Going to "Real" School

What homeschooling parent doesn't consider sending their kids to "real" school this time of year? The Christmas season has passed, the bills are due, the winter doldrums are setting in and most of all, we look at our progress for the school year and compare it to our goals at the beginning of the year and we judge ourselves failures.

Welcome to my world. I have the advantage of doing this on a regular basis for the past 20 years, so I know there's a light at the end of the tunnel. Just as I know the days are starting to get longer and before I know it, summer will be here; I also know that we probably won't finish every book I'd planned on reading, or achieve every educational goal I'd set for ourselves.

Why I'm still homeschooling: 20 years and still going strong

Or, What Taekwondo has Taught Me about Homeschooling 

I read something the other day that really irked me. Got me fired up in a mama bear sort of way. A Catholic blogger who used to homeschool wrote, "Anyone who says they enjoy homeschooling is either a beginner or in denial."

Let me take a few moments to deny these charges.

I'm still homeschooling after beginning to homeschool twenty years ago. I'm still enjoying it. Yes, there are days of sheer frustration. My youngest is turning ten years old on Sunday and he's got loads of learning issues. We pulled him out of the state-sponsored special ed program after he languished there for three years. After only four months of working exclusively with Mom and having plenty of time for imaginative play, he's blooming. His progress is slow, but we see genuine progress. His reading ability has improved. His mathematical skills have improved. His handwriting has improved. Yes, I get frustrated when I have to show him twenty times how to do something. But guess what? It pays off after twenty times of showing him the same thing. Maybe the public school paid special ed teacher only had time to show him something nineteen times...or, more likely, two times. I keep working with him till he gets it and not until the bell rings to mark the end of our session.

Thankfulness: Day 5--Homeschooling

There are plenty of reasons to avoid sending your kids to public schools, but I'd like to focus on five reasons I'm thankful I homeschool my kids.

1. I get to parent my kids instead of relying on an outsider. Parents who are active and involved in their kids' lives have a greater influence on their kids' attitudes and behaviors. Schools have gradually adopted the idea that they are to act in place of parents and have shifted their focus from merely teaching the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, to sex education and politically correct thinking. I'm thankful to be able to spend extra time with my kids and talk to them about life beyond the basics of academia.

Fatherless: A Modern Tragedy

Fatherless by Brian J. Gail

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


Although 536 pages sounds like a lot to get through, this book was a pretty quick read. While it started out seeming contrived and predictable, it got better the further along I read. Perhaps it was the structure of the book that kept me hooked: several story lines progressing simultaneously with each chapter left me eager for the next installment.

First the bad news: The word "cheesy" comes to mind, but only because I thought the characters were stereotypical post-Vatican II American Catholics. I felt like the author was hitting me over the head with scientific analysis of the action of the birth control pill through conversations that seemed over-the-top unrealistically earnest. There was at least one editorial comment that was left in the book and a few other areas that weren't edited well. I was annoyed that "Coors Light" would be followed by a trademark logo, but "Michelob" was not. I was amused when the characters in the book (including a priest) expressed shock to hear the Pill could act as an abortifacient and was complicit in the rise of breast cancer. I thought everyone already knew that, but perhaps not. (The story takes place sometime in the late 80's, I believe. Perhaps the actions of the Pill weren't as well known then). If the author's purpose was to inform an uneducated Catholic population of the dangers of hormonal contraceptives and the secularization of our culture, then he succeeded admirably. Getting those folks to read this book might be difficult. Having them understand it as based in fact might be even more difficult.

Now the good news: I'm still thinking about the story several days after finishing the book. There was something deep in the book that the cheese and stereotypes couldn't completely mask. And the story, which was rather depressing yet left the reader with a glimmer of hope, is a true story of the Catholic Church in America and the Western world. Our culture has produced a lot of messed up families, marriages and lives. But Our Lord promised he wouldn't leave us as orphans and he hasn't. The Church has been immensely blessed in these dark days, with two great pontiffs: Blessed John Paul the Great and our current pope, Benedict XVI. We have every reason to hope in the future.

I must admit, I'm "hooked," and will read his next book, in The American Tragedy in Trilogy: Motherless. I wonder if there will be any stereotypical homeschoolers in it?





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Why we need to learn Latin

The Devil Knows Latin: Why America Needs the Classical Tradition by E. Christian Kopff

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


In his introduction, University of Colorado Classics Professor Kopff, relates the source of his book's title. The late Fr. Ronald Knox, when asked to perform a baptism in the vernacular, responded: "The baby does not understand English and the Devil knows Latin."

The professor recommends the study of classical literature in their original language (likely Latin or Greek). He convinced me by page 26, that we should be learning Latin and that it was by no means a dead language. He tells us, "...of the 100 most commonly used words in English, only 10 or so come from Latin. Of all the English words, however--over a million in the latest dictionaries--more than half are of Latin origin, and those of Greek origin take up much of what remains."

The book is divided into three sections. The first section details the reasons we need to study the classics. The classics are narratives that tell a story and the story relates to who we are as human beings in the Western tradition. Learning the stories of our civilization helps us to put all the pieces of our education together. We begin to understand why we have the history we have and the underlying causes of world events throughout our history. We begin to understand how language, science, math, art and music fit into this enormous puzzle. We begin to understand the part religion, and Christianity in particular, plays. In short, our lives make more sense when we understand how all the pieces fit together and how we fit into the story.

The first section has other great insights as well. For example, the idea that tradition limits our creativity and advancement, he puts to rest. He points out "...languages are traditions learned by each generation from the preceding one and then taught to the next." Likewise, religion, science and history, are all built upon traditions. Prof. Kopff points out the beginning of science was in the sixth century B.C., when a man named Thales first proposed the world was "...a rational system, comprehensible to human minds," without relying on ancient gods for explanation. That the world is a rational system is itself a profound idea and one that we too often take for granted today. So, the first assumption in science is that the Universe is ordered and the second is that it is logical. These two ideas go back to the sixth century B.C. The third assumption of science is that the Universe is mathematical. This goes back to Pythagoras, who lived at the end of the sixth century B.C. Thus began the tradition of science.

The chapter of the first section outlines the need for the classics and the liberal arts in our grammar schools, high schools and universities. Kopff recommends children in the early years start out learning the three R's, followed by Latin, Greek and mathematics. The other subjects he recommends: history, mythology, English vocabulary and syntax and basics of government, can be taught in relation to the first subjects.

The second section discusses widely varying authors, philologists and philosophers. It was with this section that I found the most difficulty following the thread that links them all together. I felt rather like I'd stumbled into one of his classroom lectures by mistake. I was unprepared and unfamiliar with most of the names he was discussing so intimately. His somewhat frequent references to President Bill Clinton and the Monica Lewinsky scandal were rather amusing though dated. I wondered what the good professor would have to say about our present state of affairs.

The third section discusses popular culture--specifically movies--and how the ones that are most meaningful get their inspiration or find their source in some of the great classics of ancient Greece and Rome. Once again I found myself stumbling along with many of his stories since I haven't seen most of the movies he discusses and those I had seen, I wasn't always as thrilled about them as he was. For example, he thought Disney's "The Lion King" had "character and maturity." I prefer "Beauty and the Beast" for a moral tale of redemption and sacrifice.

The book reads like a collection of lectures put together to make a book. If I had been in his class and read the reading list before attending his lectures, maybe I would've better understood some of his points. Although I liked the book, it's probably not one I'd recommend to homeschoolers who want to know why they should study the classics. Leigh Bortins' book, "The Core," does a much better job of that.

The appendix, aptly entitled, "Doing it on Your Own," would be a great booklet for homeschoolers, especially if it were combined with the first section of the book. Prof. Kopff lists his suggestions for Latin curriculum to do at home, as well as Greek, along with some primary sources that would be good for beginning Latin and Greek students to read in the original.



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Gloomy Day Ranting

I was going to write a witty and wonderful book review today, but my heart just isn't in it. Perhaps it's because we're into day two of the Great Deluge. We desert-dwellers who worship the sun don't do very well when our 70 and 80-degree dry sunny days are interrupted by two days of torrential downpours of rain then snow then rain then snow. It really contributes to a generally gloomy feeling.

What I really wanted to vent about is the gloomy state of our local public education system. Before I begin my diatribe, let me preface it by saying, yes, I know there are excellent teachers in the public schools. I'm not blaming the teachers who actually care about the students and the education they receive. Sadly, I'm convinced most of the teachers today really don't care about the quality of education in the schools and the main reason they don't care is because they aren't even aware of the severe deficit in knowledge that has occurred in the United States in the past 60 years or so. They can't possibly know because they didn't receive a well-rounded education themselves. And the reason they didn't receive a well-rounded education is because their teachers hadn't received a well-rounded education.

Maybe I should first define what I mean by a well-rounded education and also let you know that I have not received a well-rounded education. The only reason I know I haven't received a well-rounded education is because I know I don't know much and I've read books by people who are much more knowledgeable than myself. So please keep that in mind when you read what I have to say. A well-rounded education consists of a basic foundation in the classical Western tradition of literature, history and mathematics, with a fundamental knowledge of at least one classical language (such as Latin or Greek) and at least one modern language (sign language doesn't count). An educated person understands the basics of logic and doesn't engage in illogical reasoning except for amusement. An educated person listens to the arguments of others (provided they are also logical) and can passionately argue a point without bashing the person with whom he (or she...see, I can be PC when I want to be) is arguing. (I know I'm missing a bunch of those elements in my own education, but I'm trying to continue learning. That's one of the perks of homeschooling your kids for a generation or more...you get a second chance to learn the things you didn't learn the first time around!)

How many of today's teachers have received this type of education? Most of them, I suspect, were taught by progressive professors who dismissed classical Western thought as so much yesterday's garbage. Darwin, Mead, Freud, Kant, Rousseau...these are the thinkers for the 21st century. Oh, wait, not many of today's teachers had to read any of these people, I would venture to guess. Instead, commitment to diversity and teaching kids to save the rain forests, stop global warming and have safe sex are the top priorities. We've moved away from the idea that the past has something to teach us to the idea that we know best how to form the future in to our own image. Popular culture is our teacher now.

Kids today are crying out for attention (as I'm sure they have always done). But as our culture has taken away the standards of decency that for so long permeated all levels of society, young people have to resort to even more extreme methods to get our attention. I know kids who praise and admire kids (who are still children, by the way) who embrace an alternative lifestyle. The popular kids are those who change their hair color every week, pierce unusual body parts and talk freely of sex, drugs and booze.

The young men use young women for their own gratification and they have their own cars (or the free use of their parents' cars) despite not having a job of their own. These same young men either wear skin-tight jeans they must've bought in the little girls' section of the department store, or they wear jeans that are so loose the crotch is at their knees. I know they must put a lot of thought into their clothing because they always have some sort of plaid or interesting print boxer shorts they proudly display as their pants fall down below their butts. (I often wonder: Who buys these boxers? I've seen them in the stores and I always end up buying the white briefs that come in jumbo packs of 6 pairs for $7 or $8. Those designer boxers cost about that much for one pair! Are their moms buying those expensive boxers for their sons to flash around town? Or are the jobless sons saving all their non-hard-earned cash to buy them for themselves?)

These kids dismiss religion as old-fashioned and outmoded and instead cling to darkness in music, appearance and lifestyle. In some cases, the parents either approve or at least don't disapprove. The parents might own a medical marijuana dispensary or the kids might be products of broken families. The only stability in their lives are the teachers in the schools they attend, but all the teachers know how to do is instruct them on deconstructing traditional values and replacing them with feminist and socialist ideologies. The teachers make a show of telling the kids to question authority but by that they really only mean question someone else's authority.

I can't end a post on a gloomy note. No matter how bad it seems, we Christians know the battle has already been won for us. There's a song that I love that's played on the Christian radio station by a group called Tenth Avenue North. The song is called "Healing Begins," and for me, it's a song about the grace of confession. The reality is the grace of confession and the love of Christ conquers all sin and death. My favorite two lines in the song are: "Sparks will fly as grace collides/ With the dark inside of us." Grace is powerful. It collides with darkness. It makes sparks. It is a cleansing fire. It is light.

All parents are home educators to some degree or another. We all have influence over our children, whether we like it or not. They will see the good that we do as well as the bad. Parenting is perhaps the hardest job on earth. On a rainy day like today my thoughts are gloomy and my heart breaks for the kids who have no one to guide them in the way of the Good, the True and the Beautiful. But I know in the end the Light will win. Because the Darkness can not overcome it. Sparks will fly as grace collides.

Still homeschooling after all these years!

It seems like forever and ever. I've been homeschooling my darling youngsters since about 1992. That's nineteen years, if you're counting.

I hadn't even heard of home education until 1990. I remember reading an article called "Home-Grown Kids," by Raymond and Dorothy Moore in Mothering magazine. I was intrigued by what I read because it made a lot of sense to me, but they were ideas I'd never even considered. I remember assuring my husband as I read him excerpts from the article, "Don't worry. I'm not going to homeschool. I just think it's interesting."

Ahh, the sweet innocence of youth. Later that fall I heard about a Catholic homeschooling conference in Chantilly, Virginia. I believe it was the very first Catholic homeschooling conference. My husband and I attended the conference and we began to think seriously about venturing into the foreign territory of home education. I decided to start my eldest daughter a year early, so that if I messed up I could just send her to kindergarten the next year.

Our first year went smoothly. Better yet, we were happy, and even joyful. I started homeschooling the fall after having my fourth child. My kids were 4, 3, 2 and 9 months. I'm sure I went overboard in buying curriculum and workbooks and worrying about fulfilling requirements. But a funny thing happened while I was teaching my first daughter to read: her next younger brother learned as well. In between diaper changes, potty training, nursing and naps, we managed to fit in a pretty decent kindergarten program. We decided to try it for another year.

One year at a time. We decided to take it slowly and not think about high school or college or even two years down the road. We were just having fun getting through our ABCs and early readers. Addition facts followed, along with handwriting and Greek myths. (My kids loved the Greek myths. And they're still benefiting from their early exposure to the Greek myths. More about that in a future blog posting.) We tried to weave in our Catholic faith and stories of the saints along with the three R's. Some days it was a challenge just to have everyone clean and fed. At the time I felt like I wasn't doing it book perfect. I knew there were things I wanted to teach the children that I was leaving out. But we plodded on.

Nearly twenty years later, we're still homeschooling. We've thought about putting the kids in full-time school, and one kid went for one day once. We've changed our schedule innumerable times. We've changed our priorities. We've changed our curriculum. We've sought out professional help when we've felt it was needed. But it's still the best option for our family, at this point in our lives. And, best of all, I still enjoy being with my kids.

When writing about one's children

...it's usually a good idea to have them proof-read what you're writing, particularly if said child is old enough to read.

Such is the case with one of my recent posts about Twixters. In it, I mentioned the struggle we had getting our eldest daughter off to college for the first time and how she was going to pay for it.

She thought I painted a picture of her as a "slacker senior," which she most certainly was not. She and we, her parents, were treading unfamiliar territory and hearing new terms, like "FAFSA," "EFC," and "unsubsidized Stafford" for the first time. I failed to mention (due to short-term memory loss) that she had won a hefty academic scholarship from a private Catholic school and was a finalist on their math scholarship. However, she turned it down to attend a state university. (I have already edited the posting).

She has now graduated and has applied for PhD programs in nuclear physics and medical physics at five different graduate schools across the country. She found out she's not in the 8% of accepted applicants to MIT's program, but has sweet offers from two other schools while she's waiting to hear from the last two schools.

Yes, dear Maria (not her real name, but she knows who she is), we are so proud of you. Even if you don't go to grad school, you've already done something we were told was impossible: you worked your way through school.

Love,
Mom

Quirky Olympic News

Yahoo sports reports:

As with all curling teams, Team Canada features five members. Well, six, if you really want to get technical with it.

Alternate Kristie Moore, 30, is 5½ months pregnant, making her just the third athlete known to be with child during Olympic competition. Ninety years ago, Swedish figure skater Magda Julin won a gold medal at the Antwerp Games while in her first trimester and Germany’s Diana Sartor took fourth in the skeleton in 2006.

Though she is showing (as evidenced in the picture above), Moore says that her pregnancy has not affected her ability to deliver rocks ... yet. "[In] the eighth month or so, that might be an issue," she said.

Moore found out about her pregnancy weeks before team officials invited her to join Team Canada as an alternate. When she divulged her secret, the team was more than supportive. Said team leader Cheryl Bernard, "she is young and fit. There's no reason we'll have any problems, and she'll be out there."

Notice the sports writer doesn't have any problems with including the unborn child. Guess it's not "above his paygrade" to do so.

*****************************

On other quirky sports news fronts, Catholic homeschooling mom of two and former Olympian Rebecca Dussault, may not have made the 2010 US Olympic team but she has won the gold at the 2010 ITU Winter Triathlon World Championships in Oslo, Norway earlier this week! This is the first time in the race's 14 year history that a non-European has won. As a result, when she took the top spot on the podium, the race announcer reported they didn't have the Star Spangeled Banner on their CD! Unphased, Rebecca belted out the song with her hand over her heart, joined by her coach and teammates, even continuing to sing while the second and third place finishers, the Russian and Norwegian left the podium.

Yay, Rebecca! You can bet they'll have the national anthem spooled up next time!

Via Media

Via Media, or "the middle way," refers to the idea of avoiding the extreme; it is also defined as "a mean between two extremes."

Do most Americans have moderate views? Are most Americans content to be left alone to live their lives without too much government interference? I think so.

I suspect most of us would define ourselves as "moderate." I consider myself an extremely moderate person, yet I know many folks would disagree and call me a "pro-life, pro-chastity, home-birthing, breastfeeding, organic gardening Catholic homeschooling mother of ten." But I don't see these things as extreme. In fact, I see them as an extremely moderate way of living.

Here's why:

Pro-life: Justice Blackmun, writing for the majority in the 1973 Supreme Court decision, Roe vs. Wade, said: "We need not resolve the difficult question of when life begins. When those trained in the respective disciplines of medicine, philosophy, and theology are unable to arrive at any consensus, the judiciary, at this point in the development of man's knowledge, is not in a position to speculate as to the answer."

If it is true (which I don't believe it is), that science can not determine when life begins (or agree with philosophy and theology...not that the Supreme Court really cares what philosophers and theologians have to say), then preference should be given to the possibility of life being present. For if we are truly moderate, we would say, "preserve life if it is present, and do not destroy it if there is any doubt."

Pro-chastity: Premarital and extra-marital sex have spawned a catastrophic increase in STDs (sexually transmitted diseases), a surge in unwed motherhood and increasing divorce rates. The chief criticism of chastity education is, "It doesn't work." Perhaps it is not that chastity itself "doesn't work," but that it is difficult. It is also difficult to run a marathon, yet look at the number of people who do that every year; or to lose one hundred pounds, but look at the hit show The Biggest Loser and see how we applaud folks who do that. To rephrase a G.K. Chesterton quote: "Chastity has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and not tried."

Homebirth: Less invasive, more natural, fewer post-natal problems. Obviously it's not for high-risk pregnancies, but for most low-risk births, it is a cost-saving and very pleasant alternative to hospital births.

Breastfeeding: Natural, good for baby, good for mom, what's not to like? Okay, stupid comments from uninformed people; otherwise, a very "moderate" way to feed the baby.

Organic gardening: We compost most of our kitchen waste, which makes a great additive to our clay soil. For the past few years I've been trying to get away from hybrid species and plant solely heirloom varieties. It's not only fun and educational, but it helps preserve rare species which are disappearing at an alarming rate due to large-scale production farming.

Catholic: The word "catholic" means "universal" and the early Christian Church adopted this term to show the universality of the Church that was planting seeds throughout the world. We don't have suicide bombers and we try to practice the teachings of our founder, who said some pretty extreme things like "Love your neighbor as yourself." He also died for the sins of others. Okay, maybe that does make me a little on the extreme side, but I haven't perfected any of those things yet, so I can still be called "moderate."

Homeschooling: The passing down of information from one generation to the next has been the way of education since the dawn of time. We're just a little more organized these days.

Mom of ten: Maybe by today's standards that's extreme, but the real reason I have so many kids is because I need them to keep me on the straight and narrow. There's no telling what trouble I might be getting myself into if I wasn't running after them. One thing I have noticed with having ten kids is that love doesn't diminish when your family grows. Love only grows. The thing we notice when someone is gone is how quiet and empty the house feels.

Let's hear it for radical moderation! Believe to the extreme. Hope to the extreme. Love to the extreme.

Love is the ultimate via media.

But now faith, hope, love, abide these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13:13

The lost tools of learning: will we ever find them?

I've been doing a lot of off-blog debating these days. It concerns the direction our little homeschooling co-op turned public school option program is going.

We have been happily partaking of the federal trough of taxpayer funded homeschooling resources through a great program called Home Option Program of Education. What began as a few moms sharing teaching efforts in a Christian co-op has expanded to utilize public funds for teachers and facilities and is now looking at creating their own charter high school.

I went to a few charter committee meetings during the summer to share my ideas for curriculum and a classical education, having used such a method, with some degree of success, for the past 18 years of homeschooling. As one of the early members of the program, and with four high school graduates under my belt, I figured they'd want to listen to my ideas.

Boy, was I wrong!

Little did I know the charter committee had already decided their course of action would have no part in medieval ideas of classical education, for they had already charted their course for "collaborative learning" and "critical thinking."

There's nothing like having to do a little research in educational theories and methods to fully convince one of the merits of homeschooling. I just did another re-read of Dorothy Sayer's essay, The Lost Tools of Learning. I'd forgotten just how delightfully refreshing it is to read her essay, first presented at Oxford in 1947.

I was struck by just how appropos this excerpt is today. Perhaps even more so now than it was in 1947:

For we let our young men and women go out unarmed, in a day when armor was never so necessary. By teaching them all to read, we have left them at the mercy of the printed word. By the invention of the film and the radio, we have made certain that no aversion to reading shall secure them from the incessant battery of words, words, words. They do not know what the words mean; they do not know how to ward them off or blunt their edge or fling them back; they are a prey to words in their emotions instead of being the masters of them in their intellects. We who were scandalized in 1940 when men were sent to fight armored tanks with rifles, are not scandalized when young men and women are sent into the world to fight massed propaganda with a smattering of "subjects"; and when whole classes and whole nations become hypnotized by the arts of the spell binder, we have the impudence to be astonished. We dole out lip-service to the importance of education--lip- service and, just occasionally, a little grant of money; we postpone the school-leaving age, and plan to build bigger and better schools; the teachers slave conscientiously in and out of school hours; and yet, as I believe, all this devoted effort is largely frustrated, because we have lost the tools of learning, and in their absence can only make a botched and piecemeal job of it.

I would love to say that after 18+ years of homeschooling, I've gotten it right and I am doing a great job of introducing my kids to the lost tools of learning, but the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know. I just hope my kids end up being smarter than me. Some of them already are!

Poetic Knowledge: The Art of Knowing

Poetic Knowledge: The Recovery of Education by James S. Taylor

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
My husband and I had the opportunity to meet Dr. Taylor and take him to dinner several years ago (1998 or 1999) when he was in Denver for a Catholic homeschooling conference.

We had a marvelous evening and learned so much from this man, who attended the Integrated Humanities Program at the University of Kansas which was a hotbed for Catholic conversions and making monks (dozens at Clear Creek Monastery in Oklahoma and the Abbey of Fontgombault in France), priests (Fr. James Jackson, FSSP) and bishops (e.g. Bishops Conley of Denver and Coakley of Salina, KS).

Dr. Taylor discusses the ideas of "poetic knowledge" as things we know with the core of our being, as opposed to things we learn by rote. For example, we know the smell in the air after a rain, or after the lawn has been cut. (Okay, so that's MY analogy, which is pretty poor...I read this book many years ago!) We are physical as well as spiritual beings and we need to learn with our whole beings, not just with our brains. Dr. Taylor's book is a wonderful complement to the Charlotte Mason approach to education as well as the Montessori approach (as taught by Maria Montessori and not by the dozens of New Agey schools that have sprouted up everywhere using her surname).

Not as delightful as sharing a bottle of wine with Dr. Taylor, this book may be the next best thing.

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Update on When Mom Goes to War

My friend, Eileen, who is the stay-at-home-Navy-reservist-Catholic-homeschooling-mom-of-five, recently updated us on her activities.

After being told she was going to Iraq for a year, Uncle Sam has sent her to Afghanistan instead.

Here's an excerpt from her latest email:

Hi everyone and greetings from Afghanistan!

All is going well here. Sorry that it has taken me a while to write. I kept thinking that I would do it this weekend, but there really is no "weekend" here per se. We work 7 days a week, about 14 hours a day. That and a workout is pretty much the whole waking time. I did go to Mass today, which was nice. 10 folks, no singing or anything. I did the 2nd reading. The priest is nice - perhaps from the Caribbean somewhere?

...Now that I am here work is fascinating and crazy busy. My room is a wooden shanty that looks like it could have been built by my 7 year-old son but what are you going to do? Plus, did I mention TINY. I mean TINY. It has a twin bed and that is how deep it is. I'll have to measure it to see how big. But you know, I pretty much go there to sleep and that is it. The days are FULL!! There are no dressers or anything, just these wooden or metal shelf type units with sort of cubbies. Interesting but making storing stuff a little tricky...

Things are good here. The people are nice. The work is interesting and I am busy. It is all going fast. Of course, I say that except I just realized that this is only my 3rd day and in many ways I feel I have been here for weeks. Crazy.

Please say a prayer tonight for Eileen and her husband and five little ones awaiting her safe return.