7 Days

Well I have approximately 7 days remaining in the U.S. My mom is now completely recovered and we are packing up and preparing to leave on December 5th. I still have plenty of packing to do...got to pack my bike...pack my clothes...pack a bunch of little things in my room...sort through my brother's stuff with him. Yep tons to do in a week! Packing is always so hectic. I have never heard of anyone who had all their stuff packed and nothing left to do for the last 7 days before they left. Everyone seems to slowly increase their frantic packing as the departure date draws near. Funny that. My family no exception. We are starting to pack like crazy. Of course I haven't increased my packing too much simply because I have most of my papers and books packed and now it is simply a matter of finishing the small stuff and a couple larger objects. Like some board games and my bike. Bike is quite important of course. yes yes. Guinea is the ideal place for biking. Lots of potholes and mud puddles in the roads. Well whenever there is any rain there are mud puddles. Otherwise it is all dry. Nice and brown. Yep that is what Christmas in Guinea is like.

Hmm...I shall have to continue the story via email through John Wilkos. From the time we leave for Africa he will be posting in my stead when it comes to the story...which is a really cool story! Yessiree! I like it! Of course I am one of the authors so of course I would naturally like it.

I shan't be able to post on this blog regularly once we return to Guinea. I may begin posting every couple months whenever I can find a good internet connection or go to a cyber cafe but that might not be very often at all. I may just not bother until I can get a good connection for free...whatever happens though, I think once I return to the U.S. I will most definitely pick up blogging again. Yep yep! This a most interesting way to express yourself. Not that many people read it but at least I can express myself to whoever is patient enough to put up with all my ramblings. Hopefully I can post a couple more times before we leave. We shall see.

Mondays

Mondays are definitely up there for worst days of the week. On Monday you have to go to school or something always happens on Monday. For my little brother, he had a root canal. Poor guy. In Africa there was this guy who gave my brother and his best friend a sucker every day. As a result his baby teeth are horribly cavitied. My parents have spent over 2000 bucks to save his baby teeth so his permanent teeth won't be ruined. I never had that problem but then my brother has it easier than I ever did in many aspects of life. Mostly because my parents are more experienced at raising kids now than they were with my sister and I. I am the experiment in my family. Yep yep. That is me. I guess I have come out ok.

This evening my sister and I were trying to out score each other in our arcade games on the computer. My sister has the high score in many of the games cause I don't play them as much. I am proud to say that in Sushi Suzi I got the high score and my sister couldn't touch it! Of couse the exact opposite happened when we played lock-out but that is ok. You win some you lose some.

Hehe! Mom is watching wife swap right now and it is driving me crazy. They pair two families of opposite beliefs and habits and switch out the wives. There is one wife who is a vegan and believes that the sun replenishes your calm and is like eating a meal. This lady doesn't believe in punishment and that the child should punish themselves. The problem with that is that childten aren't that responsible yet. The reason children has parents is because their minds aren't developed completely and their parents are supposed to help teach them the correct way to live. They have to teach that there are consequences and punishment is one way to do that. Sure there may be other ways but I just don't think that letting a ten year old punish themselves is the best way to do it. Now you could let them choose their punishment. My parents let me do that once. It wasn't pleasant but better than the grounding I was going to get. Yep yep. The other lady believes in meat eating and I agree with her on many points except she lets her kids eat tons of sugar which makes them extremely hyper and troublesome. Wife swap is quite interesting. Amazing what some families do. Of course my family is pretty different in some aspects of life.

Persecution Sunday

Howdy do and howdy day! What a wonderful Sunday this has been! Yes indeed! It was persecution sunday and so at church they were discussing persecution world wide and it was rather interesting. In Guinea among the Maninka there is a lot of persecution but it is not the normal stuff that everyone thinks of. It is more like being shunned and rejected and people just make life difficult but nothing physical (like beating people up or anything). Today I had a homemade rootbeer float with my pizza. I think they are just as good at home as at the store. So why bother paying 3 bucks at a restaurant for a rootbeer float when you can just pay 10 bucks for a 2 liter bottle of rootbeer and a half gallon of ice cream and have over twice as much? Yep much cheaper for more yummy sugar! Today I told mom that the best part of lunch (which was chicken stir fry with broccoli and all sorts on unidentified vegetables; blech!) was the bowl of white rice with butter and cinnamon sugar that I had after it! Yes it was delicious! I don't like broccoli. Though most people I meet seem to love it for some reason. My sister likes it for one reason. She likes it only because I dislike it. I remember the day she started liking it very clearly. Or maybe she is just trying to please my mom and dad but I doubt it. She decided she liked just to spite me I tell you! Sisters are always doing things like that. Just because you dislike something is reason enough for them to enjoy it immensely! I may think something dumb or dislike and my sister will immediately like it! Ahhhh! Ok so that is not always the case but hey, she can really make life annoying sometimes. She can be very annoying. So can I though. Life goes on and brother's and sister's bother eachother like usual.

Party Time!

Well today we had my brother's birthday party. For those of you who are steady readers of this blog you all may be saying "Didn't you celebrate his birthday days ago?" Actually I am not really sure how many regulars I have so....my brother did have his birthday earlier this week. And yes we celebrated it but the key word here is that it was on a week day. Meaning that we couldn't invite any friends over (cause they all have school and we don't). So that was just the family party. This is the one where you invite all the friends and they come and party party. No did not just write the same word twice on accident for those of you who think that was a typo. (My sister would single that out instantly and find anything she can to twist my words). Anyway so that is the reason. I had a blast! Besides the fact that half the people invited already had other parties to attend, of course. We watched Veggie Tales: The Lord of the Beans (I highly recommend it to all talking vegetable fans), ate delicious cake and ice cream (I made mine into a root beer float; yum yum), Evan got a remote control car, had pizza! But the best part was the combat! It all started with my little brother, who is quite the fighter (I have him well trained to wreak havoc!). He was sword fighting Andy (my friend from school and one of the three guests who came to the party). Then I sort of joined in with my knives, and my sister and her friend (Andy's sister who is the same age as my sister and the second guest to attend) and her friend's sister (slightly younger than my sister) joined. Soon my sister inevitably dug out the heavy guns (my nerf weapons) and teams were automatically established (boys versus girls) and the girls happened to have three of the four heavy duty weapons! hardly fair if I do say so myself! Not to mention that my little brother joined the girls! He really is a ladies man I guess...so it was 2 on four. I think we managed rather nicely with darts flying all over at us and one gun between Andy and myself. I was knifing people left and right until the girls managed to steal my knives and hid them. I must say I died quite a bit myself. By the time I lost the knives I managed to get one of the guns though (unfortunately they aren't much use in hand to hand). All in all I did fairly well. I don' t believe anyone won. Though I must say there was a pretty swift exchange rate of weapons. Yep! It was marvelous playing that! Just like the good old days in Kankan when I made everyone card board swords and we had hundreds of paperballs at our disposal. the living room was transformed into a papery battlle field and strewn with paper and cushions (from the fortifications; aka couches and chairs). Those were the days! We would have all sorts of fun with those! Well enough dwelling on the past. After the party we watched Around the World in 80 days which I have read before. It was quite entertaining. Not a classic movie but entertaining. Ah yes and during the party we of course played Moose moose. You don't really know my family until you have played Moose Moose with us! We are killer Moose Moose players (though today I was an off day for dad and myself). It is an intensely fun game which requires lots of discipline (to keep from laughing so hard you can't play and thereby being demoted in the game to the lowest rank). Our family has developed some interesting strategies for playing it. Hehehe! If you ever need an activity and we happen to be around just say moose moose and we will hop to it! Only draw back is you need lots of people who will listen to the rules and aren't impatient etc. Anyway so now here I am, writing on my blog for lack of anything else to do. Lately the internet is really boring. Normally I would chat with guineagal or John about our story but no one is on the internet lately and usually in a rush when they are so...yeah. People get busy and the internet gets boring. Yep yep. Well...I don't really have much else to say. I saw a cool documentary on a battle in the English Civil war but that was a couple days ago. Hmm...yeah I am pretty much out of topics. Now I shall discuss my lack of topics for a topic. After all that is something, though it is rather boring, don't you think. Ok I guess I will spare you from my ramblings. We are starting to look for plane tickets. That is good and bad.

Birthdays and More Pictures

Well yesterday was my little brother's birthday. He got some cool star wars action figures but what I think is the most interesting gift was the new veggie tales movie, Lord of the Beans. Though I have not yet seen it, it looks to be quite interesting. It is about Toto Baggypants and his magic bean going on a quest to discover great biblical truths etc. Yep! I can hardly wait to see it! I gave my brother a gameboy game. Lego Knight's Kingdom to be exact. He has been playing that quite a bit. Seems to enjoy it too. That is good. Today we got up and went to get pictures for our church. I have this ridiculously large smile on my face cause the photographer was constantly saying "say boogers" or "stinky feet" or some such thing which got me wondering what I could creatively say besides that and was rather amusing etc. Good photographer. Anyway while we waited for the photos to develop we walked around the mall. I made straight for the video games while Mom and Elizabeth went to this ridiculously pink store to look around. It was pitiful. Dad said he managed to stay in there for three minutes and dared me to stay in longer. I didn't want to. Alien planet. Too much bright pink and jewelry and what not for my taste. How do you girls stand it? Well I had to go in there a couple times but I wasn't in there very long at all. Just long enough to tell mom where I would be next. We got to go to G.I. Joe's (A sports store) next door while we waited. i looked for some fencing and archery gear but all they had were compound bows (the bows with all the pulleys and multiple strings and that appear as though you need a phd in order to shoot). I hate compound bows. I prefer the good old fashioned recurve or long bow (which require strength to shoot). See the whole purpose of a compound bow is to make it easy to draw back the string. I want to be like the English and Welsh longbowmen who just hauled back on their hundred pound draw weighted bows and let fly arrows that could punch through armor at 300 yards. Yep yep! I have heard that the English archers could shoot around ten arrows a minute and that is formidable. Especially back in the old days when rapid fire weapons did not exist. I love archery! As for the fencing I didn't find anything at all. It is a sports store though so I guess I shouldn't have expected to find any fence posts there. Maybe at a hardware store. haha! I am trying to find equipment for saber fencing but it is almost impossible to find much of anything. Rather annoying but oh well. Dad found an ice cream maker and was really excited about it until he read the instructions and finally noticed the ingredient ice. We don't have ice available in our house in Guinea, or even a refrigerator for that matter. Hehe! So much for that. I guess I shall continue improvising. I have found that shin guards work well as bracers. Next time I get in a sword fight with anyone I shall wear my shin guard bracers and my arms will be invincible! Hahaha! I practically feel like an armored knight just wearing them. I can always make card board armor in Guinea too. That sometimes works (and sometimes doesn't). I also have my stash of homemade bows and arrows so that should suffice for the archery (not as nice as the ones here but they work).

Continuation of the Washington Venture

Now let me see...where was I? I totally forgot...a bit of review here and, ah yes! New Testament Survey! yes well I was late and all that stuff. Now onwards! See what happened next...I am not sure if I went to chapel next or if I went to financial aid but I think it was chapel. Most likely chapel. Chapel was an improvement of the previous night since we sang songs that people knew a bit more. Plus someone included me! Yay! Usually I am a loner and sit by myself (until I find a friend) but some college freshman called me over and had me sit with them. Of course they were sitting near the back, but hey at least I can sit with someone. Next we went to financial aid I believe. That was interesting. I learned a bit about financing my college education. Then we had lunch and watched some of Batman Begins in the student center. Now the student center is awesome! They had a pool table, widescreen tv, and there was always someone there. Always some movie on and I got to practice my pool playing. I am ok at pool. My dad maintains that I was adopted from China because of my terrible pool playing but I don't think I am that bad. Heheh! I finally went to a class called Business Math and that was cool. All the math is practical and so it was quite interesting (even though I didn't understand hardly anything they were saying). That was my final class of the day. Then I hung out at the Student Center until it was time to go to the SING program. Catching a ride with my room mates, we went and got some pretty good seats near the front. We then watched a series of skits and sang some cool praise songs which was fun. A speaker gave a great message about how we need to respect God more. Not put Him off all the time etc. I will give you the gist of the skits. One was a dating game show with this guy pretending to be a person with a split personality. He is trying to decide between three people. A lady who is crazy about cats, a lady who is crazy about fire, and his second personality. It was hilarious! Another was about four camp counselors who get locked in the bathroom by the campers and are trying to get out. Throughout the skit all you could see was four pairs of feet sticking out and and moving when the person talked. Plenty of sound effects though. Hehe! That was one of the funniest! Anyway we went home after brownies and ice cream. I watched "Man on Fire" until about 3 to 3:30 in the morning and then went to sleep. When I woke up I went to a special breakfast and listened to the College president give a cool speech which I have only retained a generally idea of what it was about. I met a girl who has actually been to Guinea and that was neat. Didn't get to chat much though. Helped pack up some stuff...played pool at the student center until dad picked me up. We then got my sis and went to my Aunt and Uncle's house to visit with my cousins and all. They are ok but rather annoying. All below the age level that I enjoy playing with most (around 12 or 13 and up to college age I guess). I was really tired though. I started sleeping on the way over and when I sleep in the car, well...if my head is down and lolling all over I sometimes drool and that is rather embarrassing. Sometimes. Unless I am just too tired to care. Hehe! Anyway I was pretty exhausted. I managed to be rather presentable at my cousins but I finally ended up on the couch sitting with hat down over my eyes dozing. We then drove to the town of Ellensburg that same day so Dad could speak there on Sunday. I slept and drooled on and off the whole way there of course. My parents will every once in awhile comment on some beautiful landscape or whatever but I don't care. I just want to sleep. It was snowing (we don't get a chance to see much snow in Portland and Seattle) and I didn't care. I just wanted to sleep. The next day we had to go sit through Sunday school with my parents while they discussed everything that we already know along with a couple things I don't know but now do know. I was in a trance, head down, listening and dozing at the same time. I heard every word they said. I even understood everyword they said. My brain just shuts all else down except what is needed to listen. So everyone thought I was dozing off in Sunday school. Too bad the church has no youth at all. Only about 4 kids, one high school senior and some people who look to be in their 30's. That is what they consider getting lots of young people. Everyone else is at least 50. I managed to stay awake for dad's sermon though. usually I can only manage an open-eyed doze in the middle of service. I can sleep in church with my back totally straight, not move a muscle and just completely zoned out and relaxed and still hear the preacher. Though sometimes I zone out too much and have to move myself before I fall into a deeper sleep so I can keep listening to the sermon. I have it down to an art. I still listen and comprehend the sermons too! Really cool! I can even analyze it if I try and test the pastor's main points in this trance like state. Yay! I really try to stay awake and alert and it is so hard for me. So hard. I managed that time though (usually Dad's sermons are interesting anyway). Hurrah! Huzzah! Haha! See then we went and had a potluck like thing with the church and drove home. During which time I slept and drooled more of course. During the latter part of the trip (once we reached Oregon) my sister and I began goofing off and dancing to music on the radio in our cramped seats. Just for something to do. We ate at Sharis when we got back in town and then came home and got back settled in! yay! So there we go. A quick overview of my Washington Venture. Hehe!

Home Sweet Temporary Home

Long time no post. That aside I shall now recount a tale of my venture into the wilds of Washington and the college world. Well it all started at the college fair I attended awhile back (for those of you readers who have been reading this and know what I am talking about, good for you!) when I found out that we wouldn't be leaving until sometime in November. I had found out about Puget Sound Christian College's SING performance and INVITE seminar thing for prospective students. I had been invited and had declined saying that we would be in Africa by then. Only to have my dad correct me saying he had just made arrangements and that I would be going to the INVITE seminar. That was rather dismaying news at the time since I was hoping to be in Africa by then but I am glad I got to go. I shall now fastforward to the part where we travel to Seattle. The trip wasn't so bad. We stopped at a museum about Mt. St. Helens on the way up and got to watch some movie about the U.S.'s largest volcanic eruption (I think it was the largest?). That was pretty cool. After watching the volcanoe rip the landscape up about ten times in the movie and listening to survivor accounts we then got to look at the rest of the museum. After lunch we continued traveling until we reached the great city of Seattle. We stopped by a church by the name of Plymouth something or other (I don't retain everything about all my trips) and saw my dad's childhood friend Allen. He has just been hired as the head pastor (I guess he is technically referred to as the senior pastor; same difference) and is moving into Seattle. This is good news for dad cause now he can see his friend every once in awhile now. Well maybe a little more than that. Anyway I got to meet Allen and of course didn't recognize him (I guess I was just a toddler the last time we met :) ). I hate it when that happens. My dad was all excited and I really didn't feel that excited. I don't know him though. I am glad my dad had a good time though. Next we raced (well we got stuck in rush hour traffic; so we crawled) up I5 to the city of Everrett where PSCC is. We registered for the INVITE. Went to our apartments, and then to the introduction thing for the INVITE students. The introduction Escape service as they call it, wasn't that great simply because of three things. The worship music was too loud (amazed my ears are still working). The songs were all foreign, uncommon, or unknown to most normal people (really annoying when you can't sing the song cause you don't know the words and you can't hear what the lead singer is singing because the music is too loud anyway so you can't really pick up the song very easily either). Finally the overheads weren't working (so not only can you not sing along, hear the lead singer very well, or understand the words to the song, you can't even read the words in your head! That was really annoying and inconvenient). Anyway we went to bed that night (Thursday night) and my roommates played poker while I watched a movie called "Waterboy" that was really quite interesting. It was on tv and I really wanted to finish it so I ended up going to bed at around 2 in the morning. Had to get up before 7 too. I enjoyed the dorm part of life at college. I got to use the internet in the dorm (on my host's computer) and that was cool. I was able to comment on some blogs and reply to emails that way. The next morning I woke up at 6:45 and showered, shaved, and got ready for the day. I went to breakfast and enjoyed it (muffins and fruit) quite a bit. The company was good (lots of people who go to summer camp with us who I vaguely know) then off to my first class of the day. New Testament Survey. I got lost on the way to class (the neat thing about PSCC is that it is a city campus and so it has all it's buildings in downtown Everrett. So you have to walk around town to get to any of the buildings for classes etc.) but with my expert brains managed to find my way to class after taking a couple of wrong turns. Just have to get my bearings :). New Testament Survey was great and we discussed Acts. I was late and it was a little embarrassing walking in with the whole class watching (usually I am never late to class; not used to feeling embarrassed about that sort of thing). But I survived. Hmm...it is getting late so I shall now post this and continue with my tale on the morrow. Good night readers. Will have more on my travels in Seattle later.

Off to Sleepless Seattle

Howdy readers! I am sorry it has been so long since I posted. I have been working on www.randomstoryblog.blogspot.com. It is progressing quite rapidly and the story is much improved now that I have someone else to discuss my ideas with etc. Thanks Guineagal! Couldn't do it without ya! Well I could write a story but it wouldn't be nearly so good without guineagal to set me straight everyonce in awhile. She is a splendid writer and has contributed much to the story in the short week we have been writing together. Only a week! Wow! It seems like I have been working with her for ages! My goodness! Time flies and crawls all at once!

Well as you may have deduced from the title, I am off to Seattle. Well actually our whole family is going. We are going to a college tour thing-a-ma-bopper that will let us hang out at Puget Sound Christian College and see all the cool stuff that goes on there. Different classes etc. Anyway I get to go stay at the dorm and learn about college life. Actually last home assignment we had several PMI's (Pioneer Missions Institute I believe) at colleges and the food was great! There would be tons of fellow missionaries, fellow MK's from all over to associate with, and lots of good food! I loved it! Anyway this won't be anything like that. Thursday at 6 pm the college sessions start and they end Saturday morning I guess. Mom and Dad are gonna drop us (my sister and I; she may be a bit young but this is one of her only chances to go to something like this) off and then we are all on our own when they leave. Cool! Nothing like being "free" for awhile.

Once the event is over we next climb in our beloved car and drive to Ellensburg. A small town in the middle of Washington. My dad will speak at a church there on Sunday. At which point we will make the long, boring (driving in the U.S. is always boring; well when you are with family it usually is) drive home. Probably get home tired and late at night. I don't recall enjoying our visit to Ellensburg last year. Most of the churches that support us have little or no youth and I don't recall being able to connect with the two kids my age there. I do remember the drive home was really boring though. You know they need to put curves in the roads here in the U.S. to keep you awake. The construction crews should make sure to keep the road a little rough too so that you are jolting around and can't sleep if you wanted to. Then we wouldn't have nearly so many problems with drivers falling asleep. If you are alert cause you are worried about pot holes you will also stay in your lane (unless you are dodging a pot hole that is; in which case you can use the other lane if there is no one in it).

I meant to post about what I did on halloween. We were "volunteered" to help out at our churches Harvest Party. My dad didn't go 'cause he pointed out that we aren't really celebrating any harvest, no one who went is probably a farmer or knows much about farming anyway, and he had a couple other reasons involving children needing parental guidance etc. I forget the details. Anyway we went and "volunteered" to help out. Now I will have you know that I was even planning on volunteering of my own accord but my mom went ahead and did it for me. Which then made me not want to go. That coupled with the fact that Dad wasn't going, and I was chatting with guineagal and we were going over the story etc, and having fun creating it. I went anyway and still had a decently fun time. If you can call scrambling around collecting giant horseshoes for four lines of kids fun. The giant horse shoes were almost like throw pillows. Very soft and flexible. Anyway there were twelve of them and four poles that the kids had to try to ring. I spent the time (from 6 to 8) rushing around collecting horse shoes, speaking in a cheerful voice (it gets hard to maintain a cheerful voice when you get tired), switching to southern accents for the cowboys, yoda for the jedi, and calculating a batman's batarang skills, all the while gathering horse shoes and returning them to the throwing line. I was tired by the end of the two hours. Soooo many kids! The only other person manning our station was a neat guy named Adam. He has a real English accent which is pretty cool. Half the time I spent speaking in an English accent. They are such a cheerful accent. :) anyway I need to go to bed. So, my good readers, I shall post upon my return. Well I might take the computer and get a chance to post up there...but I won't count on it. :) Good night. Tomorrow we travel to sleepless Seattle!