Not A Question I Expected

Last Sunday, my boyfriend and I paid a visit to a family who's very special to me (I was their nanny for the past two summers, and I love those kids dearly!). I was so excited to see them -hadn't since August- and to introduce them to Dave.

We arrived, and of course dad had to go rustle up the kids from their hiding spots. "Megan's here, guys!"

Mr. Five Year Old came into the entry, took a long, hard look at Dave and me, and paused. Then he looked up at his parents and asked, "Which one is Megan?"

While I can understand him not quite recognizing me (I was wearing a hat, after all), I can't say I expect Dave and myself to face that question again...

We've been told we're sappy, crazy, and over-the-top cute, but never before that we are indistinguishable.

Small Discoveries

In a summer awash with some rather big stuff, there have been some less-than-life-size thoughts that have made their way into my awareness. Some important, some not. For instance, I have discovered that...

...warm Gatorade is super comforting.

...ground-up pizza tastes unbelievably good after eating broth and jello. (Hooray for a mother who doesn't think in terms of limits.)

...I like goat cheese. (Thanks, Amy!)

...I still do not like tofu. (Also thanks to Amy.)

...I actually don't like blue cheese. I thought I did. Disappointed by that realization.

...I have become a big fan of chicken nuggets. (Thanks to Dave O.)

...moped accidents can bring about remarkable changes in one's life.

...adjusting to said changes is quite the learning experience. I hope it will make me more sensitive to others facing similar learning curves in the future.

...I have a lot of protective people in my life. Getting into a moped accident on a date will totally bring those people out of the woodwork.

...insignificant changes to my environment, like turning the lights down or turning my back to the light, can make my headaches go away.

...I know about those insignificant changes because of the really tuned-in people God has brought into my life in the past few weeks. (Really grateful for the TBI Clinic at HCMC!)

...the people in my life (my family, friends, co-workers, school families, and others, too!) are far more amazing than I even thought they were. (If I were to name them all here, this blog post would never end...)

...being a part of the Body of Christ is an incredible privilege. 

...God never fails to surprise me. Or to come through.

...sometimes, less is more, like keeping a blog post short enough that it can be finished before a headache surfaces. :) The end!

If You Let Your Roommate Use Your Waffle Maker

Alternate titles for this post:

What Elementary School Teachers Do With Their Free Time

or

Proof That Tiffany Is an Amazingly Good Sport

or

How I Talk Myself -and My Roommate- Out of Pretty Much Everything

And now, without further ado, I present "If You Let Your Roommate Use Your Waffle Maker: An Open Letter to Tiff"

Dear Tiffany,

If Megan has a breakfast party, and then she leaves your waffle maker out

for a rather long time,

then she will, of course, have to make more waffles.

But look on the bright side: if she makes more waffles, then you'll have leftovers! (You are clearly psyched about this.)

But if you have leftovers, she'll need to stick them in the freezer. This could be a problem...

...because, before she can put them in the freezer, you'll have to clean it out.

And if you clean out the freezer, then she'll have to take the trash out.

If she takes the trash out, you might as well round up the recycling, too. It's only a small mountain this time.

But once the recycling's gone and the pantry is remotely accessible again, Megan will want to rearrange the pantry shelves.

Until she looks at the pantry and is entirely demoralized. At which point the entire project will be shelved (ha!) and you'll both need at least two episodes of Psych, half a pan of brownies, and a bag of microwave popcorn to recover.
Consider yourself warned.

With love,
your very poky roomie
who did finally put away the waffle maker away 83 days after that delightful breakfast party

Turns out my indecision has influence my reputation; I've become known as a waffler!
(Inspiring artwork courtesy of Dave Omdal)

These Are A Few

I am a person with an inordinate amount of favorite things and small delights. (When I was in high school, I kept an actual list of "Things That Delight Me." Lists, empty notebooks, and lemon-scented chapstick were the top three...)

While it's difficult to top those, these are a few things that have tickled me lately:

The seventh grader who pulled me aside: "Ms. Djerf, can I ask you something? I just have to know. The way that Mr. E. smells -- is that a cologne he wears, or is it just a Canadian smell?"
(One of these days I'm going to have to ask him.)

A friend drawing out the suspense of a funny story all day by virtue of cryptic emails and mysterious voicemails.

My new rain boots. So happy to have a genuinely rainy day for them today.

My nearly two-year-old niece (a diva in the making) entering my parents house by announcing, "HI, FAMILY!"

My middle school drama students who, unable to remember the word "pilot" during our practice last week, kept calling her a "planist." After several tries, we adjusted the skit so that the misnomer was part of the script, and we found a way to sneak a paper with the correct word written on it onto the stage. And it was hilarious.

Getting to sleep until eight every day last week. Spring break is a wonderful idea.

Hours in Caribou Coffee with a precious friend, telling stories, asking questions, analyzing the world at large and then bringing our myriad non-conclusions to the feet of Jesus together.

My jacket still smelling like coffee the next morning.

An eighth grader who usually doesn't participate in Bible class knowing the answer not once, but twice today! And wanting to share it!

Sitting with my six month old nephew on my lap and discovering the magical combination of talking and tickling and surprising necessary to rouse a hearty belly-laugh out of him. Pure joy.

The sweetest? To be at a painful, broken place Sunday night and find twofold refuge in my loving Father: in prayer with a compassionate roommate, and in Scripture that I'd recorded in my journal all week long. So grateful for the way He reaches me when I barely have the strength to reach for Him.

Sign Me Up For That Bargain

My 14-year-old sister and I saw the following license plate this afternoon:

IM2DLS

Curiosity (and creative interpretations) abounded. My favorite was hers: "I'm two deals."

I thought about it for a minute. "That doesn't make sense."

"Yes it does," she countered. "Like, I make the money AND I'll rub your feet at night!"

Why I Feel Three-Fold Guilt Over the Passing of Another Brief Minnesota Summer

1. Yet again, I didn't make good on my resolve to be a better Twins fan.

2. My inner cheapskate won out over my inner State-Fair-goer.

3. During the only viable months for acquiring a natural tan, I failed to be outside long enough to get one.

I'm a terrible Minnesotan!

Fiction in Progress (or, What to do with a kidnapped Barbie)

"It's MY turn to be the set designer."  These aren't words you typically hear from a seven-year-old boy. I don't know where he learned the term, but he was employing it correctly; using my digital camera, we were shooting pictures for a story we've been working on.  And his nine-year-old brother HAD been hogging the set designer job.

I've recently spent several days with my four youngest cousins, and our chief occupation has been making a movie using pictures from my digital camera. The five of us collaborated on a story involving malicious Lego men who kidnap a Barbie princess and tie her up in some bushes above their hideout.  As each child has manipulated the plot, Barbie has escaped, fought off a gigantic spider, and made friends with a 3-foot-tall teddy bear. So far, so good. But now, we've run into a problem.

I've been told that the essence of writing good fiction is to create your character, stick him in a tree, throw rocks at him, and get him down.  We were following the formula perfectly until we came to the getting her down part. Turns out my cousins invent malicious plot twists so well that nobody wants to release our poor Barbie from the tree.

Today, the conversation with Mr Seven-Year-Old went like this:

Me: We're running out of time. We need an ending. How do we help her get away?

P7: All right, I've got an idea. We can have the lego guys re-capture her and hang her by a string over a fire!

Me: That's not an ending. That's giving her more problems.  And we don't have time to make a fire.

P7: OK, so then we could have the motorcycle guy come up to rescue her, only then he can turn out to be bad guy, so he cuts the string, and she starts to drop into the fire, only then her horse saves her.

Me: No, we're not doing anything with a fire. We need to do something different.

P7: OK.  (long pause) I still like my idea. Does anyone else like my idea?

Me: I like your idea, but we're not doing it. We're not doing anything with a fire.

P7: Hmmm... I still like my idea. Megan, let's just do my idea.

Me(mostly to myself): We don't need a fire, we need an exit strategy! 

His brothers and sisters agreed that a fire was too difficult. However, they suggested

- turning the decapitated spider into a snake which re-captures her, or

- having the bear betray her and turn her over to the Lego villians.

As far as I can tell, our heroine is still in a tree, and we're still throwing rocks at her. This movie may turn out to be darker than I expected.

Tuk-tuks, Boda-bodas, and Piki-pikis (or, On The Road Again)

Two weeks from Thursday, I will be back in the United States. After five weeks in Africa, I think one of the strangest things about coming home will be having my own car all to myself again. I've missed it occasionally (mostly when I've craved solitude), but mostly, I've enjoyed trying new forms of transportation here. Here's my basic African transportation primer (for further, more official information, see Wikipedia -- I tried to include links to pictures, but couldn't do it):

The Matatu
My Kenyan friends and I took a few matatus (small buses) when I was in Nairobi. According to Kenyan regulations, all matatus should be painted white and comply with the set passenger quotas. Some do; however, there's also a large fleet of matatus run by young men who use theirs as a form of self-expression. I rode in one which was painted bright purple on the outside, plastered with the likes of Foxy Brown and Jay-Z on the inside, pounding with rap music (the sound system must have been monstrous), swerving in and out of traffic as it hawked more customers, and filled with the lovely fragrance of diesel exhaust (cough). Good times.

The Tuk-tuk
A tuk-tuk is what you would get if you crossed a scooter and an old VW Bug. Last Thursday, after shopping in the open-air market in Machakos, my roommates and I paid 20 shillings each to squeeze into a tuk-tuk on our way back to the college. We had six people in ours, which seemed to be a strain on both the engine and the frame, but it made the driver quite happy to have acquired so many passengers.

The Boda-boda
Yesterday Sarah and I persuaded Viola to join us for another trip into Machakos, this time on the backs of boda-bodas (bicycle taxis). For twenty shillings each, we perched sidesaddle on padded platforms behind our lean, tooth-challenged "drivers." Turned out to be easier than it looked, even in a skirt (we decided that if everyone else can do it in a skirt, so could we). I even got out my camera and took a short, very bumpy video.

Some of the missionaries love the boda-bodas because you can talk with the drivers as you ride; others dislike them for the same reason. Last week, a boda-boda guy proposed to one of our British girls after bringing her back from town, telling her, "I'd really like an English wife." When she explained that in her country, people don't get married unless they are in love with each other, he countered, "But I do love you!" Mine was silent; he must already have a wife.

The Piki-Piki
After shopping and enjoying samosas in Machakos, the girls persuaded me to add another form of transportation to my list of new experiences: the piki-piki, or motorbike. We dug deep and paid fifty shillings each to again sit sidesaddle, only this time behind a helmeted driver who wore boots instead of flip-flops and revved his engine instead of ringing a bell. I climbed up first, grabbed the small handle at the back, and away we went...through an alley, not to be followed by either of my friends! Shortly, however, we came out on a road I recognized, and fell into line with the other two piki-pikis. My driver had simply taken a shortcut. Whew.

Superlatives

Strangest thing I've done this week:
Pretended to be a chicken for a video some guys are making for our Friday Fun Night (read: talent show). They refused to reveal the plot beyond my minute part, so I'm looking forward to seeing the finished product (which, I think, will be a 24 knock-off). I'm hoping that it's kind to chickens.

Coldest I've been this week:
We took the students to a private school in Machakos today to visit classrooms and go swimming in their huge pool. The sun was out (and being near the equator, it's quite warm), but that water was brutal. After all, it's winter here! It took me nearly an hour to work up the courage to get in; then I enjoyed a refreshing (brief) five-minute swim.

Most interesting question I've heard in a sixth grade classroom:
"Who can tell me what female circumcision is?"
I was sitting with two of our ABO students in a room full of sixth graders. Their teacher was attempting to display their knowledge of Kenyan history. A discussion of reasons tribes resisted colonization led to the topic of female circumcision. As soon as the teacher asked this question, she met my eye, and I nearly burst out laughing. When none of the students was willing to describe this practice (ugh!), the teacher must have decided she was in over her depth. Instead of explaining, she simply said, "It's really bad. Even I am against it. Female circumcision is bad, right?"
"Yes." The students answered in perfect chorus.
"But male circumcision, is that bad?" Boy, she was determined.
"No." Again, they answered in unison.
"That's right. Male circumcision is good, but female circumcision is bad." And with this statement, she abruptly headed for safer ground.

Most insultingly honest thing a child has ever said to me (ever!):
If you really want to know, ask me. I decided against posting it where anyone in the whole world could use it against me.

Cutest animal I've seen inside:
The gecko above my door last night. I love the way they can run sideways along the wall.

Scariest animal I haven't seen inside:
The three mosquitoes which managed to bite me. Hoping that I don't regret not taking malaria medication...

And now, some educational African superlatives (just to prove that I've been paying attention during our morning lessons):
Largest African country: Sudan
Most populated African country: Nigeria
African animal which kills the most humans each year: hippopotamus
Least populated African country: Namibia (second in the world to Mongolia)
Fastest animal on two legs (in the world): ostrich
Fastest animal on four legs: cheetah
Tallest animal: giraffe
Animal with the largest mouth (in the world): hippo