Married

I have a wife.

Slide Rules

We're two days away from the wedding.

There is a lot to do and not much left. We're busy and I hope we get all of the little details all sorted out in the next two days. We'll be fine, either way, I know. I'm just a little nervous about it all, I think understandably.

In other news, we probably have an apartment up in Omaha, and hopefully we will be able to get all that figured out.

I may not post again until after the wedding, sorry about that loyal readers which have probably largely fallen away due to my sporadic postings.

Shadows

Another day, another trip, another plan that seems that it is just not sure where it wants to go. I guess since it's not in our hands, we just have to trust it will be OK.

We went up to Omaha, and while we didn't find a place, exactly, we found some good options and I think we know what we will do if we can't get a house, which doesn't appear to be likely given our price desires.

My mom and D's mom went up with us, so we had a bonding experience on the trip.

Wedding planning is just chugging right along with only occasional hiccups. Yay! One week before that the day!

I'm struggling more with being in America than I thought I would. I really need to see all the good things about living here, and I don't see many of them yet.

Upcoming Alteration

More and more to do. I think we're getting a lot of progress made. Yay!

We've got projects and crafts and videos and lots of stuff to do still.

Yay for selective criteria!

The new zoo

Well,

We are back in the U.S. After getting stuck a day extra in Dubai (not all that bad in the grand scheme of things) and me not bribing the passport guy to get out of the country, we made it back. We had a good 4th and are now in Salina with my family, hanging out and packing. We'll be back with D's family tomorrow.

And I have a phone, so mail me if you want the number.

What this has been for

We leave tomorrow.

We don't come back at any scheduled time.

We're packing or are mostly packed.

We've already sent bunches of stuff home.

We have already won.

We're ready to go.

We're coloring outside the lines.

Something in the wind

Well, its midnight and I'm sadly overly wired, so you're getting a blog update!

First, this may be TMI, but in this country, each house has a water pump to fill up the water tank on the roof, which then supplies sinks, showers, toilets, etc, with water. My water pump is not working (it might be burned out), and all of our maintenance staff is on vacation. You can see where this might be going. So, I haven't showered in a couple days and to flush, I have to fill up a bucket at the shower in the gate house outside (which has a working water pump), and bring it inside. However, it's midnight and I'm ready to go to bed and I need to make a long visit to the toilet and then make the visit go away. I don't want to go outside and fill the bucket up. What to do? Fortunately, my house has three bathrooms and I am the only one in the house for the next couple days. Therefore, the solution is obvious. I have been avoiding using the bathroom across the hall so that it can be utilized in just such an emergency. And protecting that toilet tank was a wise, wise move.

We're in Summer School season now, and that means that I am being the P.E. teacher again. Or maybe I will just assume the title of P.E. Director, that sounds more awesome, right? Last week, we played with frisbees all week, culminating in Ultimate Frisbee for the older kids. That was pretty fun. This week is soccer, which has also been OK. Next week will be basketball, and I have high hopes for that.

Summer here is nice because the campus empties out and we get to spend more time with people, which this year happily includes some of our favorite people on campus, the school's science teacher and his wife and four kids. They're great and we are really going to miss them next year.

I mention them for a reason. I would like to ask you to take a minute to Remember them, and especially their younger son. Here's an e-mail I sent out to our school staff earlier this week about them.

"On Sunday, J fell and split his lip on the cement. He went to [a local expat run hospital] to get stitches to sew his lip back together, and they put him under general anesthesia for the surgery. While he was on the anesthesia, his heart stopped, and they had to do CPR on him to revive him. He made it out fine, and now [Friday], he is physically fine (albeit with 5 stitches in his lip,) but he has developed what the doctor says is something like PTSD. He’s very scared, says he needs air to breath, is shaking his head constantly, and doesn’t want his parents to leave him. If you could please Ask for comfort for him, and Ask for strength for the rest of the family."

J is a pretty tough little kid, and he usually doesn't show a lot of emotion, so this situation has been really taxing on their whole family. Yesterday (Tuesday) he got the stitches out of his lip, and he's doing a lot better. But he still is really sensitive and gets really scared at night. If you, my faithful readers who I have let down this year by not posting as much, could Remember him, that would be really great.

I'm heading to bed now. D and I get married in 32 days! We're super excited.

Obsteporous

This.

The year at school, it is concluded.

This.

The country we live in is experiencing some silent upheaval. It may be the calm before the storm.

This.

Disruption for many of our friends here.

This.

We are not alone.

This.

Slalom

In a week, another school year will be done and many people I have spent the last year with will be gone.

In a month, I will have moved away from the place I have called home for nearly 3 years, and will be where home was and waiting for home to be.

In two months, I will be married and on my honeymoon.

It's the end of the school year, the end of my time, and it seems to be a new era unfolding here. There are many things occurring in this country that are more than meets the eye, and who knows where some of them will lead?

It's been a busy and not busy last few days. We had the dance recital Saturday, it was great, D did a good job with her dance and the rest of the recital was great! We had a garage sale last Thursday, and sold a bunch of stuff we won't be needing anymore and don't need to take back.

We're both pretty worn down and worn out, so please ask that we have patience with the world around us our last month here!

Reveries of Flight

We are the army of the far from perfect.

And we come here, not to berate those who are not perfect, but show them the way to become perfect.

Yet there are many here who wish for this to stay out of reach.

Following the footsteps of heroes never led to the safe and grey road.

There are things happening here. There are powers moving here, powers that having been moving in opposition for hundreds, nay, thousands of years. While we doubt not the light, it grows darker here. Not just for us, but for our friends here.

But the Prince of the Dawn will not be moved, and will bring the light again.

Please Remember our friends here as they stand fast against the son of the morning.

To understand

Good morning, readers.

Yesterday was our school's graduation. There were 11 seniors, some really good kids, who are now leaving us and going into the wide world. The graduation, after emergencarily (why is that not a word?) getting moved due to the big conference which was supposed to start this week, went pretty well. I did sound, and because of the move, we didn't have as many frills as in the past, which meant I could just take our little sound system and set up in about 20 minutes instead of it taking me 3 hours. That was nice. The ceremony was pretty good, but it did remind me of what country I live in, when the speaker, the head of education for this country, was describing some of his vision for education in the country (that by 2020 every child would have access to basic education, in a building, with qualified teachers), and he said that, "I hope to see these things come to pass, if I am not assassinated before then." This has seriously to be one of the only countries in the world where almost the entire room laughs at a speaker's joke about his own possible assassination.

So now, there are about two more weeks of school left, and just over a month before we leave. It really feels like the year is winding down. We know people are leaving soon, and I think the reality that I'm not coming back next year hasn't fully sunk in yet. Three years is not and is a lot of time to invest in a place. The relationships we have built here are going to, and not going to, end in many ways. The time of transition is coming on, in a way it never exactly has in my life. When I went off to college, it was with the thought that I would still stay connected to friends. And I did. When I left there, it was more of a sudden switch away, and I didn't have the time to really transition. When I came here, tit was originally just a short term deal, and it gradually became three years. Now, we're leaving, and we're heading into another great unknown. I think the unsettling that I feel about that is more than I realized. And I know I can't hold on to here, but I don't have anything tangible I can grab on to and hold for the next stage, except for D. And I'm not much of one for goodbyes, so closing this chapter out is hard and means I turn into her more than I perhaps should at times. I don't want to do things with people, because it reminds me that we'll soon be gone.

I've been thinking more recently on how to be who I am called to be wherever I go. I want to be His child where I am, and I know ways to do that here. I know I need to develop more in that area, especially when we move, but I don't know how. I also feel like I am growing in my understanding of how the larger world works, and that also plays a roll in helping me to understand how to serve as I am called. All of this to say, I don't know how life looks like next, and that makes me unsettled as well.

Why do I bring all this up?

Is it because I want to be whiny and for you to feel pity for me?

Not really.

It's because this is what life is about.

Not knowing, not understanding, sometimes feelingly like nothing ever happens, sometimes feeling like you are lurching along from crisis to crisis, and then other times feeling as though you have everything under control. It's about seeing the path that you are supposed to Walk, and walking it. It's about knowing that by yourself, you are going to live, but that you need to just die so you can truly live. It's about dependency, trust, surrender, and action. It's about waking up in the morning, knowing that the day is sufficient for its own troubles.

It's about keeping your feet on the water.

Asthma

The end of the school year, and my time here, is coming on. I feel like I'm gasping for breath against the tide of tasks, events, and stressors.

Our dads left yesterday, and are currently winging their way home. I think they had a good time. Dad took in the neighborhood of 800 pictures in the 10 days he was here, thank goodness for digital cameras, eh? They got to experience a nearly full spectrum of life in Kabul, including the cancellation of a number of activities and not being able to take our trip to a village up north. Some disappointments, but also a routine-ish part of our life here. "The Dads," as they were known on our campus, got to help D with a number of conversation activities in her classes, and they helped me do an inventory of my equipment, which was very valuable because it would have taken me 4 or 6 hours to do what they did in about 3.

The end of the year is going to be breakneck, with graduation, a software conversion, and people leaving. But it should be a good time of transition out of here as we get ready to go home. Oh yeah, and get married.

I've been working on editing together a video from the beautiful footage a friend shot for us, and the great pictures our co-workers took at the party. Hopefully when I get home you all can see it!

Time for a party!

Our engagement party was last night! We had a great time, and we think a decent amount of our guests did too!

The day started with D and my Thursday morning tradition of breakfast together. Then we started the set up. There were a lot of small details that I won't bore you with, but the basic idea is that we had to set up the tables and chairs under the tents. Yes, our party was out of doors, under two tents, with a divider down the middle so we had a men's side and a women's side. On the women's side, there was also a small stage where we had a head table that had cake! We ended up going back and forth between both sides, we went from the men's side to the women's side semi frequently (mainly just us, almost no other women came to the men's side, and very few men came to the women's side.) to greet the guests and thank them for coming. After the traditional supper, we had a cake cutting and then some traditional dancing. It was quite the sight to see my dad dancing with the locals in their traditional dance!

We had a pretty good time. Once I get my camera with pictures back from the guy who took photos for me, I'll try to put a couple up.

Surrounding

My dad and Diane's dad are here! They are spending about 10 days with us, and it's going to be pretty good. They just got here and are not overly jetlagged so far. We're pretty excited.

Save your breath

I was going to post pictures, but Blogger is not cooperating.

We're back from our whirlwind 4 days in Jordan (Dead Sea, Petra [AWESOME!!!]) and 4 days in Istanbul (Hagia Sofia, Blue Mosque, Topkapi Palace, Grand Bazaar). It was a busy but fun trip. Jordan was pretty good, if a little tiring because of necessary late nights, long drives, and long hike through Petra. My demi-evil twin sister flew over from her home to Jordan and was with us there, and that was pretty cool. Istanbul was good after we finally got into our rented flat (after I yelled at the man on the phone). Istanbul was less hectic, and we had some cool stuff happen to us.

While in Jordan, we went to Mount Nebo, where Moses supposedly looked out over the promised land, and then to Bethany in Jordan. Bethany was pretty interesting because you can go down to the Jordan river, and there is an Israeli tourist spot just opposite. So there are guards on both sides, to monitor the possible Jordan crossing, since at that point, the Jordan isn't much bigger than the creek in my parent's backyard. After that, we went to the Dead Sea. I could float in the Dead Sea's hypersalinated water, which was an interesting experience. After some floating, and comparing the Dead Sea to the freshwater pool at the beach, D and my sister went and bought Dead Sea mud to cover themselves with. That was kind of entertaining. Then we drove to Petra (actually, Wadi Musa, the town by Petra), and the view through the Jordan Mountains was awesome. In Petra, we hiked down the Siq to the Treasury (the big building from Indian Jones and the Last Crusade), which is actually a Nabatean tomb. It's pretty impressive, I will post pictures if I can. I highly enjoyed Petra. After that, it was a 6 A.M. flight out the next day.

We flew to Istanbul, and my nice sister helped us understand the Metro and find our flat. Then we went out to eat at Chilis (D and I go to Chilis in every country [Jordan Chilis - could be the U.S. Seriously.] we visit, so it was a combo Birthday dinner and Chilis visit), after which she flew back to her home. The next day, we went and bought coats (because Istanbul is cold) on the pedestrian shopping boulevard Istiklal Caddeshi in Istanbul, and then went to Sultanahmet Square to get lunch, where we made our Way to a random cafe and had a super-encouraging encounter with an American lady and her friend. We had planned to go to the Hagia Sofia that afternoon, but didn't make it because of our cafe Detour, which was just fine. We went into the Blue Mosque instead. (that's a pretty impressive building, and I thought it was interesting how everyone who was not Muslim had to go to a side entrance to get to the same spot.) The next day, we made it to a crowded Topkapi Palace (where D and I almost succumbed to tourist rage because, well, to be culturalist, Orientals don't have a personal space bubble) and saw a bunch of cool artifacts from the Ottoman period. Then we went to the Hagia Sofia and saw it. The building is impressive. It was the main cathedral of the Byzantine Empire and the Eastern Orthodox Church, then in 1453 the Ottomans turned it into a mosque and removed all the old iconography and plastered over the mosaic walls. There is reconstruction being done, so there were lots of scaffolds, and it is a strange hybrid building. But it's just huge and to think it was built in the 300s is amazing. We also went to the Grand Bazaar and Spice Bazaars in Istanbul, rode around the Metro system and went to a mall. We also took a joyride on the ferry to Asia. It was a pretty good trip, even though the ending was tiring, because we had to travel overnight and get back here at 8:00 A.M.... so we flew through the night.

But it was a pretty great trip, and one that we probably wouldn't be able to take later in life.

Speaking of life...

I'm pretty excited to announce that I have a job for when we get back in the U.S.! I'm going to be working for a network support company in Omaha, a small company with some sharp people, which is exactly what I wanted. I am really excited that such a job has been Provided to me!

And this is all the time I have for writing now, because I have to do some planning work for our engagement party and our dad's visit next week. That's also really exciting, even though it makes our lives pretty busy.

Yet another appropriation of the trees

We're heading out tomorrow! Not to the U.S., but on our last trip around here. D had days off and I had extra because of the great Swine Flu incident, so we decided to go to Jordan and Turkey. We're going to go see the Dead Sea and Petra, and then to Istanbul for a couple days. My demi-evil twin is meeting us in Jordan, so she'll be on vacation with us, too, and probably, with her speedier internet, do a better job of posting pictures for some to enjoy.

I am starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think I can make some of these projects work, and I am thinking I will not leave here a complete failure. Plus, we got all of our flights for going home booked, I got all of the honeymoon flights booked, and all the hotels. So when we get back, we'll finish planning our party and figuring out what our Dads are going to do while they are here, and then it's the home stretch!

Yay for being almost done!

Russ

If you qualify for a FREE LANTERN...

Sigh. I probably shouldn't be blogging this late, but I want to so hey!

We just got the last bits of our next vacation all booked. It's been a stress-causing ordeal, but I think we have it almost all figured out, except for what we will be doing on which days in Istanbul. Hopefully, I will figure that out tomorrow. And I have to plan my group meeting for tomorrow. It may be real discussion heavy. :)

I've gotten myself re-assigned/volunteered to carline duty, which is good and bad. But it's helping out, which is what I do, so that's ok.

I made lemon chicken for D tonight. It turned out OK.

We have our engagement party invitations and our wedding programs all printed and they look good! D gave the party invites to some of her students, and they were very excited because they got 'real' local invites to a 'real' local party. Planning it is a little stressful, but we're excited.

In our language lesson the other day, we were doing vocabulary words, and one was for a local nAn shop. It turns out that the name of the bakery where you buy nAn is a nAn bUy. They just took the English word for buy and made it the name of the shop. There's funny things like that all over the language.

My appendectomy housemate is doing pretty good. No contact sports yet, but he's up and moving.

I played ball with other staff on Thursday. It was great. I love playing ball, even on our teeny tiny little court.

I picked out a tuxedo for the wedding! And I got flights booked for the honeymoon, super cheap too! A 3 city multi-city ticket from the midwest to the southern coast to NYC and back to the midwest for a touch over 600usd each. It was almost half the cost of just buying one ways, or buying two round trip tickets. Airlines are crazy sometimes.

And now, I go to bed.

Sounds and Trumpets

Wow. I'm getting more and more delinquent in blogging. Where to start...?

We are running an after school basketball tournament with the 7-12th grades, and the teachers have a team. We tried not to be too mean today, but we still won 53-10 (twenty minute game, short court so scores are slightly inflated.) It was overly gratifying.

It's strawberry season here, so my gorgeous fiancee is trying her hand at Strawberry Shortcake. It's pretty good. I got some Friday night, and then more today!

India really was fun. The beach was relaxing and I got to read a couple books, which always makes me happy. We also swam some in the ocean (well, technically the Arabian Sea), and I body surfed on the waves, resulting in only minor salt-water inhalation that left me with a now-conquered sinus infection. I think if we are over here again, we will be spending more time in Goa, even with the hassle that getting a visa is!

One of my housemates had to have an emergency appendectomy last week, and I was drafted to go to the hospital with him and the school nurse. They are both blond. So most of the locals thought I was the interpreter, and after their first couple questions (what is his name? What is his work?), I'd exhausted my language and had to say, [almost literally in the local language] "Don't understand. American." The locals got a kick out of that. The surgery went well, and he got out of the hospital after two days. I do have good blackmail material with the things he said under the influence of his pain meds!

We are getting our wedding programs printed here, after D and I went to a local stationery store and discovered that, along with engagement party invitations, we could turn local wedding invitations into wedding programs for us. So 300 programs is going to cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of 130 dollars. Printed. And good quality. It's pretty awesome.

I am really struggling against checking out, especially on day-to-day tasks, or non-strategic longterm stuff. I really need to fight against that.

Our 'Max bonus' has run out. The local cats have realized that we don't have a dog in the yard anymore, a dog whom I constantly reminded to eat cats, and so the cats are invading. I had to chase one out of the house tonight. They are smart, they can get into our house even if the door is shut, but not latched.

Have you ever thought about what the point of what He means when he says, equivalently, 'Yay! for the poor in... cause look what they get?" Been reading a book that talks about that. Challenging. What do I say to and about those people today?

Mars

Goa was great, we really didn't want to leave. We went for walks on the beach, swims in the ocean, all the fun stuff. Our trip back to Delhi hasn't been so great so far, but I think today here will be better, and I am hoping the trip to the 'Stan is terrific.

We also made some important decisions about what we are going to do after we get married, and hopefully we have His direction guiding us in all that.

In the heat

We are in India! We had absolutely terrific travel out of the 'Stan,
and then in Delhi we went to see Alice in Wonderland in a 3D movie
theater where we sat in leather recliners. It was nice. Now we are
hanging out on the beach with D's cousin, and having a good time.
It's nice to not have to keep track of what time it is.

We were reading about the 11th brother, and wondering if his ten
brothers spoke in their family language or a trade language. It was
an interesting discussion.