The Sweetie Has Landed

Since everyone else has taken to calling him that, I might as well jump on the bandwagon for now as well. Neal is safely here. :o) And on top of that, I have made two successful trips in my new rental car. Amen!

More soon.
~Nikki

An Awaited Update

I've been meaning to post for a while, which seems to be the story of my life lately. Meaning to call people, meaning to return emails, meaning to correct books, meaning to get a rental car sorted, meaning to clean up my apartment. Well, life goes on, I guess. But here's a quick recap of the last month-ish.

Getting sick made for a pretty miserable three weeks. After having the flu for a solid week, I felt something like how my mother described having mono. I'm so happy to have energy again. I've been to the gym 1 1/2 times since then, and it bums me out (the half time was a few days ago when after about 10 minutes, a bunch of guys walked in and just stood around, staring and things I didn't need to have them staring at. We left.)

At the tail end of being sick came our Inspection. A week prior was spent on prepping my classroom and trying to get books corrected. I had a lot of 8:00pm or later nights at school. Some of that was by choice, and some was dependent on when I could get a bus to take me home. The week following was the week the inspectors were at school. The easiest way to describe that is to say that our school is now going for international accreditation, and while last year was kind of a trial run, this year was the real deal. Except that the standards get raised your second year. So if we pretend that our school was awarded points, we got the same number of points as last year, but from the sounds of things, our rating went from "Good" to "Acceptable". The second time around you have to improve from the first if you want to maintain your rating, let alone move up (the school was reeeeally pushing for "Outstanding". What a joke.)

And now we come to this week. Our break for Eid starts after school tomorrow, so it's a short week. On top of that, our National Day celebration was today. But that pretty much got put on the back burner due to the inspection, so there wasn't a whole lot going on, which was fine. I also found a great deal on a rental car, which is awesome and means that I will have a set of wheels soon. But the best and most wonderful thing about this week is the fact that by this time tomorrow, Neal will be here. With me, in my apartment. That's right, a "Sweetie Alert" was sent to me via email today, and I am alert and ready for him to get here. Being able to talk most nights is nice, but there's no replacement for being able to give someone a hug. And I plan on plenty of those over the next two and a half weeks.

Time for me to go to sleep. Because when I wake up, it will be the day that Neal gets here!!!

Speaking of Fighting...

Just now as I was finishing my last post, I had some idea of what people in the Twin Towers must have felt like just before the planes crashed. We can see the commercial airport from our balcony,  and for some reason a fighter jet is doing excercises over our neighborhood right now. I'm talking rolls and turns and continusouly flying over our building and the surrounding areas, sometimes down so low that is disappears behind the one other tall building that's near us. It's a little unnerving, that's for certain.

Joy and Strength

The title of this post is a little book by Mary Wilder Tileston. It's one of those page-a-day devotional type books, but I appreciate this one a lot more than most I've seen. Wonderful roommate Rachel sent it to me a while ago, and I'm enjoying it so much that I'd like to share some of it here. This is from November 11.

I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therein to be content. Phil. 4:11

          Forgive us, Lord, our little faith;

          And help us all, from morn till e'en,

          Still to believe that lot the best

          Which is,--not which might have been.

                            George Zabriskie Gray

Thou givest within and without precisely what the soul needs for its advancement in a life of faith and self-renunciation. I have then only to recieve this bread, and to accept it, in the spirit of self-sacrifice, whatever Thou shalt ordain, of bitterness in my external circumstances, or within my heart. For whatever happens to me each day is my daily bread, provided I do not refuse to take it from Thy hand, and to feed upon it.

Finding joy and contentment in every day is a constant battle, and I find that truest for myself. I know it is a daily battle, and one that no one wins 100% of the time, but that does not mean it is a battle not worth fighting. We must fight all the more, for not to fight is surely to lose. And when the joy and peace is there, we must remember to let it shine brightly when held in contrast to the bleakness of our suffereings.

The Desert Place

Blessed be Your name when the sun's shining down on me
And the world's all as it should be. Blessed be Your name.
And blessed be Your name when I'm found in the desert place.
Though I walk through the wilderness, blessed be Your name.

Every blessing You pour out I'll turn back to praise.
When the darkness closes in, still I will say
Blessed be the name of the Lord. Blessed be Your glorious name.

And blessed be Your name on the road marked with suffering.
Though there's pain in the offereing, blessed be Your name.

There is much more to say, but it is very late, and since I was at school until 9:30 this evening, and I'll be back at 6:30 tomorrow morning, I should keep this short. But like I said, hearts are fickle things. I guess that's not always a bad thing, especially when someone else is changing the condition of your heart for you.

~Nikki

Fickle

Hearts are fickle things. So are school principals, but that's another story. In my last post, I wrote about attitude. Attitudes can be hard things to control. Mine has been lately. It's a good thing there is already a plane ticket for Neal to come and visit me, or I might have had one to go home. But now I'm looking at buying a car, so...

I'm actually stopping this post here because I've just gone and gotten upset again looking at the school calendar (which we just got, finally.) Oh me of little faith...