always Christmas

I'd say it's time for another post. Long or short as this may be, I wanted to say that I'm doing well. Spent another Friday night cheering for Nojay and her band as they played music (especially) for the wait staff at the Sabai Sabai bar, where "it's always Christmas and never snows,"... or something like that. Nora likes to speak of the bar that way. Though I never actually understand that joke, I pretend I do...

Another interesting thing about Friday night was that there happened to be some kind of protest going on right near where the band plays, and somehow the word "protest" slipped into several of the songs Nojay sang. For example, one Norah Jones number came out: "I waited till the break of day, protest teardrops in my hands..." I think I was the only one who noticed the subliminal messages Nora was trying to pull. Also, when and if she dedicates the song, "Kiss Me," from Sixpence None the Richer, to the waitstaff, I'm also the one of the only ones who is surprised when none of them approach the stage in response. Of course, I only witnessed this last occurrence once. I'm acting as if I've been seeing them play at the bar for years... or a long time, anyway.

But now I notice that this post is sort of turning into the opposite of how I instruct my students to write (paragraphs and even in letters). That is, I teach them to stay on topic. Not to add stray ideas or sentences into a paragraph where there should be one main topic... Some of these things I'm teaching, it's all from back in my education. I need to remember how to be a new learner again, not taking some of the things I learned for granted.

There was an answer to prayer that happened just last week. If you didn't know, I'd been assigned five classes to teach at the University and two days in the week I had 7.5 teaching hours and no break... This felt a little overwhelming--not only because of the fact that I'm a new teacher, and this is my very first career, but also because of the diabetes. The not being able to eat... not even being allowed food in the classroom... But, some teachers--I'd heard--had gotten some of their sections removed from their schedules, some rearranged; and I felt like God was telling me that it would be okay for me to ask for one of my classes to be redistributed to another teacher so that I could eat and have a break... That was also when I had some more revelation about the Father heart of God (see post before last), when God reminded me of the verse, "Ask and it shall be given to you..." It's been much, much better. Even though I've only had two days where the readjustment actually affected my schedule, I feel more at ease. It's probably also easier to be in my fourth week of teaching as opposed to my 1st. There are still more mountains to scale, rivers to cross... I'd like to see the river in Bangkok sometime soon.

Thanks always for your prayers and notes. I miss you all!