and wisdom.

At 22 years old, I find myself teaching grade 4’s all subject in English... in the French speaking country of Madagascar. Nobody in my family knows a word of French. So my ability to do every day things here such as taking a bus, asking for help, speaking with the parents of my students, or even ordering a pizza, is completely dependent on my French language skills which I owe entirely to my elementary and high school teachers in Dawson Trail School turned Ecole Lorette Immersion, and then later on in College Lorette Collegiate. In Malagasy they would say Misotra Beteka, Thank you very much, Merci beaucoup.

rain = bad net connection... please work!

November 16, 2008

Stupid Bugs and a Wonderful Weekend

I just found myself saying ‘Well you should die too seeing as all of your brothers are dead you will find no pleasure in life, and you will feel awfully full and probably extremely guilty after digesting your dead brothers and sisters.’ Please environment & animal/insect loving friends, don’t judge my actions until you too have been woken up from a Sunday afternoon nap because of a very quiet, odd sound, and you realize that it’s about 30ish giant biting ants running around and munching on the cockroach that you had killed earlier when you were half asleep… I did the only thing that would make me feel at peace- sprayed the bundle of them with RAID until I could feel it in my lungs. I watched their little bodies wiggle and squirm in pain, I believe they suffered greatly for about 30 seconds, I thought I felt guilty enough about killing all of them that I would never pick up the RAID again, but then I saw an ant that got away, and I’d be lying if I said I did NOT get immense satisfaction when I stepped on him.

I have a great many bites on my body; fleas, mosquitos, flies, ants, spiders… I don’t know! Many different kinds and it is all the more apparent now that i have shaved my legs (for the 2nd time since my arrival 3 months ago), it’s annoying, but thankfully I found some kind of cream (I don’t know what its called, everything is written in some kind of not nice sounding European language) to smother my bites in, and it soothes the itchiness.

Ah, I am SO thankful that I have a bed off the floor, woo hoo!

I just wanted to share that I had a wonderful weekend : ) Colleen, Georgina, and Sarah were all away house-sitting different houses (not that I don’t enjoy their company, it was just different), and Ella came over. Ella is a lady I met a while back, and we’ve wanted to get together but things just didn’t happen… but this weekend she came over for the whole weekend, woo hoo 2 slumber parties in a row : ) On Friday I made some kind of delicious pizza creation, and Ella, Tania and I enjoyed pizza, good talks and then we watched Napolean Dynamite. Ella also enjoys music immensely, and we spent many hours this weekend just relaxing listening to songs… that’s when you know you’re meant to be friends hey? She’s a blast, we headed into town and walked around and when we found ourselves caught in the rain we wondered into a French Cultural Center where they are doing an exposition on the UN’s top 20 or 30 Human Rights – we ended up watching a French Documentary about the migration of birds from all around the world (it was a nice encouragement to not eat meat). Ella doesn’t speak French (she is from Indonesia, so she speaks Indonesian, and English), but that was just fine because there was almost no talking at all.

This weekend God gave me an awesome new friend, and provided me with the means to buy 3 kilograms of lychees. God is good…. (and now you say)

ALL THE TIME! (I’ve kind of being going through a phase where it seems like most everything is futile, and I’m not quite out of it yet, but His goodness and grace never fails me)

This was perhaps not very interesting for most of you to read, but I thought my parents and maybe church might like to hear that I am making friends and enjoying myself out here and maybe somebody else would like to hear about it too!

Ah but before I conclude, I HAVE to share the most PERFECT playlist for a rainy day (like today has been out here):

Ben Harper – Forever

Ani Difranco – Welcome To

Great Lake Swimmers – Track 09 (Unfortunately this is the ONLY song I have from them, and I don’t even know the name!)

Hawksley Workman – What a Woman

Ben Gibbard – Carolina

Sarah Harmer – Don’t get your Back Up

Serena Ryder – Weak in the Knees

Pete Murray – Opportunity

Lindsay Jane – I can’t Rescue You

Sarah Harmer – Around The Corner

Ben Harper – Walk Away

John Mayer – Slow Dancing in a Burning Room

Cat Power – I don’t Blame You

Jennifer Knapp – A Little More

Ani Difranco – In the Margins

Xavier Rudd – Green Spandex

Blog posts for pretty much all of November : )

November 10, 2008

I am seeing myself turn Perfect, almost.

It’s midnight and I am awake. Why oh why? Four and a half hours past my bedtime and the wheels in my brain are turning, my heart is thumping and I have so much energy I could dance circles around Michael Jackson.

I thought maybe I was hungry for food, so I ate a mango. Strangely enough, the most delicious food in the world did not impede this growing hunger for something in my body. The mango didn’t do it, neither did brushing my teeth, neither did praying, so I find myself writing and trying to unravel this energy.

No matter where I am in the world, no matter who I am with, I find myself in seasons where I find myself at a complete loss of understanding in what is going on! In these seasons I feel as if I am outside of this life I am living, and not apathetic, but I feel as if I am so far from away from what my hands are touching and my eyes are seeing. I feel as if I am to be observing myself and learning, and then when I am put back into my body I will be full of convictions and then I will learn from all my observations of my mistakes, and I will be PERFECT! So this is me looking from outside my body, and at the end of this blog entry, I will be perfect, and you will get to witness this… lucky you, you get to watch me turn into a beautiful butterfly : )

In April I went to a ‘retreat’ for 4 days at St. Benadict’s Monastary just North of Winnipeg. It was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life! Complete stillness in peaceful quiet can bring such an unimaginable serenity. Imagine eating delicious food in community with nuns and people you have never seen before… only there are no words spoken, nobody asks you questions, nobody tells stories, nobody says a word. From 5AM – noon every day was silent retreat. They have an ART room full of HUGE cupboards full of a mix of various art supplies that are there for you to use, open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They have a small room with a record player, cd player, a lazyboy, and candles. They have a room with a big piano and some couches and candles. They have a chapel/sanctuary with candles going any time of day. Their motto for the weekend was;

Be Still and Know that I Am God

Be Still and Know that I Am

Be Still and Know

Be Still

Be

That was back in April (2008).

This past Saturday I was heading home from town and because of the traffic I took a taxi rather than a bus. The taxi driver’s name was Herve, he is from Madagascar but went to school in France and thankfully he was able to understand my brutal French dialect and we were able to converse. It’s funny that he brought up the pace of life in Madagascar, how ‘chill’ it is. He said it’s difficult, but relaxed.

Today is Monday this means I teach extra school lessons to four Grade 4 students after school for one hour. Then if I’m lucky (just a figure of speech, I don’t believe in ‘luck’), Anna’s dad will pick her up in their SUV and will drive me to Jocelyn’s house where I go for supper and then later we go to bible study together. Today though it was Anna’s mother who picked her up (but still in a vehicle rather than a moped). It was the first time I had met her mother. She also spoke excellent French and offered me a ride, and I excitedly took her up on it. We talked on the way to Joce’s, and oddly enough, she TOO brought up the ‘chilled’ pace of life here. Hmmm… I am beginning to shed my cocoon.

Today the Bible study was about gentleness. How we need to take the time to bind wounds (no matter how old they are!), but at this busy pace of life the majority of us are used to, we do not take the time to wrap up and encourage healing to these wounds... and it will be impossible for us to be whole.

God clicked this in my brain today. It’s been a re-occuring theme since my time spent in St Benadicts this past April. ‘Just BE, and fall in love with ME!’… I think that if this is the only thing I learn this year… traveling so far from home, away from friends and family… it’s worth it : ) (although I kinda wish I wasn’t so thick-headed, so I’d learn quicker!).

Wow look at me, I am a beautiful perfect butterfly!

Oh the time has come, I am returning to my body. My eyelids are feeling like heavy weights I am struggling to keep from closing, my muscles are aching and I don’t really FEEL like a beautiful perfect butterfly, I feel more like an exhausted, flea bitten, 22 year old. Actually, I think I’m 23, it crossed my mind the other day I actually don’t remember my age. It doesn’t matter I guess, who really cares how old a perfect butterfly is ; )

Oh the sounds that I have been blessed to hear as my thoughts flow onto this computer screen:

*Avril Lavigne – Say

*The Album Leaf – On Your Way, Over the Pond, Another Day, Streamside

*American Football – Stay Home

*Corinne Bailey Ray – Trouble Sleeping, Call Me When You Get This, Choux Pastry Heart

Dixie Chicks – Voice Inside My Head, Favorite Year, Easy Silence (Everytime I hear this song, I hear and see Janessa Penner singing it in her beautiful voice, and Tim Rogalsky walking around the congregation playing his viola… I miss snc)

p.s. (what does that stand for?) I don’t truly think I’m perfect, but I like to dream : ) Also, I don’t think I’m crazy, but if these ramblings seem to convince you otherwise, just know that I have strange bug bites all over my body and I am probably carrying some kind of mind altering disease…

hahaha

Have a great day!