Holiday Update

The past week has been a mishmash of emotions for me. I can officially say that I’ve reached the homesick stage of my year away. Perhaps it will pass quickly once the holidays are all finished with, but for now, I definitely miss my family and friends. On the bright side, I’ve been receiving cards from people and churches back home for the past two weeks. It’s a wonderful feeling to receive a card in the mail. Many of the cards are from people I don’t know, but I imagine this is what a soldier feels like when he/she receives cards from random children. It warms me up a bit knowing that people from Iowa, W. Virginia, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and all over took the time to send a few words to me. 

We have continued working on our 8000 piece puzzle, and it still has a LONG way to go. When we first started it over a month ago, I thought that we could finish it by Christmas. Not to toot my own horn (ok, yes it is), but I happen to be a very good puzzler. For that reason, I figured it could be done. My thinking was that a 2000 piece puzzle takes me less than a week, so 8000 pieces should take 4 times that long. Wrong… The sorting of pieces from the massive pile adds an exponential increase in time. I’ll keep the updates coming. 

Steffi, Becky, and I visited Dublin for a few days prior to Christmas. This trip made me realize that I am not a city vacationer. I would much rather spend a couple days hiking or camping than walking around a city looking in museums and at architecture. However, I do still enjoy cities, just not as much as some people. For me, Dublin was a bit of a letdown. I’m not sure if it was because it’s a difficult place to visit when on a tight budget or if we just didn’t know what to look for, but I wasn’t all that impressed. We did see St. Patrick’s Cathedral and the Dublin Castle which were both pretty neat, and for a bit of craic, we visited a pub to listen to some traditional Irish music. Our original intent was to visit the Christmas market in Dublin during our first day there, but once we arrived, it became clear that it wasn’t going to happen. The market was in the courtyard of Dublin Castle, and as we entered the courtyard, we saw a large Christmas tree and two stalls at the far end. For whatever reason, all of the other stalls had gone home. Oh well! I think the most exciting thing for me in Dublin was my ability to find coins everywhere. I often find and pick up coins in the street, but this was ridiculous. I found upwards of 25-30 coins in under 2½ days.  Sweet.

On Christmas day, the three of us had dinner with L’arche Belfast volunteers. It was fun meeting and chatting with new people, and I discovered something about myself while there. Whenever I am at gatherings where there are children present, I naturally gravitate toward those kids. So at this dinner, there were 21 adults sitting, eating, and talking away, but there were also three children present. At one point in the evening, I discovered that I had just spent the past half hour playing a game with a 5 year-old. Even if I’m not with the kids, I’m thinking, “Man, I really wish I could swing on the swing set with them.” It’s not that I don’t enjoy being with adults. I do, but sometimes the conversations bore me. What does that say about me? Am I not mature enough to sit and have an intelligent conversation with adults? Well, obviously I can do it, but sometimes I’d rather not. Do I relate better to kids than adults? Maybe so. I’m in the process of figuring out if this leans toward being more of a good thing or a bad thing.

And one last random thought before I sign off. Growing up, I always thought that adults were super smart. To me, it seemed as though they always knew what to do and how to do it. Now that I am an adult, I realize that this was not the case. I am just as clueless now as I was back then, and most everybody around me is just trying to figure it out along the way like me.

Santa Comes Up the Mountain

There is something to be said about the magic of Santa Claus. I like the way it is portrayed in The Polar Express. In the story, a young boy travels to the North Pole and is picked by Santa to receive the first gift of Christmas. Knowing that he can choose anything at all, he asks for one bell from one of the reindeer's harnesses. When the boy rings the bell, both he and his sister marvel at the beautiful sound. His parents, however, are unable to hear the bell and remark that it must be broken. The story then closes with this famous line:

“At one time, most of my friends could hear the bell, but as years passed, it fell silent for all of them. Even Sarah found one Christmas that she could no longer hear its sweet sound. Though I've grown old, the bell still rings for me, as it does for all who truly believe.”

I don’t remember a time in my life that I believed in Santa. He just wasn’t a part of my childhood. My parents never tried to convince me that Santa was real, but they never told me he wasn’t either. I guess that I decided for myself to believe in more than a rosy-cheeked man climbing down our chimney. 

And for a long time, I thought that Santa was a silly invention to keep children from misbehaving around Christmas time. I mean, let’s be honest. That’s exactly what the Naughty & Nice List is for, isn’t it? 

Yet, I finally realized that there’s a bit more to it than that. I spent the last three weeks talking with children about Christmas and Santa and what they want for presents and la dee dah dee dah, and even for the kids who are old enough to know that Santa doesn’t exist, there is still a glimmer of hope behind their eyes that maybe he does. It was actually an amazing thing to see. They were studying our Santa, trying to pick up on any clues that confirmed it wasn’t the real Santa. But for the younger kids, the glimmer in the eye is more of a supernova. For these children, Santa brought more than presents. He brought them imagination. He brought hope and laughter, and he brought a belief in magic and wonderment that can throw off the veil of the problems at school or at home. I don’t know. Maybe their gleaming eyes really do just shine for the presents. Or maybe, just maybe, the bell really is ringing. 

A Very Quaker Christmas

Hello again!

'Tis the season of merriment and joy, giving and receiving, love and laughter, and the all-important holiday food!  Pull your stretchy pants out of the dresser.  You'll be needing them soon. 

I heard someone say recently that you know Halloween is near when you start to see Christmas decorations.  This is entirely the case in Belfast.  I started to see Christmas decorations in windows just after Halloween.  More and more have been put up since then, but because they do not celebrate Thanksgiving here, it has pretty much been the Christmas season since the beginning of November.  At Quaker Cottage, our Christmas excitement just started this past week.  We've been putting up paper chains, wearing Santa hats, and singing Christmas songs all week.  The afterschoolers all built gingerbread houses and decorated Christmas cookies during the week.  Some of the gingerbread houses were fantastic.  One girl even added a mailbox.  Others (like mine) crumbled in.  But you know what?  I think it's easier to eat a destroyed gingerbread house than a pristine one.  Nobody wants to wreck something that took so long and looks so nice!  That's my opinion, but not necessarily the same one as the little brothers and sisters who saw loads of candy stuck to houses when they were brought home. 

The Christmas festivities continue next week with trips to the Christmas Market in Belfast City Center each day.  I'm not going to lie.  Taking these kids to the city and walking around in crowds with them makes me a bit nervous.  Who knows when one will decide to take off running.  We'll see how that turns out.  And then the following week is packed with parties.  Six Christmas parties to be exact, and I'm thinking that I'll have to play Santa for at least two of them.  The last time I remember being Santa was in an elementary school play or music concert of some sort.  For whatever reason, I remember having a solo for one of the songs and then I danced in front of the entire crowd.  But of course, the hyper little child that I was thought that a good alternative to dancing was laying on my side and spinning in circles on the floor.  I don't know.  Maybe that was dream...

What else has happened since my last post?

• It was super windy one day.  Like blowing down power lines windy.  Like make a lake look like the ocean windy.  We were out on a bus run, and as I step out of the bus to head to one family's door, something big smacks into my back.  As I shout out, I see a large bin lid flying away.  The wind had actually lifted up a bin lid and chucked it at me.  The people watching from the bus got a good laugh from that.
• I received my first ever mistletoe kiss this week.  My supervisor had put some up in the playroom, and without thinking, I stood underneath it.  As soon as one of the mums walked near me, she pointed it out and quick as lightning that mum planted a kiss right on my cheek.  There was no avoiding it.  
• On Friday, one of the children was having an extremely bad day.  Steffi, Becky, and I each walked out of work that day with tales of his attacks.  Becky nearly had her earrings ripped out and nose pulled off.  I received a strong slap to the face, but Steffi won the day with the teeth marks from a bite that are still visible two days later.
• Progress on the 8000 piece puzzle has slowed to a crawl.  We have finished all of the areas that are easy to do, but that was only about 1/4 of the entire puzzle, if that.  The goal to finish it by Christmas will not be happening.  

There is a commercial playing here that we at work have decided shows an accurate depiction of one of our kids.  Right around the 20 second mark, a boy starts dancing and repeating the words "I fell asleep, and now it's Christmas day."  It's that type of silliness and excitement that we get to see every week.