Football, home improvement, and hanging out with the president.

Hey! The government is up and running again (kind of). That’s nice. In celebration of that, why not post another blog.

Have any of you ever seen me play football? No. Of course not. Because I literally cannot remember a single time in which I’ve ever played. And every football game I’ve “watched,” I just sat there and talked to the people around me, standing up and cheering every once in a while when the rest of the crowd would cheer. Literally my great friendship with Martin Olson started out by neither of us wanting to go watch the Bethel football team when everyone else was going. So we would go watch a movie and wait until people got back from the game.  It was awesome. (We also only did that for about 3 games before no one else at Bethel went to the football games too.)

Still, I was born and raised in Amurica. And, I was present at those few highschool/ college football games I attended. Also, sometimes my dad would watch football on the TV and I would walk by. Plus! I’ve been to many many super bowl parties, I’ve eaten the food, I’ve watched the commercials. Sometimes I even glance at football posters when they are posted in rooms that I am in. WHAT MORE COULD I HAVE DONE TO FURTHER MY FOOTBALL EDUCATION!?        

But alas, even after all that exposure, when I found myself in the middle of a football scrimmage with some friends of mine and some neighborhood kids, I was the Achilles heel of my team.  I just couldn’t figure it out. I really really suck. It wasn’t so much at the athletic part (we were playing against middleschoolers so it wasn’t like the NFL or anything), but the figuring out what to do part that I struggled with. My team tried to help me out. They really did. “Yellow Man” (a scrawny pre-teen who got his name because the first time he met his friends he was wearing a yellow shirt) gave me great advice like “Just look at the ball!”  Mostly I just found my friend Erica who I was “guarding” and we would stand there and giggle while other people did the work.  One of the kids told us at the end “playing Frisbee with you guys was really fun, but that was the most boring game of football I’ve ever played.”  Oh yeah, we played Frisbee with them first.  So if anyone wants to play football with me sometime and very clearly and slowly explain the rules, I might be up for that. I think it’s important that I understand the basics, but not that important that I will look it up on the internet and try to figure it out myself.

On to the next topic, my house. I love my house. I love the people, I love the location, love all around. But when you live in a house that people only live in for a year, no one really takes care of it. So, it’s vaguely run down. For instance, although our local program coordinator keeps “fixing” our doorknobs, I’ve been trapped in our bathroom many times because the doorknob will just fall off on both sides. One time no one came to my rescue so I had to climb on top of the toilet, out the window, onto the ledge/roof thing, and through Anne’s bedroom window just to escape. It’s all fine and dandy now, but winter’s coming and I don’t wanna do that bare-foot in the snow.

I ain't the only one with door knob probs. Keith "Sassy Pants" Suter found himself locked outside of his room when the doorknob fell off on the inside. Photo cred: Cara Smith

Also on Thursday the support committee came over for a potluck. One of the support members fixed our light in the living room (it hadn’t been working the whole time so we just used lamps). So that was nice. But then in the middle of dinner he just stands up, takes the chair he was sitting in, and pulled it apart with his man hands. I was so surprised I yelled out “WHY DID YOU JUST BREAK OUR CHAIR?!” He was all “better I break it now then someone breaks it when they are sitting down in it.” Fair, I guess. And now we have fire wood.

The lovely broken chair model in this Photo is Anne "Carl Lehmann's sister" Schrag. Just kidding, I just call her Anne. 

Wednesday, we found worms in our raisins. It reminded me of when I was little and we would find worms in our fresh-from-the- garden salad. My dad would eat them and my brother, sister and I would run away screaming. No one in my house was bad-ass enough to eat the worms (knowingly that is, we had all been eating the raisins for a while before we found the worms). Although this is slightly more gross than garden-salad worms because the raisins weren’t fresh from the earth where worms are expected to be.

We were all pretty grossed out if you can imagine. 

We’ve never really been able to solve our mouse problem. We keep many of our bags of chips and other non-mouse-proof food in our microwave so the mice can’t get to them. This is a very flawed system because I keep forgetting to put the chips back in the microwave when I’m done using it. So just 2 days ago the mice got into our unopened bag of Tostitos. Lame. What a waste.

Still, improvements are being made. We had some men come on Thursday and install a fan. Just in time for next summer! Apparently the request for a fan was made in March.   

Life is going pretty good. I’m getting better at talking with people over the phone in Spanish. Or rather, I’m less embarrassed to ask them to repeat themselves slower. Usually I just pick up on a couple of words they say and start talking about what I think they are wanting to know, and then they stop me and ask me the question again. After a couple of times, we work it out and both leave the conversation with a vague understanding of what’s going on. The other day I literally said “No entiendo “honche.”" The student on the phone said “como… eleven.” Dear God. I learned that word when I was 5…. From Barney! But why add an “H” sound to a word that doesn’t have an “H” if you’re going to ignore all the “H”s  in other Spanish word. And then adding a “ch” sound where it doesn’t belong. Forget it. I’m completely lost.

But I’m still pretty happy about the amount of Spanish I’m able to use at work. Most of the time my Spanish is better than the student’s English, and a lot of the medical words are the same or similar in Spanish and English.

On Friday, my school took a field trip to a farm. So as any professional school nurse would, I went through the First Aid kit and made sure was full and complete, and then promptly abandoned it with my supervisor while I explored a corn maze with a kick-ass Honduran family. It was so fun. They also said my Spanish was good, although all I did was cycle through the same 4 Spanish phrases: “Nos perdimos”, “No se”, “quizas este via?”, “alla”.

Ok! Fun at the farm picture time!  

 Brittany and I on the hay ride. Hence the hay. 

 Cara "Micah Smith's sister" Smith and I with our pumpkins. 

 I love pumpkins. 

 Grace took engagement pictures on Saturday so she was practicing with this charming pumpkin.

 Then we took some shrooms. 

 Meta picture... or something.

Coolest people at the pumpkin patch. 

Also, Perry and Daylene White visited DC. I was so excited to see them I ALMOST forgot about how old and boring I sounded when I told people Perry was the president of my alma mater.

Me and Perry "Per Bear" White at church this morning. 

Until next time! Here is a picture of the beautiful Miriam in her natural habitat.