Devils such as cancer and divorce and tiredness

And though this world, with devils filled, should threaten to undo us,
we will not fear, for God has willed his truth to triumph through us.

Sleepsick In the Cave of Day

In the innards of the night
there is a hollow cave,
a space where time does not feel tight,
so dark that I am brave.
The threat I risk is sure to come
but I do hope it won't.
I risk the slap of running out,
but I sure hope I don't.
Soon I'll run out of energy
just when I need it most.
Yes, I feel fine and dandy now,
but I don't dare to boast.
For I have battled all night long
and forced my mind to play.
Then rode to morn on rising sun
and slept along the way.

I do not regret my quest.
I did it not to fail.
I do not regret my stops
to talk beside the trail.
I do regret I ever thought
that I could do it all.
Sleepsick in the cave of day,
for health to God I call.

Language and Stories

Ahora– right now– I am thinking en una mix de Español y English. I've just come from la clase de Español, and I am happy to say that this class makes me think in Spanish rather than stop thinking, which was the case a year ago. On the sidewalk, I have to stop myself from saying "hola" and I thanked the person who held the door open for me with "gracias." But now I am in cross-cultural psychology, an appropriate place to write about this code-switching, and the professor is talking about education in America, and he is using English to do this, and I must write in English para ustedes (for yall), so I am thinking more and more in English now.

As for my typing, also Spanglish. It just takes a keystroke to switch from the English layout to the Spanish layout, which is just a slight modification of the QWERTY layout. But my fingers lag a little behind, and when I try to make parenthesis, it doesn´t work right )like this=. Typing in Spanish used to be very slow for me, with the accents and the switched up punctuation, but now the only thing I am slow at is the switching back and forth thing.

When I went to Kentucky for a week each summer during high school, I would switch to their way of speaking within hours. When I came back, it took a little while to switch back. I noticed this especially when people would ask me about my week in Kentucky and I would slip into that beautiful Appalachian drawl subconsciously in order to tell the stories that took place in that place, in that dialect.

When I get to Spain, how long will it take me to switch from hearing the speedy Spanish flying around me as foreign musical syllables to hearing it as facts and opinions? How hard will it be to pick up the phone, punch in three dozen numbers, and say, "Hello, is this Alissa?" instead of "¿Hola, estás Alisa?" Pero no creo que será un problema muy grande.

But here's where a problem may lie: (Remember how I couldn't talk about Kentucky without slipping into Appalachian speak. Remember how it took me weeks and weeks of story-telling to debrief from my summer at Mt. Rainier. Realize that there are no words to perfectly describe any experience to anyone who didn't experience it themselves. And think about this: I usually describe my summer as FABulous or SOOOper or AWEsome, English words pronounced with a Glacier Dorm accent.) How will I ever describe my experience in Spain to English speakers?

Language and Music

Today is a good day.

At supper I just sat and basked in the sound of friends speaking Korean. It is good to just sit and know that ideas are flying past your face, but you have no obligation to understand or process or respond to them. You just get to listen to it like instrumental music. And it is beautiful to know that, in fact, they are not speaking a foreign language. They are speaking their own language, the one they don't even have to think about. It must feel good to go to supper and let their mouths spew ideas freely after a long day of classes in English.

Will I miss English next semester? I am sure that I won't be completely removed from English. Many of the students in the program will just be taking beginning Spanish courses. Today at Honors tea we were talking about facebook, which led to a discussion of things that people give up for lent, which led me to think, "Could I give up English for lent?"

Only if I found Keith Green's Albums in Spanish.

Hey Pumpkin.

My roommates asked what it was.

My resident assistant thought it was an octopus.

My pumpkin knows what's on my mind because it's on his face.

It's Mt. Rainier.

Reading Weekend

Reading weekend is for reading the call numbers of TCCS library books, magazines at the dentist's office, sale notices at the thrift store (c'mon, Mom!), the menu at Culvers, the birthday bread recipe, and wall posts on facebook. It is also a good time to watch movies, go on a hayride, carve pumpkins, cuddle with the sister, sing vociferously, make aloo gobi, and dance to Michael Card.

My first day of teacher aiding was phenomenal. I was greeted by the assistant principal, who showed me to my cooperating teacher's classroom. She was friendly and down to earth. As far as I can tell, she knows the names of all 140 students that she sees throughout the day in her 1st and 3rd year Spanish classes, and she demands respect from them while still being a very likable person. I found out that they put the native Spanish speakers in separate classes called "heritage" Spanish classes, so I wasn't overwhelmed by my lack of fluency. I was able to work one-on-one with a student who had joined her class late. He was trying very hard to catch up, and he had the brains and study skills to do it. He notebooked everything I told him, and asked me questions to make sure he understood. Later I graded tests and observed the way the teacher taught the class. Throughout the day I was introduced to many of my cooperating teacher's colleagues, who were also friendly and professional. And this made me feel friendly and professional, returning their "nice to meet you"s and standing, smiling, tall and confident while working with the students.

Scary!

Okay, so tomorrow at 7:30 (which is when I am usually just getting up) I have to be at my school in the next suburb, reader to be the most stellar teacher aid within my capabilities. Why is this scary? Because it's high schoolers, and it is inevitable that they won't accept me unconditionally like the special needs 5th graders I worked with last semester. Because it's Spanish class, which I am not nearly prepared to teach. Because it's a Hispanic community which means I won't know nearly as much as the students.

I wanted Spanish and high school and a Hispanic student body, but I don't know if I can handle all three at once!

But I don't have to be the teacher. Just the teacher aid. Breathe deeply. Go to bed early.

Dude! I'm excited!

wasting my time

It is late, therefore I am tired, therefore I am crabby, therefore I write this poem, which despite my cynical state of mind, ends on a hopeful note:

______

I'm wasting my time.
…I'll never be called lazy.
I'm burning it up.
…I burn the candle at both ends.
I'm throwing it to the wind.
…Running too fast to feel the wind in my hair.
I'm burying it in the mud.
…Digging myself deeper, I feel the weight of everything above me.

I chase after knowledge
That I'll soon forget
Because I don't stop
To ponder and rest
Before I must move on
To asking "What next?"
I'll be old before mature
If I don't stop and reflect.

Won't waste my talents–
I'm trying them all.
Can't waste my tuition–
I take a full load.
There's so much to learn,
I just have to get involved.
When I'm at an intersection
I take every road.

I'm wasting my time.
…There is a time for everything.
I'm burning it up.
…A season for everything under the burning sun.
I'm throwing it to the wind.
…So why am I chasing after the wind,
I'm burying it in the mud.
…when all that is good and true is as old and steadfast as mud?

____

So what have I been wasting my time with? All good things; nothing to complain about. Here's the past two days:

Friday– hit the snooze button. Alarm clock decides to be faulty and just not ring again. But I wake up anyway, although not on time to finish mi narración para la clase de español. So I go to Theology, then finish my narration for the class of Spanish, then go to Spanish, then eat some lunch, then cross cultural psychology, then history. Next I run errands to the offices of several professors. I get in contact with my cooperating teacher who I will be teacher aiding with starting next week. I read two chapters of a book just for fun. Then I realize that my reading time is done, and I go to supper, where I meet my cousins, and we have a pleasant time. Next, Trollstock. This is just plain fun, and I am still with my cousins, and so I have someone to sway to the music with. The band that plays at the end of the night is called Scatteredtrees, and they are amazing. I actually used to be in a band with the bass player and the drummer (Christian Life High School Pep Band). Now they are rock stars, as I always knew they would be. I buy their album and have them sign it, as we catch up on lives that share a piece of past. The rhymes they sing sink into me and I return to my desk to write my own. When I've written it all out, I crash up to my bed like a sluggish monkey.

Saturday- no snooze button to push, praise God for Saturdays. I complete this week's assigned cleaning duties while taking a shower. Finally dressed, fed, and ready for the day, I realize that a trip to the thrift store is in order, as another pair of my pants has sprung a leak in the left knee, and as much as I want to be the grungy girl, I don't want to be the grungy girl. After a completely unsuccesful trip to the thrift store, where everything that looks good is small, and everything my size is ugly, I return to campus, where I eat lunch with a group of friends who are my acquaintances. Then it is off to the Chicago Shakespeare Theater. "Gloria, if you put on black and white in five minutes you can see a show for free." And so she does, and we are off. First time downtown this semester, and first time I've ever driven there. Hardly harder than Rockford, which is hardly harder than Freeport, which is hardly harder than German Valley, which is no harder than Borchers Road when they've just graded (but now it's paved). No problem, even in the parking garage. We usher for the show, allowing us free seats on the upper balcony, which are still good seats, with the jut stage right below us. They tell the story of Cembeline with great skill. A series of Lori's intriguing questions gets us through the stop and go traffic filling the roads to Trinity. The Matthew West concert is just starting when we get back, so I go to that, and he sings words that remind me of truths I should never forget. Eat supper, watch a little of the movie that's on (because it's Princess Bride), talk on the phone, write a blog.

So far this weekend, I've just done fun things, and good fun at that. I haven't been wasting my time. But I haven't gotten any of the things that I need to get done done, which is what's really bugging me. There's responsibilities, and then there's opportunities, and then there's rest. Scared of the responsibilities, I take every opportunity, except for the rare opportunity to rest. Somehow I still manage to complete all my responsibilities, though not to the best of my ability. That is what I mean by wasting time. So here is this writing, an opportunity to rest the burden of the procrastinated responsibilities that try my abilities and test my agility. For me, this is a piece of peace.