May11
Now a college graduate, I have only five weeks left before I leave the States for Manila and then a year in Taiwan. In preparation for my missions trip to Manila, we have been asked to read The New Friars. Since all I find myself doing when I sit at home is fall asleep on my bed (even after getting more than 10 hours of sleep at night), I had to leave my house to focus on reading the book. I have a theory that my bed at home is dangerously comfortable and when you lie down on it you get sucked into it and even with the loudest alarm on the planet, there is no hope for actually dragging yourself out of bed on time.
So, I drove to Starbucks and bought a grande iced coffee for $2.00 and plopped down on a stool to begin reading. From time to time, I would peer out the large glass windows of the coffee house and gaze at the beautifully crisp and clean landscape that has been so meticulously designed for the rich elite of my suburban neighborhood–the comfortably safe residential area of the politicians, lawyers, and doctors of the wealthy metro DC area. And as I began reading about the intractable poverty that plagues the vast majority of this globe, I knew that God was already teaching me before I even set foot on a plane. continue reading »
Jul27
I think it’s funny how kids always sing that rhyme…
Rain, rain go away
Come again another day
But really, do I want the rain to come back another day? I think it has literally rained every other day in Boston during this entire summer. The humidity here is just ridiculous; maybe it’s the city pollution cloud that keeps all of the moisture from escaping so we just get thick humidity and rain all the time. But, it’s absolutely disgusting and upsetting.
I’m reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon and the autistic narrator describes how his measure of a good or bad day is the number of cars of a certain color that pass while they are driving to school. So, three red cars in a row counts as a good day but three yellow cars in a row counts as a bad day. The longer the pattern, the more intense the feeling. He notes that other people think his method is silly, but he explains that it is as arbitrary as other people deciding their feelings based upon the weather.
But the rain really does make me sad and tired and lazy. It makes me just want to curl up with a book next to the air conditioner (since there’s only one in this entire house) and read all day long or take a nap in a couch and just sit and be. It’s actually quite a lot like pulling teeth to get me to go outside in the rain. And when we took some of the students out on a field trip to the aquarium when it was absolutely down pouring, it took an enormous amount of energy to try and keep positive for the kids.
I was soaking wet. And I was wearing jeans. The kind that start to weight 50 lbs after their weight. I was also wearing sneakers with holes and socks. Socks that just suck up the water and squish until you come home and your feet have pruned and smell nasty. Blah.
Go away rain, please.