florida highlights

Well. It's my last night sleeping in my old room on this trip home. I wish I knew exactly how I felt about it.
I brought Morgan with me this time. Back in the planning stages of this trip I asked Mom to schedule me a bunch of yearly medical visits that I never take the time to get done in Kansas City, so that meant I drug Morgan to 5 different doctors, dentists, opthamologists, phlebotomists, endocrinologists....not joking. She was a terrific sport about it, and then we finally got a good day at the beach.

Michelle's wedding was lovely. I got to meet all the college friends she made in the last four years since we've been every-day friends. Our lives are so different now that it baffles me. When she asked me to sing at her wedding a few months ago, I was terrified at the "yes" I heard myself say...but I actually surprised my parents and myself. It went pretty well and I even got compliments afterward from 6 of the 300 guests. Go me.

Oh yeah. I wore my boots.
But only to the rehearsal :)
It still mortified my mother just a little bit.

And speaking of which, I did something else to mortify my mother today. Somehow she still likes me, but I talked her into getting her eyebrows threaded with me. Yes, threaded. Heard of it? It's where a sweet little Indian lady lies to you and tells you it's a pain-free way to sculpt the perfect eyebrow shape by cinching your eyebrow hair between two pieces of cotton thread and yanking them one by one out of your head.
"Common Mom! It'll be a great new experiment....I mean experience!"
So I went first. As soon as sweet little lady started going to town on my forehead, I knew I had made a mistake. I squeezed the fire out of Mom's hand with every individual hair that was heartlessly wripped from my unassuming little follicles and thought to myself: "This week I've had three cavities drilled, blood drawn, and minor eye surgery...and this it definitely worse." I know you want to see it:

My advice: skip it. Take a good ole hot waxing any day over this. Sorry, ethnic beauty treatment; I shun you. And sorry Mom. But we totally bonded. And we got an uber-identical picture out of it:

And some sweet eyebrows that will last "at the most, three weeks". Thank you India, thank you terror.

Then Dad acted a fool to make us laugh.

Then my trip home was over.

That's my Opa

The rocket scientist. He changed the world.

guess what

Friends, here it is: my very first guilt-free blog from home.

Last fall when Tiffany moved out I sent the internet with her, among other things. It's been a rough road.

I've learned since then that if I sit in the living room in one very specific spot, with a strong wind and open window, and laptop tilted to a specific degree...I can get internet from a far-off unsecured connection. Sometimes. Mostly not.

THEN came the day that Emily (roommate #5) hung out with our neighbor and acquired the network key for her secured connection. From that day forward, whenever Em left her lappy lying around, I had internet at home. The only problem is that Emily's sweet little Dell has a malfunction we like to call "Blue Screen of Death", which is a tantrum Dell throws when you try to upload too much at once, or type too fast, or breath too hard. Dell shuts down and gives you the Blue Screen of Death for a while till she wakes up in a better mood. So we had internet sometimes...but it was always coated in guilt that we were thieving it from our neighbors without their knowledge.

Then we decided to approach our friendly neighbors and offer to pay half of their internet bill if they would share the key with all of us. The delightful ladies said they wouldn't dream of making us pay for internet that would only work in our kitchen. So now all our computers have the key! Whoopee! And I don't have to feel guilty anymore! Whoopore!

So now I can blog at will.

Tomorrow, I will blog about how I can't donate blood.

from Asresa

To my dear sponsor,
above all I provide you my respectful greetings in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. How are you? How about family and neighbor? I am fine thanks to God. I have received your letter. God bless you. I understand that you are praying for me. I am happy that God gave you to me and you are influential for my life in school and for my future. I am attending my lessons carefully. I am attempting to be a good person, and strong woman in my target achievement, especially school achievement. Thank you for thinking of me from such a far distance. I hope we will meet each other physically. God may do this. Stay with peace.
Yours from Ethiopia,
Asresa.
Bye-bye.

Little honey, you have my heart.

for a visit

I love airports, probably because I have such wonderful memories of them as a child. In my mind, airports are where you go to see people you love very much who have traveled a long way to see you because they love you very much.
There is something incredibly wonderful about standing outside a terminal and knowing that someone you love, someone you haven't seen in a very long time, is about to walk out of that airplane and straight into your arms.

There is also something incredibly wonderful about taking one of your favorite people to one of your favorite places to rest and read and drink coffee and catch up.

I'm having a blast with him.

families

Fun fact about me: when I get really excited about something, I can't sleep. Ever. Dad's plane will touch down in Kansas City in about 14 hours and I have so much happy anticipation over it, I only got 2 hours of shut-eye.

It's ok.

So it's 3:06 am. I've been trying to go back to sleep for 2 hours, and I've given up.

Luckily, though, I have some touching entertainment to bring you. Think of it as a midnight snack. Three am brings facebook lurking to new dimensions. I just found this from April, 2007:

Michelle, bless you for having a senior recital and inviting me. This was the first picture tagged of me by anyone in Kansas City after I moved here. I can still remember sitting at my desk in that 3rd floor apartment on 107th, by the window that collected ice on the INSIDE of the pane, and blinking disbelievingly at my computer screen.

"Someone...someone tagged a picture of me...in Kansas City? Does this mean I have...FRIENDS?"

Oh, how clearly I remember my schedule during that time.

Class 8 till 9 am. Work 10 till 5 pm. Class 6 till 9 pm. Collapse. I ran off fumes and fell asleep on the couch every night, trying to stay awake to have some chill time with Tiffany but failing each time.

This was a Wednesday, and I skipped Economics II because community was more vital to my life than a case-study of America's GDP in 1981. I arrived late because I got lost and sat in the back of the dark auditorium, quickly spotting the group of people I vaguely knew from church. I had been going faithfully for three months and had made a few casual acquaintances, but no real friends yet. I knew I wouldn't survive much longer in this snowy city without a pack to run with, and I was willing to work for it.

At intermission I fearfully walked over to their happy chattering group and inwardly begged someone to know me and invite me to sit down. Susannah did, and we started talking. Bless her too. She asked me if I knew the other people there.

"Not really..."

"Anna, Jason, Dan, Alissa, Julie, Rachel, Shibu, Sean, Jessica, Molly, Matt, Jon, Kathy, Stu, Amy, Stephanie, Beth..."

Some names registered, some didn't. I asked Suz if Jon and Alissa were brother and sister or husband and wife. They had the same last name but he was older and they looked alike...I couldn't tell. Suz smiled and didn't make a big deal about what a stupid question that was. "They're husband and wife."

What a difference two years makes. These people are my best friends now. This place is home. I am carried by my community. I am known. I know the streets of my town. I run into people I know all the time. As I was cleaning my room today I found the stack of encouragement letters my friends wrote to me before Ethiopia, there were TWELVE letters from friends who know my heart well enough to speak life-giving encouragement into it.

I remember Isaac giving a talk at the Gathering sometime that Spring and quoting Proverbs on how beautifully our God works: "He puts the lonely in families."

Praise Him for putting the lonely in families.