A Three Post Day: The Lonestar Rescue Mission

The college fair circuit brings people together.

We may never see those hoards of students again, but come rain or come shine, we, the counselors from universities all across the states, will probably join together for a 13 or more day string of the same fairs. Sometimes, we see one another twice in the same day--or more depending on if we end up in the same Starbucks. 

We bond. 

Thank goodness for that. 

Remember the time Abilene had to rescue my promo (and me) from the rain/parking lot incident? 

It was a thing. 

Today, yet again, I required rescuing. 

My keys and I...had a falling out. 

Or, rather, a falling in. 

Falling into my trunk. 

Without having had unlocked the car. 

And a dead phone. 

I'm not sure if they had slipped from the hood into the trunk or if I had set them there on the back ledge, but there they were, just out of reach. I could even touch their plastic tag. 

Dallas Christian and Cal Baptist were on it, managing to fanagle their way down into the top opening with the ear of sunglasses to hit the trunk button on the downward-flipped keys. 

Miracles. They're a thing. 

Kickin' Beats and Taking Names

Today, Texas melted my cupcake.

That is not innuendo for anything.
My first of two college fairs today gave me a cupcake.
I put said cupcake in car as I navigated my way across the Dallas ring.
And it melted.

Melted.
Cupcake.

...

How.

Other than feats of physics (Is that physics? I'm not sure. I was, after all, a creative writing major, not a science major), I have already started learning some things about Texas and college recruiting.

1. I am not made for Dallas driving. It makes me want to repent of all my sins and update my will.
2. Making friends with other reps is actually a really good idea. It's fun to exchange ideas on how we're doing things differently/similarly. Also, if you're both trying to work a difficult area, you can exchange schools/contacts to help one another just get in. 
3. Give yourself super extra time to get places. You will get lost. Even if you see the school, you are not in the clear. Find the high school office then give me a call.
4. Bring more than one phone charger and put it in an accessible place.
5. Pack snacks. This is one is more like a life rule, but really. Snacks, guys.
6. Casually dressing in your school colors makes you so cool. It wasn't my idea; I actually saw a very hip sort of girl at another college fair do it then my own boss and have since been very cognizant to ask myself the question, "Does this come in navy or gold?" Today, for instance, I am sporting the yellow/gold bridesmaid dress I wore in my best friend Caity's wedding (yah that's right I actually wore it again. Can YOU say that about any of your bridesmaid dresses?) with a blue striped scarf. And I feel very school-spirited without being all up in your face about it.
7. It is difficult to have road rage when you are listening to the Bible on audiobook.
8. Dallas has a bollywood radio station: "Fun Asian Radio." Top notch. Even the commercials. I especially enjoyed the inspirational hit: Roobaroo by A.R. Rahman and Naresh Iyer. I'm not being ironic. It has a beat you won't be able to resist decoratively twisting your hands to.

Today thus far I have had a classroom visit and a college fair. In an hour I have another college fair.

It's going well so far. Only one student took a snooze on me today. In all fairness, the music on my promo videos is really soothing.

I think I enjoy talking with students just as much as I enjoy talking to their parents. Don't even get me started on my "momference" idea. I may have one at the end of September. It's pending. But I for sure have one scheduled for October, and I am stoked for it.

Moms gotta mom. I get that.

Time to leave Starbucks for my second college fair today.

PSL

It's that season again, when all the white girls in The States don their nike shorts, ugg boots, and head on over to Starbucks to take selfies with their pumpkin spice lattes.

It is one of my dearest pleasures to inwardly (and now bloggily) mock those humans.
At the same time, I admit that there are few things that are more delightful than a good pumpkin spice latte. Or really anything pumpkin flavoured.

Aldi carries so many strange and wonderful pumpkin products during the halloween season including, but not excluded to, pumpkin cream cheese, pumpkin yogurt, and pumpkin pancake mix.

And, I'm not sure if you're quite aware, but Northern Ireland is not known for its pumpkin-flavoured anything.

Not even their Starbucks carried the PSL.
Finally, after days and days of searching, I found one in Sinnamon on Stranmillis. (If you're ever in the UK in the fall and get desperate. I understand. We all have needs.

To me, at that time, I needed pumpkin because it tasted like home: jumping in crisp, fire-coloured leaves, the smell of the ozark mountains changing seasons, and carving pumpkins with my friends. All things I had been stripped of. All things I now have again.

Currently, I'm sitting in Starbucks in Rogers, 45 minutes away from my Siloam, finishing up some office work and drinking a PSL in the rainy weather.

Why?
Partly because I needed to do office work.
Partly because if I chose Rogers instead of Fayetteville, I can see the boyfriend after he gets off work.
Partly in celebration.

Today, I submitted the single most strenuous and single most important paper of my academic career. That's right; the Master's thesis has been officially turned-in. Now, all that's left to do is wait and hope my little American, literary voice is understood.

Lasts

• Last lunch with my MA friends (Boojum and Common Grounds after for coffee and traybakes)
• Last goodbye and house reset for any groups I'll be in charge of (Family and Human Services. We liked them very much). 
• Last bonding time with Heather and Jonny (My smallgroup leaders during the past year, featured here with their kids, Heather's sweet sister Lorna, and some cute kids I was babysitting)
  
• Last trip to the special collections (to look up an old MA dissertation for help on how to structure my own)
• Last coffee in the Starbucks on Botanic (the site of many a public tear shed)
• Last night in my room, St. Patrick (They needed my room for one of the other group's students)
• Last "class" (technically that was a couple weeks ago, but I had to return to meet with my dissertation supervisor) 
• "The Last Supper" with the girls (High Tea with Lynsey, Lauren, and Megan)
• Last Botanic outing (dinner with Steve and Hot Greg)
• Last cuddles with Lauren at midnight (really good surprise)
• Last Sunday morning at Belfast City Vineyard (Happy Pentecost, errybody!)
• Last hugs with Kiera and my other church friends (Held it together dynamically until my final hug with Kiera)
• Last hugs with Megs (she came over to drop by a "Northern Irish Must-Haves" gift. So lovely)
• Last tea with Naomi (where I passed the torch of Mac n Cheese and Kool-Aid off to her, we finished the season of New Girl we started when I got here, and she gave me an "on-flight entertainment" gift, wrapped but I'm assured it's customs approved)
• Last bag packed (It was an ordeal. Don't even want to discuss how much cursing happened)

Now to spend my last night in the place I've called home for almost a year now and will forever be part of my soul. Lynsey told me I'm allowed to claim myself as 1/22 Northern Irish now and would be more legitimate in doing so than nearly every American that claims Irish heritage. It made me laugh. And it's probably true. 

These here are my last goodbyes. Wow. 

The Domino Effect

What's crazy is, if my phone wouldn't have drowned, if rice would have solved the problem, if Apple was helpful, if the water damage man had been there on Saturday to fix it, if the phone repair shop had been open the first time I checked on Monday, if I hadn't gone back to Starbucks after dropping off my phone, and if a couple hadn't stolen my cozy window spot, none of what happened would have happened.

As it was, upon sitting down in space number 2 in Starbucks, a girl asked if she could sit with me before seeing that it was, in fact, me whom she was asking. It was my coursemate. 

Of course I was delighted to have her sit with me, regardless that we had never spoken really before. 

I offered her a cookie (baked lemon lavender cookies at Eli's idea. Note to self: always trust Eli's cooking ideas) and we began to chat. 

We ran from how long I'd be in the country to young marriage (I'm leaving in June to make it for Kira's wedding) to Presbyterians (I guess in this country, Presbies get married very young). Naturally, this led to me asking after her own religious beliefs and her divulging a lot of pain and bitterness about the religious abuse she (and a heck of a whole lot of people in this country) has experienced. 

I asked a couple handfuls of probing questions (as I am known to do) and, after fully answering them, she asked me after my own religious views. 

Now, there's something I've started doing since this past summer waitressing, and that is this: I don't volunteer the fact that I am Christian. If there is nothing in me to set me apart as different, I don't want to be any part of furthering the bad Christian title. However, I will tell you all you want to know if you ask.  

Therefore, I told her straightforwardly that I agreed with her view that organized religion has achieved for itself a pretty priggish name for good reason but that I myself had found Jesus himself in a pretty profound way. 

Next came some questions as to a few specifics in my theology (particularly homosexuality, sex before marriage, and "how far is too far?"), and she was a little surprised (in a good way) by my answers' balance of theology and reason. 

She asked about my depression and counselling, and I briefly shared about my last semester's horrors but necessities and reciprocated the question as to whether she herself had ever experienced a wretched time that she would keep in her history anyway, if given the chance to remove it. 

I was given the great honor of hearing her story, known only to half a handful of people. 

Digging deeper, I asked after what it is that gives her the most satisfaction and joy in her life. 

Horses. They're quiet and they listen. 

The way I see it (and told her so as well), the reason we all love dogs and horses so very well is that no matter how many old ladies I kicked in a day, no matter how many homeless people I passed up on the street, no matter how many times I broke my diet, ignored texts from well-meaning friends, or cursed at wait staff, that little ball of fur is going to come running to the door for snuggles and love, treating me like I'm the greatest thing on two legs. 

And if there were a person like that, well, then there just might be grounds for reevaluating everything. 

That, in a nutshell, is why I love Jesus. 

He loves out the very best parts of me regardless of what I've done. 

Love like that changes a person. 

I am a new creation every day because of the wild love I receive and could not ever be good enough to deserve. 

He makes me a better woman, gives me the equipment to love, in part, others in the same way: seeing all and holding onto and speaking truth into the very best pieces. 

My coursemate didn't open up her life to Jesus right then and there, and she may never. But she didn't shut down the conversation either and has asked that we do it again. 

Maybe nothing will come of it, but I am humbled to have been able to even have that one talk. 

My phone is dead. Really dead. And a lot of dead memories that I'd been holding onto in its archives are now gone forever, along with a few pages of writing notes I'd really like not to have lost, but I've no room to be bitter or even upset. 

Scrubbed-down slate for brand new memories, one of which went down in Starbucks over broken Apple products and cookies. 

God is good. 

My Man

If this doesn't say, "Good morning, Belfast!" then I just don't know what does.

Good morning, Belfast. Jamie here. Sitting in Starbucks because the phone repair store is neither open nor has posted when it does indeed open. Good thing I didn't end up in City Centre when I'd actually intended to this morning.

According to my countdown calendar, I've only got 99 days left in the land of the greenies, and that doesn't seem like nearly the correct number. I remember looking at the prospect of 10 months and thinking nothing could be shorter. Then, I remember looking at the prospect of 9.5 months and thinking I had never experienced anything longer in my whole life.

Funny how time works that way.

Also funny how things that seem like yesterday were forever ago and things that seem like forever ago were really yesterday.

Today's NI lesson is the concept of "your man."

Now, in The States, if someone asked after "your man," you'd either talk about your husband, fiancé, boyfriend, child, or scream, "WHAT MAN?! FOREVER ALONE!"

Here, though, "your man" could refer to whatever man is in question.

So, when David (our keeper of the house fixings) told me today that he'd call up my man for the laundry, he simply meant that he was to call the laundry man on my behalf.

My coursemate Johanna was recently asked about her man in the context of prison:
"What did your man do?"

During The Troubles, the families, friends, and acquaintances of political inmates would sneak notes and radios and other small such things into and out of the prisons.

Because of this, visit days were extremely important.

When Jo was near about 19, she was chosen by her neighbourhood to serve as the visitor for the son of a neighbour, as the mum was sick.

It was all an uproarious experience, actually, as she had no choice but to go, didn't tell her mother (who wouldn't have let her), and her brother was in the army (enemy of the prisoners and ensuring that he would be informed the moment she entered the prison and questioned as to his sister/family's politics).

Jo had never met the man she was to visit and described to us how very awkward indeed small talk was with a prisoner you've never met: "So...how are things...?"

When their time was through, she got up to left, and as she did, he pulled her in and kissed her on the mouth, shoving something in as he did (no, it was not a tongue).

Freaking out a bit, but not able to show it for fear of being imprisoned herself, Jo made it back to her car, drove off, and drove a mile before risking a spit out.

Inside her mouth was a very tiny note wrapped in cellophane from son to mother.

Genius, her man.

I like this principle of "your man." It's endearing and gives me a sense of community, as though I were actually friends with my house launderer. If he's anything like David, that's something I would like very much indeed.

Approachable

Some things in life do not make sense to me.

Like how I'm always told I look unapproachable and intimidating, yet every time I'm in a coffee shop with headphones in, a stack of books five high, a computer on my lap, a pen in my hand, and a journal stuck somewhere around my chair, apparently I'm irresistibly approachable. People think it's the exact right time to strike up a deep and divulgent conversation with me. I know many a stranger's dark truths and life story. 

That recently happened to me with this man: 

He woke up from his drunken stupor and told me his childhood memories, political views, and made me watch several videos of a sheep. 

I'd like to harness that irresistableness and use it during appropriate social settings, not the ones when I'm trying to decipher criticism of Ulysses or write a presentation on disengagement and father-figure searching in The Gatekeeper. 

Speaking of appropriate social settings, I was tricked into one this evening. 

At newcomers dinner (take 2) on Tuesday evening, the pastor's wife casually invited me to sing with a choir-like group on sunday (tonight) because they were desperate for another alto. Made it sound super casual. 

It turned into me showing up at someone's home, joining an established choir for Christmas Caroling, and discovering that Harmony was never showing up ever. Hello...strangers. Who wants to take me home tonight? To my home, that is, not your home. I don't know you like that. Or at all. Dang you, Harmony! 

Luckily, I've been practicing my small talk social skills a lot in the past couple weeks and have "looking pleasant" down to a science. 

First are the arms. Uncross them and place them delicately in your lap.

Next is the face. Stop staring like you've got laser beams for eyes and give yourself a nice, dreamy expression, making sure the crinkles in your forehead are smoothed. Maybe raise your eyebrows a bit to widen your eyes even more and make you look innocent and curious. 

The mouth. It's pursed, isn't it. Or frowning a bit. Don't smile like an idiot, but you could stand to turn the sides up a little, so you look like you've laughed at least once before and would do so again if called upon. 

Along with singing to some neighborhood folk, I heard all about some guy's reminisces about every english course he'd ever taken, the warm childhood memories of a man and his father geeking out over web design and technology together, and got myself a ride home with a very nice swedish south african girl named Sam, who also made me wear tinsel. 

A battle awaited me at home. The crazy thing is that I don't even know where these attacks are coming from, like what their root is, so there's no way for me to come to plate against them really. 

They knock the life out of me. Literally take me off my feet and to the floor (funny thing: that's another time I apparently am most approachable. Dang near every time I cry--which previous to this move has been seldom--somebody walks in on me or calls me). 

But thank God almighty: New mercies will be ready for me in the morning. 

December, day 8: complete.