a catch up

So, I've been home from Chile for almost 3 months. This is going to be a catch up post. Chile was wonderful. Came home with only part of my heart. I left part of it in Chile with a guy named Jonathan. Hopefully some day I can put my heart back together when he comes up here to meet my family. Speaking of Jonathan, he'd better get online so we can talk or I'll smack him!!

Today is memorial day. I am working at the Elmer Twist all day, scooping ice cream, making milkshakes. Nothing like making some extra money. I think I will make myself a sundae.

My friend Alexis got married last weekend. Sarah and I were in her wedding. She is moving to Alaska with her new hubby who is in the air force. We will definitely miss that crazy girl.

Well, now, I don't feel like writing this anymore. I've given up writing anything(besides in my journal) for quite some. That isn't a good thing seeing how I am locked into that correspondence writing course for $2,000. I haven't sent anything in for.... 6 months... wow that's bad. I've got to get on that.

so- I'm warming up. Maybe the next time I blog it will actually be organized, productive thoughts and not a bunch of miscellaneous things.

Love to all
Lizzi

Spiders, Worlds, Chef hats, the Letter ¨R¨

So, it has been a while since I´ve posted. I just can´t seem to find time to sit down and type for a while. I share a computer with 6 other people who need to answer emails and facebook stuff and etc.

Here is a brief overview of what has been going on, off the top of my head.

There are spiders as big as my palm living in the basement with me and my friends.

I made a big globe that is super cool and if you go to my facebook pictures you´ll see it and pictures of my friends down here.

Now I am making chef hats for the kitchen staff, I already made their aprons. This is a mental adventure because I don´t have a pattern or even an example of one. I am kind of figuring things out as I go along.

I cannot roll my R´s which sad because Spanish is full of R´s. They laugh and I try but, oh well. In this I am praying for a miracle.

I am on a diet of mainly fruit. I fainted and threw up a few weeks ago and they figured that I am anemic so I try to eat meat and lots of fruit and vegetables. I´ve lost a little weight so my shorts all fall a bit as I walk. I had to borrow a belt from one of my friends.

I get back home in three weeks. I have one week of camp, I am going down south, then I have a couple days here in Santiago. THEN I GO HOME!!!

Love to all!

Bienvenidos!

Hola from a ¨siempre¨ sunny Santiago, Chile!

I haven´t posted anthing in over a month, for this, I apologize.

The month of December is busy for most people, I believe. I had a couple extra things to keep me occupied this year.

One of them being this trip. Two months in Chile working at a Word of Life Summer Camp. The camp is on the side of a mountain in Santiago, the capital city (which is in South America, not Africa an they speak Spanish) I will have the internet on the weekends so I hope to update often.


This summer I find myself with a bit more free time than last summer. Last summer I was always running somewhere. This summer I am writing and reading and taking naps. I can´t complain but I wish that I could be of more help somehow.

I am moving to a different room again, only the 4th time since I arrived a week ago. While moving down in the subterrano (basement) of my cabin I stepped over a black thing on the floor. On my way back out I stopped to take closer look at the ¨thing¨. It was dead, slightly crumpled. It´s tail which would normally curl up a bit was flat making it´s length about two and half inches long. I looked and looked and yes... it was as I feared, a scorpion. There is dead scorpion in my oom. It was once alive. There was a live scorpion in my room! Ah!!!

Later on today I will cover a giant circular metal structure with fabric to make a globe. Then I will make costumes typical of other countries. Fun junk' eh!

Love to all!
Lizzi

Omnibus

Definition: pertaining to, including, or dealing with numerous objects or items at once

1. My neice, Avery (2) calls her snow pants- "Snowman panties"

2. A quote from Kiterunner: "Children are not coloring books. You cannot fill them with all your favorite colors."

3. I leave for Chile in 28 days!

4. My Aunt Judy at Thanksgiving dinner: "So, Jim, it'll be colder this winter."
My Uncle Jim: "Yeah, and it sucks! I want global warming back."

5. When Joseph was in the stable with Mary and the newborn Jesus did he wrestle with himself on whether he had missed God's direction somehow and that why they had just given birth in an animal cave. "Oh Crud! I just made God's Son be born in a donkey stall"- as he watches for lightening bolts divinely directed to his head.
(Even when it doesn't seem like it... it just might be God's plan after all- try asking just to make sure.)

6. My mom: "Well, I tried to put blueberry yogurt in my tea because we ran out of milk. Yeah, it was pretty yucky."

7. If you are looking for an interesting book to read (and are old enough to handle its contents) I suggest the Freedom Writer's Diary. It is hard to believe (and sad to know) that the things revealed in that book happen everyday in America.

8. Reflex tears (those shed while cutting onions or cleaning foreign objects from eyes) and emotional tears (sad or happy tears) are chemically different.

9. The World's smallest country is the Vatican city with .2 square miles. Montenegro is the world's newest country- officially on June 28th 2006.

10. Just one cow gives off enough harmful methane gas in a single day to fill around 400 liter bottles.

Love to all!
Lizzi

Feet

I hate feet. To annoy me all you have to do is put your feet near my body. (just ask Sarah, the little sister) Feet are eternally dirty, they usually have at least a hint of foul odor, and they are home to several different types kinds of fungus.

No, you may not borrow my shoes.
No, I do not like your socks either.

Keeping my hatred for feet in mind- a verse in Mark chapter one (in the Bible) intrigued me. The verse in John the Baptist saying that when Jesus comes he (John) would not be worthy enough to help Him remove His shoes. When I got to this verse I pictured John dressed in camel's hair potato sacks afraid to touch another man's shoe.

Not out of disgust
But out of self- unworthiness

What kind of man is this that we dare not even touch his dirty shoes when they are attached to his feet?

Confession: Probably if Jesus was walking on earth today and He came to my house and I needed, as a good host, to wash His feet (though it is no longer a custom) I would most likely debate- on whether I wanted to touch feet today (or ever). I would contemplate using rubber gloves... and finally, mentally scold myself with the reminder that-
"This is the Man that was beaten and crucified so you have never-ending life and fellowship with God... and you think you're too good to just wash his feet"

"Jesus... um... could I- uh, help you take off your shoes?"

Love to all!
Lizzi

Nieces and how they make me laugh

My niece, Bailey, is 3 and very smart. I don't just say that because I am a doting aunt. She knows and recognizes all of her letters and the basic numbers. She knows all the shapes, colors. She uses compound sentences. (never mind the fact that the 3yr old logic is evident throughout them.) Here are some of the quotables from my time entertaining a crazy, high-energy, ornery, fuzzy headed little girl.

*While I was buckling her in her car seat,
"Aunt Wizzy, you're such a nice, sweet dirl (girl)."
"Why, Thank you, Bailey, you are a nice sweet girl too."
"NO, I'm not! I'm itchy!"

*She often mixes her words up,
"Mommy, you gotfor my tup!" (mommy you forgot my cup)
"Aunt Wizzy, tan I sidebe you lay?" (Aunt Lizzi, can I lay beside you?)

*Everything did or did not happen to Bailey when she "was little"
She wore that dress (on a tv actress) when she was little
When she was little and she was a boy she didn't have a motorcycle.

Now, Avery, is 2 and SO Adorable!! She has one little dimple on her chubby cheek. She insists on calling me mom-mom.

*One day at dinner she reached over and grabbed my sleeve making my my neckline move over and slip down over my shoulder. Avery patted my bare shoulder and started saying, "Cow! Cow!"

*She started whining her ABC's. She was fussing one day over something and in a whiney voice she says... "A- B- C! D, E, F!" Half in tears and that wasn't the only time. Later in the day she started with "O, P, Q!!"

* She calls Bailey's princess castle, "Bailey's Boody House"

Darn! I love those girls!!

Becoming Jane

There is a movie with Anne Hathaway starring as Jane Austen called Becoming Jane. I saw it and liked it if only because I love Jane Austen and it is a sappy love story.

But, I have watched three of Jane’s books made into movies today and now am on a fictional rendition of her life. I am thinking in Victorian English and I won’t be surprised if this blog ends up sounding a bit “Jane-ish”

Anyway, my reason for explaining all of this is… I can see myself becoming somewhat like Jane Austen. She was single her whole life, took care of her sister (who was also unmarried) and her widowed mother until Jane died at 41. She wrote a series of vastly popular novels about love and marriage. Some of them were not published until after her death. She was a woman and in her day women did not get published and those who did were at times considered a bit shameful.

I know, I am only 23. I am not even close to being an old maid, and much further away from being a vastly popular author. (I don’t see this blog bringing me any closer to the latter and much nearer to the former) But, like Jane I prefer my imaginary heroes, the men in my books, much more than men in real life. “The only way to get a Mr. Darcy is to make him up yourself” I am dreaming of Mr. Darcy but only finding “Mr E’s” (read Pride and Prejudice and Emma to figure out the analogy)

As it seems from this movie, “Jane Austen Regrets” many men are in love with her wit and charm but she turns them all away or they get tired of chasing her and find someone else to love. One day she wakes up and find herself old, still loving men in reality but preferring those in her books. But, she is 40 and she doesn’t know that she is going to die soon.

I may end up like this. Never satisfied with the ones I find and therefore making up my own and being more pleased with them. Happiness in marriage only happening in my books and never for me personally.

Newest fear, Becoming Jane
Love to all!
Lizzi