ANOTHER one of my favorite songs

AMAZING song. This kicked off the Revolve Tour last December...

OK, why...?

We sang this song at youth group last night and I was wicked confused. Why? What's the point? Seriously?
Good song, though.

Compass story #2: Day two at service sites

Day two at my group's service site was church-cleaning day. This meant painting, scrubbing the chairs, etc. The Friz, Sweet n' Spazzy and I washed all the church's chairs. Afterward I counted. It was something like one hundred and two. We also painted white walls...white. Admittedly they weren't the cleanest walls ever and looked better when the painters were done...

These jobs took all morning. After lunch we went out and did more prayer walking. Another job was to invite people to karaoke night that night. I was with Sparky, The Joker and Pixel. Pixel being the only one in the group to speak fluent Spanish, she coached us on the proper phrases and we took turns inviting people. (And we found a banana tree growing on the sidewalk. This was another discovery that really excited me.)

When we got back we discovered that Glove Love had actually put his training to good use and greeted the woman who worked at a little restaurant thingy across the street from the church we were working for with a kiss - and the restaurant had given us a whole lot of free juice. So, over bottles of tasty Mexican orange juice stuff, we reviewed what we'd seen, etc. But something was nagging. So when we were finished I crawled up into the corner of the donated Burger King playplace (remember, this was also a party salon) with my journal and pencil, and wrote a song.

It occurred to me, "Hm. For once in my life, I'm actually around people who write music." So I went and asked The Joker, who is some sort of musical genius, to put music to it. (He did. I got to hear the song to music a couple days later.)

Then we had karaoke night. At first it was just us, but finally a bunch of Mexican teen guys came in. One of them knew the whole dance to Michael Jackson's "Beat It" and danced while Enrique and Glove Love sang. It was so funny. And they spoke some English, and that, with our limited Spanish, was enough to let us get to know each other some and to invite them to the soccer outreach at the park the next day.

After karaoke night, and presentation/skit practice, we had Table Talk and called it a day.

ahem.

Here's a line from the Geography research paper requirements. This is a college course, bear in mind. Boldface emphasis is mine.

Bibliography - cite your sources! This should be the last page in your report, and must include at least three different sources. Internet sources, including Wikipedia, are acceptable, as well as your textbook.

It's just...it's completely...this is...wow. Just...wow.
Wikipedia?
Wow.

Wow.

Wow.

NEVER USE WIKIPEDIA FOR A RESEARCH PAPER. That's what they told us in English Composition 101. NEVER EVER USE WIKIPEDIA OR CITE IT!
Why is it that they teach us this stuff, and then expect us to throw it away?

Wow.

Day one of kindergarten

Yesterday was the first day of kindergarten. There was this one little girl who was crying all morning. Not explosive temper-tantrum type crying; she was just being quiet and there were tears running down her cheeks.... You couldn't get impatient with her either, she was just so cute.... When she sat next to one of her new classmates, a little boy, he patted her on the back and told her, "It's OK...let it out...it's all right..." and kept doing it. It was just the most adorable thing. He was being so sweet.
At another point, I was sitting there hugging her and telling her that at two o'clock her daddy would be back to get her. Behind us, a lady asked Mrs. F who I was. "Oh, she's a high-schooler who's working with us on Mondays and Fridays this year."

"Oh. I just didn't know whether she was maybe her mother or something."

Compass story #2: Day one at the service site

Yeah, I know it's been a while getting this up. It's been hectic. REALLY hectic. My insane schedule for this semester includes five high school courses, three college courses, fife and drum, theater, kindergarten volunteer work, college Christian Club work (they want me to do some more writing for the paper), and of course church and youth group. I'm also teaching myself guitar and doing creative writing. (And of course sleep has to be in there somewhere...)
But here goes.

That morning, after some more training, we took taxis to our service sites. My group went to a little storefront new church plant, which operated as a party salon during the week. That was where we'd be staying. We met the pastor of the church, along with his wife and two boys. Some things that happened immediately: The Joker started jamming with the pastor's sons (hey, guitar chords have the same names in English and Spanish), we divvied up mealtime cleanup into five teams of two (I was with the Friz) and set up for lunch.
We used this time to get to know the pastor and his family. Here I was at a disadvantage. Most of the others had taken some Spanish, or closely related French, as their high school foreign language. BUT my language was...modern Hebrew. Yep. No help at all.
After lunch we played some Foosball (remember, this was a party salon) with the pastor's sons. The Joker, Samwise and Glove Love were especially keen on the game, although the rest of us enjoyed it a lot too. It was amazing to watch the language barrier disappear, say, while Samwise and The Joker were jamming with the pastor's sons "Robby" and "Danny," and while we were playing Foosball.
That day our main occupation was prayer walking. Then we had a Mexican culture class and talked about some of our activities for the next week. It was pretty tame. I took another Mexican siesta...

Remember

Today is 9/11. Nine years ago this morning, planes hit the twin towers in New York City, another plane hit the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a fourth plane, a Boeing 767, went down in Pennsylvania. The current position on this crash is that it was hijacked by yet another terrorist(s) and that the passengers hijacked it from them and crashed it, choosing to die saving others' lives instead of as victims of a successful terror attack. Many also believe that the intended destination was the Capitol building in D.C.
The Capitol building was the building that my family was in that day, on our first (and pretty much last) family vacation. I was seven years old. The building was evacuated with mass hysteria, and the sky was filled with smoke from the Pentagon.

Today two of my brothers and I performed at a fife and drum event. I saw no half-staff flags all day. In fact, from the behavior of others, it looked like any other day. And I was shocked, appalled and offended by the forgetfulness I saw today.

STUNNING Ground Zero mosque news, I'm sure...

Fox News reports:

A key financial backer of the proposed Islamic center near Ground Zero once contributed to a U.S.-designated terror group, MyFox New York reports.

Egyptian-born businessman Hisham Elzanaty, who made what is described as a "significant investment" in the Ground Zero mosque project,contributed more than $6,000 in 1999 to the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, also known as HLF, tax records show.