Happy birthday Mitchell!

Today was my brother's 12th birthday.  I was allowed to take the day off, so I caught the bus in to White Rock and spent the day with him and the rest of the family.  It's always great to hang out with them...I hate saying goodbye at the end though.  Some of the kids get a little teary-eyed, and I feel I'm leaving part of myself behind.  Still, this time wasn't SOOOO bad as they're planning to come in to town in a few days and spend the afternoon with me.

This afternoon Mom and I visited a second hand bookstore (always a dangerous place for us!!!) where we found a couple of books to take home.  She and Dad have been reading "Conversations With God" by Neale Donald Walsch, and we found another book by him called "Tomorrow's God" that she and Dad decided to buy.  I found a book called "The Four Agreements" by Don Miguel Ruiz that I recently heard about (via a new friend I made while playing a game called "Kingdoms of Camelot" on Facebook) and was wanting to read.  However, Mom was also interested in it so I left it in White Rock for her to read while she's there.  She started it this afternoon and already found it interesting enough to share a few things with me...which of course peaked my interest and now I can't wait to read it myself!!!

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Pillow fight!

I have the best job in the world, apparently!  At what other job do you get PAID to beat children with pillows?  Seriously, it was a good night.  Some of us started out with a few games of Twister...which we promptly abandoned once we heard there was a pillow fight going on upstairs.  Twenty or so kids and a couple councillors running, screaming, and beating on each other with pillows equals a lot of happy kids.  Then we "quieted" them down with GuitarHero (one of the kids bought it yesterday at the mall).  Now I have a little bit of free time.  Not much else to share...except a favourite poem of mine that I re-discovered today.




"Earth" by John Hall Wheelock

"A planet doesn't explode of itself," said drily
The Martian astronomer, gazing off into the air--
"That they were able to do it is proof that highly
Intelligent beings must have been living there."


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Roses
















Lovely sunny afternoon...I'm so glad I have a laptop!  Now I can blog on the grass in the sun while listening to worship music in Mandarin.  Can life get any better?  I submit it cannot!



Since a group of Taiwanese students arrived late last night, they had to stay behind and do placement tests while the other kids went off to their English classes.  After the test, Matt and I took them on a tour of the campus (like we did for the first batch of kids).  Thanks to these two tours, I have changed my opinion of...roses.  



Yes, roses.  I've never really liked roses.  I mean, if someone were to give me a rose (or a bouquet of roses), I would receive it/them graciously, and appreciate the thought behind them.  But they are not my kind of flowers.  I like wild flowers (among which, ironically, wild roses rank very high on my list of preferred flowers!).  I remember a number of summers ago I was rather obsessed with the story of Beauty and the Beast and read several different versions/variations of the story.  All VERY different and all VERY good.  One of them was told from the perspective of The Beast, an unfortunate Persian prince who was turned into a lion and as such was chased from his kingdom.  This particular prince loved roses above all other flowers and had a huge rose garden back in Persia that he had spent many many hours working in.  I never understood this obsession of his.  Until now.



Here on the university campus there is a rose garden.  I'll admit I groaned inwardly when I saw we were going in...but inside it's so pretty!  So many shades of red, pink, orange, yellow...and the SMELL!  Sun-kissed roses in a slight breeze....



Maybe not quite as close to Heaven as the smell of pineapples, but it's definitely up there!


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The next six weeks...
















I'm being really stretched right now!  Today is my first real day as a councillor for an ESL youth program, and I'm exhausted!  Up at 7:30 to get people in to breakfast around 8, temporarily loosing 2 students, orientation, finding the 2 students (changed rooms without telling any councillors, slept in, and did not respond to our door knocking or yelling “HELLO!  ANYONE IN THERE?”), ESL placement tests, lunch, campus tour (2 hours of walking!!!!), meeting 2 new students, dinner, ice breaker games, announcements for tomorrow's schedule, new batch of Taiwanese students to meet at 10pm tonight, give them an orientation and get them settled in...


 
The stretching part is being a leader when I have no idea what I'm doing!  But it's all going relatively well, and I'm sure by the end of the week I'll have got the hang of it and the next 5 weeks won't be so hard.  It's good though.  Last night I laid in bed and all I could really do was thank God for what He's teaching me through this and how He's stretching me and helping me to grow into the best version of myself.


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About Me











I was born and I will die. I eat, breath, sleep, talk, and periodically raise my voice. For a little variation I read, watch movies, and walk on the beach. I am a Christian, a Canadian, and a homeschool graduate. When it rains I stare at the windshield wipers and get mad when the wipers move a little too fast for the stream of water that is desperately trying to get away. When it's sunny I walk down to the beach and think about amnesiacs washing up on the shore. When it snows I stay inside with a book and curl up in a blanket. I like CSI Las Vegas, Criminal Minds, and Firefly. I like dark chocolate and dandelions and daisies and wild roses. And RED.




















    

    

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