My Paper - Stealing My Life with 700 Words to Show for It

For the class I'm taking, I have to write a paper on the Misegian Language Family. Writing a paper takes a lot of work. First you have to get your data. Sometimes that data is on the flip side of the Earth and sending large documents from a 3rd world country to the other side of the world is far from an easy feat. Sometimes people are hesitant to entrust their work to you and you have to set their mind at ease. Sometimes you can't get the data you need and just have to work without it. After all that, many hours have already been put into the paper.
Then you get to sit down and write. I have sat many hours in front of this screen writing this paper. Many hours. Let's say several. At least 7. Presently, at most 10. Just for fun (and because my brain refused to think anything useful for writing) I decided to take a break and remove all the extra stuff from my paper to see how much I had actually written. I removed the maps, the charts, the tables, the data examples, the headings, and all that other extra stuff and do you know what I came to? Less than 700 words. Less than 700 words! That's 100words/1hour! Right here I've already written more than 200 in 5 minutes! At that rate I should be able to write 800 in 15 mins and I wrote less than that in 7 HOURS!?!?!?! And yes, I understand that it's a little different to spill the thoughts in your head and to compare data and write intelligent statements in a professional manner but is the difference really so grand!?!!? Is it really 45 TIMES MORE WORK!??!? THIS IS RIDICULOUS!!!!
...
Oh and the best part? This paper is to be 12-15 pages. With the extra stuff it's six. I'm half way done. ONLY HALF WAY DONE! MAYBE ANOTHER 10 HOURS OF WRITING 100WORDS/HOUR AND I'LL BE FINISHED! Lets just hope there's not A CURVE!!!!
(The curve I'm referring to is when you've written as much as you can think to but you still haven't met the length requirement so you just sit and stare at the screen hoping that you'll have an epiphany concerning what to write and when you do, you scrap together only a short paragraph and then return to staring at the screen. In addition to be emotionally and intellectually painful, it's also very bad for your eyes.)

P.S. Just because I'm logged into Facebook doesn't mean I'm actively on it. The 7 hours spent in front of my computer was not spent on Facebook. So there!

The Expensive Stage in Life

That stage of life where you start to begin to go from being a college kid to being a professional in the work place is very expensive!
The wardrobe has to be flipped from my usual as-many-layers-and-colors-and-patterns-in-a-single-outfit-as-possible-without-clashing to ooo-chic-and-professional. And I can get a good dozen or so outfits out of simply rearranging the articles of clothing I have into less dynamic arrangements. And that's all I needed for the occasional speaking at a church or the meeting with a preacher or the coffee date with a could-be supporter. But now! Now that the rest of my semester will be serving in church offices! Now I need a bit more than a dozen arguably professional outfits!
And I need shoes! The only pair of flats that I have are my black tennis shoes that I wore to work at the convention center! (And you don't want to wear heels all day, all week if you've not very sure that you'll be sitting at a desk all day, all week) And besides being tennis shoes, they're so worn I'll probably replace them before I wear them to work again! So I had to find shoes. Two walmarts and a target left me unsatisfied (oh the gas it takes to drive around to get what i need!!!!) I finally went to a payless and found a pair that I'm ok with and were at a price that I was ok paying even though I was only ok with the shoes. But then I had to buy socks! Because these shoes were the shoes that just cover the toes and even threaten to show off a bit of the cursed "toe-cleavage" and you can't just wear any kind of sock with those!
...I don't even want to think about jewelry....

Jackpot!

Last night my external hard drive, Devon, died. So I had to buy a new one. I was thinking that I was about to run out of space on Devon so I bought a 1T hard drive. $119. Ouch. It is bulkier than Devon and not as pretty and it has that surface where if you breathe on it, all your gross oils will mar it. I named the brute Boris.
When I got home I discovered, in outrage, that the hard drive already had more than 100GB used up! This feels a lot like tithing I thought, probably in a more sad tone than it should've been. "Here buy a 1T hard drive! But you can't use 10%." Then, put out, (lets say my less than great pleasure was because I tithe to God not to a hard drive) I went to go see what was consuming 100GB of space. That is when I found 20 blockbuster movies on the hard drive! I believe that someone bought Boris and then returned him, but Walmart didn't wipe the drive before putting it back on the shelf. (Which, of course, begs the question, why did someone return Boris? is he not house-trained? I, until I discover otherwise, will believe that someone swiped Mommy's credit card for a $119 hard drive and Mommy wasn't happy about that.) And then I thought, "Wow! This is a lot like tithing! "Give me 10% and I'll give you AWESOME"!"
If all those movies were $15, that's more than double the price of the hard drive!
Devon will always have a special place in my heart.
But I will come to love Boris like you love that mangy mutt who you only bought over the lovely Akita because if someone didn't adopt it soon they'd put it down and then you bring him home to discover that he fills your home with something worth more than the price of him, a plethora of movies!

Sometimes I get jumpy...

We were in Madang, where the PBT office is located in PNG. It was our last week in the country. My team leader had moved to her own room. The Intern who had been in that room moved into the room that I had slept in. I, after the Cockroach Chronicles, had not left the living room couch. It was about 3 am and I heard something. I tried to tell myself it was another intern coming home (he was next door at the house of his fiancee), but when I remember that the doors were not locked, my concern became un-easeable. I got up to lock us in.


(The locks in PNG have keyholes on both sides, so that you can't punch thru the screen and reach thru to unlock it. (I know that the picture you may have in your head is probably very different from the picture in mine so, instead of use 1,000 words, I'll include a picture!) Having two keyholes makes it very easy to get locked in, as one of our team leaders has demonstrated here).


As I was locking the door, I kept hearing sounds in the yard. Every twig that snapped made me jump. I was way too on edge! I laid back down and fell into a restless sleep.
For this reason, I will never watch Criminal Minds whilst in the jungle. I love Criminal Minds, I really do. I own the first Season. But I get really jumpy state-side watching it. I think I will become a traumatized wreck if I tried to watch this in an already jumpy enducing environment.

(I probably will. After a while, when I rewatched all the Bones that I own, and Lie to Me, and House, and NCIS, I'll tell myself, oh it wasn't that bad. And watch it. And I will be terrified, and say I will never do it again. But there will probably be a next time...)

My Car Accident

Today I got in a car accident. I was not hurt. But I was a little shaken. Now, as you all are very desirous to know what happened, I drew you a picture. First, I, the tan box indicated with an "A" was minding my own business when I noticed blue box indicated with an "A" in the left turn lane with his right blinker on. Realizing that Texans are terrible drivers I decided that it was likely that he would pull out in front of me. So I moved over into the position indicated by the letter "B". He, as predicted moved from his lane into the position indicated by the letter "B". I thought I was good to go so continued forward. Then, he jerked in front of me! ("C") I yanked my steering wheel to turn onto the perpendicular street ("C") as I slammed on my brakes! My brakes locked! My steering wheel didn't want to turn! And I found myself in position "D". Notice the "D" position of the blue car. You cannot. That kid was gone.
I called the person with whom I just had lunch as he was two minutes from my present position and savvy in the manner of cars. He called the police who arrived surprisingly promptly. As we were telling the officer what happened, some random bloke walked up with a description of the car, driver, and lisence plate number. Apparently, he was behind me when all this transpired and followed the kid who didn't stop. The kid realized he was being followed so came back and while I was on the phone, came to me and said "Are you ok? I'm sorry that happened". I didn't realize that this was the driver but thought it was a witness and so waved him off as I tried to focus on the re-telling of this tale. When the man who followed him initially realized that the kid just stayed long enough to see if we were ok and didn't give insurance information to me or the other lady, he took off after him again to retrieve the information he gave the cop.
My car sustained some body damage but is mostly all right I think.

(I took this picture with my phone. I am impressed with its quality.)

A Thing about Beds

It started in Fall '09 when I first moved to TX. I thought I was staying in a house for four months and then going home. But a change of plans had me staying there for 6 months, a hatred of the place I was living had me move out early, my new house had me share a room, a departing resident had me move to an empty double room, and another shift in residents had me move to a single room. In six months, I had slept in four different beds.
I've moved before in my life. A lot when I was really little. But in my memory, I lived in one house for about 10 years. After my parents got divorce, my mom moved around a bit but then got settled. Then my dad moved a bit and then got settled. But even during that time, there was always a bed that was mine and stable.
This month I started at home in that bed, in my travels in a bed in GA, and now I'm in this bed. Next month I know I'll sleep in at least two different beds. That's five beds in two months! And if my semester goes as planned, this rate will not slow down.
I don't want to say I have developed an attachment to beds, because I try not to get attached to the bed. 1. I know I will leave it soon. 2. It is an inanimate object. But I have developed a thing about beds.
This is the bed I'm sleeping in in TX this time. I'm really digging the headboard shelf and I think that whenever I do settle down I will have to make sure I have one. I have an electric blanket under the sheet which I really appreciate. Sadly, it has a three-hour automatic off which means that I wake up every three hours to being freezing and have to turn on my blanket again. The house is very cold. Very very cold. Very cold.
I like proppig my pillow against the wall, having my coffee right there, and having all my textbooks within arms reach. (All of the books on the shelf are my textbooks, but the books on the shelf are not all of my textbooks).
I like the bed a lot. Perhaps I will match my long-term bed to it. Or perhaps, in my travels I will meet an assortment of beds which different fun elements and combine them into THE AWESOME BED! Ah, something I can dream about as I lay in each one...

A Miserable Day in the Garden

While we were in Samban, the missionary who we were quasi-staying with needed to go to her garden and I, along with a couple other interns, were recruited for the task. Little did I know how miserable I was about to be.
Her garden was, I'll say, more than a mile away, which was fine. A long walk, a walk where you started wondering if there even was a destination, but not miserable. Miserable comes later.
When we arrived in the garden, finally, the missionary was concerned because the grass was so high.
"It'll be hard to see if there are Death Adders… It might be better if you don't help."
"I'll do what my team leader says!" I replied, confident in my team leaders ability to lead me safely.
"You can do what you like," she said unhelpfully. "You might get bitten, but then you might not. I guess it depends on what you believe." And then she walked into the grass.
Great! So now if I don't walk in the grass I'm a faithless heathen and if I do…
"Hey!" calling her back, "Hypothetically speaking, let's say I do get bitten. What happens? Do I get medi-helicoptered out?"
"There'd be nothing we could do. You would die."
Great.
So I walked into the grass. Honestly, this was probably an act of pride more than faith. So if I had gotten bitten, I would have deserved it. But after a few moments of wading through the grass, I came to realize that there was no capacity in which I could help. I didn't have a machete to remove the bananas with and the national women who were helping us didn't need us to catch nor carry the bananas because they had a fantastic system of their own. So after risking my life for naught, I returned to the path and engaged the other purposeless intern with a lively debate on Mark 16:18.


Before we left, as we were waiting for the 4 wheeler to come back to carry the bananas, one of the nationals found gongray, which is this pod and you pull back the petals, fighting past the slime congealing it together, to reveal at it's heart these little raspberry looking fruit that taste like strawberries. Even though we were warned that too many might have less than wonderful effects on the workings of our systems, we ate plenty of the delicious fruit.


By the time we were ready to return home, the sun had risen high in the sky. The mile back, some of which was in the bush, but most of which was on the airstrip, was miserable. The sun beating down from above, the long walk, and started not on a well-rested body made me wonder if I would make it back. I very much wanted to just sit down and let the others go on without me, in the most melodramatic manner possible.
Finally, just as I was about to give up, a women sitting in a garden much closer to our destination than the missionary's called out to us "white kids" and offered us a kulau, a green coconut, which are marvelous at rehydrating the body. So I sat, and drank, and rested.
In retrospect, perhaps it wasn't so miserable. Risking my life, eating too many constipating berries, and almost dying in the heat of the day might be better described as rough than miserable…

I Wish I Was Filthy Rich

In February, I'm going to Vegas. And I'm super excited about it! My objective is to meet new people, start to build relationships, and get supporters whether promptly or down the road. But secretly, I just want to see Verve. I feel like God is moving there and I want to see it. I want to be a part of it.
Anyway, I found out on Facebook that Verve was starting a new series called Reel Prayer so I went to Verve's website (www.vivalaverve.org)to listen to their podcast. But something entitled "State of the Church Address" caught my eye. Vince's blog had stated that anyone who was a part of Verve should listen to it and, even though I'm not, I am nosy, and I settled down to listen to it.
Vince talked about how he came to find himself in Vegas, how Verve was facilitating in changing lives, and how important it was that Verve keep growing so it could continue to do so. Then he asked that the people of Verve help in this by 1. serving 2. giving 3. inviting people.
As Vince spoke of the struggles newly planted churches had, I became overcome with the thought that Verve was going to succeed, that God was moving thru that ministry, and the gate of Hell would not withstand it. And my desire to be apart of it intensified. I'm going to serve for two weeks, but two week? That is small potatoes.
I want to give to Verve financially. I thought about my tithe, but I tithe to my church and my church is Forefront. But I want to give to Verve. And I want to give to my friends who are preparing to go on some missions internships. And I want to give to Project: Greenhouse Affect. And there are so many things that I want to be apart of financially and I can't... I just can't. Because I'm a missionary and I need money. And the money I get people gave to me for my work and I can't very well give it away, can I?
I wish I was filthy rich and give as much as I want to whoever I want. I just want to be a part of what God's doing all over!

Edible Ants

Shortly after arriving in PNG, a friend who had been living there for a while pointed and said to me, “eat that!” I was but an intern and she was trusted and so I obeyed.
 
These rather large ants were called Muli Ants, named after their lemon flavor, which, I must say was rather potent.
 
Later on the internship, I discovered that these ants were the sort of ants that would return the favor. An intern and I were trying to leave through a fence, but these ants were swarming over the latch. My friend tried to be bold and fast but the ants made her regret that decision swiftly.
 
When I confronted the woman who told me to consume these evil ants, she said in her defense, “That’s why you crush their heads before you eat them!”

Back at GIAL

I'm presently sitting in my new room in Dallas, TX at my sweet desk, whose drawers serve as my dresser. Since I arrived yesterday, I've had Starbucks, visited Walmart twice, talked to the lovely people in the PBT office, met my new housemates, moved in, returned to the PBT office for more visiting and (the next day (today)) went to visit my GIAL advisor, my new professor, discussed my class, retreived my new textbook from the library, and went to visit with my PBT coach again. This does not include the time spent doing PD. Now it is lunch time. Only lunch time!
My course appears to be less than rigorous. My professor assigned me an 150 page book and gave me a week to read it. In previous classes at GIAL, I've been given 150 pages of reading to be completed in 2 days, not 7. Perhaps it'll pick up. This course is an independent study on Papuan Languages. My first book was an overview of Papuan Languages. My second is a classification of Madang languages (which is the province in which I will work). And books about the Cargo Cults which were formed in Madang will come soon.
It's good to be back. It's always fun to walk into a building that you're very familiar with after a long time. And studying linguistics again will be enjoyable as well. Counseling wasn't bad but it wasn't quite as fun as linguistics!