Saturday, February 13, 2010

knock on marble...

Ok, so I'm sitting here on my marble window sill, thinking about what I need to blog about. I don't really know what to update everyone on. So I guess I'm going to ramble if that's ok with you.
So, I've been back for over a month. Since then I have read 3 1/2 books. I finished The Wednesday Sisters, The Road, A Million Little Pieces, and am currently reading No Country For Old Men. The Wednesday Sisters was an alright book. It was a little too predictable and corny but it was still good. Now, The Road was an amazing book. I can't even say enough about it to express how much it impressed me and broke me heart. I think I feel in love with it and it broke my heart when it was over. :) It was SO well written and I would encourage anyone to go to Walmart right now and buy it for $6. My third literary endeavour was A Million Little Pieces. This book comes with a lot of controversy. Apparently, Oprah loved this book and had the author on the show. Then, it turns out that this "memior" was hardly a memior at all and most of the stuff in the book never happened. So then Oprah, being the sneeky devil that she is, brought the author back on her show and "raked him over the coals" and made him confess to all his lies! I read the book anyway and still was not very impressed. I guess it was a good description of what addiction and recovery would be like to endure, but if he never did all those things, then how would he know?? Where did all the emotion come from if he never really had to experience 6 weeks of terrifying and intense rehab in a clinic somewhere in Minnesota? But that's just what I think. SO, now I'm reading No Country For Old Men which is by Cormac McCarthy, the same author of The Road. It is just as good and well written. An interesting twist on the Western genre.
What else can I babble about? Oh, I recently went to an orphanage 4 hours outside of Moscow. It is an orphanage for children ages 8 years to 10th grade. I think. They live there and also go to school there. Most of them are "social" orphans which means they don't have parents because they were either taken away from them or their parents are in jail. Some of them where found in Moscow, living on the street or in the metro. We left at about 8am with 15 person van and a truck full of clothes and presents. Once we got there, we had a little time to hang out with the kids. They were a little shy at first and I didn't really know what to do. It's hard getting to know someone without a common language. So I tried as much as I could with the little Russian that I know. After lunch we had a huge Christmas/Birthday party. First we played games and then we had a huge dinner. But it wasn't really a dinner it was just tons of candy and cake and cookies. They loved it. It was hard when we had to leave because I felt like we had just started to warm up to each other. It will be great to go back and see familiar faces. It was a very humbling experience to be around children that have been through so much and yet they are still children. They still need love, they still love candy, they still can be happy with a small stuffed animal that most children would toss to the side.
Oh and in about a month from now, I'll be in sunny Egypt for Spring break!! I am so excited! It's going to be amazing and WARM. The plan is to fly to Cairo on the 13th of March. Then I will hopefully meet up with Erik Stapleton who is currently living in Cairo. I am planning on seeing the Pyramids of course and museums and all that stuff. I'm really just going to enjoy being in the sun which might be a bit of a shock to my system. :) Then on the 17th, we will travel to Dahab, Egypt. Here we will spend a few days swimming in the Red Sea and climbing Mt. Sinai! I think I'm most excited about being somewhere that is in the Bible. It might not be the exact place that the Lord parted the sea, or the exact place where Moses climbed to receive the 10 Commandments, but just to be in the place where God freed His chose people is going to be amazing.
School is good and the kids are good. :) I'm getting a little sick, though. The other day I thought, "I'm the only teacher who hasn't been sick yet...knock on wood." I guess knocking on marble just doesn't cut it. cause i'm sick now. Hopefully not for long. I'd rather not have to go to a Russian doctor so he can give me a stamped document saying that I do, in fact, have a cold.
P.S. can someone please send me some peanut butter??.....just kidding....kind of.