The same old...

I'm out of blogging rhythym and don't think I could write a truly unified-theme blog, especially on a hotel computer, if I wanted so instead, more of the same scattered thoughts.

The honeymoon of going to the big city for vacation is over. The malls, the palaces, the restaurants are all less thrilling than they were since we first ventured out of our "little" hometown.

I found a baseball bat and softball today at the bookstore. Unfortunately, the only gloves they had were for kids. Anybody have an old baseball glove they're not using? Or ifI could find a mushball (one of the large softballs they sometimes use at highschools so they don't have to shell out the big bucks for gloves), I wouldn't need a glove.

The only non-business English books I could find were the Greatest Works of Oscar Wilde and The Greatest Works of H.G. Wells.

If you refer to God as the "Great I am" here, you may accidently be calling him the "Great Chicken."

My top criteria for finding a hotel is now whether their pool has a slide.

My language learning is progressing to point where I can usually answer all the bus-ride-length questions a person typically asks (where are you from, how long have you been here, may I purchase your wife (kidding)) but at times my mind simply shuts off to the local language and I stumble through even those easy questions.

I mentioned the other day to Amanda that if she were to lose me to another woman, it would have to be to an Asian featured woman with an Australian accent. "If I were to lose you...?" she responded. "You mean, 'If I were to give you to...". I stand corrected.

I agreed that if I were to give Amanda to someone, it would be that crazy old guy in our city who walks around in an ill-fitting loin cloth. If she's nice...

I find it tough not to compare our language school to highschool...on fast forward. Instead of 4 years, people are around for a maximum of nine language units, each lasting about a month. The "seniors" have been around for a year at most but some people only take a unit or two before trying another program, going to work or simply dropping out. It was fun to see the freshmen group of eight come in last month all nervous and green. Here cliques aren't based around sports or GPA, they are based on who you work for or where you'll eventually work in the country or your national origin. There are the kids who have a ton of extracirriculars (in our case a child but they might also include a house in need of repairs, neighboorhood obligations etc) and those who seem to do nothing but study. Some you meet and think they'll never make it through while others seem to have such a grasp on the material that you wonder what they still need to learn. It's really a curious little group.

Odd to say that after two days of vacation, I miss home and that after less than a week out of school I miss the classroom.

I find myself really missing teaching and am actually looking forward to starting some initial informal interviews with universities next week. Keep that in your thoughts.

Package from Greenfield

What a great thing to get half way through a language unit - a package filled with unnecessities from some of our favorite people in Greenfield! There's just something great about opening a box of unknowns - even if the mailman first walks you through the customs declaration form, laughing at some of the things that made their way from the US.

And it's just the second package weve gotten since moving here - though it sounds like several are in transit - so we haven't gotten bored with presents...yet.

The hardest part about it was waiting three hours for Amanda to get back from class before I could open it. It sat, untouched on our dinner table, just taunting me. But I held my ground and didn't even walk the twenty minutes to school to pull Amanda out of class just to open it.

So what'd we get? The highlights include:
- Decaf tea and coffee and lemonade: This means we can induldge without having to stay up all night or having to pay five dollars a glass at one of the nice hotels in town.
- notecards: something I've tried to find both here and in Africa to no avail. Learning the langauge will be a snap now that I've got cards (or so my junior high Spanish teacher would leadme to believe).
- Post-its and scrapbook paper: I have no idea what good those are for but I think Amanda might find a use for them. :)
- Gum and dark chocolate: Survival food on test days or when there's no water.
- Sermons on cd from the cool church service (I hope the worship is there too!)
- A couple trains for @, causing him to exclaim "Yeah! I LIKE Calvin and Carter."

Cost to send a five or six pound package to the Island? Less than dinner for two at Applebees.

Some things just make us happy!

Just like the Parent Trap

I've written about finding your doppleganger before but didn't expect to run into one of mine here, in a town that isn't in any of the guidebooks and barely on the maps. But he's here and I have confirmation that it's not just my imagination (unlike my assertion that Just Pete's can be found in the movie National Treasure).

Jimmy's, my favorite store in the city, is staffed by Donny - an otherwise bright and curteous fellow - who insists in calling me Andy. This might seem odd if I hadn't met Andy. Andy is a white, thirty something midwesterner who wears khaki pants, has a bit more belly than he should, walks around in hiking boots and baseball cap; and has shorter hair than his wife would like. Andy sounds a bit more like Dan Akkroyd than I do but is a passable likeness if a person squints or only looks from a distance.

This was also confirmed today when walking with a couple of Americans who had spent the last week at a conference in one of the resort towns WITH ANDY, and they still thought I was him.

Amanda and I also speculate that maybe one of the reasons our bread order wasn't delivered last week was that Andy had cancelled his order.

I don't know if I should mention this to him or not - he may view it as an insult - but it seems a shame not to take advantage of this similarity. Shouldn't we swap families and see how long it takes them to notice (no thanks, he has more kids than I do but he also has a motorcyle...?). Or maybe we should trade places so we can reunite our estranged parents and get Dad to dump that golddigger fiance of his...

Or maybe not.