"Don't you think that daisies are the friendliest flower?"

Our apartment has a little dining nook that used to be a back porch. I, for one, wish that it were still a back porch because there is nothing I love more than laying on back porches and admiring the stars. Now it is a useless room with a dining table that is never used. The four of us in this apartment aren’t exactly gourmet chefs and if we do cook something, chances are it has been eaten within five steps of the microwave. We never make it to the dining room table.

However, Sarah and Michael bought me some lovely flowers for my birthday and that has made the dining room much more inviting. I’ve found myself straying in there with a book or notebook to enjoy my purple and yellow companions. I don’t know much about flowers except that I like them. I can’t ever remember the names. I know daisies, roses and tulips, but after that I’m lost. I’m content knowing God designed them creatively to bring Himself pleasure. I’m like that with stars too. Some people want to know everything there is to know about space and planets. They want to know how stars are composed, their temperatures, how far they are from earth…I just like knowing that Carli, Jake, Taylor, Lori and I can lay on the sidewalk on a clear night and marvel at them. I’ll leave all the science part to Jake and Louie Giglio.

Tonight my flowers and a cup of hot chocolate accompanied me through the book of Hosea. I questioned my “ignorance is bliss” axiom when I read, “My people perish for lack of knowledge.” I thought to myself that maybe I should pick up a couple of Better Homes and Gardens to brush up on my flower skills. (Carnations and camellias always throw me for a loop.) Clearly knowledge is something God values an awful lot if Israel was perishing for their rejection of it. I thought of all the things I cram my head with in the race for knowledge... Gosh, there is so much pressure just to know…everything. But God values a slightly different kind of knowledge that can be found in the Economist. A couple verses down I learned what he meant. “Because you have rejected knowledge…since you have forgotten the law of your God…because they have stopped giving heed to the LORD…the people without understanding are ruined.” Knowledge that God values can be found in the pages of Deuteronomy: “And you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. And these words which I am commanding you today shall be on your heart and you shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up…” That is the kind of knowledge I want to build on. I guess it's alright if I can't tell you the latin names of the flowers on my dining room table. However, I do need to apply myself to get a better understanding of the things that God wants me to learn.

“For the LORD gives wisdom. From His mouth come knowledge and understanding.” – Proverbs 2:6

FLEX Workshop 2008

This week I had the pleasure of hanging out with 112 of our FLEX students in D.C. For those of you who don’t know, I work with an exchange program called FLEX that is funded by the Department of State. Usually I work with grants and write newsletters, but this week I got to evaluate our Civic Education workshop for students who competed and won an essay contest. We picked 112 of our 1200 students to come to D.C. this week and learn about democracy and civil society firsthand. It was fantastic. FLEX students are from all of the former Soviet republics- from Ukraine and Russia to Armenia and Georgia and on over to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. They’re going to high schools in the U.S. for one year and this week they represented 38 different states. Pretty exciting. I think they were surprised at how different the states they’re living in are. Some were staying Alaska, Hawaii, Arizona, Wisconsin, Maine, Alabama, Florida- even South Dakota.


















Anyway, the week was awesome. They arrived on Sunday and through the week we visited every memorial and museum Washington has to offer. We even got a sneak peak at the new Newseum- a museum all about the history of journalism. They got to hear a panel about the importance of a free press and made their own news broadcasts.


It wasn’t all fun and games, though. Students got together in country groups to talk about projects that they wanted to implement in their home countries when they return in June. FLEX alumni are very active. They volunteer all over the place. They work in nursing homes, visit orphanages, teach English classes, work as OSCE election monitors, lead community events, start recycling campaigns, work with American embassy officers, sponsor AIDS runs, clean up parks, and get elected to office. I think the most encouraging and exciting thing I got to do this week was listen to their ideas of how they are going to change their countries for the better when they return. Unlike many exchange students who come to America, most FLEX students do not want to move here. They want to go home and change their countries. And that is awesome.






















For some of them, with relatively free countries, this might be as simple as having an event to promote national language in culture. For some of the less free countries, I heard ideas of creating a democracy forums online. They want to have weekly computer classes for orphans who are about to turn 18 so that they have good job prospects when they get out. They want to clean up city squares. They want to have Special Olympics. They want to do all sots of amazing things. It was awesome. And I am so proud of them.














Besides hearing them talk about how their lives have been changed during this week and this year, I think the best thing I gained this week is that I now have friends to stay with in 12 different countries. :0) Sometime soon I want to wear cheshki with my friends from Turkmenistan; I want to go to a Georgian dance; I want to go to a café in L’viv. Soon.

Freebird!!!!

There is an Afghan restaurant across the street from the Target I run to. The building is slightly run down and the sign has a faded, painted-over line about “Emerald Palace” or some name that it used to possess when it was an Americanized Chinese buffet of some sort. Green neon tubes outline the windows and something equally bright written in Pashto illuminates the front door. I would have paid little attention to it had I not noticed that every time I ran by it, no matter what time, the parking lot always seemed to be full. I said to myself that either the food was really delicious or that some criminal plot was being hatched in the back room. That’s what always happens in Jackie Chan movies at least. I, being no Jackie Chan, didn’t have the guts to go in by myself, but I remained curious all the same.

So, when Daniel called yesterday and told me that I had to pick the restaurant for my birthday dinner I decided that this would be as good a time as any to try out some Afghan food. Turns out Cameron and Daniel were curious about it too. So, it was decided that we would save Panera for some lackluster evening and try something exotic. Daniel made sure to park near the street so that we could make a quick getaway if the cops busted up a terrorist plot at the table next to ours. Turns out our fears were quite unfounded, as, minus the green neon windows, everything in the restaurant was decidedly normal. Pictures that looked like they were shot from the movie “Hidalgo” and scenic shots of Afghanistan hung on the walls and a big Afghan flag adorned the check-out counter advertising the fact that gift cards were now available. The food was great. (Any place that gives you bread is going to be a winner.) I had lamb kabobs and they were delicious. Our server was really sweet as well. So, thumbs up to the Afghans. If you are driving down Jefferson Davis Highway towards Crystal City, stop by.

We then went to Baskin Robbins where Daniel was quite disappointed that out of 31 possible flavors, chocolate fudge was not available. I would have thought that chocolate fudge was a staple, but Tallahassee does not have a Baskin Robbins that I know of, so maybe Cotton Candy really is more popular. I was just excited they had diet Pepsi. Some song from Guitar Hero began playing on the radio and it was decided that we would go over to Best Buy and try to play Rock Band. Rock Band wasn’t set up, but Guitar Hero III was. I saw some pithy comment on the screen while the next song was loading. That’s one of my favorite parts of Guitar Hero. They give bands some great advice, such as:

"Don't let the drummer handle the money."
"They don't really want you to play Freebird. They're just heckling you."

Much to our dismay, some fifth grader was hogging the game. He’d probably been there since the store opened this morning. That’s what they do. At least my brother has the consideration to take his friends to play in the middle of the night when no one else is waiting. Even after 9 straight hours, this kid had no intension of going anywhere. “Surely he’ll have to go to the bathroom,” I thought. It was then we would make our move. We lounged in leather chairs in front of two plasma TVs watching Transformers and Spiderman 3 simultaneously, eyeing the plastic guitar enviously. As soon as the announcer called for all customers to make their final purchases, Fifth Grader’s mom came and told him it was time to go. We dove for the guitar. I pounded out in red, blue, yellow and green a rusty version of “Welcome to the Jungle,” and Cameron and Daniel got in a song before they started turning out the lights and vacuum cleaners clouded up the music. Next week we’ll have to arrive early to beat Fifth Grader there.

Quote o' the Day

Heard on the Mall:

"So we all got together and went down to look at the cherry blossoms. Turns out they all look alike and now we're bored."

It was all set up for a big disappointment, people. What do you expect, really? Dogwoods are so much better.