Happy flowers

I'm a little under the weather, so we skipped church today and had a low key morning at home. The only bummer about this is that our routine of ordering/picking things up from our favorite bakery each Sunday gets thrown off. So what did my sweet husband do? He went downtown to pick up our bakery order, do a little extra grocery shopping, and buy me some happy flowers. [Sigh] I love him. :)

Amendments

We've made a few amendments to the game playing log...

1. Since our group of friends often get together on the weekends to play games, and there usually are too many of us to play one game together, often times I find myself playing games without Mike. The whole game/meal deal was so that we would spend more time together, but arguably so, I am still playing games and even in the same room. Amendment #1: 1/4 time instead of no time.

2. I don't like learning new games. So in order to encourage me in this area, Amendment #2: for every time I learn to play a new game, I get 2X time.

3. "Free-bee" Amendment #3: for every 10 meals I earn, I get a free meal. (I think I need a punch card or something...)

Bernd

This is Bernd.

This is my game playing log.

 This is Bernd thinking he can be a part of my game playing log.

 Silly Bernd

Disgusting

This was the nice stack of papers I had to grade this weekend. (Notice the past tense! :) )

Gross, right?

GOA!

The latest craze in game playing is this game called, "Goa." It is a strategy/bidding game that involves buying spices with duckets to found different colonies. It has [too] many rules and takes about 2 hours to play. The first time I played it, I was literally banging my head on the table out of frustration and I think it took about 3.5 hours to play. It's the biggest hit among our group of friends now. The "prize" for winning is a picture of yourself on the FB "Bangkok Gamers" page, holding a spice & holding up the number of fingers of the number of times you've won the game.

 And in the words of Holly: at least Tuan wins the good sportsmanship award...

(sorry it's so grainy, the pic was taken on a phone)

Have I mentioned that we get together practically every Sunday to play? This weekend was a double whammy. Mike was thoroughly spoiled being able to play both Saturday & Sunday. He was like a little boy in candy store. :)

Dear friend

This is Holly. She is one of my accountability partners. She is my partner in crime. She is a Nepal trekker. She is a Korean-American who often thinks she's white. She is a prayer warrior. She is a relationship and deep conversation lover. She is a dear dear friend. She is a sister in Christ. She is a friend forever.  Love you, Hollster.

Angel

I made my first angel food cake with coconut. It was delightful!

28

It's not just the number of how old I am... it's also the number of the best cribbage hand I've ever gotten! Despite my ridiculously awesome 28 point hand the other night (which is only 1 point away from being the best hand of 29... Mike robbed me of (k)nobs), it was a close game. I won... and Mike was ticked because he was left in "the stink hole." :) Muahahaha. I told him that I have to win every now and again because it compels me to keep playing and adding to my game log for my yummy dinners (of which I have accumulated 2, [and am 2 hours and 16 minutes away from #3] thank you very much). :)

Reliance issues

Today things did not go as planned… and I was really disappointed. We were supposed to be putting Christmas shoeboxes together as the 10^th grade class, but several kids didn’t bring in the requested items and the person who was supposed to bring in the boxes, didn’t. So we were only able to put together 2 boxes (with shoeboxes that students brought in). I got frustrated because part of it is that these kids just don’t really know how privileged they are.  How can you make them grateful for what they have? How can you make them want to bring in items to donate when they don’t care? How can you open their eyes to the world? But the other part of my frustration stemmed from having to rely on other people to accomplish a task. As I thought about it though, I realized that it just goes to show that we are human, we are frail, we are sinners, and we let people down… which can be disheartening if that’s where our thoughts stop. How grateful I am to know one who is worthy of our dependence, of our praise, of our loyalty and of our love… and what’s even better is that He will never fail us.

A politics man

I love ESL students because they grapple with language like none other.

I love ESL students because they say the greatest things as they are lacking the vocabulary.

I love ESL students because they make good stories for my blog. :)



Remember THIS POST?   Well, that same student that wanted some understandings had a lot to say about Cuba after school today...

Student: I was wondering if they will ever do a telehistoria in Cuba.

Me: I don’t know!?

Student: Hmmm… I don’t know either. Do you think communism will ever end in Cuba? Cuz if it doesn’t, then we’ll never get a telehistoria from Cuba. I mean, how can they film in Cuba if it’s communism?

Me: If it’s communist? I don’t know that either. I suppose communism in Cuba could come to an end if with different leaders. I guess that means we need to pray for the right leader. I’m not really big into politics though, so I don’t really understand the whole situation.

Student: I am into politics. I want to be a politics man.

Me: You want to be a politician?

Student: Oh yeah, a politician. But I don’t want to be a communism.