Had all three meals outside today.

I like our verhanda. I like the sun. I like warmness. I don’t like the dog barking every three seconds.

Took laptop out to the table to get myself away from the distraction of the internet. Ploughed through getting all Special Ministry topic journals together and doing Kingdom of God assignment. At lunch I moved on to attempting to write my NT Bible study. A simple 500 words on any New Testament text you so choose for whatever audience sounds quite easy. HA. I changed my mind about 15 times. I have finally settled on doing the Centuion’s faith story thing in Matthew 8. I got pretty much nothing done. Outside was fairly free of distraction aside from the stupid dog and the time I made the move to the hammock and came oh so close to falling asleep.

Hit 4:00pm. I walk inside and find Sam looking for me. Didn’t hear her come in (sorry Sam :P)We ended up wandering up to Morrisons (the cafe whose coffee card I’ve gotten numerous free ones on, the best within walking distance). I had a latte, Sam a milkshake, we shared this berry cheesecake thing. It was GOOD! Spent over an hour up there talking and talking and more talking. Bit of laughing, bit of serious talk, bit of idle chatter. Very enjoyable. Thanks Sam!

There was a really old St. Johns’ Ambo guy there in full uniform. I had a bit of an internal chuckle (theres a word that’s a bit annoying) at some of the conversation he was having with those around him. Sam and I gave eachother a few grins over stuff he said. Hehe, an old lady came up to say goodbye to him. Some old ladies are just really beautiful, despite having all old hands and wrinkles and everything, she had these really cheerful eyes and nice smile. He points to the skin on her hands and goes, “You have the same problem as me.” Then he proceeds to talk about how horrible the drugs are and they use all these brilliantly non-modern words and are just superbly carrying on conversation as polite half-strangers. Yes Sam I was listening 😛 Only took a moment to take that in.

Nothing much else happened after getting home. I don’t know where all my time went this evening. Jess came over to get her computer doctored by Dad. That’s about all.

Someone stood on my Palmers Cocoa Butter bottle thing (best stuff in the world)without realising it, hence moisturiser all over the carpet, big mess. Not too impressed. At least it doesnt smell too much (and rather nice)and is no horrendous colour.

Coffee General Life

Australians are bigots.

At least when it comes to Americans.

Nothing frustrates me more when certain people I know complain about American’s as if they were all ‘George Bush’ etc. How they tie everything back to Hollywood and America’s responsibility for world deconstruction.

I don’t like generalisations: which means I have to take back the first line of this blog. Oh I’m sure I make them all the time.

I cannot wipe myself from the blame I do it myself. Cultures don’t understand eachother.

Emily dumped a book in my lap tonight (borrowed from Emma). ‘God Chicks’ by Holly Wagner. I gave it a random flicking. ‘Too Hollywood’. Overuse of the word Destiny and Awesome. Chicks. I hate that phrase. So not for me. Simple. I don’t read it.

Phillip Ashley and his fiance sent a webpage link thing to us tonight. The Ashely’s are SITAG people. American’s yes. It is quite amusing, so vastly different from what most Aussies would do. It’s not what I would do. Okay so there – someone I know would say, “Thats so typically American”. Not to bag the Ashey’s, they are great people. I didn’t get to know Phillip very well (more so his sister Susan) as they left the Solomons before us. Uncle James has the best fudge recipe in the world. Extremely hospitable. Karen is from the deep south. Hey this is the way they do things.

Contrast one American family with another. My future inlaws… well not mine exactly. Sister’s potential. They wouldn’t dream of doing something like that. John would die of shame (that and Laura wouldn’t let him).

I don’t really know where this blog is actually going.

The Carters. Have I talked about them before? Surely.

John Carter. One day (we all hope) will get enough money together to come over and marry Laura. Meanwhile. I was thinking about this tonight not sure why. John’s a mountain climbing kind of guy. Quiet. Insanely sensible. A thinker. No fuss. Wouldn’t even tell someone it was his birthday if he could get away with no celebration. I know him enough, but I’ve heard enough from Laura to know this kind of stuff. I know Kristen and Josh far better.

Hrm, is this relevant to anything before. I guess I’ll tie up a loose end by saying. American families contrast sharply just like Australian or any other nationality families do.

Their family is practically our family. 😛 Now just to make things legal.

Josh added me to his msn the other night. Haven’t caught him online yet, but that’s what time differences will do to you. That’ll be interesting. Kristen’s a few years younger than me. Hanna and Joseph younger still.

Bob and Dad are like best mates (and colleages, oh that’s right, Dad’s back now).

Mum and Amy are good friends.

Hanna and Hannah are like ‘this’.

Kristen, Em, Josh and I are/were all fairly close.

Joseph 🙂 well he just fits in somehow.

and Laura and John. Well! I don’t need to say anything.

The people I want to see…

Lunchtime today, I got a craving to go see the ocean. So I went. I had to walk really fast to make it there and back and only got about 5 minutes down there. I needed to find the space, I needed to see somewhere with a clear horizon. Talked to God a bit, and just um let myself live the moment. I walked to the water’s edge and stood on there. The beach was almost empty. A couple were walking further down, aside from that, it was just me in this expanse.

I’ve always seen the sea as this place that isn’t really tied to any country.

20 minutes later I was back behind a desk.

General Life Solomon Islands

And so I came up with the thoroughly tacky ‘counties’ term by complete accident. This is Jomcgo, K of the T and me 🙂 About a week or two ago.


General Relationships

“To be, rather than to appear”

General Words

As of two minutes ago I was in a not so exuberant mood. I hate hate hate shopping when you go intentionally and can’t find anything. What do they make bathers for now? Show? or the junk heap. Ugly and impractical. Wish I hadn’t lost my last ones.

I get home. Email from Jane showing how bad budget is for end of year party (which is next week). Two emails below that is one from Angela (finance person at Tabor) and they’ve finally decided we worked hard enough so they are being more generous which means we are saved and can deliver on what the posters promised. So good, not to have to stress about that. Hurrah for God!

Wrote a shockingly long to-do list on the train. Had copious amounts of time as the weather affected the power which affected the train signals. Which meant I had to sit on the already late train for ages, then change, then sit even longer and stop, start, stop, start. Took me nearly 2hours to get to work (not quite). The book I bought with me was decidedly badly written so I gave up after chapter 6. My headphones started playing up, so now only one ear piece works properly. The rechargeables have already worn out so it’s running on others that could run out very suddenly but thankfully didn’t.

Work wasn’t too bad. Except for having to do two site surveys, one of which I got out of because the person wasn’t available. I hate phones.

Oh how optimistic this all sounds.

Was overtired. The coffee at work isn’t as great as it used to be for some reason. I can’t bring myself to drink coke yet after too much social justice talk so had Sunkist which in reality is probably just as bad. I think it’s placebo. So it was tea when I got there, and coffee this afternoon ha ha no, not fair trade.

The races are on. I don’t know which ones now. I entirely missed seeing the cup on Tuesday – I don’t really care much. Heaps of dressed up, hat/facinator/low cut dressed at the station. Look a bit ridiculous, a lot of them. Ha, but then onto the train. Wow, it was so entirely amusing. These four old (60yrs’ish) women, chatting really loudly. They were coordinated perfectly. Purple and red, each different, all matching. It was really quite funny. I saw the older guy facing me turn around and look have a bit of a laugh to himself. I was grinning behind my hand and headphones. They had an animated conversation about how ‘young men’ should be polite by offering their seats up, and then questioned whether people should offer seats to old men etcetera. “It’s manners”. They were dressed to varying taste. The woman whose face I could see had a fairly flat purple hat with bright red feathers around the brim, it was pretty tacky, but some of the others had it just about right. It made me think of the movie, “Mrs. Calidcot and the Cabbage War” – old ladies with attitude.

I couldn’t see them for most of the trip as the train was packed, but when they got off, red feathers had hot pink bag and umbrella. Ah dear.

Was perfect and unusal and so entirely entertaining. They walked out as if they were dressed to the nines and into a culture entirely unlike that of the 21st Century.

Home now. Late but not really. Have got in the door and need to head dump to page.

Last night.

Hello brain immaturity.

Began to seriously question what I’m doing with my life.

I really like Tabor. I mean really like it. The community aspect of the place, the people. I have previously questioned coming back one day.

So I reconsidered (this was running through my head about a month back) next year and not going to uni, but going to do a Bach. of Ministry or something (at Tabor) instead. I had myself semi-convinced as of the moment that uni seems pretty pointless, I am unsure about my course, I don’t know if it is what I want to do with my life. I am interested in it yes, but yeah.

Talked about ‘the Christian Bubble’ ie: the fish tank analogy for those youth min people. I pushed this idea to the side. I know it, I knew it, I wanted to ignore it. There is still relevance where I am at the moment (head arguement). I’m finding it really hard to look that far ahead to when I am no longer studying.

I am not entirely sure if I intentionally directed the conversation towards feeling really out of community, I guess lost. Not really having a church. Not that traditional definitons of church really do anything for me at the moment. They don’t. I go to hope to get something out of the sermon, thats it. I don’t have relationships there, ha I don’t even have many familiar places, I don’t have people to look up to, or people to look up to me.

Essentially. I think I was, and am afraid what will happen next year.

I know exactly what I should be doing (which is going forward as planned next year), and how irrational I was being last night.

“So do you want to go to Tabor to exist in a Christian community, or do you want to do a Bachelor of Ministry?”

I knew the answer to this question Paul before you asked it. My motivations for staying are wrong. It is not the time for me to be sticking around. Someone might have well have taken the piece of paper of my life and folded it and cut squares and bits out of it for all the places I’ve left. Leaving things sucks, I’m so tired of it. But I needed to hear that, really needed to have a slap in the face with my own rationality from another’s words. Thank you.

Sleep and a 30 second thought on the train about it this afternoon and things are so blindingly obvious. What messed with my head was not good, I guess in some ways it’s useful to deal with it before I get three months down the track and wonder if I’m in the wrong place.

Well theres a varied blog post if I ever saw one. Now to ha, actually do those things on my to-do list.

General On The Train Relationships YITS