Nothing Whatsoever

I decided to come on here and post a post telling you absolutely nothing whatsoever.

Yep.

So this is a nothingness post.

I will tell you, though, that I bought a plant for my room and named it Fergus. Contrary to popular belief, I do not talk to it. Well, at least not most of the time.

And that, my friends, is the end of the nothingness.

Tollers

Yes yes, I am finally getting around to this Tollers post! Shall I begin at the beginning? Tis always the best place to begin, dost thou not agree?

As I was saying: Tollers. Most of you know that I have been wanting a parakeet for ages. I finally managed to get a cage and all my parakeet accessories (perches, mirror, toys, food dishes, etc) ready a few weeks ago, and began hunting for a parakeet. Living in Cambodia, this is not an easy thing. In the US if you walk into a pet store, there will be parakeets. Guaranteed. $14 parakeets. Every petstore. But in Cambodia we don't exactly have regular pet stores. With that said, I will continue from the almost beginning.

We heard from our bird-people-friends that you could find people carrying little cages of birds around on the other side of town. My dad set out on the motorcycle and drove for what seemed like ages, to the other side of town. My foot, brilliant thing that it is (or not), decided to take a nap as we drove. We reached the location and found birds, but none were parakeets and they decidedly looked like they had mites or mange in one form or another. I felt so sorry for the poor birdies, but we left without finding my parakeet. Dad and I went to the bank afterwards, where I made a fool of myself by being unable to get my stupid foot to actually work (I hate it when it falls asleep), I practically fell over and then I couldn't put my shoe back on. I limped for a few minutes, but eventually my foot started to work again, which was a relief. As afore-mentioned, we went home without a parakeet.

This was when the dreams began.

I had dream after dream about buying parakeets--and trust me, these were strange dreams. I won't relate them because you would probably never look at Tollers the same ever again and I wouldn't be surprised if you never spoke to me again, either. Let's just say that they involved glasses, pets for blind people. mutant penguins, parakeets trying to fly away, and eggs hatching into bright pink parakeets... Not your normal dreams, if you ask me.

The dreams occured for several nights, until my mom managed to take me up to Central Market to follow a parakeet lead... Well, we didn't find parakeets, which was heartbreaking, but a very nice man who sold locks told us where to find a petstore! I was ecstatic, so we quickly went to the street where the petstore was supposed to be.

As we drove down the road suddenly I spotted them--hundreds of parakeets, all jammed in one little cage. I screamed something about parakeets (what else? Did you expect me to start babbling about the hidden theology behind LoTR?), and we pulled over. I jumped out and ran over to the cage of birds.

The petshop wasn't exactly well cared for... The birds, as I said before, were in a cage far too small for the many birds, and the other pets in the store didn't look healthy. Most of the birds had feathers falling out and didn't look too good, but I managed to spot a few healthy looking ones. I watched the birds for a while, until I spotted one that looked young, healthy, and very active (he was attempting to shove another bird off of his food dish in order to get more for his greedy little self). I pointed to the one that I wanted, the store owner stuck his hand in the cage, and pandemonium broke out. The birds were going crazy, flying from one edge of the cage to another as fast as they could--it wasn't a surprise when the store owner grabbed the wrong bird. I decided to give this bird a chance, so I looked at him for a while, then discovered that he was missing a toe and did not look healthy. I told the store owner that I wanted the other one, and attempted to point out my bird amongst the masses. The next bird wasn't the one I wanted either, but finally the store owner managed to grab the bird I wanted and put it in my little travel-cage. I paid the store owner, and headed home with my own little parakeet!

Well, I can't give you the full minute by minute analysis of my bird, but he is adorable, I trimmed his wings myself (with a lot of help, admittedly), his name is Tollers, thanks to the suggestion of one of my fellow TPSers--oh yes, about the name. For a brief time I had people shocked that I had not named him something Tolkien related. Sorry to burst your bubble, my friends, it is Tolkien related, just too obscure for most of you to know of =P. Anyway, he is my dear little birdy, he likes to eat my rings, my fake vines, my hair, and my fingers. He is one of the cutest little birdies ever and I am really worried that one of my friends is going to try and steal him.

And that, my friends, is all. Oh, and here is Tollers and his favorite "snack."

A Downpour of Rain, A Reminder of Glory

Tis the rainy season in beautiful Cambodia. Rain is pouring down at the moment, like it did last night at the same time, the night before, and the night before that. I love every minute of it. The trees swaying in the wind--the sound of water on tin roofs--water flooding our yard--rain blowing through my bedroom window and soaking my room--everything. I love it. I love the thunder that makes the ground shake, the lightning that makes the sky bright as day, everything. And then sometimes, if it's still light outside, you can see a rainbow--a constant reminder that God keeps his promises, something that I often forget. God made the rainbow, the rain itself, the wind, the thunder, and the lightning, and it all serves to glorify him. That's what the rain reminds me about: God's glory. I have a slightly awkward habit of breaking into worship songs at the top of my lungs when it rains. It's awkward because I frequently forget just how loud I am singing (the rain drowns out a lot of noise) and I get people staring at me funnily. But that's what the rain makes me want to do--worship God. I love the rain, singing in the rain (or rather in a nice dry room while it rains), and more specifically, worshipping God when it rains.

If there was no rainy season, life in Cambodia would be quite different. The river would never overflow, the rice-fields would never flood, and the Cambodian way of life would be drastically different. By something as simple as rain, God has enabled the Cambodian people (and probably every other people group, when you think about it) to develop the culture and way of living that they have today.

God has used something as simple as rain to show His glory in Cambodia and in the rest of the world.

Something as simple as rain.

The First Day of School (Among Other Things)

School started today. Isn't that such an ominous sentence? Doesn't it immediately bring terrible thoughts of pile after pile of homework to your mind? No Abby, I'm not talking to you, we all know you love school, but not everyone does. Well, I have one thing to say to all you pessimists who can relate to the third sentence in this blog post: Stop being so pessimistic, school's not that bad.
Ok, some of you are thinking "Katherine, give me a break, you're a homeschooler. You sit on a couch watching Star Trek and eating doritos all day."
Well... I have very little to say to that except that if you think such a thing, you should really do some research. Here is what I did on my first day of school:
Health, Algebra 2 (I'll actually do Geomoetry this year, I'm just finishing up last year's work), Exploring America (which encompasses history, writing, literature, and Bible and included me beginning a two-page summary of my worldview), Spanish, read 1/3 of Peace Child, worked on memorizing the periodic table of the elements, Classical Roots, Analogies, Art, and a few other things that were undoubtably so boring that I have already forgotten them. Oh, and I haven't even started Advanced Comp or Chemistry yet. To put it simply, that's not sitting on a couch watching Janeway beat up the Borg. Not at all. I know very well that my friends who attend private (or even public) school are probably all doing something vaguely similar to what I'm doing. So hey, I'm as much an expert on the first day of school as any other Sophmore on Planet Earth. Thus I can truthfully say, from experience, that the first day of school isn't as bad as everyone seems to think it is. In fact, school in general can actually be pretty fun, and if you look at the first day for me, school probably will be pretty fun this year. Even for a homeschooler. And no, I'm not a social invert.
But anyway, getting on with what I was saying, the first day of school was actually pretty fun. Spanish was just...well... It was the first day and was pretty much just housecleaning that I fastforwarded through (BJU Press Distant Learning stuff). Art started simply enough, but I flipped through the book and saw what looked like some awesome lessons. Math is, well, math, 'nuff said. I don't like it but I don't hate it. It has always been that way it will always be that way. Classical Roots... I don't know if I've ever told anyone, but I absolutely positively love my Classical Roots book. It has all these awesome famous quotes in Latin and is filled with writing assignments that are simply a blast. I also love dissecting those words and figuring out their history. Analogies started out rather dull, but I know that it will be at least somewhat fun, eventually. My Health book is a complete crackup, it was talking about how our bodies are the Holy Spirit's temple (which they are, of course, don't get me wrong here), but instead of using the word "body" it used the word "temple" pretty much constantly. I kept thinking of an area of my forehead, which wasn't exactly what the book intended. It looks like it'll be halfway decent, although it looks relatively dull. Now we get to my American History/Exploring America. This thing is AWESOME. Basically it combines History, Literature, and Faith. It has the regular history book part, but it also comes with a book of complete source documents! How awesome is that? I get to read the words of Benjamin Franklin and Theodore Roosevelt without any editing or frustrating people interjecting their own summary of what so-and-so said. I love, love, love it. Of course, I am now supposed to be writing a two-page summary of my worldview which is going...well...interestingly. I'm not the kind of person who really talks about my worldview, so it is rather interesting getting it down on paper. I'm not sure how to describe half of it. But moving on, I haven't started the literature for this course yet, but I've seen the books and they're wonderful classics like Uncle Tom's Cabin and To Kill a Mockingbird. Mom also supplied a list of extra credit literature which I will, naturally, be reading as well as the required lit. I've already started with the afore-mentioned Peace Child which is, to put it gently, not for the squeamish... I absolutely can't wait to start my TPS courses. Chem sounds very fun and Advanced Comp will be good, I'm sure, except for that pesky Be Verb rule... I'm working on memorizing my elements and you'd probably be surprised how fun it is to memorize "Hydrogen, Helium, Lithium, Beryllium, Boron, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Fluorine, Neon, Sodium, Magnesium, Aluminum, Silicon, Phosphorous, Sulfer..." Yeah, that's as far as I've gotten. But tis fun!
So yes, the first day of school wasn't bad at all, and I got to read with Tollers sitting on my shoulder (what do you know, he's interested in the classics as well as fantasy!).

And because I feel like it, here is a list of books that I know I will be reading this school year. First of all we have my school-required-and-extra-credit books:

Peace Child
The Scarlet Letter
Narrative of the Life of David Crockett
Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Company Aytch
Humorous Stories and Sketches
Up From Slavery
In His Steps
Mama's Bank
Christy
To Kill a Mockingbird
The Giver
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Adventures of Huck Finn
Portable Poe
Walden
The Day They Came to Arrest the Book
My Antonia
Grapes of Wrath

And as to my own, personal reading:

The Sword of Shannara (I should at least finish it, no?)
Pendragon
Emma
The Silmarillion
The Unfinished Tales (I need to read these two again)
The Virtual Mummy (I'm maybe halfway through)
Brush up Your Shakespeare
The Treason of Isengard
Twilight (Because Abby's making me ;) )

Naturally, more books will come along and will be read... But for now tis a good start for a list, don't you agree?

Ah, I'm boring you, so ttfn, I'm off for now... Be expecting a full-size post about Tollers to be coming along soon, I'm on the wrong comp for pictures of him right now, so you will be spared that mammoth post until at least another day.

Oh wait, I just remembered, I'm not done with this post! I did say "Among Other Things" in the title, if you will recall, so I intend to continue boring you with this post.

I wanted to talk to you all about the Taizé service at ICF... Most of you know that I haven't gone to ICF since I went that one time eight years ago, but I decided to go to the Taizé service (which is very different from the normal service and only happens every few months) with Abby. I wasn't sure what to expect, but it all turned out to be very peaceful and relaxing. I did a reading from Isaiah, which I butchered, and actually turned out to, oddly enough, be my favorite Bible passage! The service was very quiet and was composed mostly of singing with beautiful flute music, reflective pauses, Scripture readings, and prayer. Twas all very nice and worshipful. I fully intend to go next time. Of course, next time I won't sit on the floor... I think every bone in my body cracked when I stood up =D. But it was definitely worth it and was overall a very nice, calming time of worship.
Oh yes, and speaking of church services, I'm planning to go to the ICF afternoon service (as well as my usual ICA morning service) next week, because I've heard that the youthgroup at ICF is very good... Thus I might as well try it! Regular youthgroup is starting up soon and I'm very excited about that. Hopefully it'll be good this year around. The Highschool group was quite good last year. I'm going to try helping out with worship again this year... We shall see how that goes.

And that, I think, is really all. Namarie!

~Manwathiel

Parakeet Needing a Name

No, I haven't got my parakeet yet (alas) but since I like my pets to have a name on day one I've decided to get a head start on names... And I need your help! Check out the poll on the right side of this post ---> and give me your opinion! If you choose "other" go ahead and comment on this post giving me your suggestion. Whatever your decision may be, feel free to give input on this post in the commenty comment section. Thanks!

~Manwathiel

*edit*
Too late, the parakeet has been named! Tollers be his name, thanks to a wonderful member of Isaiah. I'll undoubtably make a whole post on the subject of Tollers later, but for now he's being shy and hiding in his cage, but I'm sure that he'll do something of interest soon!

Songs...

I have decided that two songs can pretty much sum up what I want my life to be about. Yep, two songs. Here they be:

To the Ends of the Earth
Hillsong United

Love unfailing
Overtaking my heart
You take me in
Finding peace again
Fear is lost
In all you are

And I would give the world to tell Your story
Cause I know that You've called me
I know that You've called me
I've lost myself for good within Your promise
I won't hide it
I won't hide it

Jesus, I believe in You
And I would go to the ends of the earth
To the ends of the earth
For You alone are the Son of God
And all the world will see
That You are God
You are God



Mission's Flame
Matt Redman

Let worship be the fuel for mission's flame
We're going with a passion for Your name
We're going for we care about Your praise
Send us out

Let worship be the heart of mission's aim
To see the nations recognise Your fame
'Til every tribe and tongue voices Your praise
Send us out

You should be the praise of every tongue
You should be the joy of every heart
But until the fullness of Your kingdom comes
Until that final revelation dawns
Send us out

Every tribe, every tongue
Every creature in the heavens and the earth
Every heart, every soul
Will sing Your praise, will sing Your praise
Every note, every strain
Every melody will be for You alone
Every harmony that flows from every tongue
Will sing Your praise, will sing Your praise
Will sing Your praise, will sing Your praise

A poem loosely based on Tolkien's Elves and their love of the sea:



The Voice of the Sea

As I walk under trees of green,
I realize what my fate is to be.
No longer will I hear the trees sing,
For I am to fall for the love of the sea.

The voice of the sea is calling me;
Calling me to lands unknown,
Calling me to shores that are free,
Calling me to lands renown.

Lands that are free from hurt and pain,
Lands that nothing will ever maim,
Lands past the sea that is my bane.

The cries of the gulls along the shore—
The voice of the sea is calling me.
The whistling foam that all adore—
I am called by the voice of the sea.

The voice of the sea is calling me,
Out to the wilds of the deep.
In little time I shall see
Where storms arise and strange things sleep.

Never again shall I love the trees.
Love how softly they sway in the breeze—
For I am called for the love of the seas.

Someday across the sea I will flee,
And there I will find that I am free.
For the voice of the sea calls to me.