i was asked if i wanted to be on her team for the pumpkin carving contest. since i’m horrible at cutting snowflakes i figure i’m probably horrible at carving pumpkins as well (i know, they don’t have that much to do with each other but it’s what i was thinking), so i said no. she then told me that she was signing me up.

a few days later, i gave the idea for what to carve, we figured out who’d draw it on the pumpkin, and she’d carve it. there were so many people, surrounding the tables, busily cleaning out pumpkins and encouraging each other on. one hour later, a candle was placed in each one, and the judges went around to have a look. they only ever award two teams for their raw skill and creativity but they said this year they had to acknowledge one more team for trying to earn brownie points from the staff, who happened to be the judges.

yup, it was my team. i had suggested we carve the Torchbearer symbol (the school’s symbol) and my team had thought it wonderful. we just didn’t realize how everyone would take it. we were teased but were able to say, “at least we were recognized!”

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a conversation between a boy named david, who is half american, half canadian, and a boy named samuel, who is german:

“samuel, is this your paper sitting here?”

“yes. it is my paper.”

“dude, this is horrible.”

“why is it so bad?”

“i mean, great job at trying to write your paper in english, but this is terrible. you should have one of us look at your papers before you hand them in.”

samuel is the funniest kid here. his accent sounds a bit like arnold’s and he’s the most random person ever. he talks tons (i taught him the slang), uses the poorest english i’ve ever heard, and his vocabulary is pathetic.

a few hours after this conversation he brought me his paper and asked me to go through it with him. with my red pen in hand, i started crossing out most of it. in the first paragraph, i took out half of the first sentence and replaced it with one word. he played with his hair and said, “my english is this bad? why didn’t my teachers make it better?” most of the time i’d read a sentence and then have to say, “what does this mean, samuel?” it took an hour and by the time we were done there was red ink everywhere and he was suddenly worried that it wasn’t going to meet the quota of 1000 words. it did.

today he asked me if i’d help him with all the journals he has to do for the Old Testament reading. he’s such a funny kids… this should be interesting.

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before it was all about speaking in tongues. this week everyone wanted to discuss relationships. somehow i get asked a lot of questions… about everything. but that’s cool, right? by the end of these six months i’ll be a pro at explaining why i believe what i believe.

good practice at apologetics. : )

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i came here determined to learn some german. so far, the only thing i’ve learned (that stuck) is how to ask, “are you insane?”

hopefully i’ll learn a bit more.