Great Colombian Foods

Great Colombian Foods that Ryan Could Eat:
1. Coffee.
2. Rotisserie Chicken.
3. Mango Biche. Slices of mango with lime and salt.
4. Bandeja Paisa, except for the ground beef.
5. Plantain Chips.
6. Candied Coconut.
7. Bakery bread.
8. Arroz con Pollo, and all the other foods that are made from rice and chicken.
9. Fresh fruit.

Great Colombian Foods that Ryan Couldn't Eat:
1. Avena (oatmeal). It's actually a drink made with milk, served hot or cold.
2. Buñuelos. Why are these fried spheres of dough so good? There is cheese in the dough.
3. Chocolate. Hot chocolate, which is sometimes served with cheese in it.
4. Grilled field corn on the cob.
5. Arepas, which are round corn breads, often filled with cheese.
6. Maracuyá ice cream.
7. Empanadas made from corn pastry.
8. Tamales. Corn dough filled with good stuff and boiled inside of plantain leaves.
9. UHT milk. Like milk, except it tastes different, and you can keep it on your shelf for a year. It comes in bags here.

It's good.

It's good when it is good to say,
"Tomorrow will be like today."

Help me to remember

I should get back in the habit of blogging. It helps me to remember things. I just updated my list of places I've slept throughout college. Am I forgetting anyplace?

91. Somewhere south of GR at the house of an ACMNP board member.
92. The house on Kalamazoo.
93. Pella, on the way west.
94. Ft. Collins for Alissa's illustrious graduation.
95. Coeur d'Alene for two nights at Josh and Kelsey's.
96. Paradise.
97. Cougar Rock Campground with the ACMNP team.
98. Sunnyside. We saw Tobias when he was four days old, and then I saw him again at his baptism.
99. Yaak for the Vander Wilt family reunion.
100. Ft. Collins.
101. Pella, on the way east.
102. Alumni 109.
103. Michigan for October birthdays.
104. Amy Laib's house, after our spontaneous trip to Natalie's house.
105. Sioux Falls for a night.
106. Ft. Collins.
107. Sioux Falls again. Does that count?
108. Pella for Christmas.
109. Jamie's house, so we could go straight to the airport.
110. The Moyer's. We'll move to Spanish-speaking homes soon.

I very much like Bogotá so far. It's a huge city, but the school is on the edge of it and you can always see mountains on the east and the west, so that makes it feel less endless. We have been riding around and bussing around with the Moyers and the past three nights we have had supper with different families from the school, and it is so good to get to know them. I am looking forward to school starting. The school seems so empty during these days as we go about getting ready for the spring semester.

This semester

This semester I didn't write poetry.
There weren't any rhymes in my head–
just wishes to wander
and longings to linger
and dreams about going to bed.

in suspense and incomplete

I have been very frustrated with school this semester, mostly because I have a high concentration of education courses. I have a hard time motivating myself to do work that teaches me nothing except that I don't like to do work. To make sure that we are ready for student teaching, all my education classes are designed to review previous education classes. This might be okay if the first education classes weren't already a review of common sense. I'm sure you remember the pain of being told "show all your work" on simple algebra problems in middle school. Imagine the pain of being told to spell out your whole thought process behind every lesson plan so that a professor can tell you ten ways to make it more creative. I know I'm not quite ready to teach on my own, but I feel like my training is just turning me off to the profession. I just want to student teach, graduate, marry Ryan, and teach. Funny that it was in one of these wearisome education courses that I was exposed to this encouraging poem by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:

Above all, trust in the slow work of God.
We are quite naturally impatient in everything
to reach the end without delay.
We should like to skip the intermediate stages.
We are impatient of being on the way
to something unknown,
something new.
Yet it is the law of all progress that it is made
by passing through some stages of instability–
and that it may take a very long time.

And so I think it is with you.
Your ideas mature gradually. Let them grow.
Let them shape themselves without undue haste.
Do not try to force them on
as though you could be today what time
(that is to say, grace
and circumstances
acting on your own good will)
will make of you tomorrow.

Only God could say what this new Spirit
gradually forming in you will be.
Give our Lord the benefit of believing
that his hand is leading you,
and accept the anxiety of feeling yourself
in suspense and incomplete.

Autumn

I lost half of my tan today.
The melanin was washed away
with soap and water down the drain–
and summer's gone and done the same.

Back to School

I've been back at Trinity for almost a month, and I finally feel like the school year has started. This week was my first yearbook meeting, my first work shift, my first tutoring sessions and the honor's kick-off fest. Best of all, novice teaching started. Being in the classroom with a group of bilingual sixth graders was a pleasant reminder of all the reasons I do want to be a teacher.

It's great to have both a cousin and a sister on campus. Last weekend we went up to Grandma and Grandpa Vander Wilt's and spent the weekend hanging out at the campground at Lake Red Rock. It was a lot of fun to carry on an old tradition.

Ryan is planning to visit in about two weeks! We're engaged. Yippee!