Wes's return!

I realize it's been a ridiculously long time since I've updated. Things have been kind of crazy. Partly because of school, but mostly in a good way, in that Wes is back. For real. How amazing is that?

I picked him up from the airport on the Saturday of Thanksgiving break...it was strange because things kind of came full circle. It was raining, just like it was when I dropped him off at the airport over two years ago. And we went to Wadsworth the next night, to meet a bunch of friends at Kaisers, the same pizza place we met his friends at the weekend before he left. It was a strange, awesome sort of picking up where we left off...everything exactly the same but so different at the same time. Our reunion was of course amazing...it felt so unreal. It feels unreal now that he was still in Tanzania three weeks ago.

It's so amazing to have him back; there's going to be some getting used to things though. Mainly saying goodbye for any length of time. Wes went to Chicago yesterday to see Steve's band play, and it was so strange saying goodbye for just a night, so hard to convince myself that it really WAS just for a night and not 6 or 10 months. Casual conversations on the phone are weird too. Awesome, but weird - it's been over two years since I've had the ability to call him just randomly for a few minutes to ask a few questions, or call casually for a few other minutes, rather than worrying about making every second of every phone call count. It's going to take awhile before I'm convinced that he's really here, for real, he's not just here for a couple of weeks, and that I DON'T have to say goodbye to him for any more half-years.

Anyway, other than that... we had a lot of visitors this past weekend; Wade and Rohit were here from Wednesday to Sunday, and Kevin and Dania were in town over the weekend. It was a lot of fun to see everyone, although left me kind of exhausted at the end of it - it's hard to juggle visitors and schoolwork. Still, I had a blast, we had some great dinners made for us by Rohit, and had a couple of really fun nights out over the weekend, including karaoke! :)

Just finishing up the semester at this point...I have a LOT to do, as I have all semester, but I think I'll be able to pull it together for the end. Next semester I'm student teaching!

Eeeeeeeek!

That title is a squeal of excitement. I just got off the phone - my last transcontinental phone call that I'll have to make to Wes. The next time I talk to him, I'm going to be talking to him face to face. Two days! He leaves tomorrow morning from Tanzania. It seems so strange and unreal, like we've been counting down forever (and really, we have - two years is an extremely long time to live on different continents), it's hard to wrap my brain around. Also making it very difficult to sleep at night...I'm too excited! It's really going to happen...he's really coming home.

*GRIN*

Happy Birthday, Wes!

The last of three of your birthdays I can't spend with you. :)

12 days!

Random rides, the Virgin Mary, and Hyenas

I went to Purdue this weekend to visit Natalie. It worked amazingly. I was planning on going on Saturday. On Friday night, had dinner with Lauren Haynes, who was driving through town from Saint Louis. Towards the end of the dinner, she mentioned that the reason she was driving through town was that she was going to Purdue. Eh? Thirty minutes or so later I was on the way with her. :P

It was a great weekend, really good to see Natalie... A bunch more random weekend events followed. Including, finding a woman's wallet (license, credit cards, -everything-). I called her at a number on a business card that was in the wallet, then left the wallet with someone who actually -lived- there, and he called her with his number...hopefully she got it back okay and didn't panic too much before she got the message.

Also went to an orchestra Halloween concert. All the kids were dressed up in costumes, and paraded across the stage, and one of them...about four years old...was...I'm not joking...the Virgin Mary. She was wearing a light blue cloak and carrying a baby doll. Weirdest Halloween costume ever.

The way home we saw a bunch of dead hyenas on the side of the road...not really. Ask Lauren. :P

I taught my first lesson in my high school class last week. It went really well except for one small slip up. We were teaching about propoganda techniques, and we had them find magazine ads that fit particular techniques. Before we did, though, we showed them examples. I found this ad for Curve perfume that was a perfect example of transfer, which is connecting one idea with another when they're not actually related. It was for Curve perfume, but the entire ad was about being on vacation. I did forget, though, to thoroughly read it before reading it aloud. I was reading the paragraph at the bottom of the page, got through stuff along the lines of "sunsets so beautiful they make you cry like a little girl," and then got to a sentence that said, "Getting frisky on the beach until there's sand in unholy places." I got as far as "Getting frisky on the beach until...um...nevermind...so what's this an example of?" Whoops. Luckily the class was mature about it and my teacher was good-natured, although she did say that she wasn't sure if it was better or worse that I stopped myself at "until" instead of finishing the sentence.

Right Brain v Left Brain

Link courtesy of Lauren:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22556281-661,00.html

This is weeiiirrd... I could only see it turning clockwise for the longest time, until I concentrated really hard, and I figured out how to see her turning the other way, but I have a really hard time switching between the two. My mom, on the other hand, started freaking out that she "kept switching" every two seconds or so. I'm not sure how much truth there is to it, but it can definitely keep you amused for a little while...