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As Chrissy suggested in her comment on my previous post, I was going to write about my Hallowe'en costume woes. But then I thought "Hey, didn't I do that last year?"
Yesterday I wrote her a desperate email begging for costume idas. Since she works at a party store, I figure she's my best bet for such information. Try as she may, I was unsatisfied with her suggestions, although I toyed with the idea of dressing as an ESL teacher. (You're very funny, Chrissy!)
Last night I spent a good chunk of time browsing this website and found a solution to my costume dilemma. I was quite impressed with the ideas therein. There were lots of great ideas for homemade costumes and also lots of lame pun-based costumes like a babysitter in which one ties a doll to his/her rear end. LAME!!
Eventually I decided on a costume that meets my criteria:
- It's cute and/or fun.
- It's easy to make/put together.
- All the components are easy to get.
- It's at least semi-comfortable.
And voila! My costume:
(Please tell me you know what I am!!)
All I have to say is that Darren's lucky. If we had had big boxes laying around I would have forced him to dress up with me as a pair of dice. Or maybe a magnet, and I'd wrap myself in tin foil. But this way his entire costume consists of a birthday hat and noisemaker (besides a pair of jeans and a t-shirt.) That should appease his "I don't like dressing up and especially not in constrictive getups" side.
I've never been this ready costume-wise for the work Hallowe'en party before. I guess it pays to plan a little ahead. This way I can look forward to Friday rather than dread the stress-filled moments before the party as I run around the apartment searching for anything that resembles anything but me!
I'm a bad sister. Alaina is in Mombassa, Kenya right now at a YWAM Discipleship Training School. She left in September and won't be home until February. This is her first time away from all of her friends and family for an extended period of time.
Since she's been in Africa, I have chatted with her on MSN messenger once and joined in on the family's phone call to her at Thanksgiving. But I haven't sent a single email.
She has a blog and I read it faithfully. Acually, I do more than read it; I'm her editor. It's my job to add photos and formatting since she it's more challenging from via her Internet connection. So I feel like I'm somewhat involved in her life there, but I still haven't written an email!
I should know better. Every time I've been abroad, I have longed for word from home. Even though I loved what I was involved in, I always wanted to stay connected to the community I had left. I would leave comments at the end of group emails (blogs weren't popular back then) that hinted at my desire to receive "status reports" from my friends and family, (ok, I probably should say begged...) but few people would respond with emails.
Now I realize that most people were thinking, "There's not much going on here. What does she want me to write about...what I had for supper?" That's a fair argument, and actually the one that I use every time I think about writing and don't. But the correct answer is: YES! Yes, she wants me to write about what I had for supper or the fact that I got my midterm grades completed or that my husband wrote a paper on blogging in the classroom or that I had a funny conversation yesterday. It may seem dumb and insignificant, but it's just so nice to be remembered and included in the day-to-day business that you're missing.
Shame on me! I know the value of getting some news, albeit mundane news, from the homeland and I don't do it. But I will. I'm off to send an email!
Sidenote: It worked out well for me that Darren wasn't one of those people who thought his life was insignificant. When I was in Chile he wrote me long, informative emails that helped me feel less abandoned by my Canadian consort. Of course it helped that he thought I was interested in him...but that's a longer story for another time.
For the past 2 days I have been especially thankful that I live in St. Catharines.
Before moving to this city in January 2005, I was a pseudo-resident of Fort Erie. For 2 years (off and on) I worked as the night manager at a refugee shelter there. So my "permanent residence" and most of my stuff was elsewhere, but I slept in Fort Erie 6 nights a week.
When I finished working there, I started squatting at my friend's house. She was working at the shelter during the day and living down the street by herself in a 4-bedroom house. 
I would often "visit" her for the night, bringing a change of clothes and toiletries with me, and then eventually I just moved into one of the bedrooms. It was a great system - she was from Virginia and didn't have many friends in the area and (I think) appreciated my company, and I was living rent-free...although I did offer! Sigh...sometimes I miss those days.
While in Fort Erie, I experienced my fair share of snow storms. It seemed like every morning for weeks at a time I'd have to clean the snow off of my car and drive extra cautiously on the roads to Welland. I also remember getting stuck in the snow at least once and having to get Ashley out of bed to help me shovel out my Mikko in her pajamas. (What a good friend, eh?)
Residents of Fort Erie are used to dealing with snow, but not this early in the fall. According to this CBC report, yesterday's storm left record amounts of snowfall for October and while most of the city should have its electricity working by now, there are some parts of the city that will probably be without power for 2-4 days. The Peace Bridge and parts of the QEW were closed - in essence, the city was shut down...on October 13th!!
Back here at the Conley apartment, we watched the snowflakes fall yesterday morning with the excitement of little children. I didn't realize that there were places in the area that had accumulated snow until I started passing cars with significant amounts of the white stuff on their roofs and hoods. Of course, a little freak out episode accompanied each one. :)
Yes, it's good to live in St. Catharines!
One of the benefits of teaching an advanced listening class is that I'm constantly seeking interesting things to watch in class. We have a textbook but I like to supplement it with other audio or audio-visial documents on related topics.
I realize that "constantly seeking interesting things to watch in class" may not sound much like a benefit, but it is because it forces me to make the time to preview documentaries on various subjects and keep up to date on international goings-on (web news video clips), as well as get a firmer grasp on the plethora of online audio resources.
So I've been going to the library on a regular basis. One week I took out a stack of videos (yes, videos - we actually went out and bought a VCR because neither Darren nor I owned one) on Canadian geography; the next week, documentaries on Koko the gorilla and a man who speaks with wolves; the following week, the Inuit; and this week, memory. Usually I can find only one good clip from my stack of videos, but I enjoy watching them nonetheless.
Two library visits ago I stopped by the CD stacks and picked up Jesse Cook's album Nomad. We listened to it in the car for 2 weeks straight. There are a number of songs we like, but I must say our favourite is incomprehensible to us. It's called Quadukka-L-Mayyas, it's in Arabic and it's SO catchy! (Listen to a clip of the song here.)
The moment I heard this song, my memory brought me back to a day in our friends, the Peters', living room when their 4-year-old-daughter sang the entire song for me. I don't know if you remember from the previous paragraph, but it's in Arabic. And she sang it word for word.
This blew my mind then and does so even more now that I've listened to the song probably 20 times and the only words I can make out are the English words I superimpose onto the Arabic lyrics. (I'm convinced the singer says, "I know I have been efficient enough". Seriously - go back and listen; you'll hear it too!)
There are a couple of hypotheses I'd like to propose based on Ceilidh's and my interaction with this piece of music. (This is the result of my second-hand reading of academic stuff.) First, I think it's normal to seek meaning in sounds or text. I didn't try to turn the song into English; my brain naturally interpreted it that way. Secondly, I think this process doesn't start until after early childhood. Ceilidh was able to immitate or reproduce the Arabic sounds she heard in the song even though some of them were foreign and none of them made sense to her. I, on the other hand, am still struggling to sing along; my brain just won't let nonsensical words come out of my mouth.
I'm sure there's tons of research that both supports and undermines my hypotheses, but there's no way we're going to have 2 people in this household doing hardcore (or even softcore) research! I'm just going to have to believe that I'm right based purely on observation.
By the way, Darren found the lyrics to this song translated into English here...and there's no mention of being sufficiently effective.
Happy Thanksgiving!
There are few things in life better than a long weekend, especially one that involves lovely visits and lots of laughs.
We had a great Thanksgiving weekend. Friday was dedicated to Leona, since it was her graduation and all. Then Saturday we celebrated Thanksgiving with a delicious mom-cooked turkey dinner. Our cousins joined us for the afternoon/evening and it was so nice to spend some time with them. Jen and Pauline are fabulous girls separately, but together they're absolutely hilarious! I think they could hire themselves out as entertainers at parties; just by having them on the guest list, your other guests are sure to enjoy themselves.
Sunday morning we left my parents' house early-ish and made it to Church on the Rock on time (the first time in our life together!) It was nice to see some friends there - friends we don't have time to really visit now. This was followed by Thanksgiving dinner at Swiss Chalet with Darren's immediate family. The extended family (aunts, uncles, cousins, grandmas) will get together today but we ducked out of that one, needing an entire day at home to make strides on the necessary tasks of the week. On the way home from our visit, we stopped by Grandma M's place to finally get the rest of my stuff out of storage in her basement, a week before she moves to a retirement home. By the time we made 3 trips up the 4 flights of stairs, we were quite pooped but Darren managed to read an article and I was able to format a few handouts for his presentation.
I think part of why this weekend was so good was that it contained a great balance of productivity and relaxation. In Forest, whenever he had a spare moment, Darren snuck away to the upstairs computer and worked on his research (productivity) and then when company came, we visited, played games and generally enjoyed ourself (relaxation). My theory holds!
I guess that means that I'm going to have to do some cleaning at home today, or some research for a project I have to do for the culture class I'm taking. Or maybe I can count updating my blog as productivity?!? Perhaps I should begin by making some breakfast. Every little bit counts!
Posts have been few and far between lately, I know, and there are a number of good reasons for that. First of all, my computer has just recently been returned to me by the kind folks at Staples, after having her inverter removed and a new one put in its place - not a fun procedure for the poor inanimate object, I'm sure.
We did do a good job of sharing Darren's computer while my laptop was away, but work took precidence over everything else, and between my teaching and his studying, we were living in a "computers-are-not-for-fun zone" for what seems like an eternity.
Speaking of Darren's studying, our home has been rather stress-filled of late. You'd think that by midterm we'd be better equipped to deal with the necessary shifts in priorities, etc., but it's simply not true. We have begun to settle into some new routines and habits of this new life of ours, however. For example, we now get up at 6:00 am (Well, that's the time Darren starts the "wake Larissa up" process) and leave for school/work at 7:30, or as soon after as possible. I'd like to say this is getting easier, but that also is simply not true. I suspect this will be an ongoing struggle for the Conleys, or at least the female half of the Conleys.
One thing we have become good at is coordinating our drop-off/pick-up times, which became a necessity when we sold my car, leaving us with just the one. I really like not having the option to stay home a little later and take my own car to work on days when Darren has an early class and I don't because it forces me into a positive routine. I also really like coming home together. We can usually get through the telling of one of our days by the time we pull into the driveway.
I think we've also actually started to grow accustomed to the increased level of stress around the house. Please don't take that to mean that we've grown to like it. Some people thrive on stress; NOT US. We both strive to live in a stress-free environment. Since that is impossible, we try to create as much space for stress-free living as we can. In this new arrangement of MA reading and ESL preparation, we've found that times of relaxation have become special moments rather than the norm, making us take note of them and appreciate them all the more.
So there are benefits to life since September, but also much frustration. As I type this, Darren is reading an article that was written by a man whose sole purpose, as far as I can tell, is to impress and confuse the world of academia by his convoluted and complicated language. Every single sentence that Darren has read to me I have not understood. Unfortunately, the poor guy has to do a presentation on this article Friday, among other assignments this week.
I should probably start rehearsing my encouragement speech. It seems as though I get to practice it every other day, when things seem just a bit too overwhelming for my husband. But on the days between my oral support giving, I'm on the receiving end of a very similar speech. If nothing else, this year will teach Darren and I to support each other through everything.
As Chrissy suggested in her comment on my previous post, I was going to write about my Hallowe'en costume woes. But then I thought "Hey, didn't I do that last year?"
(Please tell me you know what I am!!)
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