Well I am here at university trying to fill in an hour before I meet Jai for coffee (I mean Chai, yay Chai makes me so happy) and trying to decide if I want to go to Spanish or not. Sorry that is not the way I want to put it, I know I don’t want to go to Spanish but I am trying to decide if I will. It feels silly not to as I am here but I am so tired from being here all day and I just find it so boring, I relly don’t think I could sit through it. I also just read and email from the teacher that was reminding us that we have to attend 80% of class if we want to pass which means we can only have 4 days off and as some us have already had four we bet to be careful as we don’t want any surprises. That email pissed me off so bad for some reason, it was so patronising and rude and as I am not one of the one who has had four days off I have had one I just feel like not going.

I am always so relieved when Thursday is over. Thursday is my hard day you see, it’s the day I leave home at 8.15am and I return at 9.45pm. That’s a long day. I am especially relieved today as I had a Spanish test and as always it is great when they are over. Mind you I am not feeling that good about it. It was really hard. I want to learn another language, I am bored with Spanish at the moment, firstly the teacher drives me crazy, she is so boring sometimes I think about scratching my eyes out I am so bored. well maybe not but I am pretty bored. I also think when you first start learning a language you learn so much so fast and it is really fun whereas now I am at a stage where I have totally plateaued out and I feel like I am learning one or two words a week and it’s not really keeping me that motivated. The final reason I want to learn another language is cause well I want to. How cool would it be to be like multilingual it would be great and then I can to communicate with more people.

I have to say though I find language hard, it does not come at all natuarally to me and the idea also in partly freaks me out.

Ther once was an inventor whose work it was to invent new danced. His aim was to invent the perfect dance, which of course is an impossiblity. At the end of each day, enraged, he would fling his day’s work out onto the street in disgust. The peasants of the town woyld seixe upon these imperfect dances and dance them with great joy and gusto. The invento worked on in earnest deication. Alone. The peasants danced their lives away. Together. And so life goes on.

Leunig, how much do I quote but oh how good is he.

I have just finsished reading a really good book, it is called “why warriors lie down and die”. I feel a bit nervous about describing it. I am afraid I may say something that could come across as patronising or trivialise the issues in trying to sum it up in this small blog post so I thought I would start with what the back of the book said:

“Why warriors lay down and die is essential reading for anyone intereested in indigenous peoples. It provides hope and new direction for those simply searching for answers to why “the problems” seem to persist in Aboriginal communities. It also offers insights for those who want a greater understanding of the issues involved in achieving true reconcilitaion”.

It certainly did that for me. I have in the past felt so helpless when considering the plight of the aboriginal people. It all seemed so complicated and so big and I just didn’t understand any of it. It also seemed like the suppport of non aborigianl people was not very helpful or very much wanted by the indigenous people. It all seemed so hopeless. This book however explains really clearly some of the issues and how they came to be. For the first time I feel like I have a tiny bit of understanding. It is also very hopeful in that the situation can change and there is things that one, as a non aboriginal Australian can do.

I also think it is a great book to read for anyone interested in cross cultural communication at all. So many things that happened to me while I was overseas that I didn’t understand now make a little bit more sense to me when I consider the cultural stuff that was going on. I can also understand a little more some of the challenges that Martin faces everyday in such a different culture.

It made me realise how it important it is that I know something of the culture and the language of the places that I hope to visit one day. This will mean I can avoid some of those things happening again and also so that I can offer people the best possible support.

I just wrote a nice long post about some very important things and then I pressed new entry instead of save and it is all gone. I guess the importance is debatable but none the less I spent time and thought writing it and now it is gone and I can’t be bothered writing it again. It’s not that I can’t be bothered it’s that the moment is gone and I feel annoyed now so it will all be written in a different light. Maybe another time.

it is nearly as frustrating as disappearing emails

I am not very good at being sick. I see some people and they seem to manage to get up when they are sick and they work and stuff whereas me when I am sick I just lie around and moan and complain and want people to do things for me and writing this blog is requiring way more energy than it should. I am probably only doing it so that I can feel like I achieved something today and not just slept.

The one good thing about being sick is that I don’t have to go to work or uni. I am not very happy with either of those things at the moment. My Spanish teacher and I do not seem to have gelled real well. I asked to leave last week 10 minutes early so I wouldn’t miss my train and be waitingat 9pm on the freezing cold platform for another half an hour and she has been angry ever since. And work well if I get started there I won’t stop and you know I think I decided that it wasn’t very good to talk about people on blogs, probably isn’t at all and my porblems there revolve around a person.

Today two people remembered me, it was a nice feeling really as I never seem to get remembered.

The first time was after my first lecture today I handed in a form to the lecturer who I had once before in my forst semester and she said “thanks Emily, it’s Emily right?’ and I said ‘yes’ of course as that is who I am and she said, ‘I remember you from first semester’ and then she continued to say, ‘I remember you fell in love with Paulo Friere and it was quite exciting to watch’. I was happy I can imagine worse things than being remembered as someone who is passionate about Friere who is also a passionate man.

The second time was when I went to the International Studies department to hand something in and the girl said ‘Hello Gemma’ and I responded ‘no I am Emily, Gemma’s sister’ and she said ‘yes I remeber you’ I was surprised as I didn’t remember her and then she said ‘hey you married a Peruvian. congratulations. I thanked her, of course and thought aagain well it could be worse than being remembered by being Gemma’s sister and married to a Peruvian.

Well it actually was on the 28th of July but tonight we are heading out to celebrate it with Carlos and Eva and Jo and Jem.

I am very excited as I love dancing and I have not done it in sooooo long.

So I better go and get ready as they will be here in less than half and hour and I have to have a shower and I don’t know what I am wearing. I guess it is a good thing I don’t care about that sort of thing tooo much.

Obviously a little but don’t tell anyone.

Well I thought I would pick an easy topic to discuss tonight…… not… (does anyone still say that?)

I guess I have being thinking about prayer a lot lately but thinking about it is a lot easier than actually doing it as Eugene Peterson (The Message guy) puts it:

“Getting started is easy enough. The impulse to pray is deep within us, at the very centre of our created being, and so practically anything will do to get us started – Help and Thanks are our basic prayers. But honesty and thoroughness don’t come quite as spontaneously.”

That’s true for me. I want to pray desperately I do but being thorough and honest is so hard. Staying focused and not letting the mind waunder is almost impossible and if I am honest here I probably find even the basic prayers of Help and Thanks hard as I struggle with intercessary prayer adn so often those things become intercessary.

However Eugene goes on to say one of the things that I have found most comforting recently. I think this is something I know on an intellectual level or something I feel is true for everyone else but not somthing I really feel deep inside me is for me also. I gues that is what I am working on.

“Untutored, we tend to think that prayer is what good people do when they are doing their best. It is not. Inexperienced, we suppose that there must be an “insider” language that must be acquired before God takes us seriously in our prayer. There is not. Prayer is elemental, not advanced language. It is means by which our language becomes honest, true and personal in response to God.”

Blogging is a bit like an exercise program, I start with lots of energy and I do it every day and then it starts to happen less and less and before I know it I am back to hardly doing it at all. I don’t why it is like that, I enjoy exercise and I feel good afterward like blogging but for some reason it is so kind of hard to do.

But here I am so I better make it worth doing and say something interesting…..

I just wrote an email to my mother in law which was kind of fun. I love her, really I do but our relationship has been a little strained, a little stressful and not altogether what I had hoped for. I guess when God called me to bring her out to Australia I did but I think I subconciously thought, ‘great I have done that now and God will take care of the rest and I don’t have to do anything’ but that wasn’t quite true. I then had to get to know her better and accept her more and love her much more and that was much harder but much more inportant and really the reason that she was to come here and although I had God’s support I had to do that. I did it a little but not as much as I should have.

Thankfully though life and relationships are journies and that was part of ours but now there is more and we can write emails and talk on the phone adn reflect on what happened. God keeps giving us the chance to know wachother more and love eachother more which is great, which I guess is grace.

Hey maybe it is like blogging and exercise. You start woth lots of energy and ideals about waht is going to happen and it is easy enough at first but then you have to work and you have to be committed.