Day 19 - Where I want to live

April challenge
Day 19 - If you could live anywhere, where would it be and why?

Yes, finally an easy one! :) This is a cinch. While I love traveling and want to see as much of the world as I can in my lifetime, there's absolutely no place like home. My dream place to live is Canada, my home and native land, and more specifically BC, my home and native province.

That being said, I don't have any desire to live in my hometown in the Okanagan Valley, although it will always hold a special place in my heart. I'd rather have a little more land and be a little more out in the country. I've never been partial to the Lower Mainland area near Vancouver either. There's some beautiful scenery out that way, but again too many people. Plus, BC is full of beautiful scenery. You just have to sometimes go a little bit off the beaten track to get to it. Give me the coastal mountain range or Vancouver Island or even the Shuswap area, just a couple hours north of the Okanagan Valley. I have no idea where I'll end up living in my life, but one vital key is that there have to be some form of mountains (even just big hills will do) and there has to be a few evergreens hanging around. A good-sized body of water definitely wouldn't hurt either.

In recent years my sister and I have schemed up ideas of living in small Sicamous on the Shuswap Lake. It's a nice small community but it has most things any person needs (school, grocery store, post office, etc.), but it's not swarming with people (except for maybe during the two summer months of the year when houseboat season is on). It's got great mountains, lots of green trees, lake access, and a little bit more of that living in the country feel without actually being the country. And best of all, who wouldn't want to live in a town pronounced sick-a-mouse?!? :) Only problem is I can't for the life of me figure out what my dear husband could find for fulfilling work there. So who knows. That's just one idea. I've got a few more bouncing around my head.

With the bro and a couple cousins on Kalamalka Lake (one of my favourite BC lakes)

Rocky Mountains in Fairmont (one of my many favourite places in BC)

Day 18 - Most difficult thing to forgive

April challenge
Day 18 - What has been the most difficult thing you have had to forgive?

Hmmm, I don't really know for this one. I think for the most part I can work through forgiveness without too much difficulty. I can't think of any really long-lasting grudges or unforgiving times that I've had. But there is one that I'm still working through.

Last year I worked with ADRA in Tanzania. Although it was a great year in many ways, the work part of my time there was rather lacking in solid guidance, general focus, and for the most part I had very, very little to keep me occupied. In a way, I kind of feel like I wasted my 8 months in Tanzania and didn't really learn much, at least job/writing-wise. That's a little hard to digest still because I was so excited about working and writing with ADRA when I finally was chosen and approved for the position. All that enthusiasm quickly vanished a few weeks or maybe a month after I got there. And I feel like the only redeeming part of the year was meeting so many amazing fellow volunteers and giving my heart totally and completely to the babies at the on-site orphanage. Without those two things, though, it would have been a really disheartening year, and even much harder than it already was being so far away from Jonathan for so long, especially leading up to our marriage. But God knows what He was doing and I'll just have to accept that He had a plan for my year in Tanzania. I hope someday He'll let me know what His plan was.

Day 17 - What I wish I was great at

April challenge
Day 17 - What is the thing you most wish you were great at?

Wow, how about everything? But really, if I just had to pick one thing I think it would have to be socializing. My parents and grandparents are the friendly, talkative sort, whereas I always feel like a bumbling and awkward conversationalist. Especially with people I don't know very well. Most of the time my brain knows what it wants to say, but somehow it usually never comes out very smoothly. But I hope that someday I'll be able to do as good a job of hosting people as they do.

Day 16 - 5 greatest accomplishments

April challenge
Day 16 - What are your 5 greatest accomplishments?

Wow, do these ever get easier?! I guess not. But they are fun to work through. Here I go (and I'll try to keep it relatively short this time...):

1. Getting over my fear of everything (well, not everything, but many things). I still have lots to work on, but it's nothing like when I was that scaredy-cat four-year-old.
2. Mastering the violin. Sure not easy to learn, but definitely fun to have as a skill-set! The biggest things I owe to my classical music training: 1) appreciating good (also known as 'real') music, 2) discovering the fun of ensembles, 3) meeting my husband.
3. Coming around full-circle to one of my earliest career ideas and finally graduating from college after only four/five major changes (changes two and five were the same major...).
4. Doing missions. Not sure if that really counts as an accomplishment, but every time I go out on a mission trip, whether short or long, I grow a whole lot. Hopefully I've helped a few people along the way, too.
5. Establishing a good Bible study method. For years, and I mean years, I aimlessly read a verse, passage, chapter or book here or there in the Bible. I read Christian/SDA magazines, devotionals, books to help you along in your Christian walk, all kinds of stuff, and never found any clear or focused method to actually get into the Bible and study it. Well, I have one now and boy is it ever working for me! I used to think that a shower was the only thing that could really wake me up in the morning, but a good morning Bible study does just as good a job!

Day 15 - If I were an animal...

*Well, I've fallen behind. You can blame the cherry trees for FINALLY blossoming and my upcoming Friday evening sermon for my accidental disregard to this blog challenge. But I've made up my mind to catch up tonight and tomorrow. Get ready for a whole slew of blog posts coming your way.

April challenge
Day 15 - If you were an animal, what would you be and why?

Wow, this is a hard one! I have to choose just one animal?! But I have so many favourites! I guess this topic isn't about favourites, though. Maybe it's about the animal I would be best as.

Jonathan, when I asked his opinion, said I would be a cat because I enjoy lying in the sun. This is true, especially on cold winter days if there is a window big enough to get some good sunlight. But I don't think I have enough feline-esque qualities to make me a good cat.

I considered penguins for a little bit. I like to swim, I sometimes look comical, and I like being around others. But that's not a perfect fit for me either. I definitely need some individuality and some alone time. I don't think penguins have quite enough of either for me. Colobus monkey? I like being in trees, and sometimes I have funny hairdos. They even have alone time or together time depending on how many of the group decide to move on to the next tree together. But they don't seem quite excitable enough. They're kind of like moderately quicker sloths. I talk fast with people I know well and I always walk fast. Nope, the Colobus isn't quite right for me. Sharks have a little too much solitary time and I do need people sometimes, too. Plus, they don't have family and that's pretty important for me. OK, how about a Canada goose? They have family, and even have a nice set schedule telling them when it's time to get a move on. And they get to travel a lot! But, then again, they go to the bathroom right in public. Soooo, not me!

Alright, so here's my final choice: dolphin / orca. They're in the same family so I figure it's OK to pick both. Both have been a favourite animal of mine at one point in my life (OK, let's face it, all the animals I mentioned in this post are favourites...) and I think I can see some Ali-qualities in both of them. They also get to travel and explore. They live together in a group, but you can sometimes see small groups of them and maybe once in a while even a singe dolphin or orca hanging out by him/herself. They can be defensive if they need to be, especially to protect the weak ones of the group. They're good at team work and pulling their own load. But best of all they have a fun joy about them that's contagious. You just try to not smile when you see those happy faces! Always being joyful is something I have to work on, but someday I hope to get that all-encompassing joy and zest for life that all the dolphins / orcas of the oceans are born with!

PS - If they'll have me, I'm SOO having all of those animals and more as pets in heaven! :)

Day 14 - 5 strengths

April challenge
Day 14 - Describe 5 strengths you have.

OK, here's the other half of yesterday's topic. I'm guessing it will be equally as hard to think up five things.

1. I'm good at organizing (even papers when I get into it). This being said, when I try to help other people organize their things it's a lot harder for me than to organize my own things.
2. For the most part, I'm a hard worker.
3. Although not your normal take-charge type of person, when I'm given a leadership role I can usually do an alright job of it, mostly by delegating different jobs fairly to those who are appointed to help me.
4. I'm pretty good at understanding kids. I think this is mostly because I have a quite extensive memory of my own childhood and since I remember all the frustrating parts of being a child, I can understand what most kids need or want.
5. I'm fairly good at saving money and not spending it on things I don't need. Where I do spend money, though, is on traveling, which of course is more expensive than say a new T-shirt or pair of jeans from the mall.

Well, there are five. Phew, these posts are just getting harder!

Day 13 - 5 weaknesses

April challenge
Day 13 - Describe 5 weaknesses you have.

Today's and tomorrow's topics are going to be hard. I'm never good at finding and/or recognizing my own strengths and weaknesses. It's so much easier to do in others. Isn't that just the way it goes... Alright, here's to learning how to find and improve my own strengths and weaknesses!

1. I'm not sociable enough in groups of people that I don't know very well, especially large groups.
2. I'm afraid of trying anything new, especially if I haven't ever observed the new thing I'm supposed to be trying.
3. I'm bad at giving people my full attention when I'm busy doing something else.
4. I'm not good at graciously accepting criticism (constructive or otherwise). I may look gracious on the outside, especially to people I don't know very well, but it's not how I'm feeling on the inside. It's a work-in-progress.
5. I need to work on having consistent Bible study. Definitely a weaknesses for me in the past, but I'm really working on making it a priority in the present and for the future.

And for fun: Bonus - I'm VERY ticklish! Haha, yep, that's definitely a weakness of mine. I'm ticklish pretty much everywhere and sometimes people can tickle me just by wiggling their fingers in the air and not even touching me.

Day 12 - A day in my current life

April challenge
Day 12 - Describe a typical day in your current life.

This topic will be the easiest to write up so far, I think. A typical day in my current life is nothing too extravagant or complicated. So here it goes:

I wake up whenever Jonathan wakes up (around 7ish), but usually stay snoozing in bed, happily knowing that I have an extra hour after he leaves to teach his first class before I have to be at work. He does his Bible study and then gets ready for his day. When he is ready to leave, I get up, say bye to him, and do my own Bible study. Then I do a quick check of my e-mail, and if time allows, Facebook and Google Reader, while I scarf down some easy-to-make breakfast - usually toast, yogurt or a package or two of Quaker oats (don't worry, people, we carefully priced it out at Costco and found that it was enough cheaper than the fancy organic plain oats they stock to justify buying a large box of it). Usually by the time I'm done breakfast I realize it's getting close to when I need to leave for work so I scramble to get ready and almost always make it to the office by 9 a.m.

Then I work there until noon. At work right now, I'm mostly just doing whatever editing needs to be done. My part of the office, the Adult Textbook section, finished our big government project about a month ago. Since then we've been helping the Junior Textbook section with their big project, revising a set of textbooks called the WISE Master books. (I have yet to find out if the WISE part is an acronym for something.) An earlier version of these books is being used by another English institute in Seoul, but I just found out today that next term a few of SDALI's smaller institutes will be piloting the new revision for junior classes instead of the Yes I Can and English Time books we currently use. So we're all scrambling to get these books done so they'll be ready for next term (which starts in about two and a half weeks). So far, for WISE Master I've been editing the Teacher's Guides and writing extra reading passages for some of the books. This term there are four foreign workers in our office and all four of us are working on various levels of the WISE Master books right now. I'm mainly working on the Junior level (the middle one between the Starter level and the Intermediate level). There are 12 books (one per month) in each level so it's quite a large project.

At noon I walk home and make lunch with Jonathan, who fortunately doesn't have a class from 12-1.We generally keep our lunches pretty easy since I only have an hour free. Just before 1 p.m. I do the five-minute walk back up to the office and work until 6 p.m. Then I rush home again to eat supper with Jonathan. This term he has evening classes from 7-9 so we again only have an hour to eat together. That means our suppers are pretty simple, too. Actually most of the time our suppers are much smaller than our lunches. I'm usually not even really all that hungry for supper by then if I've had a semi-big lunch. Then Jonathan leaves for his English class at 7 and I usually do work on my computer while he's gone - usually some e-mailing or blogging or just catching up on Google Reader feeds. If I had my library of books over here I'd probably do some reading as well, but I've been through most of the books we have here so my reading time is quite lacking compared to what it's usually like. Recently I've sometimes been using the first hour of my evening along time to watch an episode of 7the Heaven. It was a favourite with my sisters and me when we were younger and I still enjoy catching up with the Camden family from time to time. Actually I found a great site that has all 10 seasons and since I've never seen some of the earlier ones, I started watching from the beginning. I used to keep up with a lot (and I mean a LOT) of TV shows via the networks in college, but I've since realized what a time waste it is and have pretty much let them all fade away. And wonder of wonders, I don't really miss them at all. But I think I'm hanging on to 7th Heaven right now because it reminds me of home and my siblings who I miss. (Haha, if that sentiment continues, I might end up taking on Full House next. Bryn and Becky, we should have a Full House marathon someday for old times sake, eh?!) And since it's about a minister's family, it's pretty tame compared to most TV shows these days and tackles a lot of sticky issues. Anyway, enough about that. About 9:20 or so Jonathan comes back home and we finally get to hang out together for longer than an hour. This two-month term ends at the end of April and then Jonathan will have a new teaching schedule for our last term, May and June. We're both hoping he won't have evening classes every night and we can hang out together for longer some nights. Then around 11ish or so we head to bed.

See, nothing really unusual or remarkable. But I have to say, it totally beats the socks off last year when we had all of two weeks together out of the eight months I was in Africa. Have I said before how awesome married life is?! :) Anyway, if you'd like to SEE a few minutes of our lives, check out our apartment tour on our Korea blog.

*Note - Now that my daily schedule is down in written form, I can definitely see some areas I should improve on. I could just get up when Jonathan does and shower then instead of trying to frantically squeeze it into a few minutes just before heading out the door to work. It would give me a more relaxed pre-work time. I could definitely cut down on my computer or show-watching time while Jonathan is gone in the evenings. And instead I could definitely spend more time with God. So I'll try to work on those in the next little while. Yay for these blog topics actually showing me ways to re-prioritize and improve my life!