/a/muse(d)

This week has felt long and crazy and I have that horrible tired feeling that goes deeper than muscle and bones and just settles into the deepest place inside you, ready to warp your view of the world and make you fantastically antisocial. The disturbing part of this is that the next two days (the ‘restful’ weekend) will be absolutely FULL of people and rushing around and organising things and trying in vain to get time to sit down in order to write reports, polish programs and collate assessments.
Sometimes it feels like the crazy ball just won’t stop rolling.

Saturday, although busy, proves an exciting challange. I’m helping to put on a dinner for over 100 women from church and beyond, and am mainly responsible for turning the greenish interior of our church building into a sparkling winter christmas wonderland, and actually fitting in enough tables and chairs for that many people to comfortably eat dinner. It’s awesome that we have so many women coming…I’m praying that God uses the night for his glory and that everything runs smoothly.::deep breath::

Here we go….

So I’ve managed to get through five entire weeks of being a teacher.

I seem to be doing fine judging by reports I have had from my supervisor and other people who have wandered into my classroom over the past few weeks, and I maintain some degree of sanity, which has to be a positive thing. I still make organisational blunders such as getting the day when I have to be at an in-service wrong by an entire week and stuffing up the arrangements that had been made for a casual to replace me that day…I felt pretty stoopid about that one. I’ve missed my playground duty once because I didn’t know that they’d changed the roster, and I’m semi-regularly confised about the timing of things such as assemblies, integration, RFF etc, but I’m managing to hold it together, and I just pray that my brain would become programmed enough in time to be able to juggle the bazillion things I am just supposed to know instinctively, without dropping anything. There are lots of those instinctive things which I am supposed to just know…like how to legally keep a class roll, (no, not bread storage…), what the red card that suddenly turned up in my pidgeon hole was for, why I have to contribute hard earned money to something called the ’social club’, and what to tell a child when they ask if they can go somewhere that I’ve never heard of. I still giggle to myself when small, lost looking children approach me in the playground and ask me if i have seen their friend, Herbert, or Janice or something, whom I have never met, seen or heard of in my life, but such is the way a child’s mind works. Teachers know everything. A dangerous, but flattering misconception.

The whole experience makes me tired if nothing else, and people who say teaching is an easy job with short hours and long holidays should be shot on sight. I work longer days than some lawyers I know. They say it gets easier. Bring it on.

Foolishly, I read the contents on the back of a packet of chicken nuggets that I bought (albeit on Ben’s request) today.

Firstly, when does it become illegal to call something what it is technically not. 48% is not a whole lot of chicken in what is promoted to be a nugget of that substance. To be honest, upon consumption of said product, had I not been aware of what it was meant to be, I probably wouldn’t have identified it as chicken. Edible, but not chicken.

Secondly, I would be much obliged if someone would tell me what is involved in Egg Albumen. Maybe it’s just me, but it sounds very much like something slimy used in paper mache sculpture. Or spittle. Or that mucus-like stuff that holds vomit together. You know those times when other people’s imaginations get the better of you? Yeah…I’m going to stop now.

Thirdly, why are the ingredients with strange names (63%) bolded? Is it to confuse the consumer and distract their attention from the synthetic time bombs that are merrily warming to a suitably mushy level in their ovens?

I’m usually a huge believer in Home Brand products, but I must say that after this lot, my freezer will be a ‘chicken’ nugget free zone. Ben’s had his nugget fix for this half-century.

Last Saturday my dad, having recently returned from a trip to Bangladesh with his mission, told us that he was hoping to take a small group of people back there in July on a very short term mission trip (two weeks) to do various mission-type things and have various horizon-broadening experiences. July is during uni holidays, and is the hot, wet monsoon season, when political rebels are too sweaty to cause much trouble, and my feet started to itch in the biggest way.

Anyway, after praying about it, and thinking hard, Ben and I have decided to go. It’s a really big thing for us…a hefy financial commitment, and perhaps moreso for Ben than myself, it’ll be a massive step outside the known into the possibly uncomfortable unknown. I think the first step into a third world country is perhaps the hardest, so I don’t expect this trip to be nothing more than a tropical getaway. We’ll be working in various capacities in an orphanage for the first part of the mission, then going into a rural area where there is a smaller orphanage and hostel set up, which has various purposes, beyond the obvious. Hopefully, our church here will also be positively effected by it, looking outwards to the world and what God is doing out there, and putting into effect their policy of ‘Bringing, Building, Sending.’

I am terrifically excited about it. This will be the first time I have flown in 5 years, and having the chance to go back to that part of Asia is something of a dream for me. I don’t think we’ll be able to do Pakistan at the same time, for lots of reasons, but one step at a time eh? I’m also immensly glad that this is something that Ben and I can do together, and that he can experience perhaps a tiny bit of what I feel towards that part of the world, and that we can step out of our comfort zones together and see how we deal with it. The fact that we can serve God and his people in a practical way while we do this is possibly the most excellent part.

Ever since I came back to Australia, I have had a huge desire to be part of cross cultural ministry again, although now as an adult having a less observationary role, and doing something worthwhile myself. This opportunity to go to Bangladesh, albeit briefly, means that I will be able to experience the challenge of being part of a different culture again, and I think that this will feel like a joyful homecomming for me.

More excited ravings to come.