so, i officially informed the headmaster here that i’m planning to look for another job, in a public school. i’m sure it’s right, but it feels a tiny bit like a blind leap, leaving a nice secure job (the first i’ve ever had, too) for something i hope will work out when i’m the current primary breadwinner…but here we are. all shall be well, you know?

i would really love to find somewhere i could stay at least 2 or 3 years; i’m getting sick of the moving around and upheaval the last several years involve. i was working on my application and had to list my residences the last ten years: nightmare. i could go for a little settling down just about now.

i am writing this while my kids are at art, but it is my revenge that the freezing rain failed to produce any sort of delay (WHAT).

snow day

we are stuck inside for the weekend, delightfully. the latest economy measure had been to just turn the heat off, but seeing as we are home for the foreseeable future, it’s back on and we’re snugly off-duty here. rebekah and josh came over to ensure pocho properly experienced making snow balls, snow angels, etc., which he did not because we decided to go back inside after five minutes. then we baked up a storm all together here and finished with a movie. we rented an embarrassingly large quantity of them, just in case.

(what fun to have neighbors and friends all in one, and how rare these days!)

now pocho is curled up next to me, snoring away. i apparently snored the night away last night. i always imagined that would be a deal breaker, you know, the sort of thing that could not be discovered under any circumstances because what man would love me then? it is enormously comforting to find that loving and being loved has so little to do with lists and deal breakers. i thought for the longest time that good marriages were based on successful combinations and so we made extensive lists of what-to-look-for, neatly divided into categories of “necessary” and “preferred.”

last night he played computer games or video games or whatever they are while i read. never would have i believed i’d end up with a man who found that his rest, his haven. i expected to read aloud to one another, to garden and take long walks and philosophize together the rest of our days. somehow i fell in love before i knew it, with an old friend who loved me for no reason at all that he could ever name, without time for consulting the compatibility and conditions lists. it used to shock me when people could not rattle off a list of things they liked in their lover, but here i find what they probably knew– i love him, himself. it’s all so wrapped up in him loving me and i him i hardly know where it all ends and begins.

i’m getting mushy. i always said i never would be, especially here. it’s just so fascinating being toppled over like this, and having so many assumptions turned on their respective heads. imagine that i am married to man who didn’t read my blog once and has always heard my grand ideas undoubtedly butchered as they pass through a second language. yet here we are.

lately i’ve had self-denial in mind. it’s been a huge part of marriage, of course, and it came up the other week in small group. (i tried to explain this to megan, very poorly– but of course she stuck with me and filled in the the gaps to hash it out, as always. i love that in her.) several people mentioned the idea, expressing that it filled them with fear and distaste to be called to self-denial, to the total and all-consuming degree Christ calls us to. i appreciated their honesty– who hasn’t felt that?– but too, i realized that somewhere along the way i’ve encountered the utter joy that comes from that surrender.

don’t get me wrong. we’re talking a teeny, tiny, tastes of it. like, microscopic battles and sacrifices. i’ve never lost anything seriously precious to me. but i think in giving of yourself, your time, in giving over “your ambitions and favourite wishes” you will taste IT. i think one reason i’ve always wanted an excessive amount of children is because when i was younger, i practiced this all the time, unconsciously and consciously. you simply couldn’t get your way, because there were a gazillion other-people’s-ways always ready to get in the way of yours. i stumbled into that Joy, here and there, doing dishes or changing diapers and it made an impression on me.

i mentioned to someone some terror i had– i have no idea what– and she said, “well, if it happened, at least you wouldn’t be dreading it anymore.”

i think that has something to do with this. i might spend my whole life dreading that God would ask something horribly unpleasant or even unbearable of me, if i offered myself. if i gave it up– and He did ask it– i would find, i believe, that he indeed would be waiting on the other to bind up my wounds. it might mean suffering, but i would KNOW. i have every right to expect he might ask something dreadful (or am i above Christ?)

i find, in marriage, mini-versions of this. they feel like little deaths, you know. i never imagined i could possibly be so peevish, exacting, and sensitive. i never imagined anyone could have the capacity to hurt me so. i am RIGHT, with mile-high expectations and hurt feelings miles deep, and to give it up without any promise of getting my way in the end… well, it seems like just that, the end.

and then, sometimes, i let go of my selfish demands and tight fears, only to find life and goodness on the other side.

the past two months have been very full, and i’m just now crawling out from the aftermath of planning a wedding in six weeks and the horrible, horrible, mountain of paperwork marriage to foreign men involves. (if anyone decides to immigrate to the u.s. anytime soon i have become quite the expert– just give me a call.) it’s true that paperwork and deadlines kick my butt like nothing else.

and yet these are sweet, sweet days. i think there’s a honeymoon to most things for a reason (adoptions, culture shock, love), because you need mushy inexplicable feelings to form that initial bond, to be ready for the tough stuff later. below is a quote by lewis– if you’ve made it this far, you might as well read it because he obviously states it much better anyway. love you all. =)

“Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self… But there must be a real giving up of the self. You must throw it away “blindly” to so speak. Christ will indeed give you a real personality: but you must not go to Him for the sake of that. As long as your own personality is what you are bothering about you are not going to Him at all.

The very first step is to try to forget about the self altogether. Your real, new self (which is Christ’s and also yours, and yours just because it is His) will not come as long as you are looking for it. It will come when you are looking for Him. Does that sound strange? The same principle holds, you know, for more everyday matters. Even in social life, you will never make a good impression on other people until you stop thinking about what sort of impression you are making. Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it. The principle runs through all life from top to bottom. Give up yourself, and you will find your real self. Lose your life and you will save it. Submit to death, death of your ambitions and favourite wishes every day and death of your whole body in the end: submit with every fibre of your being, and you will find eternal life. Keep back nothing. Nothing that you have not given away will be really yours. Nothing in you that has not died will ever be raised from the dead. Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”

we were on the verge of getting him here– the point where we’d been approved by the u.s. embassy and bought tickets– just waiting to pick up his passport with the stamp in it, when the embassy calls and says they’ve made a mistake.

it probably can be resolved. maybe not in time to make his flight, but at least before the proposed wedding date. the thing is, he needs to be in lima to sign a document and then wait for his passport with that tiny visa stamp on which everything depends.

so, days earlier than he expected, he packed his bags, sold his motorcycle, said a few hurried good-byes, and left. he missed the big family wedding in which he’d say good-bye to the family, the last sunday at church, where he could have some closure with the youth and congregration he’s poured himself into the last year and a half, and even the closure of properly saying good-bye to a place where’s he lived almost his whole life. and just like that, without a complaint and without self-pity, without the worrying i always immediately fall into.

“pero amor, lo mas importante es que nos aprobaron. y mira lo que me espera.”

(basically, “but look babe, the most important thing is that we got approved– and look what i get at the end.”)

i shy away from the really important stuff here. i like to stick to funny little things or great abstract things. but i just wanted to say– look, this is the man i love and get to marry.

I just spent my entire and very-much-looked-forward-to fall break emptying boxes of kleenex’s and watching entire days of TLC programs. Don’t judge though. I finally understand the delivery of the placenta and how to drop $5,900 on a wedding dress. Life skills, life skills. It has been so long since I just vegged though, and I forgot how much I like it.

Now I have a sinus infection (yummy, I know) and medication, so it is back to being the goddess of productivity for me.

I. have. so. much. to. do.

Let’s list it out here…

To Do before December 20th:

- Plan wedding
- Plan honeymoon
- Find somewhere to live
- Furnish said home without exceeding approximately $300
- Travel to Lima and back for the visa interview
- Fill out 2,148 MORE forms of paperwork to get Pocho here
- Introduce said fiance to my family, and um, all of my friends
- Be the best 2nd grade teacher ever and plan the school years’ biggest event… The Greek Festival

I found most of this out within the past week. That Greek Festival, which is pretty much my job, is scheduled 2 days after our visa interview in Lima. I mean, how do you tell an embassy in South America that you need like one more week to pull yourself together?

Wow. All this is good, of course, and exactly what I begged for all those times. I just have to enjoy it and work fast, I guess. It’s a happy stress; certainly better than the horribleness of being in limbo and/or waiting.
Sorry if you don’t hear much from me in the next litte while!…

i’m resurfacing from several weeks of random vacations, which, by the way, involved getting dropped off in a random desert town because of nation-wide transportation strikes and– get this– surfing. yes, i surfed in peru, and by that i do not mean simply paddling around stretched out on a surfboard. very, very, fun.

i would put up photos except that we can’t find the camera. the only evidence is one photo on facebook with my new favorite new yorker and jungle fruits buddy, kristen d. i have been very unlucky with technology lately as i also accidently sent pocho’s phone through the washing machine. i like to take care of my man but we can all be thankful the 50’s housewife in heels isn’t my life plan.

just a few more lovely, summery days with my (ahem) fiance left…

so, la clinica san lucas decided to have a day against discrimination against the handicapped. they needed two “muñecas,” or dressed-up people, to give the event a more festive flair and make things even more fun for the participants who were children (read: dubious peruvian sense of “fun” and/or “flair”). you know those people who dress up and stand by the road to sweat and wave you into a restaurant or store and you feel sorry for them and wonder what’d it be like for life to suck so bad that that was your job? yeah.

when morgan, the other american and i volunteered (read: were coerced) into the job, i didn’t realize it would be held in the main plaza, for all to see, along with the local news stations standing by. i’m telling you, nice surprises like this happen all the time here.

but… what can you do. we arrived yesterday morning to find in the program that to make matters worse we were dubbed “pocho y sus amigos”– which in pocho’s words “sounds like ‘barney and friends’ because i haf a big stomach.” anyhow, they kept calling us the king and queen even though i was obviously, in a cruelly ironic twist, in a snow white outfit.

we ran off to get changed because everything was suddenly starting, so in a huge rush i donned my dress, complete with crown and cape, trying not to let it touch the wet bathroom floor and arranging it all in front of a dingy mirror. elvira, the director of the program, called us up the rickety stairs onto the enormous decked-out stage for the introductory remarks– for “the photos,” you know. the mayor and other important officials all sat there too, along with the three newly crowned “señoritas”– miss moyobamba, miss orchid, and miss tourism. we stood there squinting and awkward, like any huge foreigner would, led the “no a la discriminación” chants, and then were mercifully informed to get down and say hi to all the kids.

i gathered up my plentiful skirt and started to go down the stairs (remember, it was more like a ladder and the stage was at least six feet tall), trying to do so gracefully and not let my dress get caught. alas– i forgot my cape, which did get caught. of course i am not coordinated enough for that, and so i went flying and fell all the way down the stairs.

of couse everyone freaked out and all the officials ran over to see poor (and now disgraced) snow white. i don’t even know in what form i landed but it couldn’t have been pretty. i had to be extracted from the ground in my yards of satin-in-primary-colors, recover my dignity and reset my tiara, and then spend the rest of the morning waving and smiling and handing out free pencils.

i now sport several new bruises on my left thigh (pocho’s little nieces were practicing their colors in english on them last night) and a new paranoia whenever i’m walking the streets now… because, let’s face it, i didn’t blend in before anyway.

in morgan’s words: “yeah, i didn’t think this could get anymore embarrassing…”

in pocho’s (in response to my question of whether he still loved me after we about wet our pants laughing over it all, later in the afternoon– this is for sarah and must be imagined in a spanish accent): “yes. i like you… i like you because you are… different.”

what can a girl do.

many fabulous topics could be written about, but i can’t concentrate enough to do justice to any of them, except one:

i am the luckiest girl in the world.  i am packing my bags in exactly 12 days to go

- see the man i love
- in the jungle
- in south america
- for two entire months
- with no other plans.

how did life get this good?

pet peeve: unlocking doors.

it’s such a drag: arriving at the door of my house or car, carrying a butt-load of stuff, probably late, and then having to stop and perform an all-out search through the mary-poppins–esque-scale of the inside of my purse to actually find my keys. mary poppins, i suspect, would efficiently drop her keys into an easy-to-find side pocket.

all my friends (or maybe people who in the olden days would have been categorized “acquaintances”) list people who use ellipses as one of their pet peeves. i don’t like them either, in excess, but i do like them and they save me time and fuss in emails especially. now i’m paranoid and feel like i’ll be judged on the basis of my ellipse-usage.

i wrote like 2 posts back about being awesome and productive of late and then LOST MY PLANNER which was the key to all of that. it’s been a month and i have yet to find it; i’m convinced someone stole it. (i don’t blame them.) i bought a new one though and am slowly recovering the contents of the original. my favorite part is in the back, where i listed the main things that have always kicked my butt and continue to do so (paperwork, running, dancing, etc.) and am slowly attacking them. to address the third item, i am going to this class later this morning at the gym called “zumba”– the title of which almost made me not go– for the second time. it’s latin-inspired dancing/aerobics/something and wants to defeat me, which purpose is aided by my questionable sense of rhythm. 

however, i have a SOUTH AMERICAN boyfriend. i. must. learn. how. to. dance.

do capitals annoy you? would you put their constant usage up on your list of “25 things about me?” what about my lack of cpitals? i am so paranoid. it’s like when i accidentally get off the interstate an exit early and go straight through the intersection at the top of the ramp and get back on. i am always glancing around, in my mirrors, certain someone is howling over my dim-wittedness. buuut blogs are meant to be fun. agonizing over grammar, while generally fun, is not on the agenda this morning. some good shakira moves, however, certainly are.

one more thing: my life is complete because i have read a famous/must-read/well-regarded book that abby farson has not. (middlemarch, by george eliot.) i do not exactly remember it, just that i loved it in high school. i don’t generally remember books unless i read them at least three times, which is unfortunate because dropping “oh, i loved (insert impressive title)” into a conversation loses its punch when no actual details of the story come to mind. i am SO pleased, though. abby farson has read more than anyone i know and probably can talk intelligently about all of them, too. i suspect that today, with such a promising beginning, will be incredible.

he is not here, he has risen

today ranks among some of my favorite easters. it was not especially peaceful, in the contemplative sense, but busy and loud– full of people. i mentioned before that i love my new little church, and everyday moreso. i love that we’re small and when i say “my church,” i don’t picture a place; i picture all of them.

i love that so many are completely new to everything. i’m probably the only one who showed up planning to align herself with this group for their minutely specific theology and practices and therefore had much of an agenda. (how many of my fellow-generation-ers aren’t imprisoned by self-conscious agendas?) most of the energy goes to the old-fashioned basics of Christian love: hospitality, charity, sharing, serving.

we had a baptism today. i love baptisms, and this one was so imperfect and joyous.  i think i like the imperfection of things; i don’t generally like a place that comes off too polished and too seamlessly structured. the whole afternoon, latin-american style, was spent eating and playing together, with new people showing up all the time and most of them new.

it did occur to me just now that in my flurry to do, i think i missed remembering. i was worried about teaching a good sunday school lesson but don’t remember being especially awe-struck myself, which would surely have made a farther-reaching impression. the classic mary vs. martha, i know, and i fell prey.

no, wait, i think there was a moment– when we arrived at the empty tomb scene on my (amazing) flannel board, and i let it in and didn’t hurry past, inside.

on the retreat last week we spent time in john 20. it was well-timed. i won’t go into all of it, because i am queen of intently reading blogs until they arrive at the gushy spiritual meditations, at which point i skim and/or peace out. briefly, this part was a big deal:

They asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?

   ”They have taken my Lord away,” she said, “and I don’t know where they have put him.” At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

that sums up and addresses very many things. i cry all the time now, i can’t figure it all out,  and i miss Jesus when he is in front of me.

and then he speaks:

“Woman,” he said, “why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?”
      Thinking he was the gardener, she said, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.”

Jesus said to her, “Mary.”

i will gladly give my life to him. He so consistently gets to the meat of things. even the whole afternoon– during the crazy mix of spanish and english and a wild variety of places on the spiritual/economic/social spectrum– in that joyousness i was self-absorbed. and i do not want to be left to myself, to the preoccupied Self with so little space for anyone else, the same one that depends on the five-second rush of flattery or temporary gratification for its joy.  

Joy came then after several dark days and i know it comes in the picture of that, from a life given over and lost in order to find it again. to think in an instant of busyness i toss its it’s rule in me by the way, or so it would seem– in reality i can no more tear away the rule of Christ in my life than i can instate it. there is indeed cause for rejoicing, amen?

do not try to write an entry after perusing christa’s blog, you will only be discouraged because the possibility of ever being so delightful– original?– seems so distant.

basically anything can be over-analyzed, especially in the internet age, but i still like blogs. my friends tend to write well and i like keeping up that way. i am nosy, though, and mommy blogs or sites of friends of friends are an extremely enticing option for wasting a few good hours thinking about/envying/judging people i will never meet.

(oh my GOSH i just saw a coupon for “barbara’s shredded oats.” they are unbelievably good and i haven’t thought about them in two years. i adore cereal since being back; sad but true: it’s the highlight of many days recently.)

i am on easter break from school. still got a few side jobs going, but a break from the kiddos sounds heavenly. today everyone was wired from too much candy and the excitement over the coming break, which was a headache but i maintain they could NEVER create the daily chaos back in good old annie soper. being an elementary spanish teacher is great. it’s all about games, songs, and whole-body activities, with a little coloring and culture thrown in. i am looking forward to switching to second grade (hello, charlotte’s web unit) but i will never get the same rush from teaching how to borrow from the ten’s column as i do with spanish.

i was listening to lots of npr at first, but i am tired of the economy so now it’s almost exclusively embarrassing latin pop. sometimes awesome songs come on, which is enough for me. yesterday i switched cars in order to drive the baby i nanny home, and realized i’d left mine on the spanish station with a  mix of mostly bad latin pop for her mom to drive home with. i am glad not everyone is as judgemental as i am. anytime “tito el bambino” makes your day, there is room for concern. but gosh i am missing me some moyobamba and the boyfriend today!

i have a lot churning in my mind– stuff from the retreat i went on last weekend, various conversations, etc. i’m eager to write it out but not yet. i have grand plans and projects for the next week and hopefully some time to pause and think and write will materialize. what fun.