Sunday, March 08, 2009

This weekend

We had a great weekend here at Chandler. On Friday, Kaleb left with his senior class on a mini-sneak out to a lovely hotel in Batu Ferringhi for the weekend. He came home this afternoon full of energy and excitement at spending time with friends, playing board games for hours and making lots of great memories. So Tim took him, Nathan, Santi and Alan out for roti tisu and lime juice at curfew, which always makes the boys extremely happy not to have to go to bed at the regular time.

Tim and I worked with junior class for five hours on Saturday afternoon helping them get the plans in place for the Junior Senior Banquet in late April. We still have a ton of work left to do but I'm sure somehow it will all get done! Maybe little elves will magically appear in the night to build all the props the kids want to have....then again, I won't pin my hopes on it :)

On Saturday afternoon, I took 10 kids swimming next door at Paradise since our pool was closed for maintenance. It was so much fun but I foolishly jumped in with my hand phone in the back pocket of my swimsuit and it ended up drowning. I prayed for a resurrection of my phone because, at this point, I don't want to shell out money for a new one but I can't be without it either. I took it apart and left it in the air con for 24 hours and, thank the Lord for his care over forgetful people such as myself, its working again today!

Last night, five kids and I went out to play soccer on the covered basketball court because it was raining. I was goalie and didn't do too badly. Eventually a bunch of others joined us and we had a blast, running around like crazy til our t-shirts were soaking wet with sweat. I previously mentioned the dolphin sighting and possible monsoon rains....it all came true so the local folklore was spot on. We are roasting with high humidity in hot season. I'm managing not too badly by avoiding the outdoors from 10 am-3 pm and using my fair share of air con.

Book update - I'm into Tis by Frank McCourt and having waiting in the wings The Memory Keeper's Daughter and a Charles Dicken's classic, Little Dorrit. Books are so much cheaper here but I have got to stop buying them or I will need a huge crate to get them all back to Canada. I also finished an indepth read of 1 and 2 Corinthians which took over a month and have now started Galatians. I wish Paul was here to explain himself but I'll have to wait for a long theological conversation with him when I get to heaven!


We hosted our second national staff appreciation breakfast and it was a big hit. We had 30 folks show up for roti canai, dahl curry, curry puffs, fruit and pancakes cooked by our high school boys. We had roti and curry left over so we invited people back for coffee break later that morning.
These ladies were telling me how easy it is to make dahl curry and chapatis. I will have to get lessons before I leave.
Four ladies from our amazing housekeeping crew.

This is the first time Santi has ever cooked anything but noodles - he did really well!

On Friday, we hosted George's birthday party. He's an honourary Chandlerite since he spends a lot of time here hanging out with Alan and Abbie. He's also the son of my friend and prayer partner so it was our privilege to use our porch for his surprise celebration.

I think about 30 people came up for cheesecake and curry puffs. Some were invited, others just heard we were serving food!

Annie loves to wear Santi's glasses - he has at least three pairs and leaves them lying around all the time.

It was a lovely Sunday afternoon so we hauled everybody down to the beach for some play time. Renata, Sophie, Abbie and Annie spent most of the time just lounging and chatting with one another.

Our two extraordinary fifth graders!

Tim held races into the water with some of the boys. The water was unusually clean today so they played in it for a long time.

Kaleb, Santi, Nathan, Alan and of course, Sabrina went rock and tree climbing. Alan was like a monkey, swinging from branches and running along limbs. Santi thought he would do the same but ended up falling to the sand below with a huge WHOMP!

Later tonight before our dorm meeting, we heard the Chinese drums coming. Some sort of celebration passed along our street. I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the national holiday tomorrow or not.

This is where I live and this is what I will miss next January during the deep freeze called winter.

3 comments:

Kate said...

lovely pics...and yes, you will miss that, especially if we have a repeat of this winter!!!

Carla said...

I enjoy your pictures and glimpst into your life in Dalat. Roman would love that tree!
I just read memory keepers daughter last year. It was good. I was foster parenting a little girl with downs syndrome at the time so it was interesting to read a book on that topic.
We should "chat" again soon.

Glendyne Gerrard said...

I'm anxious to hear what you think of Memory Keeper's Daughter.