Location

FYI: I'm in the US. I'll be in Canton/Akron in a couple weeks.

(Sigh) I forgot what it's like to be carded. I hate looking like I'm 18.

piccies

Flickr site updated... more to come next month as I've used up my quota for this month. I can't believe I haven't uploaded photos since last summer! Shame on me.

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Playing in the rain

That was definitely the most rain I have ever seen in England, it's awesome! I miss storms like this. One clap of thunder and then the skies opened. I just had to go outside. My housemate thought I was mad but he came too :) It took less than a second to be as drenched as if I had jumped into a swimming pool fully clothed. People should play in the rain more often- go outside, holler, spin around with your arms outstretched... try it sometime.

Down the Pub

Advice of the evening:

Always go with what the landlord drinks and you'll never go wrong.

Why not? Seriously, I'm not sure why I haven't gotten into this whole pub thing sooner. I guess cause I didn't know anyone. Now that I do, I feel like I'm down the pub 3 times a week. Actually, this week I've gone to the pub... 4 times? As I don't like beer on its own, I don't know anything about it, but I've decided to try different types in my shandy to figure out which I like best. The discussion with the landlord came about because I told the barman to pick one for me :)

I'll miss pubs if I move away from England.

Sezen Aksu

So I went on iTunes to find a world music radio station and had it playing while I was doing some work on the computer. All of a sudden, I realized the song playing was in Turkish. I checked and sure enough, it was Sezen Aksu. That may not sound very exciting to you, but I'm rubbish at learning languages so I thought it was pretty cool that I could recognize Turkish, without a doubt, in a song I wasn't even really listening to. Yea :) Maybe I did absorb something from spending last summer in Turkye. Or maybe I've just listened to too much Turkish pop music since then ;)

btw- I'm having crises every time I write a blog now. Should I write recognize or recognise? Color or colour? Yogurt or yoghurt? I type it, change it, and then change it back again, while I try to remind myself 1) most of my readers are American and 2) which way of spelling it is the American one.

Questions of the not too brilliant variety

I am trying to think of a way to write this post that does not sound irritable. I'm not coming up with anything, so forgive me if it does.

OK- every time I meet someone and they ask me what I do/where I work, and I tell them that I work with (mentally) disabled students, they say, "That must be really challenging." Or they say, "That must be challenging, but rewarding." It's just recently started to get on my nerves. Why is that everyone's first reaction? Is it because they've never met any disabled people and for some reason think they're all "challenging?" I think teenagers are challenging but I don't say, "wow, your job must be really challenging," every time I meet a high school teacher.

When people ask me "Is that really challenging?" I've started responding, "Yes, but not because of the students." People who work in this field do it because they enjoy it. So my personal advice would be: don't respond in this way when you meet someone. If they work with people with disabilities they probably love it, and it's more likely that they find YOU challenging.

Does anyone else work in a "challenging" field and get this response all the time? What do you think? Feel free to comment and disagree with me.

But while I'm on the subject of annoying questions, I've remembered the thoughts I meant to blog a couple weeks ago. On July 4th, I taught some line dance at a party for the ladies from the mum and toddlers group at church. Why do married people ask single people if they have a fiancé, a boyfriend, any romance, as soon as they meet them? When you think about it, it's actually very, very odd. Single people don't ask each other personal questions like that the moment they are introduced. (Unless they're trying to get a date of course.) Now, I'm really fine with being single right now. I'm not hung up about it, I'm not embarrassed about it, I'm not jealous. But it was really annoying having young mums asking me all evening if I had a boyfriend or any prospects. After awhile, I was tempted to yell, "HAHA!!! I'm free to travel the world and do what I want to do without having to worry about anyone but myself! You're not! So there! Ha!"

Of course, I didn't say that. I smiled and said, no, no boyfriend.... nope, no one has swept me off my feet ... no, no one is trying to either...

Yeah, way to make someone feel lousy. Though I wonder if maybe, subconsciously, that was the point. Maybe marriage and kids has not made them as happy as they thought they would, and maybe they're the ones who are jealous of me. Hmm...

whoa

I just realized something . . . I'm living in England! How cool is that? And I've been to 3 foreign countries (other than England) in the past 2 years (Turkey twice), at minimal expense. That's really quite, well, incredible. Praise God for his super cool blessings!

Let go and fall

Three more days of saying goodbye to students . . .
I will not make it through this week on my own strength.
What a great time to put aside my pride and just let God carry me.