:: espirita - the chronicles of a dorm mom living on a tropical island ::

The final post

2009-09-02T06:57:00.005+08:00

If anyone is still out there checking my blog, sorry for the delay in posting. I have had trouble uploading the pictures of our Thailand trip where we went on a 2 km long zipline through the rainforest, visited five tribal villages and once again, played with tigers. That is all now a dim memory as we have been here in Canada for over two months now. After spending some wonderful rest time at our cottage, we bought a house in south Regina and moved in three weeks ago. We are loving the space and the unique floorplan as well as quiet time with just the four of us as opposed to a dorm full of students. We do, however, keep up with what is happening in dear Chandler dorm via friends at Dalat and it sounds like the new dorm parents are tailor-made for the ministry of loving other people's kids. So we are grateful for that!

I started my job over a month ago and am slowly figuring out a gameplan. I have already traveled to Saskatoon twice, Calgary for a week and even went up north to Churchill, Man, and Arviat, Nunavut, to encourage the folks in the churches up there. Tim was up there four years ago to do some electrical work and he was excited to go back with me this time. We ate beluga whale, which was chewy, and Arctic char, which was awesome. We even came home with two frozen char in our suitcase! To our great disappointment, we didn't see any polar bears even after two hours of ATVing out on the tundra in search of them. It is definitely a unique experience - a cold one especially for our thin blood - but wonderful nonetheless.

Otherwise, my job is about making connections and encouraging relationships so I'm listening to videos, reading books and going through old material trying to figure out a new way of doing things or of resurrecting an old way. Although everyday is a question mark for me at this point, I'm basically following this adage:
Show up for work every morning
Get my instructions from God
Execute with obedience

It helps that I have a great group of folks to work with who have come alongside with their help and advice.

Tim is self employed. He began Archer Electric this month and has a slate of jobs to do. He's finished two and is working on a third. If you are in the Regina area and need an electrician for a smaller, reno job, Tim's your guy. Kaleb has secured full time employment at Staples and is loving that so far. He had an older Honda Civic given to him so he's got wheels that actually work! Annie started school last week and had a group of girls waiting to meet her when she walked in the door. She is loving being in our own home - she's often had meals waiting on the table after work and has taken to doing her own laundry, which is awesome.

My reading list of late has included Switch and Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, The Book of Negroes by Lawrence Hill, Too Small to Ignore by Wess Stafford and The Divine Commodity by Skye Jethani. I haven't seen any good movies lately because we don't have TV or internet aat the house yet so evenings are full of conversation, baking and playing Ticket to Ride, the game Tim bought me for our 23rd anniversary.

Anyway, thanks for following this blog. It means a lot not only tome but also to Tim, Kaleb and Annie, who have enjoyed all the comments and press we have gotten from our posts. Thank you for your prayers that have resulted. Each one of you has been a blessing and we are humbled that you would be interested and involved in our lives. It's been a great ride but needs to come to an end now. If you still want to keep up with our lives, find me on Facebook.

As we end, let me give you these wonderful words from Scripture as a finale to my cross-cultural blog/diary of our journey around this glorious globe:

May God be gracious to us and bless us and make His face shine upon us that His ways may be known on the earth, His salvation among all the nations. May God bless us still, so that all the ends of the earth will fear Him. Psalm 67

Where are we?

2009-06-24T21:38:00.002+08:00

In Chiang Mai, Thailand...a place we are beginning to love more and more everyday. We flew here on Monday, June 15, for some much needed R&R. So far we have enjoyed time with Gerry and Beth, friends from Dalat who moved here last week to begin new lives, a 2 km long series of ziplines through the rainforest that got our adrenalin pumping hard, time with the big tigers as they played, night market shopping during a torrential downpour this being wet season, pool time here at the Juniper Tree, shopping at the silver factory (ladies I'm coming home with goods to sell!!) and at the Mengrai Kilns Pottery shop, riding around in the truck taxis, visiting hilltribes, going to church and making lots of new friends. We are also attending personal sessions every day at Cornerstone Christian Counseling Centre and all four of us are learning bunches about ourselves and our family dynamics. We finish up there tomorrow and leave here Friday for one night in Bangkok (isn't that a song??). Bright and early Saturday morning, we make the 22 hour trek to Regina via Air Canada, which will the first time using that air carrier to go this far....stay tuned on that experience. I will post pictures of all these exciting events when I am relaxing next week at the cottage. Thanks for checking in!! And oh, please pray for no overweight luggage as we are once again maxed out on kgs.

Random pictures of the last two weeks

2009-06-12T22:13:00.008+08:00

Here is a sampling of pictures taken over the last two weeks of the activites we enjoyed with with Tim's sister Pam, her husband Gene and Tim's parents. They left this morning to head back to the US.

Aunt Pam and Annie at Kaleb's graduation ceremony.

Lana and I together for one last photo op at grad.

We worked the 10K water station at the Malakoff 26K race last Sunday. This is at 5:20 am waiting for the first of 1600 runners. Our friends, Lyn and Debbie, ran and placed 2nd and 5th respectively in the women's category.

We enjoyed batiking for the final time. Kaleb joined us and between he, Annie and myself, we made 12 table napkins of various colours and patterns.

Aunt Pam and Grandma were good at it and enjoyed the painting except that it was desperately hot out that day.

Grandma was a good bargainer at the night market in Batu.

We all went out for market fresh breakfast one morning and this fellow asked Kaleb to help him make Hong Kong Chee Cheong Fun, a rice dish. So Kaleb took a quick lesson and away he went!

The steam is hot so Kaleb had to work fast!

Here he is scraping the film of rice together with the shrimp.

Ta da! It wasn't too bad when we added the chili sauce :)

Tim and Rosie are good friends. She is the drink lady at the morning market and gave us all a round of free drinks for breakfast. Rosie recently underwent knee surgery so she no longer walks around taking orders - instead she sits on the stool and yells!!

This accident happened across from the school. The ice truck was going too fast and tipped over onto a car, which was completely scrunched underneath. The tow truck came and got the car out just as we drove up. We're not sure if there were any injuries or fatalities.Pam, Gene, Tim and I ferried out to Pulau Payar for a day of snorkeling. It was the most amazing snorkeling experience I've had so far - thousands of fish! We even swam with a 5 foot long barracuda with lots of sharp teeth!! It was gorgeous out there and we enjoyed the water and the beach.

We headed up Penang Hill for some cooler weather plus tea and scones at David Brown's Tea House. It was a lovely excursion and a great way to 'waste' a morning!

Tim's parents celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary this week so we treated them to supper at the revolving restaurant in downtown Georgetown. In less than an hour, we went the whole 360 degrees around and could see the mainland, bridge, harbour and lights of the city.

Pam, Grandma and I went to the Kenko Fish Spa, where three sizes of fish 'eat' the dead skin on your feet. It was a wild experience to have these fish attack my feet! Thankfully we started in the tank with the smallest fish in order to get over the strange sensation. We moved onto the medium sized fish and finally, the aggressive large fish. Our feet were definitely well exfoliated after this!For their last meal with us, Kaleb wanted to take our guests to the Korean Palace for the ethnic specialities he loves. It is a one of a kind dining experience, that's for sure! The bbq is in the table and the thinly sliced meat is cooked by a server. Rice, bulgogi, pickled spinach, kimchi and many, many side dishes came with this. We had 69 dishes on the table at the end of the meal! And our waiter was a Nepali fellow ... working in a Korean restaurant in Malaysia! So funny :)
Our shipment went out today - 3.74 cubic metres or 21 lockers/boxes are now on the way to Canada. It takes approximately 45 days by boat to get to Vancouver and then a few days by truck to get to Calgary where we clear customs and pick up our stuff. A good portion of our clothes are in the crate so we are hoping it doesn't get stuck somewhere! We leave for Thailand early Monday morning and are only taking one suitcase plus carry on each.

Family pictures

2009-06-12T13:28:00.007+08:00

Either she's saying 'Hold on a minute' or 'I'll take four of those'...not sure!

I can fly!

One, two, three jump!! OK, who jumped on two??

Surf's up, dude!

Knock out :)

Rejection...sorry, buddy, not you this time.

Why?

2009-06-04T01:55:00.002+08:00

We've been asked why we've been involved in dorm parenting, why we chose to work and live at a Christian school, how we can engage teenagers when they are so fickle and tempermental. I admit - there's a lot of drama with teenagers, too much some days actually. Lots of hormones, hearsay, poor choices, miscommunication, generation gaps, tears, tantrums, laziness and lost homework. About week 12 of 20 in a semester, the energy levels are sapped and the good intentions of parenting can sometimes be lost in the business of 'just getting by'. But every now and then, a student would say or do something that would make it all worthwhile and that's all I needed to recharge my batteries to keep going. These are like 'little wonders' that are mentioned in a song by the same name. Here's a sampling of those little wonders that made all the difference to me when I was a dorm parent and will continue to touch my heart long after I leave Dalat in a few days.....

I thank you always for welcoming me with a bright smile. You've shown me what it's like to be a Christ follower and I've been blessed just seeing you everyday.

Sacrifices you made for God blessed a lot of people and made big differences.

We both loved the time we spent together and will pray for you and may God bless your family. We love you and we always will.

Thank you so much for being supportive of me.

Thank you for making my life so fun.

There are many memories I have with both of you that will resonate in my heart forever. Thank you for making those memories with me.

You make your dorm daughters and sons feel like they're really home. It's been such a blessing for me to get to know you.

It's not an easy thing to have to say good bye to kids who are a part of the fabric your life, who you love like your own, who leave you notes like these when you need it the most. So far, I've said good bye to David, Dennis, Laurian, Nathan, Santi, Kirsten, Yea Lim, Joycelyn, Chan Yang, Chan Mi and a bunch of other kids plus a really good friend, Colleen. My tear ducts are working overtime! In a few hours, I will do it all over again for another group of students as they leave to board planes. Maybe I will connect again someday with a few of them, maybe not. But at the end of the day, I know that life is really measured in these little wonders and that, despite the drama and the heartache, it's been a great ride here at Dalat. Whatever we did for the Lord will not be wasted in His economy and whatever we did for ourselves, I pray He will redeem for His glory and make wonders out of it all.

The future arrived

2009-06-04T01:21:00.008+08:00

The future has arrived today

The future's alive, alive as can be

Just open your eyes, it's as plain to see

Just don't be afraid, just keep going on

One step at a time and you can't go wrong

It's time to create

Time to grow if you feel right

The world, yeah, she's changin'

Don't it make you feel alive

The future has arrived

The future has arrived today

(from Meet the Robinsons)

The future arrived for us tonight as Kaleb officially graduated from high school. No more classes, exams, homework, assignments, projects, field trips, sports teams, recesses, lunch hours, dress codes, library fines (!!), research papers. His high school career is behind him and the wide open future is before him. As their class verse from Galatians 1:15 reads, "God has special plans for me and set me apart for His work, even before I was born. He called me through His grace."

Here is part of the reflection that was read about him tonight by his Bible teacher, Mr. Hurlbut:

Kaleb, your mother says that your birth was a surreal moment. When you finally started breathing a light shone from heaven through the ceiling of the hospital and an angelic choir sang the Halleljuah chorus. OK, perhaps it wasn't that surreal but it was clear from the outset that you were a special child. When asked on your Dalat application, "What single event has had the greatest impact on your life?" you replied in typical Kaleb/postmodern fashion, "I have had a jumble of events that have caused me to be the way I am." Kaleb, you indeed are unique. Your heart for the underdog and for those on the periphery is a genuine reflection of Jesus - and your faith for the impossible is a gift that God wants to give to the world through you. Your pronounced social gifts enable you to navigate within a wide range of different people and to connect with them supernaturally.... Continue to question, Mr. Archer, and recognize that your curiosity is not an obstacle to faith but an avenue for His revelation. Continue to explore those crazy ideas, and then expect more than a few of them to take root and blossom. As you love others and follow faith you will leave a legacy.

Good thing I took Kleenex with me on stage!

Two little junior marshalls started the processional. They were so cute!

Kaleb, again first in his class down on the aisle.

I was asked to to the prayer of invocation and sat on stage with Rev. McLeod, the guest speaker, and Aunt Val, who gave the benediction.

Annie was an usher and, being seated last, had to sit across the aisle from Tim.

Kaleb receiving his diploma from Mr. Steinkamp, the school director. Dalat tradition has the graduates giving Mr. S. something at this point - this year it was Magee noodles and chocolate bars.

Kaleb and his grandparents who came all the way from the US for this occasion. Kaleb is the only Archer boy to carry on the name!

Family again - all smiles!

Kaleb and friends at the hotel before going to the Wailing Wall to sign yearbooks and to the Senior Party for final good byes.

More grad stuff

2009-06-03T23:38:00.005+08:00

Kaleb's class put on a wonderful Senior Chapel on Monday evening - their way of leaving a final blessing with the Dalat community. They wore t-shirts that said Generation X and focused the evening on how to make a difference by doing little things. Some students gave personal testimonies about how Christ has changed their lives and the friends who have helped them on their faith journey. Others mentioned small ways friends and teachers had blessed them. It was an excellent way for these students to end a year of servant leadership among their fellow students.

This morning the Senior Wills and Assembly was held. Kaleb willed a tall styrofoam column from a previous drama set to George, a Superman belt to Santi and Alan, his dorm brothers who have issues with low riding pants, and a book to Nathan, another dorm brother who is a voracious reader. At the last minute, he also willed his Canadian flag to two middle school Canadian students, hoping they will keep the spirit alive!

The start of grad activities

2009-06-01T18:30:00.006+08:00

Kaleb receiving his gifts from the school director the Senior Tea on Saturday.

At the Paradise Hotel ballroom waiting for the Baccalaureate Service to begin. We were front row!Kaleb walking down the aisle at Baccalaureate - when your last name begins with 'A', you get to go first and lead the way!
I sang in the parent choir. We had two practices and managed to pull off a fairly decent rendition of LeeAnn Womack's song "I Hope You Dance".

Kaleb and his good friend, Seung Yoon.

Another good friend Kyle.

Three beauties and friends forever - Khalie, Annie and Bethany.

Abbie and Annie with Kirsten, a dorm sister from the last two years who returned from the US via Cambodia for grad.

The Class of 2009 - Dalat International School.

Chandler Dorm 2008-09.

The Archer family.

The extended Archer family - Tim's parents plus his sister Pam and her husband Gene who came from the US for grad.
We enjoyed lunch together on Sunday - many thanks to our friend Colleen who covered our dorm on Saturday and Sunday so we could enjoy these activities as a family.

A Tad of Trouble

2009-06-01T13:08:00.005+08:00

Here are some random pictures of the HS drama written by four students and one teacher. It was a musical comedy drama! The first showing was held at Wawasan Open University and was a fundraiser for the local branch of the Cancer Society. The final performance was back in our little chapel on Friday night. Kaleb played a cynical angel, Zander, who was the overseer of the bad guy, Obediah. Another angel, Olivia, was the guardian to a mute boy Tad who ended up in a bunch of trouble hence the name of the play.

Kaleb broke out dancing at one part - it was the funniest thing!

Tad, finding his voice through song.

Catching up

2009-05-23T22:31:00.006+08:00

OK, life has been a blur lately. Blur, blue, blur. Yep, that's my best excuse for not posting. I did manage to get some things accomplished and we are deep in the midst of packing. Actually we had a garage sale today with a bunch of other families out on the basketball court. I'm happy to say we sold out within an hour and closed down before anyone else! Of course now we are missing useful items like lamps and tools and chairs but I think we can live without them for the 22 days before we leave. It will be like camping!

This is what our little living space looked for a few days before we moved it into Annie's room. She has moved into the dorm with Sophie and Sabrina so her room was the only free space to store all this stuff. It looks like a cyclone in there but I just close the door and walk away! After school is over, we'll give it a more concerted effort since the crate leaves on June 12.
Last Sunday, the junior class threw us a farewell party down at the beach. It was a good time hanging out, eating burgers, roasting s'mores and jumping the waves. The pictures below are some of my favourite people!

Lydia was cooking burgers on our BBQ when it burst into flames and blackened all the burgers!! It really didn't matter - the kids ate them anyway.

Annie and Sophie had a sleepover in their room when Sabrina was away. Chan Yang and Evelyne joined them and they giggled the night away.

An impromptu U12 soccer game with Uplands School came up so Sabrina came running up to the dorm for her soccer cleats and socks. They managed a win!

The week that was

2009-05-09T21:22:00.006+08:00

Kaleb turnmed 18 this week and although he was sick, we held a party for him. He managed to eat one piece of his cake and blow out all his candles!

Annie picked out three t-shirts that all the kids contributed towards as gifts for Kaleb. He really liked this one.

We also held a party for all the dorm seniors in the Student Centre on the actual day of his birthday. We showed Corner Gas episodes from Season 5 and ate nachos and donuts.Tim's birthday was the next day so we celebrated as a family at Swensen's restaurant. We gave him a coffee press and a Chelsea Football Club jersey as he has now declared his allegiance to them, much to the chagrin of Kaleb, who is a diehard Man U fan. I am cheering for Barcelona so I think I'll get a jersey of theirs. Talk about divided loyalties! Barcelona and Man U play in the UEFA final after Barcelona narrowly beat out Chelsea last week.

Some faces of Chandler.....

Sabrina's piano recital was this week and she did very well!

And her dorm sisters came to support her :)

Fun at the beach one night as the sun was going down.....

Brother and sister

2009-05-03T18:03:00.001+08:00

Dorm trip to Pangkor

2009-05-03T17:44:00.005+08:00

In January, we started planning a long weekend getaway with Jackson dorm for this past weekend as we had Friday off from school for the national Labour Day. We had a few glitches along the way, mostly just last week when a bad flu strain hit the school and over 50 kids were out on Wednesday and Thursday. Two from our dorm were down with it plus two over at Jackson dorm. In the end, our group of 30 became 26 and we piled into two vans on Friday morning. We had a great time staying in five service apartments, taking the ferry out to and playing on the water at Pangkor Island and hanging out together. Annie and her good buddy Evelyne.
The fishing village stop along the way to Pangkor.

David and Elijah are fifth grade friends.

Dorm sisters swinging on the beach.

The jocks waiting for their turn on the banana boat.

Annie slept on the beach most of the time but still managed a good sunburn.

Lunch on the beach with a friend - does it get any better than this?

The waves were great and the water was refreshing.

One night we showed the movie, Princess Bride, on the wall in one of the apartments so we crammed everyone in together. Earlier in the day, we have given the kids digital cameras to make homemade trailers for the movie so we previewed those first. It was absolutely hilarious!!

These five shared an apartment along with me. These girls love being together.

Baba Nyonya

2009-05-03T17:24:00.004+08:00

The Parents' Organization hosted a meal at the Baba Nyonya museum in Georgetown for staff and parents. It was a great evening in a beautiful place.

Bible study party

2009-05-03T16:11:00.004+08:00

We finished our study on Esther by having a princess party! We laughed and we cried and laughed and cried :) We gave Vi a print with our signatures on it for hosting at Jaffray dorm ten different studies over five years. She won't be able to do so next year due to changing responsibilities. And Akiko made a gorgeous scrapbook for Mollie who has led the studies for four years but is now moving to Japan. Vi with her gift.
Mollie and the ladies checking out the homemade scrapbook.

Lyn looking happy!

Princessess Colleen and Ailee.

Random shots

2009-05-03T15:56:00.004+08:00

A storm was brewing over Georgetown while we were heading there on the bike so we turned around and went out to Batu instead.

Condos continue to go up on every available piece of land in Penang. Unfortunately, not much thought is given to parking and traffic issues.

Tim got some old bikes fixed up and the kids enjoy riding them around campus.

Three senior guys who LOVE to play soccer after supper.

Tim took the middle schoolers to the beach for devotions one night and got some great pictures of the crew.

The Archer's

2009-04-29T09:20:00.001+08:00

Jr Class party

2009-04-29T09:13:00.002+08:00

We held a spontaneous party on the beach last night to celebrate the junior's accomplishments of this past semester. It was fun - Tim grilled burgers and hot dogs and the kids played on the beach. Since we are leaving, new sponsors came forward to take our place for senior year. Thanks to Kerry and Robin, who are presently senior sponsors for Kaleb's class, and to Lydia, whose amazing technical and creative abilities helped us with JSB. They will join Larry and Debbie in August.

We were only missing a few kids even though it was short notice. This huge log washed up earlier this week so we made good use of it for taking pictures and for playing on.

Other stuff

2009-04-26T16:14:00.007+08:00

WOW - I'm actually going to post twice in one day. Now that JSB is over, I have more time on my hands! But don't expect this blogging spree to last - our final five weeks go quickly and we still have lots to do :) Anyway, here are some pictures that should have been posted a while ago.

Four of our juniors dedicated hours to making Treebeard, the Ent from the forest of Fanghorn, for one of our photo ops at JSB. Late nights, bags of flour and hundreds of newspapers went into this fellow. He is now resting in the crawlspace underneath our dorm.

Others painted these cut-outs that were a big hit.The girls and I spent hours working on the program, MC scripts and seating arrangements.
The seniors surprised us on our final work day with ice cream floats! What a blessing that was on a hot day.

We woke up early on Saturday, April 18, because the power had gone off and we had no air con or fans. I heard noise outside and opened the doors to smoke and the smell of plastic burning. The fifth grade classrooms next door were on fire and the Bomba (fire dept) was here doing their job.

They contained the fire and put it out quickly but the water and smoke damaged almost everything in both classrooms. Thankfully, the fire didn't spread to the adjoining counseling centre. Our little David helped by cleaning the sticky goo off his desk. A bunch of others showed up to clean up, haul stuff, provide water for workers and encouragement to the fifth grade teachers.
One of the many melted desks.

Santi turned 16 and we celebrated with friends and a cheesecake.

We held two nights of science fair this year to alleviate the huge crowd in the chapel. This is the high school evening and Alan with his experiment.

The mad scientists, Golnaz and Aunt Lana!

Nathan put together an underwater city and used LEGO and styrofam to build it.

Our director looking very sauve in the recommended protective eyewear.

Annie at her city display with Sabrina.

Santi and his friends did an experiment with an oyster and bought one from a local restaurant.

JSB - Junior Senior Banquet

2009-04-25T13:17:00.014+08:00

Last November, the juniors chose as an overall theme "The Lord of the Rings" and eventually we came up with this title for the evening "The Company of Many - The Pursuit of One" using Ephesians 4:4-6 from the Message as our foundation. Our story line for the evening went something like this.... a fourth Tolkien book was discovered entitled "The Company of Many" and the junior class came into possession of an ancient copy of the text. It tells the story of Bilbo returning to the Shire from the Undying Lands to seek another legendary power to replace his 'precious' and recruiting the senior class of Dalat Intrashire School to go on an adventure for him since he is so old. He gives the class clues to decipher from a seven line elvish poem. The seniors go in seven groups to different locations to search for the power Bilbo seeks but alas, all faced obstacles and returned to the Shire empty handed. It was at this point, the Great Elders, aka class sponsors, helped the seniors put the clues together to see that one letter in each clue was highlighted. When placed in the right order the letters spelled "oneness" and that, they realize, is the best treasure of all! As Ephesians says, You were all called to travel on the same road and in the same direction, so stay together, both outwardly and inwardly. You have one Master, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who rules over all, works through all, and is present in all. Everything you are and think and do is permeated with Oneness. So the real treasure is to journey through life with the company of many good friends in pursuit of one thing, God Himself.

For each group of five students, we did a very short 30 second video of our seniors being chased by villains and turning back as well as video montages of their submitted baby and fun pictures. Each junior wrote a page long tribute to a senior friend and read it. We interrupted the program with three meal courses and lots of picture taking opportunties.

In keeping with our theme, we gave the seniors rings engraved with the theme and, because we could not secure copies of the fourth Tolkien book for them, individual photo books of tributes, pictures and words of encouragement from staff and students. We used the digital picture company Shutterfly and I highly recommend their user-friendly services.

The juniors created a six foot high Treebeard, an Ent from the forest of Fanghorn, that took hours upon hours to create from styrofoam and more paper mache than I ever went to see again in my life. They also painted cut-out photo ops of Gandalf and Frodo, Aragorn and Arwen and of course, ugly little Gollum. We used interior castle walls made of styrofoam to set the stage of being in a grand hall and put the seniors at two long tables with tall, glass candlesticks and shallow bowls of floating flowers. We held this event at the historic Eastern and Oriental Hotel in Georgetown, a old British establishment with outstanding balconies, crown mouldings and antique chandeliers. I heard the food was great although I only managed to grab two pieces of baguette, three mushrooms and a bit of creme caramel during the whole evening!!

After the evening was officially over at midnight, most people headed home on the waiting buses while we took everything down and packed up. After returning to campus and dropping stuff off, we picked up all our other dorm kids who were hanging out at a friend's house, got them to bed and went out as I mentioned in my previous post. I think I hit the pillow shortly after 2:30 pm and was up early this morning to get breakfast ready for hungry tummies.

Here are some pictures in a very random order....

My beautiful children (and I'm not biased either for goodness sake!)

At midnight with the junior class.

Annie took this picture from the balcony. She was asked to man the tables of gifts that guys and girls give each other but don't want to keep at their table. Since only grades 10-12 plus staff attend, this was a big honour for a ninth grader!!

The hot looking Archer women ... that's what Aunt Lana said ... I'm not really that arrogant!

My dear friend Lisa and me.

Tim and I with our favourite nurse.

Speaking of precious, here's my dear Lana!

Kaleb and his date, Chan Mi, standing next to Treebeard. Don't you love his new three piece pin striped suit? It was tailor made just for him!

Annie hugging one of the bigger gifts. I think she would have taken this home if she could have!

The book Tim made. We had the story printed on large pages and inserted. It's really cool :)

Joyce is a beautiful Indian girl who helps with the preschool program. I loved her sari! Notice my shoes - I switched from the uncomfortable fuchsia dress shoes to my Birkenstocks :) What a trendsetter I am! You know you are getting old when you choose comfort over style.....

Here is Treebeard. Four of our students made this from a picture and spent countless hours in the shop paper maching, molding and painting it.

The junior class executive - absolutely awesome kids to work with!

Our co-sponsors at the beginning of the evening!

And at the end......just before going home to their five little kids!!

Can we go home and go to bed now???????? Please!!!!

A quick post

2009-04-25T10:55:00.003+08:00

JSB is officially over and when I have time I'll post pics. Although to be honest, we didn't get many due to the fact we were running around all evening making sure all the juniors were doing what they were supposed to be doing and were where they were supposed to be. They did a fantastic job - really, these are some of the best teenagers anywhere and I loved watching them shine!

We are tired today after hitting Subaidah's for lime juice and roti bomb at 1:30 am with 28 of our stellar juniors. Tim is now putting stuff away while Kaleb and Abbie are down in the chapel preparing with the senior class the After JSB Dinner (we love to celebrate celebrations around here). This is the senior's 'thank you' to the junior class for all our hard work, blood, sweat and tears over the last four months to honor them. They will use our decorations and spin our theme for some much needed comedic relief. We are looking forward to that but will definitely need a nap before going.

Now that JSB is finished, we can concentrate our time on some other issues - a dorm trip this coming weekend, paperwork for leaving, getting the dorm in order, selling some of our things. Five weeks and its all over so here's to the strong finish and big push to the end!

Vietnam

2009-04-11T22:12:00.009+08:00

Finally, pictures of Vietnam. And in no particular order - completely random as seen by the first picture which is the last one taken on my camera! Here we are dining at the Gecko restaurant, a third floor place we found that served amazing drinks, Western and Vietnam cuisine. Bronwyn joined us for the trip - she's an elementary teacher here at the school who was on my Thailand trip earlier this year. I fell in love with Hanoi - the people, the sights, the sounds and the great deals on silk and artwork. It was cool and rainy while we were there and although that meant wearing layers, it was a nice change from the oppressive heat we had been having in Penang. Have mattress, will travel.....

The trip to Ha Long Bay was absolutely amazing, even if we were a bit chilly and it rained a lot.

On the boat trip, we stopped and toured through a HUGE cave. It was absolutely beautiful inside.

Annie, Bronwyn and I climbed to the top of this mount while the guys went sea kayaking through some caves.

Isn't this gorgeous?

This is our 3 star boat - The Victory. Quite appropriately named we thought considering Easter was only days away.

There are many floating fishing villages in the bay - about 1500 people live on floating houses. Also in the village are a school, a bank and a temple.

Ahoy mateys! Are you going to scrub the decks?

We stopped at an embroidery factory and watched the workers making gorgeous pictures. I bought one and am having it framed.

Just a few of the five million motorbikes in Hanoi!! The traffic was insane and the horn honking was wild and loud but, as we came to realize later, actually had a purpose to it, the same as we found in Indonesia. Someone should publish a guide to horn honking and use it in Canada so people would stop honking out of rage. To cross the street here, we walked slowly in and around the moving traffic.

We walked miles down in the Old Quarter with our other friends, Kerry and Robin and their three kids, whom we met up with on Tuesday. We found this store with "Canada" on the window and had to have our picture taken. The two ladies in the store refused to come outside to take the picture so Riley, Kaleb's friend and fellow senior, took it for us.

We toured the Temple of Literature - the university in North Vietnam from 1200-1800's. It was beautiful and serene.

These tube houses are very popular. The communists gave out a small tract of land to each man in a family and as children were married, they built up! They are also taxed by street frontage so unless you are wealthy, you cannot buy more land. The Vietnamese folks who helped plan our trip used to live in one of these houses but said it is very dark and stale inside with three sides enclosed.

This is the view from Kerry and Robin's apartment they were renting. It was within walking distance from our hotel and is in the area of the 29 embassies so many apartments are rented for months at a time by foreign diplomats. They had a great grocery store on the main floor of the facility so one night we bought eggs, ham and cheese and ate supper together there.

Some more of the wonderful tube houses. I loved the colors! The streets in front of the houses are porches for visiting, offices for doing work, restaurants to eat at, playgrounds for kids and so much more. I think this concept of community is one of my favourite things about Asia.

Ladies use these bamboo carriers to transport and sell goods of all kinds along the streets. Of course this picture cost us some money!

Bronwyn eating noodles with chopsticks - not bad for a South African born, Canadian raised girl who emigated to Malaysia from England!

More picture of the beautiful limestone rocks of Ha Long Bay.

And again the cave....

On the boat, the meals were nine courses over two hours. We ate steamed crab, stuffed crab, squid balls, deep fried squid, steamed fish, several kinds of prawn and shrimp plus the most amazing Vietnamese spring rolls.

The might duo coming in from nearly two hours of kayaking.

This is one of the hardware stores all along the same street!

Again more houses and shops.

At the Temple of Literature.

Remember the Canadian girl who became Annie's pen pal from Dalat and who corresponded with Annie long before we ever thought of moving? Here she is! Annie and Khalie plan to live together after graduation and then marry rich men.

This is 'Hanoi Hilton', the prison that Senator John McCain lived in for five years as a POW in the 'American War', as the Vietnamese like to call it. Before that war, it was used as a prison for those who rebeled against the French occupation of Vietnam. Some escaped through the sewer system.

I just loved the bright color of this place!

Indonesia... again

2009-04-11T21:54:00.005+08:00

In late March, I took a trip back to Bandung, Indonesia, with the MS science teacher, five 8th grade girls, two 8th grade boys and Kaleb. It was a lot of fun but a flying trip since we left Penang at noon on Friday and returned home at 2 a.m. on Monday. A lot of our time was spent driving, flying or waiting in airports! The trip was optional for those 8th graders who wanted to see the volcanoes as they had just studied. Our friends who had hosted us in Bandung over Christmas once again came to the resuce. They gave us their home to stay in (they were heading away to Bangkok) and even bought us groceries for our breakfasts. We had hoped to get to two volcanoes, one on the north and another on the south, but the time got away from us at the northern spot and the traffic was heavy so we were unable to see the other place. Posing above the major crater. When we were at this same spot at Christmas, it was windy and cold so my friend and I were tossing our hair around for a crazy picture. On this day, it was very calm.

Waiting for the gang to catch up.

Hot sulfur rocks - our guide cracked them out and gave them to us to take home. I have one on my desk and although it isn't as bright as when it first came out of the ground, it still sparkles nicely.

Soaking in the hot mud pools.

The whole group at the steaming pools of the active volcano. Don't worry - the scientists are on hand and do tests constantly to make sure nothing is going to erupt.

The active volcanoe bed from up above.

How skinny is he? Skinny enough to fit into a dead tree trunk!

We hiked down into a dead volcano bed and with the lightweight volcanic rock, wrote out "Dalat". It's hard to see but Mr. Tyas (in purple shirt to the right) has a huge rock above his head!

Back at it

2009-04-06T12:17:00.004+08:00

School started this morning after our 9 day spring break. Our final students came in at 2 a.m. after missing their flight yesterday afternoon and having other arrangements made to get them here. When I have more time, I will post pictures of the Indonesia and Vietnam trips. Suffice it to say, we loved Vietnam and will definitely go back someday. Thanks to Mau Le, who helped plan our trip and get us the best prices possible.

All our flights back to Canada are booked. We fly three different airlines on six separate legs to get from Penang to Chiang Mai, Thailand, and then on to Regina via Bangkok and Toyko! Thank goodness for cheap air carriers :)

This week's agenda includes nailing down the shipping company for our crate and working on plans to take the dorm on a trip for the upcoming long weekend in May.

Spring break

2009-03-29T19:13:00.004+08:00

We are officially on spring break now. It began yesterday at 5pm although all the Chandlerites were gone by 11 am, which gave us some extra hours. We headed to the bus depot late yesterday afternoon to get our bus tickets to KL and then decided to head in to Georgetown to Prangin Mall to buy a new camera. Prangin was hopping with activity but our camera store near Komtar was closed. We ate great Thai food and fruit smoothies and returned home. Today, after church we enjoyed Indian food with friends and then Tim took off back to Georgetown. We now have a new camera for our exciting adventure to Vietnam. We take the night bus to KL and then shuttle to the airport for our 6:30 am flight to Hanoi. Lana won't be accompanying us as she made an emergency trip to Germany to help out a friend but Bronwyn is still coming. We are also meeting our friends, the Mahoney's who flew there today for a meal or two. We return late on Friday so it's a quick trip but one we are greatly anticipating.

Here are some pictures of happenings in the past week or so..... The Boomerang at the waterpark. We took the kids on an early release Friday so there were no line-ups to content with and everyone played hard!
Happy girls!

The Bubble is the best kid entertainment around. You climb up the Bubble with the ropes and then the water starts to rain down from the mushroom making everything slippery. If you jump up and down at the top the whole thing shakes and sooner or later someone goes zipping down off it to the bottom pool. For the guys, its like "king of the castle" to see who can stay on top the longest.

Soaking wet Chandlerites!

One Saturday night, we gave the kids money to eat out. Of course the high schoolers all made plans to go out in groups because they can ride the public buses here. But our poor middle schoolers were stuck with us taking them somewhere. We headed to Northam Stalls because there is a great variety of local and Western cuisine and because you can eat along the oceanfront.

Sunday afternoons can be long and boring so we drove out to the fruit farm for ice kacong a few weeks back. It was hot and humid at the school but up in the mountains at the farm, it was cool and drizzling rain. The ice kacong contained watermelon, lychee, sour sop, honeydew and mango along with the sarsi syrup spread on top. It was refreshing for sure!

JSB excitement begins

2009-03-19T21:30:00.004+08:00

The junior class officially invited the seniors to JSB with scroll announcements hanging from the trees with name tag apples on them. Which means that the 'asking' for JSB also began, precisely at 8 a.m. this morning. Kaleb prepared his big 'ask' last night with help from his dorm brothers and sisters...and me! He put a note in the girl's locker asking her to be at the clock tower right after school. Moses appeared on the Student Centre staircase, yelling that he had a message from God for Chan Mi Kim. He then read the "Five Commandments of JSB" and asked her to part the Red Sea - a bowl full of red jello to find a special note popping the big question. It was at this point that Kaleb made his way throught the crowd, bent down on one knee and invited Chan Mi to JSB. Because she had waited all day to find out who was asking her, she made Kaleb ask three times in ever increasing loudness before she said yes! Many other girls were asked today - its a bit of a feeding frenzy on the first day and quiets down after that.

So that was our fun for the day. Tomorrow Kaleb and I head to Indonesia for a quick weekend trip to visit some volcanoes with interested eighth graders and their teacher.

P.S. In case you can't read the small print, the Five Commandments are:

1. Thou shalt go to JSB.

2. Thou shalt have no other dates before your Date.

3. Thou shalt be ready at 5:15 pm in front of Jackson dorm. (We debated saying 'before the tent of the tribe of Jackson' but it didn't fit on the tablet!)

4. Thou shalt eat, drink and make merry.

5. Thou shalt part the Red Sea and take the note.

This weekend

2009-03-08T22:30:00.007+08:00

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.

The beginning of March

2009-03-02T19:07:00.001+08:00

It's so hard to believe how quickly February blasted by! March brings the soccer championships which will be held this week - Dalat vs our arch rivals - and it also brings the beginning of the 5 week basketball playoffs. And it brings the one week spring break starting on March 28. So everyone is looking forward to time off.

As I mentioned in a previous blog, this should be hot season but we've had these crazy monsoon rains lately. The clothes won't even dry on the line because the air is so heavy with humidity. The power company decided to change out a transformer here at the school, starting early Sunday morning. Without fans or a/c we thought we might die. But thankfully by the time we were finished lunch and ready for the two hour quiet time, everything was good to go.

I found The Tipping Point at a local bookstore - Kaleb is devouring it right now and I will read it later this week. I just finished Marley and Me because the movie debuts here on Thursday and I like to read the book first. I also bought The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch. It's a quick read but highly worth the time.

This is what happens when you try to share the small loveseat with your long-legged brother who doesn't want to share the space. Poor Annie!!

Kaleb is really into this cooking thing. He buys meat and pan fries it in a special concoction he makes himself. For this meal, he also made salad and bought French baguettes. The girls gave it a thumbs up!

Our two seniors looking pretty....cool??

Annie and David are hanging out together while Annie plays his DS.

Board games pop up all over our dorm - on the lounge floor, the kitchen table, the boys' bedroom floor.

Sometimes when driving the van, Uncle Tim temporarily goes insane and drives like a wild man. The kids love it and they play 'corners' as we drive along the windy coastal roads. Usually somebody ends up on the floor and those in the very back complain that they are going to vomit. Even that doesn't stop Uncle Tim - this time, he went to the roundabout a block over and drove around it a few times to add to the nauseau! Everyone falls out of the van looking drunk or seasick. But believe it or not, they beg for it again the next time we are heading out.

We are pretty careful with bedtimes around here. If one kid gets run down and sick, it spreads like wildfire to everyone else. But every now and then we tempt fate so to speak and load them up into the van after curfew for a McDonald's run. I can't believe how much they can eat just before going to sleep!
Another trip to the Youth Park one quiet Sunday afternoon. We took the skateboard, soccer ball, frisbee and had fun running off a lot of energy. Annie and Sophie, who don't like to sweat that much, stayed up on top of one of the skateboard ramps and took pictures. Santi actually brought along an English paper he was editing!
I love this picture of Laurian - he has such a great smile!

Kaleb and Santi are on one one side of the half pipe with Alan and George on the other. They were kicking the soccer ball back and forth but it fell off the sides too often and so their game became more of 'chase the ball around the park'.

Some of the Malaysian boys retrieved the ball for them but weren't that keen on giving it back. So Kaleb's negotiation skills kicked in and he ended up playing with them for awhile until they were bored! And then he got the ball back :)

Random news

2009-02-23T19:41:00.004+08:00

* It's the hot season but the last three days we have had rains. Lana and her friend who is here visiting from Germany saw dolphins in the bay at Batu Ferringhi and the locals say that is a sign of the monsoon rains to come - who knows?? So with the rain of these past days and the intense heat, the humidity is off the charts. To say its toasty warm here is an understatement, believe me!

* Our plans for the trip to Vietnam are coming along nicely thanks to the parents of some dorm students who live in Hanoi. They've booked us a hotel and got us on a two day boat tour of Ha Long Bay. We are sleeping on the boat ... which makes me wonder about bathroom facilities. Hmmmmm......

* I am heading to Bandung, Indonesia, again for a quick weekend trip as a female chaperone for a science class. We'll be visiting the volcanoes in the area and I may be able to connect with our friends whom we saw over Christmas.

* I got my dress for JSB. I know that may not be a big deal to most of you but here in Asia, my size 10 turns into an XL and formal dresses that size in my color and style aren't hanging off every rack.

* We have strawberries in the freezer! A couple headed up to the Cameron Highlands on the weekend and took orders for strawberries that are grown up there. We can buy them here on the island but for some reason, the 13 km drive across the bridge drives the price out of our range. We bought 10 containers - two for the amahs and eight for us so strawberry shortcake is on the menu for Wednesday's treat night.

* Kaleb and I are now big fans of Malcom Gladwell, having ready Outliers over Christmas and Blink this last month. I know we are reading his books in backwards order but they do stand alone for the most part. We love his writing and his keen mind. With all he discusses in his books, Kaleb and I are never without material to talk about, argue over and digest. Now I have to find Tipping Point!!

* Speaking of books, I also consumed Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns in the past few weeks. Outstanding, both of them. They helped me understand some of the issues that people in this part of the world face every day. And I also read F Scott Fitzgerald's short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and then endured the movie. To say the movie is loosely based on the book is an understatement...the only things that are the same are two characters, one named Benjamin Button and the other named Daisy and okay, maybe the fact that BB lives his life backwards. I did think the movie was well acted - it just wasn't remotely associated with what I had read. That's Hollywood for you.

* My other reading is the book of Esther since I'm in Beth Moore's bible study on Esther's life. It's great stuff and believe it or not, I look forward to doing the daily homework! Now that's not something you hear everyday, especially from my dorm students :)

* I forgot to mention that hot season is driving the cobras and other slithery things off of upper field so we are to be on the lookout. That means being a bit more cautious heading outside to my laundry area but so far, no troubles. I don't mind them at all, as long as I see them first but my preference is to avoid them all together. Oh must run, the monsoon winds are coming - the mango seeds and coconuts are dropping off trees like crazy and I've got laundry on the line! Bye for now......

Best friends

2009-02-23T19:30:00.002+08:00

Here's what Annie wrote for English class about her brother:

“Take that babe back to the hospital,” was all Kaleb could say after I came home from the hospital. Over the years I have found that Kaleb has an overly dramatic personality. He’s very lively, and flamboyant, having energy at any time of the day - even after sports practice! His mind is made up of many thoughts, maybe even too many for one person at one time. That’s why we are able to have such profound conversations about whatever is on our minds at that present time, which tends to end in a fight. He constantly has to be right, whether or not he is right at all. Kaleb has some of the most beautiful blue eyes that go with whatever he is wearing, and has hair that does whatever he tells it to in the morning or at lunch, at whatever length it happens to be at. Kaleb has to be the only boy that can change his mind as fast as a girl can about whatever, sports, clothing, TV shows, and much more. He just goes with the flow at all times, which means he has to be changing. It doesn’t matter where we are; Kaleb always seems to be taller than I am by several heads. He has fairly good style in what he wears, but seems to come to his little sister to take him shopping to help him find some nice, new, stylish clothing. Kaleb is my best friend; he has always been there for me, through the bad news and the good. He was there when we put our dog down and moved to Dalat, and now he is still here for when I move back again, to help me get through what happens in a teenage girl’s life. At the end of the day we are still best friends, lying on the floor laughing about something totally random that happened who knows when.

WOW - Annie truly captured the essence of Kaleb's personality, right down to the need to be right, which he must get from his father. Yep, I know I'm right about that!! And at the end of the day, if you were to be in our home, you would see them laughing about something weird or sprawled across each other having a tickle war.

I really like these two kids....a lot and most days, recognize that their outstanding personalities have little to do with me and my inconsistent, sad attempts at parenting. Thank goodness for a bunch of significant others and especially for God's grace that makes a 15 year old girl love her big brother to pieces.

Here we are

2009-02-14T22:21:00.005+08:00

The Archer family is once again on the move. We are heading back to Canada this summer to re-establish ourselves there. We have felt the Holy Spirit moving and doing something in all our hearts but we didn't realize it would be this big. Although it will be hard to say good-bye to the many wonderful things about life here, all four of us are at peace with this decision. So we have lots of things to pray and think about these days! Thanks to so many who have sent emails full of encouragement and excitement about this news - we appreciate your prayers and friendship.

In the meantime, however, we are still dorm parents to a bunch of neat kids and want to finish strong with all of them. Everyday they make us laugh and smile and stretch us beyond belief! We will be leaving behind four boys who have been part of our lives for a long time and we want to continue to make a strong and positive investment in them so they can make a good transition with new dorm parents next fall.

In other news here:
We have been plagued by a bat who poops all over our porch each night. Our dear dorm amah faithfully scrubs everything down each day but I have personally declared war on this little fellow. I don't want to kill him because he eats the dengue fever mosquitoes but I do want to relocate him to another place where we don't have to step in his crap.

Kaleb's trip to Malacca was amazing and I would show you pictures he took ... except he DIDN'T TAKE ANY!!!! Now that's not completely true - he took pictures of his friends in the van on the way there but none of the awesome historical sites he saw. I thought he knew I needed blog material.....

Tim ran up Penang Hill (for those who have visited that's the hill with the funicular railroad). It took him two hours of a good pace to get up. He stopped for coconut juice at the top. On the way down, he was tired so he slept on a bench at station 5 for a while and then carried on. His knee is a bit sore now.

Here are pictures of the week that was:

We hosted a progressive supper for our Valentine's dorm party. We were the dessert station where the kids could ice and decorate cupcakes. Every station had riddles the kids had to solve. We had a ton of fun doing this and the kids were stuffed by the time they went through the five courses in the different dorms.

One of our dorm's favourite treat nights is cheese fondue. They absolutely love it - can you tell?

Hanging out in the study roon for obvious reasons - first of all, its the only air conditioned room in the dorm after school til 9 pm so its the cool place to be now that we are in hot season. Secondly, the kids get one hour of gaming and they take that opportunity to play together. Thirdly, it has a comfy loveseat and piano - what more could they ask for?

Update on life here

2009-02-04T16:11:00.006+08:00

Sorry for the lack of blogging. Life has gone on here at an incredible pace and in the midst of that, we have dealt with some serious crises that have sapped my strength and creativity. Our boarding program lost three students last weekend due to poor choices and inappropriate behaviour. One of our girls was among the three and we are helping our students grieve and process in healthy ways, all of which takes time and patience and wisdom. We are receiving that from the goodness of God and through your prayers for us. It reminds me of Paul's words in 2 Corinthians...
We don't want you in the dark, friends, about how hard it was when all this came down on us in Asia province. It was so bad we didn't think we were going to make it. We felt like we'd been sent to death row, that it was all over for us. As it turned out, it was the best thing that could have happened. Instead of trusting in our own strength or wits to get out of it, we were forced to trust God totally—not a bad idea since he's the God who raises the dead! And he did it, rescued us and he'll do it again, rescuing us as many times as we need rescuing. You and your prayers are part of the rescue operation—I don't want you in the dark about that either. I can see your faces even now, lifted in praise for God's deliverance of us, a rescue in which your prayers played such a crucial part.

Thanks for holding us up and being part of our rescue operation! We appreciate each one of you.

Alan turned 16 over the Christmas break so we celebrated with a belated birthday party.
He got lots of food and some new t-shirts that are really cool.

David is a fine young Korean boy whose family lives in Indonesia...thus the reason he can speak Bahasa and English (and obviously Korean) fluently.

Chinese New Year weekend, Uncle Tim took some boys and Sabrina, of course, out to a waterfall to hike and play.

Laurian has grown so much in the two years he has been with us! He's beginning to discover his strength too so the older boys don't wrestle with him much anymore.

This is the slippery path on the rocks down into the pool of water. Apparently the hike out to the waterfall was fairly dangerous, Tim told me later, but no one seemed to mind the fact that the rocks were sharp and dangerous.

Sabrina also had a birthday. She turned 11 and we held her party after school so she could invite her day student friends.

She ordered the famous Oreo ice cream cake which can't have candles in it - only tealights on top!

On the Chinese New Year weekend, we had a full day off with Kaleb and Annie - so rare! We spent most of it with our friend Lisa and her two kids. We headed to the Youth Park, with several thousand other folks! We didn't swim - the pool didn't look so clean.

But we hung out at the skateboard park - no skateboard though just a lot of fun running up the ramps...very quickly because the cement was really hot!

Julia had her roller blades so she beetled around quite well.

Daniel made an attempt at running up the biggest ramp but didn't have enough steam to follow Kaleb.Later we enjoyed waffles and sausages at Lisa's house - the girls helped.

One night our family took a walk on the beach. These are the shanty houses put up for workers building the condos behind.

Father and son engrossed in a conversation.

The view from the school beach to the west towards Batu Ferringhi just around sunset at 7:30 pm.

The week at Chandler

2009-01-23T11:23:00.003+08:00

This week, before school started, we enjoyed the company of Mike, Lyn and Sam over a meal. Sam, who turned one recently, is way too cute and immediately took to Kaleb's invisible 'kid' quality. Sam mimicked everything Kaleb did at the table and got laughing so hard we all were laughing, not eating! He is definitely the most fun dinner guest we've ever had :) Later, Annie did dishes while Kaleb....well....I think he was thinking of licking out the jello bowl. That's a guilty face, wouldn't you say?Kaleb's best friend, Joel, had to return to Australia for university. While he was here for five weeks, they spent an incredible amount of time playing board games and hanging out together.
We have two new Korean boys in our dorm this semester. David and Dennis are lovely, courtesy boys and we enjoyed having David's parents and Dennis's mom with us for a few days. They insisted on cooking us a Korean meal on Monday evening. It was spicy and delicious!

The first day of school, January 2009. This semester we have two kids each in fifth, sixth, eighth, ninth, tenth and twelfth grades and one in eleventh.
On Thursday night, the power went out in the whole subdivision at 8 pm during our study hall. With no air con or fans to circulate the air, the kids all headed outside to run around in the dark. With all the dorms out it was craziness for a while.Tim hauled our firepit down onto the street and we enjoyed roasting marshmallows with some other students. Usually, if the temp is above +30C, we don't have a fire - just too much heat! But it was only +27C so it worked just fine. The power came back on around 8:30 pm but the computer network didn't reboot so we stayed outside. Thankfully all our students were finished their homework.

Dennis and David are noodle experts and love having them for night snack.

Check it out

2009-01-21T14:44:00.003+08:00

This is the new boarding program promotional video. It's on the Dalat webpage and features Kaleb and me, along with one set of our parents, an alumnus who lived in our dorm and other staff we work with. It was shot last May just before the end of school by a alumnus who now has his own movie production company in the US. I think does a great job explaining what our boarding program is like here at Dalat.

Girl's trip to Thailand

2009-01-19T16:50:00.005+08:00

My trip to Chiang Mai, Thailand, with three friends was awesome and too short! We packed our days full of shopping at the markets and factories, sight seeing and enjoying the main reason we came: Joyce Meyer and Hillsongs. That was absolutely fantastic! We enjoyed listening to Joyce's no nonsense approach to life and faith each night with about 5,000 other folks in a soccer stadium and absolutely loved singing and dancing with the Hillsongs worship team. Trust me when I say, you can get very worn out jumping up and down to "One Way Jesus"!

Anyway, Chiang Mai is a city rich in history and tradition. We loved exploring around in tuktuks (three person motorcycle taxis which we found could fit four North American women plus a lot of pottery) and songtaews (truck taxis with benches in the back). The night markets provided a great place to find some outstanding buys and barter for a better price. We ate some good, spicy food, endured Thai massages twice and did the thing any right-minded tourist would do when visiting Thailand - rode an elephant!!

Below are pictures of the different markets we were at, actually we hit three in four nights. The night bazaar which is for the tourists, Walking Street which is a local market and Tai Pai Gate market on Sunday evening which brought the hill tribes into town to sell their handicrafts.

Squid on a stick anyone??Jasmane is trying to decide between eating the fried mole cricket or the large grasshopper. In the end, she opted for Starbucks, I think!
The Thai foot massage was very relaxing. If I lived there, I would go everyday.

Half the fun of the trip for me was hanging out with Lana. Who would have guessed ten years ago when we were at Arlington together that we would now be in Asia together? God does work in mysterious ways!

Yep, those are real, live tigers! Lana and I wanted so badly to play with them as they are only four months old but in the heat of the afternoon, all of them just wanted to sleep. Their fur was so soft and thick. It was a lot of fun and is also highly recommended to do if going to Thailand.

And of course, the elephant farm is a fun place to hang out also. We took in the show, where the elephants play soccer and paint pictures. And we fed them bananas and sugar cane and took a half hour ride through the jungle. Its not the smoothest way to travel so I was thankful we weren't crossing the Italian Alps like Hannibal!

Indonesia

2009-01-06T10:17:00.008+08:00

This is a typical traffic scene in Jakarta. Notice the orange bajaj, at the front of the pack - best way to navigate through traffic.
Tim and Kaleb hired a bajaj to take them to the train station to get us tickets to Bandung. According to Kaleb, it was quite a ride!

This is the Alliance Guest House in Jakarta where we stayed for the first three nights and the last night of our trip. Highly recommended for a great night's sleep and a scrumptious breakfast at only $25 AM per night.

The lounge at the guest house was beautifully decorated for Christmas so the kids hung out there watching TV....

and surfing the net.

This is Christmas morning in Bandung, at a homestay house just down the street from our friend's home. It had three bedrooms, two bathrooms, two living rooms and a kitchen area that we shared with a few cockroaches! We opened presents before we left but I took along the kids stockings that were full of fun things.

This is the way to our friend's home. The streets in Bandung, at least in this area of the city, are narrow and very full of potholes.

On Christmas day, we learned how to play Ticket to Ride - a very fun family game.

This is the yard of the second home we stayed at - friends of our friends! The porch was huge and overlooked a lovely yard fully of banana and coconut trees. We were only here one night and again, it is on the same street as our friends so Kaleb and Annie were able to walk to hang out with the other teenagers.

This is the third home we stayed at while in Bandung. It was huge and gorgeous! The family who lives here was away on holidays and wanted someone to stay in their house so it worked out great for both families. The house came with a helper, who made meals and did our laundry, a gardener, a night watchman, a motorbike, a car and a very friendly Doberman.

Kaleb and Tim are in the dining room, on the ground level.

This is the second story sitting area, a great place for taking an afternoon nap on the lovely Thai couch.

Just off from the sitting area was the master bedroom with ensuite.

Tim is standing at the front door. The verandah above was a great place to hang out or read a book.

The yard was a couple of acres of rain forest with monkeys, squirrels and other things like...
this tremendously huge spider. It's hard to tell how big it actually was but it was as long as two of Tim's handspans. We found it inside the house and the gardener graciously removed it for us.

Tim and Kaleb plus our friend and his son went out motorbiking in the mountains. Here they are getting gas!

Kaleb loved ripping around on the bike. While the guys were out, the girls went shopping to the factory outlet stores and got some very good deals.

The fellows stopped for coffee and our friend, who speaks fluent Bahasa, was able to chat with the other Indonesian men.

Along one of the mountains roads were vendors who sold rabbits. We stopped to pet and hold the little ones. Just down the road from this is the rabbit satay house - if the rabbits aren't sold for pets, they are sold for food!

On our trip up the mountain to the volcano, we were asked several times to pose for pictures with the Indonesians. After I put my sunglasses on, they must have thought I was a movie star since people would run ahead of me, turn around and snap my picture. And one fellow even followed me with a video camera!

We are standing on the edge of the old volcano site and it was very windy up there. It was chilly but I didn't mind since the wind was fresh and clean.

The trials of curly hair on a windy day while trying to get a decent picture taken.... ugh!

We took a hiking path to another volcano site where geysers are still spewing out steam. It was very rocky and had a strong sulfur smell.

Soaking our feet in the +30C pool of water - it felt wonderful and the mud worked wonders on the skin.

As we were hiking, I managed to slip on the greasy mud and get all dirty. Now there's a spot dedicated to me along the path!

For lunch, we took our picnic basket to the local tea plantation. Tea plants are stocky and dense so rolling on top of them is a lot of fun. Kaleb loved doing it but, being so skinny, occasionally fell through the small gaps.

Cream bath is an absolute treat that North American beauty salons should pick up on. For $5, we had an hour and a half treatment of avocado cream on our hair along with a head, back and arm massage. This was followed by a scrub treatment that was rinsed off with steaming towels. Later they rinsed, washed and styled our hair.

Back at the guest house in Jakarta before flying home, Kaleb had far too much energy and poor Annie endured a lot of brotherly love!

Stuck in Jakarta

2009-01-01T16:31:00.002+08:00

We left Bandung early this morning on a 'travel', a van that drove like mad down the new toll road between Bandung and Jakarta. We arrived at the airport to a line-up at the Air Asia counter with all those flying to KL. When the line was gone, I walked up to see how quickly we could get boarding passes to Penang so we could make our way through the second security section to get something to eat. Guess what? The flight is NOT today - it has been changed to tomorrow!! And they attempted to call us but we were not available. So we are back at the Alliance Guest House, after getting burgers at A&W and treats at Dunkin' Donuts. We'll hit the big mall we missed last time so the kids can spend the rest of their rupiahs and will get back to Penang late, late tomorrow night. This is our third trip with Air Asia and all have been very eventful - I fly with them again next week to Thailand so here's hoping I get there and back OK!!

Amazing

2008-12-31T16:33:00.002+08:00

Sorry for the lack of blogging. We left on Sunday, Dec 21, for Indonesia and I really haven't wanted to spend much time on the computer while we are here. It's been an amazing trip to say the least. I love living in Malaysia - so many wonderful things about the culture, the people, the food but if God ever changes His mind on where we live, I would gladly come to Indonesia. It's beautiful, so very green, the people are friendly even though we don't speak Bahasa and the weather is cooler, at least in the mountains where we've been staying for the last week. I love it here and have had such a great time, relaxing, reading, hanging out with friends, and sleeping in. We leave tomorrow morning for Jakarta to fly back to Penang and will carry with us wonderful memories of our amazing Indonesian experience. When we get home I'll post pictures of all we did and saw. Happy New Year to all!

The end and the beginning

2008-12-19T22:35:00.005+08:00

We are officially done for this semester!!! It all ended tonight with the cutting of our school director's tie at the staff Christmas party. That is our signal that work is over and holidays have begun! Here are some pictures of our day:

The lovely Christmas tree in the chapel.Kaleb sitting on Santa Clause's knee (aka Mr Colburn). Annie didn't want to....enough said.
Our good friend Nancy from Calgary, who is the kindergarten teacher.

Annie with some boys....

and Kaleb with some girls.

Mr. Stutzman, aka the Critter Guy, got a lizard from his secret Santa partner!

Brian, our deputy director and residence life supervisor, cutting Karl's tie - yippee!!!

Some of our 'friends' with legal papers came today for a break from their work. They did a dance from their home country in traditional dress and sang some carols in their native tongue.
We took time to pray over them...

and have our pictures taken with them. They also signed the new book I received about their difficulties. Thanks to so many of you who have given to this cause - its greatly appreciated.

Colossal mess

2008-12-18T13:17:00.003+08:00

The dorm is in one big mess as kids pack, clean and throw away. Three have already left for their flights - two more leave later today and the last four at 5 a.m. tomorrow morning. Then we'll sleep a bunch and enjoy the staff Christmas party tomorrow evening.

For those that don't know, we are heading to Indonesia for 11 days over Christmas and New Year's. Our original plan was to go to Bali but with this being peak season, that didn't sound like the best place for quietness and rejuvenation. So since we are flying into Jakarta, we decided to stay there at the guest house for two days/three nights before heading to Bandung to be with friends. They have graciously given of their time to find us vacant missionary homes to stay in so we aren't stuck in a hotel. We are hoping to do some hiking in the area as there are volcanoes nearby and will no doubt enjoy the cooler weather up in the mountains. We are looking forward to it!

Here's some pics from our last days together:

The fifth grade classes, including our Sabrina, put on a musical at a homeless shelter in Georgetown and then were gracious enough to do it all over again for parents and students here at Dalat. The first picture shows the children holding 'angklungs' - an Indonesian instrument with hollowed out reeds. They played three Christmas carols in two part harmony and it sounded very lovely!

One of Kaleb's best friends, Joel, arrived back from university in Australia. He brought with him some new board games and the boys spent several hours yesterday figuring this one out. Kaleb dominated and won the first round.

Last week in pictures

2008-12-16T14:47:00.005+08:00

These two Canadian kids are crazy and usually end up spreading laughter wherever they go!Laurian has his 13th birthday a few days after we break for Christmas holidays so we helped him celebrate early.

These two little staff boys are way too cute. They thought they found a scorpion so out came the magnifying glass. Too bad it only turned out to be a big ant!

These four (British, American, Korean and Tanzanian) are nearly inseparable. I'm sure they bring a lot of fun to the 8th grade class!

The Art Open Door was an awesome display of the students' talents. Here is Abbie's drawing of the inside of our student fridge minus the mold.

The little boy pointing his finger is Abbie's brother and the bottom drawing is a self portrait. Abbie is in AP art so she has to finish 24 major pieces for submission in May. I'm hoping she forgets to take something with her when she graduates in June.

Christmas party

2008-12-16T14:33:00.003+08:00

We bought sparkling grape juice for the students and the bottles made the tables look so pretty!
A bunch of clowns!

Looking forward to some great Mexican food!

The kids had to put a piece of paper behind their backs and try to rip it into the shape of a Christmas tree. Kinda sad looking trees!

During the Chinese gift exchange, this windmill flower was a bit hit and Nathan eventually ended up with it. He was thrilled :)

The stockings had lots of fun food items plus McDonald's gift certificates.

Here the kids had to put a piece of paper on their heads and draw Santa and his reindeer - the results were hilarious!

Annie got a really neat handmade book from Renata filled with candy.

In this game, the students had to come up with as many words as possible using the letters to 'Merry Christmas'. Kaleb's team won with 78 words.

We took the kids to the revolving restaurant for the Baskin Robbins ice cream feast - it was awesome but we were all stuffed when we left. Notice the kids are all in their new Chandler Dorm t-shirts.

Engrish

2008-12-15T22:21:00.003+08:00

I have copied this from my friend Ronda's blog about buying what she thought were new North Face socks and then reading the package after she got home. Those of us who live in places where English is a second language for most of the population are quite used to translating Engrish and can even find ourselves speaking it on occasion!! By the way, Ronda lives in Nepal and really needs good socks to climb those magnificent Himalayas.

This product is made by a kind of Hi-Tech, lead the multi-functionalartifical silk of sweat nature high. Combine the socks made with the textile fibre. Have good arranging the sweat, so the characteristic rapidly. Make you feel more soft while wearing, dry and confortable and comfortable.Thicken dealing with to the toe and heel position, get better protection in the outdoor exercises. Don't bleach, warm water is it wash to look through make sure not with apt to fade clothes is it wash to mix.

The week that was

2008-12-09T20:47:00.006+08:00

Sabrina's first piano recital - she did very well despite the nerves and was cheered on by her dorm brothers and sisters.Laurian, Mary and Sophie had their first band concert. With only three months on their instruments, the whole beginning band did very well.

Two of the cutest audience members at the concert!

The boys love having fun chasing each other. Here we have the pillow chase - high schoolers against the younger boys. While the HSer's won the chase, the little guys put up a valiant effort.

We did the unthinkable and made everyone get up early one morning to get breakfast at the market. Usually Uncle Tim goes with a couple boys and brings back the order list for everyone else. Notice the grumpy looks on the girls' faces....

the boys however, loved it and ate their share of wan tan mee, chinese pancakes and roti with dahl.

These three are waiting for morning prayer before school starts. Annie and Alan are in the regular uniform shirts. Kaleb is wearing the coveted 'senior' shirt - bright purple this year.

Crazy Annie Mae!

Fun loving Kaleb!

Senior treat at our dorm this week was barbecued beef by Kaleb and garlic bread by Abbie. Sheena is trying her hand at cup stacking.

And Aunt Lana and Tim are trying to beat the No Brainer computer.

Christmas banquet fun.....

Annie after hair and make-up before getting dressedBrother/sister combo after getting all dressed up!

Renata and Kirk - his tie was a perfect match to her dress!

Santi and friends waiting for their dates to arrive.

Alan, Diana, George and Abbie - all looking so good!

Kaleb and Bethany, his good friend and date for the night.

You know you need a housekeeper when...

2008-12-06T13:57:00.002+08:00

you find the decomposing skeleton of a dead baby gecko on your window sill. Interviews will be held promptly on Monday.

Sunday fun

2008-11-30T19:14:00.005+08:00

Our dorm retreat was wonderful! We studied the prodigal son story and looked specifically at each character - the younger son, the older son and the father. We had an excellent dvd by Jason Hildebrand that helped set the stage for the story and our speaker, Steve, really made the biblical truths applicable to our lives. A bunch of other things for different learning styles were used to cement everything in our minds. So thanks to all who prayed for us to have a meaningful time together as families and as children of God.

Coming home was a different story. Five o'clock on Saturday afternoon is NOT a good time to be approaching the bridge with thousands of other vehicles all vying for two lanes on the exit ramp and later two lanes on the bridge. Imagine eight to ten lanes of traffic, not real marked lanes just cars, trucks, lorries, semis, motorcycles and vans, all over the place and moving extremely slowly in a tight space, jockeying for position to get to the toll booth first. We actually rolled down our windows and chatted with the other vans full of students next to us because they were so very, very close to us. In fact, I almost took the paint off a small Toyota car! Being a large 15 passenger van is an advantage at a time like this, especially over some small matchbox-sized car. What should have taken one hour was two by the time we got to the eating stalls on the island.

BUT this is way better than the option Uncle Tim S and Uncle David took. They decided to skip the bridge traffic and head for the ferry. OOPS!! Once they got on the ramp, where there is no turning back, the sign read "1.5 hours wait - 10,000 cars ahead". So their journey home was actually over 3 hours. Kaleb was in Uncle Tim S's van and he said it really wasn't a problem except for the lack of washrooms for those who had drank cans of Coke before boarding the van :)

So today, we decided to let the kids sleep in and not attend church. We had a brunch of coffee cake and omelets at 10 am and Advent devotions at 11 am. Quiet time is usually from 1-3 pm but since most had slept in, I offered to take anyone interested to play on the beach at 2 pm. Only four boys took up my offer but we had a blast making big holes, burying Laurian, wrestling (OK not me just the boys!) and running in the surf.

I did more Christmas decorating later and then we had a feast of Korean food this evening for supper, courtesy of a bunch of Korean mom's who brought kimchi and bogobi. I'm not a kimchi fan (fermented, spiced cabbage) but the bogobi was wonderful. This coming week is busy - Sabrina's piano recital, dorm treat, senior treat here at Chandler, junior class sales after school and at the weekend basketball tournament, appetizer theater which I'm in charge of and Christmas banquet. Only 19 sleeps til Christmas break when we can breathe again!!

Tim was the tech guy and managed to overcome several glitches with the equipment.
Kaleb was trying to get a picture of kids jumping with the journalism camera he brought along but lo and behold! My little, old Olympus did a better job!
Two Canadian girls!

We had a bunch of really great games to play - here's Apples to Apples.

Kaleb and Tyler arm wrestling.

For our last session, we had stations for the kids to go through at their own pace. Here they were to write their sins on a piece of paper and nail it to the cross.

Kaleb is walking the 'favor line', the imaginary line we walk thinking God expects us to perform in a certain way in order to gain His approval.
And here is Chan Yang, enjoying the circle of rest which does not require any performance in order to be loved by God.

Free time meant hitting the pool with friends.

We had small groups four different times to process what we were all learning. Annie's group is making their poster to define their identity.

This afternoon the boys attached the big rope we used at the retreat to our fence so they could climb the retaining wall.

The fun beach time.....

The stuff of life

2008-11-28T08:17:00.005+08:00

We celebrated American Thanksgiving last evening with friends at their house. In alternating years, dorm students are invited to the homes of teachers for Thanksgiving. The kitchen staff prepare a bunch of ridiculously expensive turkeys with all the fixings and the host families pick up all the cooked supplies for the meal. So all our students were 'farmed' out and we were able to get off campus as well. It was a lovely meal and fun to share it with friends. Happy Thanksgiving to all our American family and friends who are ending their special day of celebration.

And now we are getting ready to pack 8 vans full of students and supplies and head to Sungai Petani for our two day dorm retreat as we have today off. We did this last year for the first time and it was so well received by the students, we decided to plan another one and someone generously donated the funds for it. This year, a team of five people from Brian and Val's church in Illinois has come to help us with worship, drama and some seminars. They brought goodies for us as well - dried cranberries, chocolate and butterscotch chips along with some really colorful red and green Christmas chipits. We also received a huge package from our dear Kirsten, a Chandler grad from last year, who goes to church with these folks in the US. She sent Lucky Charms, Golden Grahams and a bunch of candy we can't get here plus encouragement notes for us. You have no idea what a tremendous blessing that package was to our hearts. We really appreciate her thoughtfulness since it has been 'one of those' weeks here for us.

Here are some pictures of things that have happened in the last week or so. Enjoy!

Bill is our faithful junior class treasurer and he loves counting money with Uncle Tim!

We had a supper in the dorm last Saturday night and invited Aunt Lana, Mr Liss, Ms Frans and her son. We had spaghettit, mandarin salad, garlic bread and angel food cake - the kids helped with all of it!

Annie turned 15 on Sunday and although she had been very sick the week before, she perked up for her party. Seven other friends came to join our dorm family and help her celebrate. We bought her a bright green Ipod which she has been pining for.
Friends from Cambodia, Vietnam, Korea and Tanzania.

Later, after Annie's party, we decided to put up the Christmas decorations (even though it was before American Thanksgiving....I know we broke a cardinal rule, right?) So everything looks very lovely now. We still have to decorate a white Christmas tree I purchased yesterday that will go out on the porch.
Track and field has come and gone for another year. Here is the busy junior class table where we sold hundreds of freezies and dozens of cold sodas.

Kaleb getting ready for the 100 m race.

Alan and Santi taking off in the 200 m.

Nathan doing the same.

Sabrina jumping into the pit at the long jump.

This past week

2008-11-21T16:00:00.002+08:00

Annie is finally perking up after six days of a brutal virus. She missed school all week and is just now beginning to eat again. I took her to a pediatrician that was recommended although at age 14, we weren't sure she would be admitted to that clinic. They did let her in and we had a great time in a very colorful waiting room watching toddlers and babies play with all the toys. Annie even got to be examined on a Thomas the Tank Engine bed!! The doctor said she had some issues with her gall bladder as well so that was the reason for the lengthy sickness. She is showered and out on the porch today having eaten two crackers with peanut butter instead of lying in bed. It's the first food she has had since Saturday!

We had an intruder in our laundry area out back. He was very nimble and climbed over the gate and between the barbed wire! Tim saw him from the dorm kitchen and came running through the apartment out the back door. We think he was going through Tim's tools that are kept out there and it does make sense in regards to some missing clothes that we hung on the line to dry. Anyway, he was quick in his getaway and kept saying "no passport" so obviously didn't want to be caught. The next day, the maintenance guys installed a metal bar over the gate so hopefully no one can slip between that and the gate. Arms, however, can still reach my laundry line so I think I'll put the oldest clothes closest to the fence. And the guards are adamant that if anything like this happens again, that we call them to come and do their job, which they take very seriously.

Track and field was held this past Wednesday at the University track. It was a great day all around - the weather was outstanding, junior class did huge sales of freezies and cold drinks and the kids had a great time being out of the classroom for a day doing the events together.

It's basketball season and our girls are hosting four other teams for a tourney this weekend. That means Tim is out selling hamburgers and stuff at junior class table....five tournaments down, one to go!

My emotional meltdown

2008-11-20T21:48:00.001+08:00

Kaleb is applying to a college in Winnipeg - half a world away from us.....need I say more?

Useful things

2008-11-20T17:11:00.001+08:00

I love order and efficiency as well as useful items that make everyday living easier. If you know someone like me, this is the place to purchase them a gift for Christmas.

Holiday pictures

2008-11-18T21:50:00.005+08:00

I just remembered that I hadn't posted any holiday pictures so here are a few of our five day break ...We rode the cable car up and down the mountains since our hotel was at the very top. It was wonderfully cool up there!
Smile everyone!

We stopped at Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur and walked the 400 steps up into the caves - very interesting to see the rock structure.

Lots of monkeys and other animals make their home in the caves as this is a Hindu temple site as well.

Watching a good movie in the suite we rented in a hotel down the street from the school. Kaleb and Annie took the bus to school.

This is the view from our window - very refreshing!

It's been awhile

2008-11-18T21:34:00.003+08:00

WOW - I haven't posted in a long time. Sorry but things have been a bit wild here. I was sick last week, completely down for three days and still not well even when I did get moving. I have now passed this lovely flu bug onto Tim and Annie.

Christmas banquet is a Sadie Hawkins affair here and the girls can't start asking until given the green light by the Student Council. So, at exactly one minute past midnight on Wednesday night (or Thursday morning), the girls could officially ask. Now the whole 'ask' must be done in a creative fashion. Annie, who gets to attend CB for the first time as a freshman, made a huge cookie and had a friend write the question in Korean since she was asking her Korean friend, Joseph. Alas, another girl got to Joseph first so we ate the cookie! Annie has decided to go with a group of girlfriends instead of asking anyone else. Kaleb was asked by his good friend Bethany through a series of clues he had to follow. Santi was awoken at 7 a.m. Thursday morning with balloons and chocolates when Angie came to ask him. Abbie and her friend Diana had Uncle Brian, a former policeman, handcuff George and Alan. It really is quite a frenzy around here for the first couple of days until all the excitement wears off.

The cookie Annie made.

Alan and George trying to get the handcuffs off!Santi proudly wearing his sign to indicate 'he was taken'!

We also had a busy weekend with junior class sales for a British school's basketball tournament. They rented our gym and outdoor covered court for under 13 tournament and it was great to have some new people to sell our items to.

Sunday was an interesting day. We had a computer 'fast' meaning no computers could be turned on so all homework had to be finished on Saturday. We told the kids, who were a bit panicked by the thought of no computer time, that we would plan some activities to help pass the time. So after our quiet hours (1-3 pm the kids must be in their rooms), I took them on a walk up a paved path into the mountains out in Batu. It was lovely and lots of fun. Then we went swimming after supper and did crafts together later. All in all, most kids thought it was a special day and would do it again sometime....although not too soon!!

Today is our day off and we went shopping for a birthday gift for Annie and for Christmas gifts for all the kids. The nearby mall opened their new addition so Tim and I enjoyed walking around looking at all the new, expensive stores. Tonight we went out for supper with a young couple doing an internship from Ambrose College (Calgary) in Indonesia. They were on a visa run to KL and decided to come up and see the school. Once we got talking, we realized we knew a bunch of people in common - the world is really so small.

2008-11-05T20:07:00.003+08:00

In my last post, I mentioned the cute things our kids do. Here is one in the category of 'special' or 'memorable'. Kaleb received this hand written note tonight from a younger dorm brother:

Thank you for being a great person in my life. You show me where I go wrong and you are encouraging at other times. I am thankful that I know you.

Isn't that amazing? Kaleb has written a note back and is leaving it on his brother's bed with a bedtime treat. That's what I love about this job - it makes up for all the late nights, academic issues and discipline problems.

Back again

2008-11-05T19:28:00.002+08:00

We just got home today from our five day break. I have a love hate relationship with five day breaks. In order to go away, someone has to come and basically take over our lives as dorm parents, usually a teaching family who work all day and then dorm parent all night! That means copious notes on our students, their schedules, their homework load, their likes and dislikes. It also means I bake up a lot of food to leave so the people staying here don't have to find their way around my kitchen. It also means we have to clean our apartment and wash all the sheets and towels before leaving. That alone takes the whole first morning of our time off and then we pack up everything we might possibly need, find transportation since we don't own a vehicle here (other than a scooter) and go away somewhere. That's the hate part of the equation.

The love part is the time away. Its good to get off campus, away from the activity and noise - did I mention we live RIGHT next door to middle school? Its good to see some new scenery, eat some different food, sleep in, stay up late and not have to worry for a few days about the needs of 11 other people...just the two we are biologically attached to! Funny thing is we end up talking all about our 'kids' while we are away and miss them quite a bit. We laugh at the silly things they say and the cute things they do and worry about whether they are doing OK in our absence.

Anyway, this trip we headed back to Genting on Friday for the jungle race. But alas, Kaleb was sick Thursday through Saturday and woke up Sunday morning with a sore tummy still so the guys couldn't do the father/son event. We packed up and headed into KL, stopped at the Batu Caves which are amazing to see after the 400 stair climb. We also wanted to shop at IKEA but couldn't get a parking space so left and came back to Penang. We booked into a hotel a few blocks down the street in a suite with an attached bedroom. It had an amazing view of the Malacca Straits. Kids went to school and Tim and I slept in, read, ate, had full body massages and sat by the pool.

Now we are back at it after reading five days worth of emails and all the notes Gerry and Beth, the willing and kind teachers-turned-dorm-parents, left for us. The good news is next semester the whole school has spring break so students fly home and we get 7 days off to stay in our apartment if we want to or to go somewhere with another family. That'll be great!

P.S. I'll post pictures when the camera battery is charged.

K's hair

2008-10-29T11:40:00.003+08:00

To redeem myself in Kaleb's eyes (see next post) I thought I should post this picture of his awesome hair cut by the new Dalat Hair Fairy aka Aunt Lana. This is only her fifth haircut ever but she's really good at it. Apparently she cuts by instinct after watching her hairdresser sister for several years. He looks very nice and will hopefully not hold a grudge against me now.

Genting Highlands

2008-10-29T11:06:00.004+08:00

We had Monday and Tuesday off from school due to the Deepavali holiday. Weeks ago, knowing we had this break coming up, all five dorms booked a trip to the Genting Highlands, five hours south. We left at the insane hour of 5:30 am Monday morning and arrived just before noon so the kids could enjoy a full day's worth of activity. The theme park is on the top of a mountain and, although its quite a steep climb, our bus managed to make it all the way so we didn't have to stop and take the cable car up. The outdoor theme park was open til 10 pm and the indoor theme park and shopping mall were open til midnight so there was lots to do. We stayed overnight and then after eating both breakfast and lunch and hanging out for awhile, we boarded the bus home. It was a great time of making memories for our students and I'm glad we were all able to get off the island, even for just a short time.
The brightly colored building was our hotel which has 6,118 rooms!! And it is only one of five hotels up on the mountain. So if words like "packed, crowded, line ups, wall-to-wall people" come to mind, you've got the basic picture.

This is the view from the ferris wheel.

While Tim and I were on the ferris wheel, Santi, Danny and Tim B got on this ride, which took them up very, very high and then dropped them like a rock!

Cotton candy was a favourite of course!

Can you see him? That's Tim, whipping by in the Corkscrew Rollercoaster. I prefer to keep my spine straight, thank you very much. Even Annie, who refuses to ride her father's motorbike, went on this repeatedly.

To celebrate Deepavali, the Indians use brightly colored rice to make designs on the ground.

Here is Laurian, Aunt Lana and Caleb M on the 'drop to your death, wet your pants' ride.

The three of us just before getting on the go-carts. Lana knew the number of the fastest go-cart so she jumped on it and whipped us all!!

"Ha ha ha! Prepare to eat my dust," says the evil Aunt Lana. If only you knew she was wearing a shower cap underneath her helmet......

I'm waiting for the door to close so I can change into my Superwoman costume. Notice the jeans and jacket? It was cool up there - actually I'm wearing two t-shirts and socks as well, something I haven't done since sitting around the campfire this summer at Arlington. It was wonderful to be truly cold, not just 'aircon' cold.

Food was ridiculously expensive at Genting but we really didn't have any choice. The kids were constantly eating so I guess it wasn't too much of an issue for them.

This is the view from our hotel room on the 13th floor.

One of those white hotels in the distance is where our family will be staying this coming weekend for part of our semester getaway.

What to do with 1. time on your hands 2. a creative mind 3. a small plastic garbage bag? Try to get it on your head with tearing it....... Poor Kaleb, he knows this picture will be blog material. I wonder if he will ever forgive me.

A night out

2008-10-26T14:57:00.005+08:00

Twice a month on a Saturday evening, the cafeteria closes and we are to go out to a restaurant or prepare a meal in our dorm. This past Saturday evening, our dorm was invited to the Watson home for a wonderful supper and a play time. It was an amazing evening of hilarious fun and scrumptious food.

The girls standing on the balcony overlooking the straits. You can see Rat Island in the background.

The Watson's have a lovely two level apartment on Pearl Hill with an efficient kitchen planned for entertaining. Nathan's parents were visiting so they joined us for the fun.

Kaleb and a few of the boys ate out on the balcony.

The menu included baked salmon, fettucine alfredo, strawberry salad, french bread and green beans almondine along with five kinds of ice cream for dessert!!

This is the big screen for playing Wii and play station games. We laughed til our sides hurt watching the kids jumping up and down and shaking while they were playing Wii Olympics!!

Happy Dorm Parents' Day

2008-10-24T21:11:00.003+08:00

Our regular dorm staff meeting is held Friday mornings at 8:30 am, usually in one of the dorms. But today, our school director asked to see us first in the boardroom. We assumed he had an announcement pertinent to the dorm staff so we gathered outside the room. At the appointed time, he let us in and to say we were stunned is an understatement! The tables were set with goblets, plates and candles, roses were at every dorm mom's place, music was playing in the background and a slide show of dorm pictures was being shown on the screen. The banner on one wall said "Happy Dorm Parents' Day"! We were seated by our name plates and feasted on pancakes, banana bread, fresh fruit and scrambled eggs. By our plates were notes of encouragement written from our students. The director kept taking pictures of the awed looks on our faces but would not divulge who had put this together. Those involved want to remain anonymous and so they will! But if any one reading this blog was one of the people involved, please know that you are greatly appreciated for your thougtfulness!

Our Korean feast

2008-10-22T11:48:00.002+08:00

Kaleb has long been begging us to go out for Korean food. He's been once with his good friend, Seung Yoon, and thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. We felt that if we were going to go, it would be a good idea to go with true Koreans (as opposed to Kaleb who thinks he's one!) so they could explain the meal as it was presented. I attend a ladies Bible study with Seung Yoon's mother, Young Sil, and so I asked her if she would like to accompany us to Seoul Garden, the best Korean restaurant in town, along with Seung Yoon and KW Nam (the father). She gladly accepted for her family and last night we met for our lovely meal.

What an amazing experience! We ordered the pork BBQ meal which came with about ten sides dishes including cooked spinach, other greens, cucumbers in a sauce, roasted garlic, pickled radishes, kimchi (fermented cabbage) and rice, of course! The pork was sliced very thinly and put on bbq's built right into the table. With a pair of scissors supplied, the pork was cut into small pieces after it was fully cooked. Then Young Sil showed us how to eat this - on a leaf of lettuce, using chopsticks, we spread on a tomato paste. On top of that, we added any of the side
dishes that we wanted along with a dab of rice and one piece of the pork. The lettuce leaf was folded over so nothing fell out and the whole thing put into the mouth!! Yep, the whole thing. Cheeks bulging, lettuce sticking out - it was hilarious for us but extremely tasty. They also ordered a special kind of glass noodles that are made for celebrations, Korean pancakes with green onions and red peppers, more pork covered in a yummy sauce and steamed eggs to end the meal. All of this is served with a constant flow of warm green tea.

Needless to say, we were all stuffed to the gills when we left. We had a wonderful time with the Nam family, hearing their stories of life in Korea and now in Malaysia. And we learned about new technology and products as KW Nam works for Samsung. It was very enjoyable and we highly recommend Korean food to those who like unique and tasty flavors!

I did have a 'bad culture moment' at the end of the evening when KW Nam paid for the whole bill. We had invited them to join us and had planned on paying. All the way home I felt bad and was determined to repay the kindness by buying them something. Then Kaleb, who is truly becoming Asian in so many ways, explained to me that it was like we had willingly gone to their country or entered their culture. Because of that, we were the guests and they honored our interest in their culture by paying the bill. I could understand that explanation and felt better but I still have a thank you note on my desk ready for us all to sign - never hurts to show gratitude in any culture, right?

October stuff

2008-10-21T08:51:00.004+08:00

Sorry - its been awhile since I posted. Life is starting to resume some form of normalcy, at least for students, so we are very grateful for that and for everyone's prayers. Anyway, here's a sampling of pics from the activities of the last couple of weeks. Enjoy! Sister and brother all dressed up and ready to go before their choir concert.
Tim has spent four weekends in a row setting up and manning the junior class sales table. This time he's at the Dalat sponsored varsity soccer tournament where our boys got silver and our girls took home gold.
It was a scorching day so the freezies and ice cold pop were big sellers.
Three good looking varsity soccer players.
Girls and cameras - they just love taking tons of pictures of themselves.
We celebrated Sophie's 14th b'day with a party while her parents were visiting.
Our little lounge had 23 people packed into it to help Sophie celebrate.
We were thankful for last minute plans that came together for Canadian Thanksgiving when our first plans fell through. Over 25 of us gathered in a friend's apartment and ate ham (turkey isn't available til closer to American Thanksgiving) and a bunch of other good food we all brought to share.
We discovered Canadian girls are LOUD! At least these girls were, laughing and joking and making lots of noise!
To celebrate the end of the first quarter, we always go to Baskin Robbins for our fill of ice cream. Nothing like a good dose of sugar just before bed!

With our first Saturday of the semester free from junior class responsibilities I took the girls out to the batik factory.

Annie and I were the only ones who had painted before so the others enjoyed it a lot and showed great creativity. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, the boys held a computer gaming party in the big lab where they could all link up and battle each other.

For a friend's birthday (I stress the word 'friend' here), Kaleb used the new satay BBQ his dad bought for him to cook his Korean 'friend' a meal. Apparently he thinks we were born yesterday....

Happy Thanksgiving

2008-10-12T13:33:00.005+08:00

Thanksgiving Day comes, by statute, once a year; to the honest man it comes as frequently as the heart of gratitude will allow. ~Edward Sandford Martin

Therefore, let us offer through Jesus a continual sacrifice of praise to God, proclaiming our allegiance to his name. ~Hebrews 13:15

What a beautiful thing, God, to give thanks, to sing an anthem to you, the High God! To announce your love each daybreak, sing your faithful presence all through the night. ~Psalm 92:1-3

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving to our family and friends. May your celebrations be full of gratitude to the Lord for His care in the past that gives us peace for the present and hope for the future.

What to say? pt 2

2008-10-10T21:05:00.002+08:00

Tonight, after sitting with one of our students helping her grieve and process, I got a very special phone call. Another girl who spent two years with us and graduated last June, called after hearing the news of our mutual friend. She was worried about us and wanted to see how we were. I can't tell you how much this meant to me (and Tim as well although he wasn't able to chat with her). To think that an 18 year old, who we love dearly and miss deeply, would care enough to call long distance is beyond me right now. She made a simple but thoughtful choice to honor others and offer kindness to us.

We are so proud of you, our beautiful little Swiss Miss. We love you with all our hearts.

What to say?

2008-10-10T19:10:00.003+08:00

It's been another difficult week here. A friend's series of poor choices has led to a ton of problems and consequences that have huge ramifications for our whole school. We are emotionally exhausted. We feel hurt and angry and sad and a whole bunch of other things all at the same time. The words of King David in Psalm 55 sum up what we feel - if it were an enemy hurting us, we could bear it but no, it is a friend, one who we walked and worshipped with. My bible study leader said this week, not refering to this situation at all because she isn't aware of it, that the wounds of enemy are nothing compared to the betrayal of a brother. Those words stopped me dead in my tracks because they are so very true.

But....there's always a 'but' in the desperate Psalms.... BUT .... we have been overwhelmed by God's grace. Because at the end of the day, we all need grace and we've all received it a hundred times over when we didn't deserve it. Grace, theologically defined, is merit given to the undeserved to pardon them from their guilt. Grace, relationally defined, is a generosity of spirit that recognizes we are all in this life together (sounds like a High School Musical song!) and no one is any better than any one else, despite the size of their bank account or their car or their retirement portfolio. In God's economy, we all have empty pockets except for the nails we carry that pounded Him to the cross.

So with the grace that has covered us and given us reason to smile through our pain, we are also extending to our friend, who is in deep need of it. And we are trusting in the God of hope to redeem and restore all that has been broken. He's so very good at it and since He stands outside the constraints of time and structure that we are bound by, I have no doubt that He is already there, exchanging the ashes for beauty.

And the fun continues on....

2008-10-04T13:20:00.005+08:00

The kids had to build card houses four levels high for an object lesson I was teaching the other night. So the SkipBo cards, which get used everyday after school, served a dual purpose! Only two teams ended up getting a house three levels high because the cards are so worn out :)
Hari Raya is a big holiday here so to keep the kids busy (and off computers), I planned some water games. Here they have to squish a water balloon by sitting on it.
This is called Soggy Bottoms - they had to put on a wet t-shirt and socks and swim to the other end of the pool before taking it all off and handing it to the next player to put on and do the same. We were supposed to use jeans as well but I couldn't find a two pairs big enough for the boys.
I greased up a watermelon so they could play Greased Pig in the pool. They played hard til the watermelon cracked!

Annie needed help using a physical science program so the boys joined forces with her to create a fulcrum that would move objects on the screen. They had a blast as the difficulty increased with each level they attained.
On our day off, we had the rare privilege of both going to see Kaleb's soccer game. They lost 3-2 to our rivals, Uplands International School, just down the road in Batu Ferringhi. Tim took a crew out kayaking to Rat Island (Pulau Tikus). Just as they were leaving it started to rain but they really didn't mind since they would get wet anyway and the rain made the water calmer.

I have been awarded....

2008-09-30T15:41:00.011+08:00

Tara, a fellow blogger with the most beautiful blog I have never seen called Tara's View of the World...no I'm serious, it looks like a scrapbooker's delight...sent me this award. Thanks!Now I'm sending it on to a few blogs I enjoy because when you receive the prize, you write a post showing it, together with the name of who has given it to you, and link them back. And then you choose a minimum of 7 blogs that you find brilliant in their content or design showing their names and links.

In random order my winners are....drum roll please....

I was just recently introduced to Carla's blog Here Am I. She has an oustanding blog about life on the prairies, raising three young children and being a farmer's wife. I love it because my heart resonates with the stories of small town living in Saskatchewan. FYI - Carla came to camp at Arlington Beach as a kid :)

My mother-in-law wins with her blog Free to Be Me. She's probably the most avid blogger I know. She posts about life as a grandma and a retiree and always ends her posts with a prayer - something that makes her unique! Mom and Dad have been to our cottage at Arlington and helped us with renovations - thanks!
Kathy, my birth mom, has a blog called The Leprecaun Lady in honor of her Irish roots. She posts about all about life on the prairies and being a grandma as well and keeps us updated on life back home. Kathy also visits us each summer at Arlington and the picture below was taken in our cottage there.

Lana has started a blog recently, Adventures in Paradise, about living here in Malaysia. Even though we live so close together and are involved in a lot of the same activities, I check her blog, she checks mine. I think she has damaging pics from the Bulgarian restaurant....Did I mention she worked for us at Arlington??

Colleen is the author of Finding A Voice. She's a poet, musician, writer...let's just say she's gifted and blesses others with those gifts. And she lives with our favorite potter, her brother Jeff, whose blog is wonderfully entitled The Endless Ever. He doesn't post often but when he does, his pictures are stunning. Their connection to Arlington? Their parents were directors before us, we lived in the the house their parents built lakeside and both contribute their time to the ministry.

Last but definitely not least (because this was the first blog I ever read), is Jordon's blog, which is apparently one of the most read blogs in all of Canada. Politics, religion, sports, social issues - it makes me think deeply and beyond myself. Jordon and Wendy bought a cottage at Arlington this past summer.

The Arlington Beach connection

2008-09-30T15:15:00.004+08:00

This is our friend, Muriel Teusink, who serves in Ethiopia at Bingham Academy. Growing up in the Free Methodist Church on the prairies, I always knew about Muriel and her work in Haiti. When things got rough there politically, she and her husband moved over to Africa. Muriel's mother is an avid attender of Family Camp at Arlington Beach, only missing two years of camp since the 1930's. Muriel and her husband came home this past summer to take her mom to camp - many of us had missed her mom in '07 so we were all very thankful to see her again this year. At that time, Muriel mentioned to us that she would be attending a librarian's conference in Kuala Lumpur but, being 5 hours south of us, didn't think she would get up our way. But then our Dalat librarian decided to bring some folks back for a library tour here and Muriel signed up! It was a short stay but special nonetheless. As we got talking, Muriel mentioned that Arlington Beach is really her home because she has roots there and people know her when she returns. We agreed - Arlington Beach is home to us too. And this past week, Arlington Beach came up in conversation with some friends here who have never stepped foot on the grounds. You see Lana, our new dorm assistant, worked for us at Arlington and another girl I know through our time at Arlington, a young mom, has been emailing me about the possibility of becoming dorm parents. So others here in Malaysia are asking what's so special about Arlington Beach way over yonder in Saskatchewan. Frankly, I believe nothing will thwart God's plan for people to rest, recreate and renew on acres set apart for His purposes by the godly men and women who dedicated the land to the Lord. A short few weeks of rest at Arlington does wonders for the soul.

This may sound like a commercial but for all those out there who haven't been to Arlington in a while, you may want to get reconnected this coming summer....the coffee is usually on at our place.

Weekend fun

2008-09-30T14:38:00.003+08:00

For several weekends this semester, we'll be helping the juniors sell cold Cokes, water bottles, hot dogs, fried rice and other goodies during tournaments. This weekend, we were fortunate to be on site for Dalat's volleyball tourney, which meant quick access to many things we needed. The next two weekends, we are selling off site at other schools who don't want the fundraising opportunity. So I'm pretty sure that will mean lots of trips back to campus! It's a great way to make money, especially when you have a captive audience dying for something cold to drink.
This is the new "No Brainer" game I bought. This funny contraption straps to your head. It asks you 'yes' or 'no' questions and, by either shaking or nodding, you move on to other, more difficult questions. The questions come faster and faster so inevitably you shake when you should nod or vice versa. Kaleb tried it out for me - looks hilarious, hey? - and had to actually close his eyes and concentrate to get to the third level. I can't wait to introduce this to the other kids!!

The whole reason we bought this game (and a few other things as well) is that some of our students have little ability to come up with creative and fun things to do. They always, always default to the computer games...and this week we instituted new computer guidelines in our dorm, which means a lot less opportunity for gaming, surfing, facebooking, chatting, etc ... I know, I know, mean Aunt Shauna and Uncle Tim!! Anyway, we are practicing the 'equal time principle' during certain hours from Friday to Sunday, which is when these kids will sit for hours bug-eyed in front of the computers and even forget to eat. Basically, the equal time principle is this: for every hour in front of the computer, the students must spend an equal hour doing an non-computer, non-electronic activity (which means no PlayStation, X-Box, DS, Gameboy, etc either.)

So for example, on Friday night when they have computer access from 4-10 pm, they have three hours to be on the computer and three other hours must be spent doing something else. Each student logs in on a sign in sheet and must keep track themselves. If they go over and don't remove themselves, they lose the computer privileges, except for homework purposes, for the rest of the weekend.

We considered paying the kids to read (yes, believe it or not but most kids nowadays DO NOT read! Kaleb was all for it because he loves reading and would rack up the dough) and then having them pay us in return for computer time but that plan was complicated. So this one evolved through lots of conversations with students and parents. Posted on our dorm hallway is also a huge list of 'other things to do' because students were worried they wouldn't be able to think of anything when the time came.

All of this has come to pass because of our frustration at the amount of time on the computers and because of this book. Here's hoping our new schedule and new options for spending time create more memories, healthier kids and better students.
__________________________________________
Other things that happened lately were the arrival of Ben and his mom from Nepal. Ben was a Dalat student for 3 years and our dorm student for one. His family moved to Nepal this summer and they found spaces at the International School of Katmandu so he didn't come back here. But he returned for his box of belongings and for a chance to say good-bye. We honored him with a party, speeches, a gift, lots of hugs and many tears. I told him I would see him sometime next year when we come to visit Nepal and trek around in the Himalayas!!

Lana and I decided to check out the new Bulgarian restaurant yesterday for lunch. It was just opening to customers when we arrived. The ambience is wonderful - stone walls, a fireplace, lots of quaint windows. We ordered one set meal together as it was a bit pricey - soup or salad was our choice for the first course and since its been pouring rain and cold here, I chose the soup which was tripe. Ever heard of tripe? Only if you are Bulgarian maybe. It didn't taste good or bad, just strange and Lana thought the meat was caterpillar because of the funny texture. The main dish, chicken stew, was yummy and the baklava was to die for. When the hostess came to ask us how we enjoyed our meal, we said the soup wasn't that great. She replied that tripe is the lining of the pig's stomach.....won't be ordering that again. Anyway, we were the very first customers so we received two free meals and had our picture taken with the owner. And then we went to Starbucks for caramel maichiatto's!!!

SEW

2008-09-27T13:26:00.003+08:00

Spiritual Emphasis Week has come and gone already. It was an amazing week of watching the Lord do incredible things among us. Over 20 kids committed their lives to Christ, finding freedom and joy that they had not known before. Many others spent time praying for their friends, others were encouragers coming alongside those who were struggling with different issues. We bless and thank Pastor Frank from Florida who spoke God's truth simply and clearly, with tremendous power. After six chapel sessions together with around 200 people, it was hard to have it finish. But mountaintop experiences like this do come to an end and so now we are back in regular routine of life, living out what we learned and loving the Lord more deeply for his faithfulness to us.

Kaleb asked for Pastor Frank to spend some time with the dorm seniors one night and so we volunteered to chaperone and bring goodies. It was a lot of fun - with the 14 kids present, they were able to write 'Dalat International School' in nine languages! Pastor Frank thought that was truly awesome :)

I'll close with the words to one of the SEW songs that students and staff are still singing across campus...

How can I stop from singing Your praise?

How can I ever say enough?

How amazing is Your love

How can I keep from shouting Your name?

I know I am loved by the King

And it makes my heart want to sing

Chris Tomlin

Fun stuff

2008-09-27T13:02:00.004+08:00

Kaleb was elected by his friends to be one of eight contestants in the Mr. Dalat competition. The first category was formal wear - he wore his tailor made suit and had the girls straighten his hair again. I think he looked very handsome but then again, I'm his mother! This is Kaleb's funny costume - he dressed up as a cold Canadian moving to tropical island so he took off the coat, hat, two scarves and five sweaters he was wearing. Tim and I had to go and retrieve all of this stuff from the little kids who claimed it as their own when Kaleb tossed it into the crowd!!!
For the talent portion of the competition, Kaleb donned a beanie hat with propeller and read "Prindercella and the Handsome Since".
At the end, Kaleb and his friend David, another contestant, had to answer some questions. Kaleb was asked what he would do if he was the director of the school. Very honestly he answered that, being kind of lazy, he would outlaw homework and have more time for 'friends, fellowship and socializing'!! And to honor all the little kids there cheering for him, he quickly added, "And have more recess'!
In the end, Kaleb was the first runner-up, while David took the title and was awarded the watermelon sceptre and a box of goodies.

Mary was the first one to have a birthday in our dorm so we celebrated down under the canopy by the beach. She had a ton of gifts brought to her by her dad who was visiting from England last week. It took a while to get everything opened and the guys lost interest in all the make-up, jewelry and perfume the girls were 'oohing and aahing' over. After supper, we had cake and lots of it as her local guardian supplied us with a chocolate cake to add to the ice cream cake I had made.

Sneak pictures

2008-09-23T22:29:00.005+08:00

Even though Kaleb's class sneak was over three weeks ago, we finally got the underwater cameras developed and got other pictures too. Here are some good shots.....
His little clam buddy!
Hanging out with Kim, Kat, Hung and Sheena
The girls decided to straighten Kaleb's hair one night. He really liked it and is considering having his hair chemically straightened although he's a bit short of cash right now!

The beauty of Perhentian Island

I'm King of the World!!!

Hanging out

2008-09-23T16:19:00.005+08:00

Movie night at Chandler Dorm featuring dill pickle popcorn and Meet the Robinson's.

The kids found this coconut on lower campus, where the majority of our coconut trees are. They worked long and hard at cracking and peeling the skin with a hammer and a chisel. When they couldn't get the coconut open, they decided to ask someone with muscles. Seeing that Kaleb is the oldest boy in the dorm, they figured he was the best choice!
And Viola! it was finally cracked and we all enjoyed the fresh coconut inside! Lana is so much fun - pure joy and laughter wrapped up in a bundle of hugs, good times and even pinches! Cheese fondue night with pretzels and fresh bread. How do you spell y-u-m-m-y??
Best buds :)

How many fingers can you stuff into your mouth? The Australians had all of us beat....hmmmm....
Cup Stacking 101 - apparently its a world sport! And lots of fun for those who are quick and nimble fingered.