up and up

His compassions never fail.

They are new every morning;

great is Your faithfulness.

[lamentations 3:22-23]

to see the sun

We returned to school this past Tuesday. It was a bit gloomy earlier in the week, but by Friday the clouds parted, the temperature rose, and the Sun came out! I walked to school on Friday in a fleece and was almost sweating when I arrived. On Saturday I saw a trail of water and bubbles trickling out of my neighbor's driveway, the telltale signs of an afternoon carwash. In January? In January.

Surely this warm and sunny weather will not persist throughout February and March. I'm a science teacher; I know how these things work. But for now, we will bask in its loveliness and thank God for answering our prayers for Sun. For now we can fill up our energy tanks with sunshine and remember its comfort and warmth next week, when the temperatures will drop and the clouds will come back again.

Light is sweet, and it pleases the eye to see the sun.

[ecclesiastes 11:7]

1.11.11 : 11 goals

In honor of today's date, here are 11 goals for 2011, in no particular order:


1. Run a 10K race

my first 5K (March 2010)

2. Read through the New Testament

3. Drive a van of middle schoolers on the Autobahn without hyperventilating Drive on the Autobahn

4. Eat more vegetables.

5. Re-visit the Creation Museum

6. Master the German language Say something in German without sounding/feeling like a complete idiot

 

7. Stargaze from the top of Sausenberg



Sausenburg castle ruins

8. Begin sponsoring a child

9. Post one picture a day on my personal blog

day 8: got milk?

10. Visit Spain. 

11. Read at least one book a month strictly for pleasure

What are your goals for 2011?

package #2

Today when I woke up, this was waiting for me.

I know it's blurry, but I was excited, and I'd only been awake 5 minutes.

I squealed with delight, as I've been anticipating this package's arrival for the last three weeks.

Merry Christmas to me!

Inside were many lovelies, including two new movies, lots of coffee creamer, cookie scoops, and baking goodies (red hots and special sprinkles). YAY! Thanks to Mom and Dad, Dave, and Grandma and Grandpa Forrider for their contribution to my box-o-love.

oooOOOooo

package #1

The first of three Christmas packages finally arrived this morning! It was a Christmas card and dice game called Don't You Forget It. The game sounds pretty similar to Farkle but with a few twists. The best part of this package is that I already had an idea of what it was before it arrived. On Christmas Eve I was Skyping with my grandparents and Grandma asked, "Are you playing your new game?" I tried to figure out how in the world Grandma knew that my friends Amanda and Carrie had given me a game for Christmas.

"What game?" I asked.

"The game I sent you! You did get your package, right?"

We both had a good laugh when I told Grandma that I had in fact NOT received her package yet!

Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

[belated] December newsletter, January/February prayer calendar

My latest newsletter as well as the TeachBeyond January/February prayer calendar are available through GoogleDocs. After going to the link, for best viewing quality click File --> Download Original to access the PDF. From there you may simply open the PDF to view it, or save it and print if you wish. See screenshot below...

December/2nd Quarter Newsletter

January/February 2011 Prayer Calendar

top ten word clouds

I made the following word clouds using a really cool website called Wordle. You can put in any text and then adjust the shape, font, colors, etc. The larger the word, the more frequently it appeared in the text. I pasted in the text from my top ten blog posts of 2010 and played around with the settings. Below are three designs I came up with. They all have the same words, but which one do you like the best? Which one should I have printed in my scrapbook? Vote!

TopTen #1

 

TopTen #2

TopTen #3

Handel's Messiah

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to hear Handel's Messiah performed in its entirety by the Freiburg Bachchor (choir) and Bachorchester (orchestra). It was a fun way to begin celebrating the Christmas season, but I had to fight the urge to sing along!

Apparantly Germans don't stand for the Hallelujah chorus.

I also learned that a man can sing alto solos just as well as a woman. When the four soloists took the stage, I was confused to see three men and one woman. I just figured the woman had a huge range and would be singing all the female solos.

With the beginning of Behold, a virgin shall conceive... I realized that I was hearing a woman's voice, but the female soloist was sitting down and definitely not singing. My brain refused to acknowledge what my eyes were seeing and my ears were hearing... a man was singing the alto solos so well that I thought a woman had been singing!

Apparantly he was in the Vienna Boys Choir. [sorry, for some reason I can't embed this video, but click the link to watch - it's amazing!!]

And I can't find a video of him singing anything from the Messiah but here he is singing "The Raptured Soul." Even if you don't watch the whole video (sorry, it's long), just fast-forward to about the 4:30 mark... he hits a beautiful note at 4:50!

silvester - new year's eve

Tonight I braved the Blumenplatz (the city square) at midnight with my friends to observe the German tradition of going pyro-crazy with fireworks to ring in the new year.