Shakespeare at the Lotus

Last night I went out to the Blue Lotus - our new stain-glassed, coffee oasis in the heart of the city - to do a little grading for Pop Culture and hear "A Beginner's Guide to Shakespeare." It was written by a Scandanavian professor and preformed by a bunch of college students in Dutch. But someone behind me was translating it to his friend in the national language. And afterwards people were talking about it in the local language.

Best of all, even as I was reading about the evils of McDonald's and how ipods make forget cultural traditions, I was able to follow most of it.

I love cultural diversity.

Things I thankfully don't have

Rather than being thankful for what I have, I've been spending some time realizing that there are plenty of things that I am glad I don't have. It's odd but I am not the least bit deprived for not having:

Central anything

Hot water heater

Clothes dryer

Surround-sound or Hi-definition

Glass on our upstairs windows (only screens)

Microwave oven

Hard to pronounce tropical disease

Snow shovel

Carpet

Lawn Mower

Blackberry or iphone

I have too much stuff already. My bookshelves are full. I own DVDs I haven't watched. My television set is on too often.

Skipping Thanksgiving

I know that the title sounds ungreatful and maybe even unAmerican and it is certainly a bit misleading but this year we will not be having a big Thanksgiving meal at our house. It just seems silly and more than a little wasteful (waist-full?) to make the turkey and fixings when it will just be the three of us on a pretty regular school day.

I guess what makes it easier is that we really already had our Thanksgiving a few weeks ago. We got together with some American teachers who live up the mountain and ate turkey (which Amanda prepared, cooked and transported the hour and a half trip) and all the fixings. We talked and laughed and caught up. We put on silly hats and danced to "Elvira" (a tradition in our host's family). We skipped the games this year due to the drive home but other than that, it was a typical, albeit early, Thanksgiving.

So this Thursday we'll give thanks and talk about being greatful with @. We will likely eat more than we need to - there's never too little food at our house, no matter what the meal - and we'll hopefully be with family on the internet. So it'll still be a good day. (Even if there isn't football on television.)

The one sick parent rule

Amanda and I have an unofficial rule that only one of us is allowed to be sick at a time. Until recently, this is a rule that have been totally in favor of since I, the unhealthier, normally get sick first followed by Amanda's much shorter illness. But now, there are allergies to contend with.

Since moving down the mountain, Amanda has done a great job getting the family to eat better, more nutritional meals. Sure, we indulge some with the occasional bucket of chicken or visit to Neighborhood on the Water (great lemon chicken) but normally this is offset by chickpea and pumpkin soup or Indian vegetables and rice. The end result has been that I may not be in peak physical form - I don't bike or walk to work unlike in Africa - but I do get sick less often.

Our improved diet, however, hasn't been able to stop Amanda from being allergic to something in our yard. When we tore out a downed manggo tree in our yard, Amanda could tell it was going to start soon. But she got a jump on the swelling and spots on her arms through the ample use of drowsiness inducing medicine. So for the last two days, she has fought a valiant but losing battle against waves of "do not opperate heavy machinery-ness." She'll do one more day of heavy medicines today after I get home from classes and hopefully be done with it.

Even dizzy, my wife does a lot. She manages to make meals, do laundry, get her boys off to school, send dessert to the neighbor across the street. She helps @ with homework (yeah, he has homework for preschool). She keeps the houseworker from comepletely rearranging the house. And in between this, she tries to get a couple of minutes in the airconditioning to help keep the swelling down and limit her recovery time. Exhausting.

I try to help out a little here and there and don't do nearly enough. And still I'm tired. I guess this is what I deserve for breaking my leg the month before @ was born. I owe her.

Cheaters

This past week I gave four classes their midterm exams. And, not too unexpectedly, I caught students cheating. But what was suprising was that these students were women. Not that I am an authority on the subject but usually I only catch men (boys?) copying answers. When I mentioned this to some of my colleagues, they weren't the least bit shocked. Boys don't care enough to cheat here.

Just a few minutes after the exam was over, I began running through the vocabulary portion of the test and noticed that one student had yet to get a single answer correct. Sure, I'm usually tough but not that tough. Looking more closely, I realized that the reason for the problem was that she had written the answers for the second version of the test - the version that a classmate sitting on either side of her. I was howling mad.

Later, I shared this with Amanda who took on the challenge of identifying who it was that this student cheated off of. With 80 or so students, I thought this was unlikely but within a couple of minutes, the co-cheater was found (their short answers were too alike to be coincidence). I think Amanda has a future in law enforcement.

The next day, I called in both of them where the first student admitted to the crime while the second acknowledged that she allowed but did encourage her friend to cheat. Neither student apologized or even indicated that what they did was wrong.

Both students recieve an F for the exam and the cheater will get an automatic 0 for the course.

Yeah, things are the same all over.

It hasn't been THAT long since I blogged...

I'm teaching about mass media in America this week so I thought I should revist the blog that I've largely neglected (abused?) for the last couple of months. Why?

• Facebook is a time suck. And it's easier to post a one sentence update than go for a whole (meaning 1 paragraph) theme. There's no pressure to even say anything and a ton of voyeristic, looking over everyone else's shoulders that can be done.
• Work. While not that time consuming, it does take the creative energy out of me. I spend Tuesday and Wednesday trying to get my laid-back Asian students excited, or even angry, about something.
• Family. I spend a couple of hours a day on this computer anyway and I feel guilty about ignoring our son who just wants to play with me. He's four and experimenting with words and ideas and behaviors. God, I pray that he doesn't outgrow this.
• Life. We feel like we haven't totally found our place here yet but are also trying to see how to figure out what we should be doing. Should I spend more time at work so I can do a better job trying to connect with my students and colleagues? Should we be going on more walks around the neighborhood in hopes of running into and maybe talking to the people around here? Should we be looking for international groups so we have some other foreigners to hang out with?
• The other blog. Even though it hasn't actually started yet, I've been mentally developing this blog for American professors living abroad for about a year now. Separate name, separate readership, brilliant exchanges of ideas and resources. But I want it to be completely different than this one without taking time from any of the above. But blogs are dead, aren't they?

On the plus side of things, I'm thrilled that Facebook has helped me catch up with old classmates from Heyworth High, old Campus House friends (Emily Potter...anyone?) and even people from the EIU Forensics team (am I the only one without tenure or my name on a marquee?). It's great that I can see pictures of my new neice and vacations that friends have taken. I can pray for people moments after they list a concern. I can keep up with moves and new adventures. Good stuff.

When you've already Googled everyone you know...

Try your name, try your friends' names, try your relatives' names:

WorldCat Identities

My coolest result: My aunt has books or articles in four languages.

Then you can go back to wasting time on Facebook.

A Passing

On May 23, an explosion tore through a minibus in an African capitol and took the lives of several of the riders. Among them was our friend Hezy, an Israeli-American elephant professor who used to work at the same university as I did.

For two years our apartment was across from his and his dog's. His white hair and smiling face conveyed a sort of Jewish Santa Claus. I remember hearing stories of how he kept elephant dung on the balcony so he could measure its moisture content. While on safari, counting the few elephants remaining in the country, his puppy nearly killed him when all thirty pounds of it challenged a bull elephant. He came to our house for Thanksgiving. We often road the bus to school together and talked politics.

As I read about him and others who will miss him, I realize that he really was brilliant. One person said that he might know more about elephants than anyone else in the world. And despite this, he worked sacrificially for a University that lacked running water, decent textbooks or consistent electricity

He was a good man. I would have liked my son to have known him.

Deaf to the Word of God...or because of it?

I don't want to be petty. I don't want to be one of those church hoppers who switches churches every time the preacher says something I may not completely agree with or he pulls something out of context. I don't want to complain about the type of grape beverage they use for communion or how much/little time is taken up by off-key little kids yelling out a two verse rendition of "Jesus Loves Me". This is why I struggle with the fact that I think we may need to switch churches after only really getting to know some people.

The problem is not doctrine or format. The problem is VOLUME. I wish it was just the music or one particular instrument or praise team's microphones but it's the entire sound system. Even the "quieter for emphasis" parts of the sermon would still warrant "could you turn that down a bit" request if it was in your own home. It's at a level where you feel each note. The pages of your Bible vibrate. My pocket translator bounces off the plastic chair next to me. My heart beats faster and heavier (never good when you happen to be at my fitness level). I walk out with a ringing in my ears and, usually, a headache. The church is simply too loud.

The first Sunday we went to this store front church just down from the Harley dealer, I figured it might simply be too loud for where we were sitting. So the next Sunday we moved places. And we continue to move. Each Sunday we look to find that elusive dead zone, that vacuum where just maybe the decibel level is half of where it is elsewhere. Those spots are either taken by the first arrivers or don't exist.

The week I wore cotton in my ears, the pastor's wife asked me about the new addition to my attire. We were alone, on the way to dropping @ at Sunday school so I thought this might be a chance to voice what others had been thinking but didn't bring up. Her response to my mention of the volume was, basically, "silly American, this is how we do things in this country."

And she's right. The church we attended while in language school was also too loud but not nearly as painfully so. One American we knew there had taken to wearing earplugs during worship. At the time I thought it was funny. It wasn't THAT loud. And the man was in his fifties so he was clearly too old to understand that "this is how we do things" in contemporary worship.

From the 4 am call to prayer to the food vendors walking down the street with their particular jingle playing over battery-operated speakers, there is noise everywhere. The men selling pirated music and dvds on the streets block the sidewalks, forcing you to inch past their speakers. The minibuses play the radio over the sound of their exhaust pipe-less engines. Cellphone users talk over the blasted muzak in the malls. Motorcycles are everywhere and none of them purr quietly.

From time to time an article is written in the local and international papers about the country's "hearing loss epidemic." The next day the article is replaced by one discussing the "diabetes epidemic" or obesity or air pollution or...and they all fall on deaf ears.

This week I wore earplugs which at least felt a bit more discreet than the furry bits of white that grew out of my ears weeks before. The sound at church was still loud but a bit more contained. My heart rushed more than it should but it was certainly better. I was able to enjoy the music a little and even concentrate on understanding the transitions between the songs. It wasn't that bad. Maybe this could work. And then I looked over at our three year old son who had both hands firmly pressed against his ears.

Another first day of school

Yesterday was my first day of teaching...in years. For the last two months I had been observing a couple of classes as I waited for papers to be processed and permits be signed. Once that was done, I was legal to work.

The course is simple. Each week, the students read a short story or essay written about or by a particular ethnic group. A group of three students then presents about that group, takes some questions from the rest of the class based on their report and a short discussion ensues. Really there's only a little amount of teaching (maybe twenty minutes about of the hour and forty minute class). Since the students had their midterm exams last week, this was a good time to transition from the other teacher to me.

The only problem is that when it was time for class, only about half of the students were there. Also, the other teacher and the group who was supposed to present were also missing. So I started without them and spoke for first half an hour with material I planned on using at the end of class.

When the missing students several other stragglers and other prof arrived, the group explained that they were not ready with anything. Only one of them had even picked up the material and I doubt he had read it. But not a problem, I could always lead a discussion about the material we read.

Except only a couple of students in the rest of the class had picked it up. Literally, something like three people had read the text. The other prof thought it wouldn't be a good use of our time to lecture about a short story about Norwegian immigrants and the cultural contributions of the vikings that only five of us had read.

So for the next hour I gave an impromptu lecture on cultural centers, ethnocentrism, adaptation vs assimilation and a lot of odd references to American sports and 1980's pop culture.

Maybe eight years of extemp and impromtu did teach me something.

Bag o' money

My bank creeps me out.

Once they made an error in my bankbook and rather than waiting for me to bring the book in the next day, they sent a van full of people TO MY HOUSE to fix the typo. A bank that makes house calls?

When I go to my local branch, I am often ushered from the back of the line to the counter for "priority" customers. One teller was chastised when she didn't notice me and I was stuck waiting for nearly five minutes before a surpervisor noticed me and called me to the front. I was offered a sincere apology for the wait.

More recently they took my passport and bankbook while I waited at the counter. There was a "minor problem" they explained but they'd fix it shortly. Half an hour lately, as I had memories of a certain gov't "minor problem" a few years ago running through my head, they finally came back with my documents and the explanation that their printer had jammed.

On my way out if the parking lot I was stopped by two of the security guards. Rambling in a couple of versions of English, the national and local languages, they utterly confused me. Finally, they got around to explaining that one or both of them would appreciate being hired as as a security guard for my house or business. This is not typical. There are guards for communities and banks and huge businesses but not much more than that.

My last visit was even more odd. I was just planning to use the ATM in the bank's foyer but when I arrived I was quickly ushered inside. I had forgotten my money the last time I was at the bank. They walked me to the front and brought the bills from the back. Thousands of them. Even in local currency, it probably amounted to several thousand dollars worth of paper. They brought me, literally, a bag of money. They never asked for my ID or even my name. They just offered me several bricks of varying denominations and expected me to go on my way.

The problem was, I hadn't forgotten any money. I'd never withdrawn anything near that amount and hadn't been in the bank for several days. I explained this and who I was and that I really wasn't there to do anything but pay my electric and phone bills through the ATM. They reluctantly accepted my answer and took the money away.

Odd.

Since I've been gone...

Just some randomness that has come up since we moved here a month ago:

I thought I'd blog more now that we have high speed wireless. Actually, I just play more Scrabulous.

I'm tired of spending more time dwelling on my house than His House.

I absolutley love riding our motorcycle. But it really is too small for three people to enjoy a long ride on it.

After a month of living a mile from the ocean, today we finally went out to see it. Now I really want a kayak.

The time to move to a new city is not during the rainy season. It's never dry enough and misquito-free enough to just walk around the neighborhood and meet people.

Still waiting on paperwork for the work Visa to come through. No classes have been assigned to me so there's nothing for me to prepare for. I really can't even get involved in meetings yet.

This city is ten times bigger than we left and yet I can't find a place to buy cheese or an electric hair trimmer.

I look forward to the dry season so we can teach @ to ride a bike.

We have a package waiting for us in our old city and I don't know who sent it. (A friend will get it for us next week.)

I've been dwelling a lot on "whatever happended to...whoever" recently. Maybe because the future is so unknown right now. Annie Bergstrom found me not too long ago and now I wonder about a lot of others. Emily Potter? Brent Rankin? Kelly Wrobel? Matt Logaman? Corey O'Donnel?

Within a week's time, I bough two copies of John Grisham's new non-fiction book. They had two different covers and I was exhausted from cancelled flights and rescheduling. The first person I thought to offer the book to had also recently purchased it.

The best bookstore in town is at the airport...on the other side of security...which almost anyone can bluff their way through without a ticket or boarding pass. It's also only about ten minutes from here.

While in Singapore we found a place to stay that was nicer than the Y and nearly $150 Sing dollars cheaper. It's a bit off the subway routes but if we learned to use the busses there, it'd be great.

Things my son loves: Mr. Bean, anything superhero related, his new matchbox racetrack that has an elevator and can be mounted to the back of the door. (He got it for Christmas but we held off a month so he could play with it unbroken here.) He also can't get enough of Elmo or trying to make someone else laugh by asking Elmo-like questions. "Can a turtle wear underwear? Can a bed wear underwear?" And boats and planes. Singpore. Richard Scarry's Busytown books. "Fixing" things.

Breakfast has started to matter to me in the last few months. If I don't eat something, I'm starving by noon. It used to be that a can of Coke or Mountain Dew would keep me though lunchtime.

I miss snow and the changes in the weather beyond rain or not rain.

New job

If you check my Facebook updates, you might have heard that I have a new job...sort of...or at least I have signed a contract and will start working once the gov't approves my Visa. I'm scheduled to start in March which should give me plenty of time to prep, go to Singapore twice (since the current Visa is expiring and the work Visa isn't ready and I'll have to go out once it is), finally move all the way into the new house, learn my way around a crazy busy city and sleep.

But like all new jobs, I have no idea what I'm actually doing. There are supposed to be two components to what I'll be teaching: literature and American studies. There's no problem with the literature part - I could and have taught that in my sleep (my spologies to any of you who were my Eureka students). I enjoy it, especially the theory. My resourses for good texts may be a bit limited here but I can creatively work around that.

I really don't have the first clue about American studies. I haven't really paid much attention to America for the last several years and was never cool so I don't have any idea about pop culture unless Relevant wrote about it (and by that time, everyone in America had moved on to something new already).

Multiculturalism in America? Thematic Film studies? American Intellectual History? Theory of Culture? Method of Cultural Research?

So who/what should I be reading? I'll be heading to Singapore this weekend where bookstores abound so any ideas would really be appreciated.

Bits and bobs

I haven't posted in a while because I've been writing every weekday as part of my language class. 1-2 local-language pages on a cultural element assigned to me. The topics have been, for the most part, interesting enough but they often take me an hour a page not because the language is too tough but because the ideas are. So by the time I do that, translate my reading text for the day and interview a neighbor or two to be able to write my essay and spend time with my family, I am spent.

But today I am in a hotel in Rambuncious College City, also to be referred to as Han, with free internet and a sick boy. Amanda trying to find children's Tylenol and if our favorite Italian restaurant does carry out.

This week's random observations:

Women here don't smoke in public, ever. They also don't drive or work on the mini busses. Unlike the men, they also won't ride on the outside of the minis and stand on the running boards when the bus is too crowded to sit. (It's a rush but I don't recommend admitting that you do it from time to time....when there's a need...and the driver is very cautious...and you're wearing football pads...)

I can buy Diet Coke in glass bottles only at restaurants, and then only at some. I have never seen it for sale in any warung or store.

One of my everyday joys is seeing Muslim schoolgirls play Dance Dance Revolution. In a life otherwise oppressed, there is still freedom at the arcade.

I thought I had a new posse of Muslim college guys who wanted to practice their English. They came by for about a week but haven't seen them since the American next door set up the antenna with me. I think they may have been insulted that I didn't ask them to help us in the thunder and rain.

Dengue is a bad disease. It's like Mono only you don't have to kiss someone to get it. I think I'd rather not enjoy this cultural experience.

Evaluations and tests make me more not less nervous than they used to when I was younger.

One of the commonalities of all the people who I care to keep up with is that I'm proud of them. I'm proud how they've grown up. I proud that they are doing quiet great things like raising families and taking care of people they're not related to. I proud that they are good people where such a trait isn't always rewarded.

Some of my Eureka College kids, I still wonder and worry about. Especially the ones who married people I thought weren't good enough for them - like the girl who was proposed to just minutes after I talked with her boyfriend about how the act of plagiarism he committed would result in his failure of my class. Or the honor student who I found out later was having his mother write most of his papers for him because of a learning disability.

I try not to think about my African students much. It hurts to think of their lives now. I recently heard that no one under the age of 40 is allowed out of the country for any reason. So much for studying abroad...or teaching abroad, in the case of my African colleagues.

I'm so thankful that hotels are cheaper here than in the States. For the price we're paying tonight, we couldn't get a two star hotel in Peoria. Sometimes we just need to visit a different city.

I was sad today because the big bookstore here only had two novels in English (Love in a Time of Cholera and something you've never heard of). I would have been more sad if there had only been two novels in the local language. Books were available in at least five languages, not counting dictionaries or language learning texts. Can you find that in any downstate Illinois bookstore.

Does Pizza Hut in the US offer mayo sauce or sausage stuffed crust?

Does anyone have a couple of old baseball gloves they could send this direction?

Just wondering...

Me and Andre Agassi...or that guy Elaine dated

I remember years ago when Andre Agassi shaved his head for first time. More than simply having short hair it became clear that he was going bald. And the world was shocked.

Last week I put the quarter-inch guard on the electric trimmers to shave my head for the first time in several months. (I think I last did it when I needed a thesis stress reliever at the beginning of the summer). Looking in the mirror that night after I managed to even things out after the trimmer broke mid trim, I saw that something had changed.

No, I’m not exactly going “bald” but for years I had been blessed by full, if not the least bit manageable, hair. My hairline is receding in such a way that it’s full in the middle but somewhere in line with the outside of my eyes, it disappears. Unless you’ve met the Bunker men or know my older brother, you might not understand this description but it eventually it may end up resembling a suburban, white guy Mr. T hairdo.

I guess this is what I get for giving Ben a hard time. Maybe if I’d mocked him for being too tall or popular or good looking some of that would have rubbed off on me instead.

Here and there

One of those traps I fall into when dealing with our new culture is that of comparing everything. Usually that means either painting everything here as so much better (the government, the availability of food and western products, etc) or, especially when I'm tired, everything as worse (the quality of the tools and plumbing products, the heat etc.)

But sometimes there are just those reminders of the other. Or you start to see some universal patterns. See what I mean:

The name of our old home city translates in this language as "love" or "passion."

The name our new home city translates in this language to "the three faults" (thankfully not in reference to earthquakes).

In my English thesis I referred to a certain major African rebellion. It would translate to "The Want-Want" or "Go-Go" Revolution here.

In any country, Coke always tastes better and colder in a glass bottle.

If you're going to buy food on the street, well-cooked meat on a stick is a pretty safe bet.

The time just before rainy season is never pleasant. It either means lots of flies or lots of heat.

Teenagers can have a way of making you feel like you're being made fun of, no matter what langauge they're using.

Young children, on the other hand, can be great language teachers.

College kids love to practice their language and are less offended by your culture mistakes.

People our age and their parents do not have the same culture if they live in an urban environment. (Unless they are from the extreme upperclass or extreme lower class.)

Walking everywhere limits your ability to see how big your city really is. But you also get to know your little part of the city much better than if you relied on a vehicle.

It is easier to learn a language when you are enjoying it.

Internet connections are never fast enough.

Give a little boy a stick and somehow always becomes a gun.

Packages from home always make life better.

Anyone who speaks English is your friend.

No one, in any country other than America, understands how to make really good pizza, hotdogs or BBQed anything.

Milk from a box just isn't something you want a big glass of.

During national vacations, when you actually have time to finish your to-do list, no stores or offices you need to visit are open.

The world's teeth are getting worse.

Small children from all cultures love watching animals.

The devolping world is not in need of your old T-shirts, especially if they have profanity or outdated American pop-culture references.

Hey, whatever happened to...

Facebook has gotten me a curious about many of the people I really hadn't thought about in years (I think mainly as I attempt to bolster my self-esteem with an attempt to increase the size of my friends list. Unfortunately, I'm a couple of years late for the Facebook rush so most of my generation is out of the loop.). But I realize I have lost track of many of the people who I once spent time with.



In the interest of posting content without substance, I offer you the following:



Do you know what happened to your:



College roommates? : Maybe a third of them. I could really only tell you specifics on one or two of them. One sends me a check every month (that sounds weird) and yet I couldn't tell you much more than his address. Others I catch wind of when a group of Campus house people get together and we ask the above question. I lost track of my freshman roommate by my sophomore year.



The members of your wedding party: Yes but only because most of are relatives.



Your prom date(s): Actually I do. Thanks to the internet, I just found out that one is a language teacher. The other is married and brilliant (at least if you equate college degrees with intelligence) but that was several years ago so she may be single and dumb by now.

The owners of the lockers were on either side of your locker in highschool: No, and I'm curious.

The school bully: There were several but one shot his wife while she attempted to protect their child. Cheery.

Your closest (geographically) friend in gradeschool: Jeff Huffman, whatever happened to you?



Anyone on whose yearbook you wrote "friends forever": Thankfully, I don't know that I ever wrote that.

Your highschool class's most likely to succeed/golden child: Not since a sport's injury ended his basketball carreer, forcing him to focus only on medical school. Poor guy.

Or any of the following:

Your favorite teacher.

Any foreign exchange student from your school.

Your first boss.

Any lab/group partners from college.

If you've read this far, consider yourself tagged.

Refridgerator Rights

This was posted on Coffeehouse Christianity and it got me thinking:

"refrigerator rights". These are people who have earned the right to open up our lives (our refrigerators) and see what's inside. Sometimes they will even need to tell us that something stinks and needs to be taken care of." - Chris and his colleague borrowed this idea from Craig Groeschel.

Gretchen talks about these people in terms of drop-by friends. These are the people who simply drop by...for no "reason"...whenever. Sometimes they bring food or the kids or news but mostly they just bring themselves. There's an informality that illustrates more respect and greater intimacy than with those call-first friends who need a reason or excuse to come over.

I think we also have people who found themselves important enough to be on the outside of our refridgerators. Granted, this is a much easier group to get into, especially around Christmas when our fridge is usually covered by families dressed in coordinated outfits and forced smiles. But how many people to we allow ourselves to brag about authenically (verses those we brag about to make ourselves look more important)? How many people to take pride with when they accomplish something great?

And on the other side, who are those people in your life that you really allow to mourn with you and feel your pain? I just recieved news from a friend on that shock, stop everything level and, while I certainly can't feel the same level of loss as she is going through, I certainly hurt for her and her family. This is a person who, if there was only hundreds rather than thousands of miles between us, we would be in the car in a few minutes to be with. Have you offered yourself to someone in that way recently? Have you let them come to you?

I guess I'm in a wishful mood right now, looking forward to that time when we will be in a more permanent place and can have that level of intimacy and proximity with friends again.

Sucking face...book

So Pete has introduced me to yet another time-suck: Facebook. In order to see his pictures from his recent trip to Hawaii I had to get an account. And once I got an account, I just had to make sure I had some friends. And once I started looking, I realized that there were a lot of little features which, if I spent a ridiculous amount of time on, I might one day understand.

So if I haven't posted in a while, look up my name there -the one with my slightly girly middle name - and see what I've been up to. (But I do still plan to keep this as my primary blog site.)

Oh, and when you sign up for an account, you'll learn that you can get addicted after just one hit.

What earthquake?

Just wanted to let you all (both? you - singular?) know that yes, there was an earthquake somewhere in Asia earlier this week. And, no, it wasn't close enough for us to feel it.

As far as tsunamis are concerned, we currently live halfway up a mountain so there's little risk there either. Our new home, Big Coastal City, will be near the water but is along a shallow, protected coast so there's still little risk.

Thanks for your concerns but we're fine.