a lesson on Muslim headscarves

If you've ever wondered the difference between a burka, hijab, and chador (or wondered what they are in general), check out this article from the bbc. It's about a law passed in Belgium that bans women from wearing a burka, but if you scroll down about halfway, there's a lovely set of pictures with accompanying explanation about headscarves.

Last week my eye doctor thought I might possibly have a brain tumor or MS or optic neuritis or something else dreadful. So for a week and a half I did too. After tears and hysteria followed by extreme anxiety, I settled into a nice indifferent sort of mood. After all, I rationalized, it couldn't possibly be me who has something horrible like MS, right? Other people get that. Not me. I'd rather have a brain tumor. So then I had an mri and waited for the results (and waited and waited and nearly blew up at the most idiotic, unhelpful morons at the radiologist's office)...

...and finally found out that my brain is free and clear of anything nasty.

Disaster averted, for now. Hopefully the spots I'm seeing in my right eye will disappear within the next month or so, leaving me only with an unpleasant memory and high bills.

faith

I've been thinking a lot about faith lately. My patriarchal blessing says that I have been blessed with great faith. And as a child and teenager, that was easy to believe, especially since nothing bad every really happened to me. Oh, I had my "trials" just like everyone else, but nothing that really challenged my beliefs. But I've started wondering how to have faith but also have your heart aligned with God's will.

For example, If I were to develop a terrible disease, I'm totally, 100% sure that if God wanted it, I could be cured. No problem. But does He want to? What if it's His will that I suffer? What if there's "something I'm supposed to learn" from said ailment? All the faith in the world won't change God's will....or could it? If I had stronger faith, would I be healed, even if it's not part of God's plan for me?

So how do I know what God wants for me? How do I pray the "right" way and ask only for those things which God wants for my life? What if my faith is great, but not placed in the right area? Is my my faith then in vain, and I end up a bitter, dying old woman? Or must I accept that whatever God does is the best thing...

...but then, does God have an active hand in everything that happens to us? Do some things just happen because they happen and God just observes? Are these things really planned out for us?

I have so many questions.

some thoughts/worries

1- I'm looking for the perfect shade flowers to plant around my house. Perennials would be nice, but not mandatory. Any suggestions?

2- Sunday morning I woke up to whitish spots in my right eye. I immediately assumed I was going blind (my greatest fear since I first got glasses at the age of 7), and rushed to the doctor Monday afternoon. Since then, I've gone to 2 eye doctors and 1 retina specialist. I had my eye poked, prodded (literally) and puffed with air, dilated twice, and several color photographs and scans done (which I'm sure cost a fortune...I can't wait to see the bill for all this). And after all that, they still don't know what's wrong with me. It could be nothing. Or it could be something terrible, but the doctor refuses to tell me lest I start needlessly worrying and assuming the worst. Which I'm already doing, of course.

3- I've decided I need to get rid of/stop wearing all of my flowy shirts. I've had 2 students ask me if I'm pregnant in the past week. Once I show them my non-pregnant stomach, they're convinced, but really. It's getting a little old. And then another student asked if something was wrong with me because I'm pink instead of white or brown (and I wasn't blushing). What can I say, I was blessed with a ruddy complexion.

4- Three more weeks til the end of the semester. I'm going to be very sad to leave these students behind. Aside from some dear but rather...demanding level 2 students (who would learn a lot faster if they actually listened for a few minutes) these 2 classes have been some of my best. They've definitely made up for the beasts from last fall.

5- I miss blogging.

Dear weather,

Please stop fooling around with winter. I'm sick of swirling bits of snow that don't really stick and dry, dead grass and trees. Also. I would like to remind you that I do not live in Seattle, and therefore the sun should come out more than once a week. Please go find spring. I'm sure you can entice her to stay.

Sincerely,
a whiny, vitamin-D deprived winter-blues sufferer

Happy St.Patrick's day!

Trav always makes fun of me for this, but I consider myself Irish (Irish-American, I should say) above all other nationalities. In reality, I'm not really any more Irish than I am German or Danish or English. But I identify more with the Irish side of the family. Maybe it's because I've done lots of research on my Irish family history. Or because my first name is Irish. Or because my middle name is from my off-the-boat Irish great-grandmother. Or because they speak/spoke a really fantastic form of Gaelic (which I tried to teach myself in high school). Or maybe because I do Irish dance. Whenever I mention it, people ask me if I dance because I'm Irish. I don't really (there are far more non-Irish Irish dancers than Irish...but there is a ton of red-headed Irish dancers...); I do Irish dance because it's awesome. It's just convenient that I happen to be part Irish.

Whatever my personal motivation may be, there are dozens of reasons to be proud to be Irish. Here's a short list:

• to speak Irish Gaelic
• to speak Irish Engligh
• to be so feisty! How many other countries are renowned for having such fiery tempers?
• to be green! Sometimes when I see pictures of Ireland, I'm homesick for the land I've never been to
  
• to have great fiddle music
  
• to eat soda bread
• to have produced James Joyce
• to believe in leprechauns
  
• to have done a large chunk of the dirty work in American cities during the early 1900s
• to have a long, rich, fascinating history
• to dance with flying feet

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

for the love of dirt!

I started a compost pile. And I love it. I love that I can throw food out my screen door into the pile of decomposing food (this is especially enjoyable when throwing eggs that cracked when I accidentally flung them to the ground in their shopping bag). That my leaves went to good use this year. That I feel earthy and wholesome piling up my vegetable waste while I'm preparing for dinner. That I might possibly have nice soil for my hopefully organic garden this summer. That my garbage doesn't stink any more and is only half as full these days (the recylcing has probably had something to do with this, too).

I did, however, make one fatal mistake. I put this compost pile in one of the worst places in my yard. It's close to the house, yes, but it's in almost constant shade. That pile hasn't felt any sun in months! And because of this, I fear my compost won't be ready in time for spring planting. I also suspect that I need to turn my compost pile more than once in a while. And I don't really have any soil in my compost mixture, and I'm pretty sure that's one of the key ingredients.

Now that I think about it, there are probably dozens of things I haven't done to make my compost perf. And I have no idea what they might be. But luckily, the Central Utah Gardens have a class in a few weeks all about compost. It's free, I'm going, and I'm ridiculously, nerdily excited about it. I've had a vegetable garden the past 5 years, and it has been quite successful. But I haven't delved into organic gardening or composting or producing herbs that I actually cook with more than twice a year (if you need any sage, or rather cups upon cups upon cups of sage, head down to my old house. Two winters still haven't killed that stuff off yet). I'm hoping this year I can learn all sorts of useful things and end up with produce coming out my ears.

If you happen to still live somewhere near Utah county, you can sign up for this class (or others) here.

a quandry

Answer me this: if you were getting married, would you let your family (and your in-laws) know the dates you were thinking about? Or would you just pick a date and tell everyone to stick it- rearrange your schedule or don't bother coming. And what if this wedding was planned TWO WEEKS in advance. What would you do then? Eh?

Would you, as a friend/relative of the couple, be able to drop everything and be at the wedding...on the other side of the country? And what if you had something you couldn't get out of? What then?

mums the word

Today my German teacher was wrong. WRONG! And I did nothing to correct him.

He was explaining the difference between simple past (preterit) and present perfect in German. To do so, he compared the German to English: The boy went to the store. vs The boy has gone to the store.

Both correct sentences, both past tense. So German teacher says to class "Is there a difference in the tenses of these two sentences? Does it change the meaning?" No one says anything (probably because no one had any idea what he was talking about....Americans are notoriously bad at knowing their own grammar. But don't fret if you're one of them. You can't help it if you're a product of your less-than-worthy-grade-school-English-education).

I, not wanting to appear a know-it-all (I answer too many questions as it is), simply nodded my head. He asks again, I nod again. There is a long pause...and my teacher confidently declares "There isn't a difference! And it's the same in German!"

My eyebrows raise in skepticism. No difference? Excuse me? There is totally a difference. Yes, maybe it's a subtle, picky difference, but it's a difference nonetheless. Could you say I went to the beach last summer and I have gone to the beach last summer interchangeably? If I were to say did you see the movie, you might answer yes, last Saturday. But what would you say to have you seen the movie? Does it sound right to say yes, I have seen it last Saturday. I certainly hope not!

Unfortunately, I didn't say any of that. Instead, I sat there with my eyebrows raised, head shaking vigorously in disagreement, and mind racing. How to contradict/argue with my teacher in the middle of class...I've never been good at that...the blushing that results is always so uncomfortable. But luckily, we have a Russian student in my class who piped up (I think being a foreigner gave her an advantage) and said what I was thinking. My teacher shrugged it off as poor Russian teaching skills. But he did agree to look at one of her English textbooks at a later date, so apparently he's not opposed to being wrong.

I really should have said something. I wanted to. Usually my reason for keeping quiet in such a circumstance is insecurity- I'm never totally sure that I'm right. But this time, I knew I was right. I teach this stuff to my students on a regular basis. I can show him dozens of different grammar books as proof of my rightness. But rightness doesn't matter when you're too silent to answer.

Dang it.

the way of the Russki

I have a Russian student this semester. I love him because he's Russian and I've never had a Russian before (Russian speakers from Armenia or Tajikistan, yes, but never a real Russian!). I'm kind of partial to reverse discrimination- I love my minority students more.

On my first day of class, I was slightly terrified of this Russian guy. He's about 5'6", extremely muscular (think a smaller version of the bad guy in Rocky 4...or someone who's obsessed with "building muscular mass," as he puts it.). His hair is short, dark blondish, and perfectly parted. He wears his pants slightly too high for American taste and always tucks his button-up shirt into his slightly high pants. His clothes are perfectly tailored to his muscular frame. He insists upon calling me Mrs. Zirker and always raises his hand when answering a question in class. He is, in short, very intense.

But after a few weeks, I realized that although he is indeed very intense (and very intelligent), he's not really that scary. He's actually really great. His English is much higher than a level 2 (which is the class I have him for), so he understands when I make jokes that the others don't catch or when other students are being remarkably dense (I have a lot of dense students in this class. They're nice, but very thick). And he started smiling, which made him seem less like a military sergeant.

But the best thing about this student is his writing. He is simply incapable of writing something comprehensible to the average American. His love for "fancy" words (as his grammar teacher says) is just too strong. For example, when asking for help with the printer, instead of saying something like "Could you help me with the printer?" he says "Could you render me some assistance with this printing device?" Or if he wants to know about a homework assignment, he sends me an email that says "Let me address to you with question concerning the implementation of our home assignment." Did he get married? No, he "entered into a matrimonial alliance."

And this is how he feels about an athletic competition from his youth: "In the course of our displacement I did not experienced a critical excitement, inasmuch as I possessed sufficient training abilities. On the contrary, the feeling of foretaste overfilled me, which was stimulated by adrenalin."

I love it.