11/13/11

1. Amos and I attended an India meeting at church today.  We are going to Bangalore, India in July!  I'm so excited!  Amos is going to make a promotional video for our ministry partners (they have a Bible college and a children's home).  I'm going to teach a writing class and help the kids with homework.  I saw pictures of all of the kids last week, and I can't wait to go over and meet all twenty of them! :)

2. I am making this for dinner! :)  It should be reaaaaaaaaally good.

3. Friday was my brother Scott's birthday.  He's twenty-seven!

4. On Thursday I had an interview.  I should find out tomorrow or Tuesday if I got the long-term sub position.  I really hope I get it!  I think the decision has been made already, but please pray anyway.

5. I finished A Chance To Die: The Life and Legacy of Amy Carmichael by Elisabeth Elliot...which reminds me that I need to renew the other three books I checked out!

6. Amos and I have been married for four months now!

7. There are a lot of exclamation points in this post! ! !

"It has a little stink in it..."

Amos has several side jobs.  One of his jobs is a temporary job editing photos for our old IBEX professor, Todd.  Another is creating a website for our old IBEX friend, Lexi.  Still another job is hauling around porta potties mobile restrooms for his coworker Ryan.

I know what you are thinking.

"Uggggghhhh, porta potties!  Nasty green closets set up at flea markets and construction sites, dirty as can be, and twice as smelly."

Yeah, that's what I thought when Amos told me about it.

However, these are different.  These restrooms are very nice.

I was describing them to my mom one day.

What I said: "They're really nice, they're big, and they even have a little sink in it."
What she heard: "...they even have a little stink in it!"

Haha!

Anyway, this last weekend Amos was hauling one of the units up to Fresno for a wedding.  It was quite the adventure.  We got up at 4:20 am, took showers, packed our stuff into the car, and headed for Master's, where Amos had parked the truck and unit.

We got everything transferred to the nice, brand-new, diesel Dodge Ram and were up in Fresno by 8:30.  After talking to the wedding coordinator, we started setting up.  The unit has a freshwater tank for washing hands and flushing, so we ran a garden hose across the street to "fill 'er up."  Unfortunately the first car that drove by cracked the hose in three different places!  Water was shooting all over the road and running into the little field where we set up the restrooms.  Soon we were avoiding mud puddles and tracking dirt into the bathrooms.  One of the set-up guys for the wedding found another, heavier hose for us to use, so we set everything up inside, topped off the tank, and were off to a fun weekend!

The rest of the weekend included a free upgrade to a bigger hotel room, taking naps, watching TV (British TV shows and college football, mostly), going out to dinner at a Mexican restaurant, sleeping in, and eating waffles and powdered eggs (gag!) for breakfast.  It was fun. :)

All in all, we had a great time in spite of early mornings, my cold, and mud puddles.

Amos' parents, Barb and Lester, wanted to see some pictures of the units, so here they are!  Click on the picture to see a larger version.

Early morning Fresno, behind the trailer

The handsome husband, looking a little cold

The bathrooms, complete with mats and palm trees! ;)
Notice the little lights to let you know if the stall is occupied.

Inside the ladies' stall

Suffer

I finished The Reason for God by Timothy Keller yesterday.  I think everyone should read this book, penned for "skeptics and the believers who love them...The first, shorter part of the book looks at popular arguments against God's existence, while the second builds on general arguments for God to culminate in a sharp focus on the redemptive work of God in Christ." (from Publishers Weekly via amazon.com)

Some of the topics that hit me the hardest:

• the importance of forgiveness and the pain that is involved in that forgiveness
• the danger of building one's life on anything other than God
• Christ's identification with us in our suffering

Amos and I heard hard news about a friend today, and I have been thinking back to what Tim Keller kept hitting on, namely that Christ suffers with us.

He loves us.

True love involves caring for the sufferer and entering into their suffering yourself as you draw close to them.  Christ did this for us on the cross.  He identified with us in our humanity and suffering.  He left His Spirit to comfort us as we live, laugh, love, and suffer here on earth.  "Surely He has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows..."

He knows.

And that is immensely comforting to me, especially as I want just to fix the situation and make everything right.

He cares for our friend more than anyone else ever could.



God knows.

I'll get around to it one of these days

I thought of putting up pictures of our little house today, but I didn't get around to it.  First Amos and I didn't get up very early today; Amos blames it on the sugar we had the last few days.  I have no idea why we've been so tired.

After lunch of leftover homemade lasagna, I took Amos to work then toodled around on the internet for a while.

Later I walked to the grocery store and talked to Irene on the phone.  When I got to Vallarta, I bought a $0.20 cucumber before jay walking running across the street to Ralph's.  I bought a can of pineapple for $1.00 and a box of crumb donuts (the best kind) for $0.49.  Arriving back at the little house, I put the cucumber away, got some cash out of my wallet, and walked to another grocery store, Tresierras.  I bought two onions, a pound of carrots, and twenty eggs.  Next I walked down the farmers' market to find out how much the tamales were.  When I found out they were $3.00 each, I decided to just go home and have something else for dinner.  Another customer told me they were really big, though, and when I looked, I decided to have one after all. :)

I walked back home and cleaned up some of the house before I had dinner.  Then I talked to Amos and another friend on Facebook and finally got back around to mopping the kitchen and bedroom floors.

Now there are candles burning in the bedroom and kitchen, working away at the chemical cleaning smells.  I'm waiting for Amos to get off work.  I head off to work tomorrow!  I'm going to one of my favorite high schools.  Should be good!

Henry

Henry is the newest addition to the Ralston household.

Henry.  He even got the blue and green memo!

As you can see, he is a very nice plant of the sage variety.  I've wanted a sage plant for a long time.  I grew a tiny specimen from a sage seed when I lived at Aptartment 29 (three years ago!), and it did pretty well until I put it outside in the hot blazing sun.  The poor little plant was not prepared for SoCal's heat and quickly shriveled up.

I wanted a sage plant because you can use the leaves to make really good tea.  When I was in Jordan five and half years ago, we had tea every morning at our hostel.  The tea was very good except for the day that I found a pincher bug taking a float in the tea pot.  My friends and I asked the hostel owner what the brand of tea was and then wandered Wadi Mousa till we found some.  I bought the biggest box that the little convenience store had (195 teabags), but I didn't use them fast enough.  I threw about half of them away yesterday because they were so bitter it really took away from the taste.  I kept the cardboard box and several of the tags from the teabags, though.

Last Sunday I went to the grocery store and found a new box of Ceylon tea, though sadly and understandably, it was not the same brand.  Amos and I had some tea on Tuesday or Wednesday before we went to Home Depot and bought Henry.  I've resisted the temptation to water him; apparently he only needs a little water to survive.

Henry makes very good tea.

Jordanian Tea
Ceylon tea
A lot sugar
A few fresh sage leaves (summer) OR
A few fresh mint leaves (winter)

Now or never

If I don't write this post at 10 o'clock tonight, I probably never will.  My number of blog posts dropped after I got engaged and then started teaching full-time, so here's hoping I can raise that number now that I'm married and only subbing.  We shall see...

Sunday
Manned the donut table at church
Went to a Team India meeting
Took a really long nap
Hung out with Amos

Monday
Waited for Amos to wake up after he worked overnight
Went to the mall
Went to the Christian bookstore and got my last name embossed on my Bible

Tuesday
Hung out with Amos
I can't remember what else
One of these days we watched old Disney cartoons on YouTube

Wednesday
Hung out with Amos
We might have run errands, but I can't remember

Thursday
Hung out with Amos
Cleaned the house
Made little coasters using a fabric place mat, a rubber place mat, and embroidery floss
Went to bed late and only got a few hours of sleep

Friday
Got up at 6:00 to pick up a truck down in Sun Valley
Made poppyseed muffins
Made a fourth coaster
Went with Amos to set up a porta potty unit down in West Hills
Took a nap
Picked up bulletins
Went to three different grocery stores
Washed the dishes
Drove with Danielle to the grocery store*
Had Danielle, Jamie, and Sarah over for dinner and games
Helped Amos jumpstart Danielle's car

Saturday
Made breakfast
Moped around waiting for Amos to come back from helping friends move a piano
Went on a walking adventure
Read a book
Made dinner
Stuffed bulletins
Watched part of a movie
Went to bed too late

Sunday
Went to church
Waited in vain to meet another guy who wants to go to India with us
Went to the library
Went to Target and Sprouts
Took a nap
Went back to West Hills to get the porta potty and take care of it
Went to In N Out for dinner
Went to Fusion

*Danielle's car died at work, so our mutual friend Albert helped her jumpstart the car.  She didn't want to turn off the car, so I ran out and went to the grocery store with her, hoping Sarah, a new friend from church, wouldn't show up while we were gone.  She did.  Oh well!  We all had a good time anyway. :)

Green and Blue

Amos favorite color is darkish-bright blue, and my favorite colors are cobalt blue and olive-ish green.  Hence our wedding colors, which I think looked very nice together. :)

Happy Wedding Day! July 9, 2011

Anyway, a few weeks ago Amos and I went to Goodwill.  Amos wanted to see if they had a bulletin board.  I wanted one for a project, but he hadn't been able to find one at the Goodwill across town.  We didn't find a bulletin board this time either, but I did get four books. :)

I finished The Good Daughter by Jasmin Darznik, one of the books I bought at a Borders going-out-of-business sale (I saved $60.00 in books, only spending $18.00).  It was an interesting memoir about life in Iran.  Interesting, but I did not like Darznik's writing style.  Anyway.

I finished The Good Daughter and picked up Down the Nile: alone in a fisherman's skiff by Rosemary Mahoney, purchased for $1.99.  As the title says, she wanted to row down the Nile in Egypt in a skiff.  Last night I was reading  her descriptions of Elephantine Island and Kitchener Island in Upper Egypt, near the city of Aswan, all of which I've explored.  One of the reasons why I love books about the Middle East is because oftentimes I can say, "I've been there!  I've seen that!  I had that same observation about the culture!" and sometimes more arrogantly, "that's not what it's like there" or "what were they thinking?"  Oh dear.  In any case, I love reading about the Middle East, and this book is awesome so far.

Mahoney describes Kitchener Island as an island stuffed with exotic plants and trees.  I visited this island with a few friends in 2006 while I was on spring break from IBEX.  I tried to write down everything about my semester in Israel and my spring break trip, but there was too much to do; I didn't want to spend my time writing when I could spend time doing. My very brief notes on Kitchener and Elephantine Islands read:

Botanical Gardens on [Kitchener] island
  very pretty
  guy with gun 

Elephantine Island
  Nilometer
  creepy guy

Haha!

Anway, back to Down the Nile.  I was reading along, identifying with all of Mahoney's descriptions, when a few sentences just about leapt off the page:

...[Mahoney] moved on past Kitchener Island, a small island wholly taken up with the most exotic botanical garden I had ever seen.  It was filled with tropical trees and flowers, everything marked in Latin and Arabic.  On another trip I had seen a horseradish tree there, a cape honeysuckle, a mountain ebony, baobab, an ironwood, a rubber vine, a spotted gum, a sliver trumpet tree, and an enormous mahogany.  I had seen a Strychnos nux-vomica, a strychnine tree, and had put one of its spherical seedpods in my pocket, then later threw it away for fear it would poison me.  Kitchener was cool and quiet and shady, and it was home to a curious cat that had one green eye and one blue.

Wait, what?!?!

...it was home to a curious cat that had one green eye and one blue.

Whoa.

Whoa.

I had a picture of the same exact cat.  I was so thrilled and excited that I read the last sentence to Amos before interrupting his time on the computer to find the picture I had taken five and half years earlier.

The famous kitty

Even this morning I was so excited that I had found that sentence and that I had actually seen, with my own eyes, the same green-and-blue eyed cat that this author had seen, on a very small island in a foreign country on the other side of the world.

Have I mentioned I love books?

*sigh*

Rowdy

I had several things to do today:
1. Go to school and teach rowdy seniors and distracted juniors: check
2. Get frustrated with kids who won't just behave: check
3. See several old students from student teaching days: check!

4. Come home and have lunch with Amos: check! :D

5. Finish with the last period of rowdy seniors: check

6. Cancel my bank account: check
7. Meet a teller who knows several of my friends and goes to a local church: check

Next up:
8. Go to Lens Crafters to get some contacts that I can actually SEE out of

9. Go to the grocery store for something (hopefully I'll remember it before I get there...)

10. Call in to Ross or Audra to listen when they find out what they will be having next February (I'm guessing a boy)

11. Wait for Amos to come home from work

Stream of consciousness

[Disclaimer: I've never studied the art of writing in the stream of consciousness style, so you can just think of this as rambling if you know what stream of consciousness is really supposed to be like. ;) ]


I have four more days of CELDT testing...so glad!  I talked to one of the other testers today at lunch, and it turns out he's been a lot of the same places I've been.  He started out in Malawi, traveled up through Africa into Egypt, Jordan, and Israel before hitting up Italy and Germany.  Crazy.  $10,000.00, eleven months, and some teaching in order to get a ticket back home.  hmmmmm...How can Amos and I get $25,000.00, just to be safe?  Haha, that's more money than I've EVER made in a year.  Below the poverty line?  Yes.  Do I need to be above the poverty line?  It would be nice, especially for paying off our loans, but no, it's not absolutely necessary.
I told the tester, Sergio, that I wanted to live overseas.  He asked if my husband did, too.  I said yes, I wouldn't have married him otherwise.  You should have the same goals if you are going to get married, at least that's what I think.  He had no comment.  Weird.  Makes sense to me.  You need more than just "chemistry."
I have some ideas for teaching, but I have no students. :P  I think I might start asking kids when I sub what they like in a substitute.  I'm not talking about watching movies in class or letting kids do whatever they want.  I know that I don't have classroom management down.  Maybe the kids themselves can give me some pointers. ;)
Katie, Amos' sister and my sister-in-law, had a baby!  His name is Oliver Ryder and he is so cute.  I'm glad he finally arrived. :)  I don't know when we'll be able to visit, but maybe Katie and Seth will put up more pictures. ;)
I guess that's all for now.  I might take out my new contacts and read a book.  Amos will be home in an hour! :D

Brunch

Amos and I went to brunch on Tuesday because Amos said we'd been married two months already and he is really happy. :D  Awwwwww!!!

We went to Egg Plantation, a place just around the corner.  The menu lists at least 100 different kinds of omelets in addition to other breakfast and lunch choices (though I think I've always picked an omelet).  Amos agreed to sit outside  where we watched a server nearly fall off the steps into a potted palm tree (it was a small tree but a big pot!).  I later tripped on the same pot, but that is beside the point. ;)  Amos had orange juice and I had a mocha, which was awesome.  I don't think I'll get one at Starbucks again after that one.  Amos and I both ordered hash browns and a biscuit as sides for our omelets, without talking to each other. ;)

I just love Amos.  He listens to me when I'm tired, is calm when I get upset, laughs at the silly things I do on purpose and on accident, and gives me lots of hugs.  I like talking to him.  We talk about silly things and serious things, like church, financial decisions, dreams, plans, decisions, opinions, how to impact others, etc.

In other news, Amos and I started dating three years ago yesterday.

Lacking in the photo department...

Heather mentioned that she wanted to see our house...well, this is our house before we got it all put together.  I'm hoping to take new pictures of the little place when our prints show up and we can put them on the wall.

This is what we saw when we came back from our wedding reception and then our honeymoon.

Presents everywhere!  From the doorway, looking straight ahead...

More presents!  Taken from the doorway, looking to the right...

From the hallway, looking at the front door...

Having salad, tri-tip, and cheese bread on our first night at home!

Being silly while opening presents...

Aaaaaaaaaahhh!  Don't look! ;)  :)

Intentions

So, I really thought I would have more posts in August...and now August is gone...oooops...
Ummmm, what have I been up to...

1. I worked five days last week. :)  I'm a CELDT proctor again.  This means I administer tests to junior high and high school kids in the local district.  It's not very exciting even at first, and after a week or two it's downright boring.  HOWEVER, I am getting paid and I am very thankful for that. :)
Last week I was at one of my favorite schools.  I had to test nine kids over the course of two days.  I basically read for three hours each day, tested kids for the other three hours, and got paid for all of it.  Not too bad. :)

2. I finally finished The Media Relations Department of Hizbollah Wishes You a Happy Birthday by Neil MacFarquhar.  The narrative picked up after I went back to it, so it didn't take too long to read.  Now I'm reading Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome.  It is supposed to be really funny...we shall see.

3. Amos and I have friends in China, Afghanistan, Bahrain, Jordan, and New Zealand, and soon to be Turkey, Czech Republic, and England.  This is getting crazy.  I want to go.

4. We finally got around to picking out wedding pictures to put on our walls.  I will take pictures of our little house one of these days and will put them up on-line.  I think it looks very nice. :)

5. Yesterday I made Korean barbecue.  It was really good. :)  I also made little personal pizzas using some very flat and dry pita bread ($0.65 for six pieces!) from a local grocery store.  They came out very well and don't take too long to make.  Another creation was a white cake with coconut frosting.  A few weeks ago I made coconut rice, butter chicken, and saag aloo (potatoes in a spinach sauce).  It's been fun. :)

Sometime I will have to write about the spiders and the tiny red ants...but not today!  Happy Labor Day! :)