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things that make me happy right now: living here.
A week of my favorite things . . . When I was little I lived for three years in Barbados, and my nine-year-old heart broke into a thousand pieces when we had to leave. That place and the people there were apart of me, and leaving them was a loss I felt for a long, long time. When I graduated high school I was given the gift of moving back for a semester, and I felt like a part of me came alive again. For four short months, I soaked up the hot, humid weather, the sticky mosquito-filled nights and the island accents all around me. I learned to navigate…
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things that make me happy right now: gluten-free care packages.
A week of my favorite things . . . I am overjoyed by the number of people who learned about my new, gluten-free predicament, and have sent me care packages. Fun care packages! Yummy care packages! Full of things I can’t find here: like rice cakes and xanthum gum and GF all-purpose flour. With a cookie mix or chocolate cake mix thrown in for good measure. Priya is simply astounded by the influx. She said, “You have some very good friends!” Do I ever! It’s humbling, to be sure. 2012 has been a year of lows in the food department . . . until these last couple weeks when we…
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things that make me happy right now: city church.
A week of my favorite things . . . In November, we moved to the center of our city, because we wanted to be apart of starting a church here. You know, the fact that I’m saying “we” is a big deal. David has talked, dreamed and prayed for as long as I’ve known him about planting churches. It’s in his blood. And in college, as we were friends, then fell in love, dreamed about the future, got married, and dreamed some more, I always thought, subconsciously, This is David’s dream, and I’m going to support him in his dream. But I wasn’t very happy about it. He knew that,…
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things that make me happy right now: family day off.
A week of my favorite things . . .
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things that make me happy right now: homeschooling.
A week of my favorite things . . . Hmmm. Okay, let’s be honest, maybe a better title for this post is: “Things that make me happy right now: the idea of homeschooling.” I am growing, more and more, to love the idea of homeschooling, and to feel certain that it’s the right thing for our family in this season. So . . . I’m having a little trouble managing all the priorities in my life just now. But I’m enjoying the effort—in some ways, being more busy, not less, is a great motivator for me. And at least they’re fun priorities. Homeschooling typically seems to be first to go. …
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things that make me happy right now: teaching priya to read.
A week of my favorite things . . . “Madam, I’m sorry but I don’t know how to read,” Priya told me, one of her first days of work. I had, unthinkingly, showed her a spice label when we were cooking. And then, the first time she brought Roshen over to our house, she pulled me aside and said, “Madam, if you don’t mind, would you read a book to Roshen? I have always wanted to, but I can’t.” In that moment, I knew without a doubt that I wanted to teach Priya to read. So I did a little research, and that next week: “Priya, would you like to…
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things that make me happy right now: language study.
A week of my favorite things . . . We’ve begun week four and are closing in on our first month-long class. John and Alison and I will go on to start month two with Neetu, but it looks like David needs to find a different time slot (and therefore possibly a different teacher) due to his work schedule. We have class for an hour a day, five days a week, and I concentrate so hard for that hour that my brain hurts. Just when you think you’ve mastered reading/writing the alphabet and a couple basic phrases, there are endless lists of vocab and pronouns and declensions to make your…