Another short listed month! June, Literacy 6

In true form of catching up, I had to do a little cramming to get this blog done.  In fact, I had to go to my pocket calendar to sort out which books I had read in May and which I had read in June. (Whenever I finish a book, I write the title in the side margins of the month in the calender I keep in my purse, so that I don't leave any books out when I finally write the corresponding blog.  According to my calendar, I read Roald Dahl's Danny, The Champion of the World at the beginning of the month, and Falling Leaves (by Adeline Yen Mah) at the end of the month (in fact, I finished it in Hawaii).


Danny, The Champion of the World by Roald Dahl is one of my mom's favorite books.  I honestly can remember how many times she read it out loud to us when we were younger, but I can tell you that it is one of the few chapter books that got read more than once.  Reading it last month was enjoyable for me, because while I vaguely remembered it had something to do with partridges, a boy, his father, and raisins, I really could not remember the full storyline, so as I read it, it was like it was new, and then seconds later my memory would catch up and whisper, "You knew that." but it had been so long since reading this book, that my memory only ruined the surprises for me a few times, and none of them were the big surprises.  Danny lives with his father in a gypsy wagon behind his father's gas station and mechanic's shop, and Danny's father truly loves Danny.  It is wonderful to bask in his father's devotion with Danny.  Danny's father also has a secret pleasure, which Danny discovers one night, and soon joins in the family tradition.  The story is a good one, just realistic enough to make you want to believe it is real, and fantastic enough to keep you from finding it too close to your own life to be interesting.  If you haven't read it, you should. Pick it up sometime when you just want a book to tell you a good story that takes you on a short vacation adventure, and leave you with a satisfied skip in the step.  As this book was read aloud to me, I can vouch for it, it was a great read aloud book. It even kept my brother interested, who was 7 at the oldest possible age I can guess him to have been.  (This is also the book where the BFG makes his first, brief appearance.)  Read worthy? Yes.


Falling Leaves: The Memoir of an Unwanted Chinese Daughter by Adeline Yen Mah was another Costco find.  There is something so very irresistible about the book table there!  This is an autobiography of a daughter growing up in a large, wealthy Chinese family spanning through many of China's great political changes.  The turmoil caused by politics, however, is very rarely the cause of the main drama in this book, however, because the family drama is often so very mind blowing.  Adeline is the 5th child born to her mother and father, and the last child born to her mother.  Her mother died shortly after Adeline's birth.  Because of this, Adeline is occasionally regarded as bad luck by her own family.  The situation gets much worse, however, when her father takes a vindictive 19 year old bride.  The title of the book is take from a Chinese saying, "Falling leaves always return to their roots"  which is portrayed to mean, in the end, we all return to our ancestry, to what out family is.  What it seemed to mean to me was that our past, upbringing, our family's past, will ultimately define who we are.  The book spans from a brief history of the author's grandparents all the way up to her middle aged adulthood.  I will admit that my favorite part of the story was told during the author's childhood.  The child Adeline was so passionate, and so instantly affected by the happenings in her life it was difficult not to feel with her.  The things that each family member is willing to do, especially her siblings, who grew up under similar abuses, are stunning, and also worth pondering.  The story is not always riveting. There are times where it gets very slow, but it still managed to keep me turning pages.  It is subtly told, in almost a casual way, where it starts off that you are reading about somebody else's family, and somewhere along the way, you feel you have been observing for so long, and are so well informed, that you somehow mysteriously became apart of this tragic family.  I was never really sure which family member I might have slipped in as, but I definitely felt I had been allowed into the intimacy of the family.  There are things in this book that will make you gasp, things that you will have to find someone to tell, and it feels like gossip, after being drawn into it.  Really, in the entirety of this story, it is about Adeline's life long desire to find unity and acceptance in a family of shambles, and the amazing people who guided her through life.  Like I said earlier, it is not a "devouring" book. I didn't feel riveted, but it made me think. In the end, I was glad to have read it, and I really appreciated the small scraps of Chinese perspective on world history, too.  If you have time, Yes, it would be worth a read, but you don't have to rush out and buy it, and put it at the top of your list. It will wait calmly for you.


And that is all for June!  I have officially made it half way through the year keeping up with my personal challenge.

I can give you a brief preview of July, Literacy 7, as we are already midway through it.  You can look forward to a report on Madness by Jossy Chacko, and Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, and probably Loser by Jerry Spinelli (I am halfway through it...but I accidentally left it at a friend's house. We'll see if I can track it down in time for this month).


I hope you have enjoyed my hopefully-just-detailed-enough-to-give-insight-on-a-book-but-vague-enough-not-to-blow-the-story reports!  Coming soon (I hope)  July's installment of reports!

What's going on here?

Admittedly, I have been rather absent lately. I am trying to get back on track though.  I thought maybe, to make it up to you, I would do a sort of blog I don't usually do, an update on life.  Often I do blogs on ponderings, and blogs on places I've been, but I usually leave my day to day out of it, mainly because my day to day bores me, but just for you, blogfriends, I will compile my recent day to day into a summary.

This summer I did another week of teaching the memory verse station at VBS.  I enjoyed doing that again. I have been teaching the 1st-3rd grade station these 2 years, so it was really sweet when a sweet 3rd grader came to me on the last day of VBS and told me that next I "should move up to the 4th-6th grade station" so I could still teach her. It was very nice of her, and I will cherish it...but if I do it again, I think I shall stick with 1st-3rd grade... as I have already taught most of the 4th-6th graders in the past, and will likely teach them again soon in Jr. High.  I need to give them a small break from me if they're still going to think I'm cool by the time they get to junior high youth group.

During that week, I discovered that my car needs more repairs than it is worth. I have been working on fixing the cheaper, bare minimum stuff to keep it running, while looking around for a new car.  I'm thinking hyundai, at the moment, but I have yet to test drive anything at the moment.  Part of me cringes at the price of another car.  The other part of me says, "But wouldn't it be nice to drive something with a CD player, cruise control, and power locks?"  In the meantime, I am thankful that Bakersfield has been mostly merciful, in not having it's normal, daily record breaking heatwaves as I am, yet again, driving around another summer without air conditioning. This is the 3rd summer in a row, for various reasons each summer.

As many of you know, I went on a quick trip to Hawaii with a friend, and we visited my cousins and played tourists for a while. That was very enjoyable. Oh, how I miss Opal's Thai truck... And my cousins, of course! ;-)  I am now trying get myself back into the swing of things here in California.  It is hard to come back to a life where I have no schedule, and very little to do on a daily basis, after being in Hawaii, with something to do every day, and a lax, but interesting schedule. Also, the rental car had air conditioning and a CD player. And then there is the fact that Hawaii is 3 hours behind California. So while in Hawaii I had managed to adjust to getting up at 7 am, and going to bed at 11 pm, I am having a more difficult time adjusting back, which often means I'm getting up at 10 am, and going to bed at 2 am...  That probably should be fixed.

I am scrambling together the last bits of required application stuff for graduate school, and hoping to be in this fall.  Which is good, but means that while Compassion is hosting a sponsor tour in Haiti, I will be doing homework instead.  This is sort of a win win situation, though, because if I am not going to Haiti, it is because I got into graduate school, but if I don't get into graduate school, it means I get the chance to go to Haiti!

I am enjoying going to my church, the few times I have been in town on the weekend this summer.  There aren't many people there my age, but everyone is warm to me anyway.

And I have enjoyed the down time I have been able to have with my friends this summer.  And this weekend, I get to go hangout in Marina with my brother, and Laura, maybe go to the aquarium, maybe hangout with a cousin, but in general, I get to go play again.  Don't tell my cat...  She's still mad about the Hawaii thing.

And that, blogfriends, is my summary of my summer life so far!

Somebody's running REALLY late...(Literacy, 5 )

For those of you who have been paying attention, you may have noticed that I have failed to write up my Literacy Challenge book reports for May and June, and that the end of July is rushing up.  I read the minimum required books (Just barely...squeaking by!), I just did not have the time to write about them.  Because I am running so late, this blog probably will never get any photos, sorry.

So here it goes.

May: Literacy Challenge- Update 5

I am ashamed to admit that one of the two books I am claiming for this month is Amelia Bedelia (by Peggy Parish) ... not that I am ashamed to read from that series, because they were some of my favorites when I was learning to read, and my most recent reading of them probably had me giggling more than when I read them at the age appropriate level. I am simply ashamed to admit, that I didn't end up reading more in May when it comes to the page tally. In my defense, however, it was a 3 book set.  The set included the first book, Amelia Bedelia, the second book, Come Back, Amelia Bedelia, and also Play Ball, Amelia Bedelia!   I actually had not realized until I ready it in May that I hadn't read Play Ball, Amelia Bedelia.  Amelia Bedelia is a maid. She is a very earnest worker, unfortunately, she is a very literal person.  Being a very literal person, she has a tendency to be considered a problem.  She is told to dust the furniture, so she spreads dusting powder all over the furniture, all the while saying, "This is very strange, at my home, we un-dust the furniture." but she does what she is told, and does it well.  There is a whole list of things she does, exactly as she is told, which in the end means that her employers are very frustrated with her, and nearly fire her every time, unfortunately for them, Amelia Bedelia has mad baking skills, and just as they are about to fire her, her employed happen to sink their teeth into the pie she made, and they decide to keep her, and adjust to telling Amelia Bedelia to "un-dust the furniture."  I enjoyed it thoroughly as a kid  for all the mix-ups I understood then. The play on words in these books is delightful. As an adult, I truly appreciated how sometimes, we very eagerly try to do a good job, try so hard to impress, and in the end get it all wrong.    I know the feeling all too well. I have been told I can make a mean pie crust... maybe I should attempt putting my own baking skills to "safety-net" uses. The best way to handle such utter failure is with a hint of humor, when all is said and done, and I appreciate Amelia Bedelia for both her workmanship and the sheer, rueful comedy of failure.

The second book of May was I am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced  by Nujood Ali, Delphine Menoui, translated by Linda Coverdale.  This book has been looking at me for months, or, I should say, Nujood has been looking at me for months, as the cover of the book is a head shot of the little girl who relates the story.  Nujood Ali, as the title hints, was forced into marriage some time near the age of 10.  I found this book to be haunting, simply because of the tone in which the story was told.  It has a childish, simple, innocent feel to it, because the story is told like a 10 year old girl.  She was not a child raised to be a small adult, trained in the ways of womanhood before being turned over to a husband (not that such a situation is more justified). She was a child skipping happily through childhood in the most flippant way that any ten year old does when she was suddenly handed a head covering, and sent to live with her husband's family, far away from any of her own family.  She had never been warned about the details of adulthood.  The tone reflects this.  It is haunting read about the things she lived through when Nujood relates them in the simplistic, immature, bluntly honest way any of our own protected 10 year old girls might use when talking about the events of school yesterday.  The only difference is underlying, matter of fact numbness that threads through words she strings together. Nujood makes some very courageous choices, and did something that no child bride had managed to do up to that point. It was well worth the read.  The story, though disturbing, is discreet, never overusing details simply to shock a reader.  It is short, and well formed, and somewhat heartbreaking.  Would I suggest it to a friend? Yes, but probably with the warning that while the reading is not at all strenuous, the material is no light read.  The truly heartbreaking thing about this story is that it is not unique, it is just one of the very few to actually be printed.

And that sums up the books that I read in May.

Thanks for reading. Check back soon, if you are interested in the June update!

Whatever you do...

If you go to O'ahu, Hawaii, and you get a chance, go to the botanical forest.  Do it, it's beautiful.

If you go to the rainforest, by all means, stop and read the signs.

If you stop and read all the signs, make sure you follow the ones pointing you to the waterfall.

If you head towards the waterfall, make sure you stop and appreciate the plants

This is not the waterfall, it's just on the way

But you'll get to the waterfall shortly after the paradise lua, and they are in no way linked...

 

And if you have decided to walk out to the waterfall, definitely swim out to the base of it

The water is a bit chilly at first, but by the time you get to the base, it is really nice.

If you decide to go to O'ahu and visit the botanical forest, and walk the paths, and read the signs, and admire the plants, and bypass the Paradise lua and find the waterfall, and swim to the base of the waterfall and walk back, by all means, do it, it will be great!

Whatever you do, though-and this is very important!- WHATEVER you do, DON'T forget the BUG REPELLANT!

 

This photo was taken a few days after the bites were bit, and they were less angry that day.  I was bit 21 times!  Laura... well, she stopped counting after she reached 25.  They itched horribly. I had flashback memories of what the height of my chickenpox felt like.  We used a CVS anti-itch spray(active ingredient: benadryl, I think), benadryl name brand ointment, ice, AfterBite ointment, and finally-in an act of total desperation- Biofreeze(that would be the stronger, icier, and hotter cousin of IcyHot intended for muscle pain).  As my cousin-in-law, Patrick, put it after using Biofreeze on his bug bite, "That feels...better...  well, not so much better...but different.  It burns."  At that point, for Laura and I, the burning was more tolerable, and the temporary numbness was well worth the burning consequences.

Hawaii was fun. I really enjoyed the botanical forest and the waterfall.  The moral of this story? Well, there are actually two.  1) Whatever you do, don't forget the bug spray.  And 2) If you do, well... Biofreeze burns, and sometimes burning is preferable to itching.

Thanks for reading.

Who misses me?

I may have failed to mention that I went to Hawaii.  I'm still here actually, with my friend Laura.  I'll admit it. I have neglected my remaining faithful readers.

We are staying with my wonderful cousin (whose name is also Laura) and her husband Patrick, and their two kids (my little cousins).  They have been so good to us, showing us around, giving us local secrets, providing coffee(Patrick makes a great cuppajoe), making excellent Indian food(this award goes to my cousin Laura), and sharing late night chats and the abundance of their bookshelves. I have really enjoyed the chance to get to know their family better.

Sean's on Patrick's back...he's there, you just can't see him.

I have spent the past week and a half climbing, swimming, trekking, hiking, viewing sea turtles, and Amazonian, Guam, and other rain forests(botanical gardens, Island rainforest style). Once through the forests, I swam out out to a waterfall.

I have been reading the BFG to my little cousin (first cousin once removed), Keira, but my fellow booklover could not stand just reading a chapter or three in the evening, and went ahead and finished it without me one afternoon.

We switched hats for a moment

I have been discussing rainbows (mbo-mos) and bird poop on cars ("a-poop-acars!) with my 2 year old little cousin, Sean, and also learning argument management from him. "Sean, it's time to sit."  -"No sit."  "Can I have a kiss?" -"No piss"  "If you want a cookie you need to say please."  "Ah-unt cookie...No-pease."  in a sweet and matter of fact tone.  The kid busts me up, but I dare not crack a grin, because he is an entertainer, and will repeat anything that gets him a laugh.

Let this be a warning to all who expect me to babysit...I have ways of maintaining good behavior.

We have found a Thai truck that we love dearly. We will miss it terribly when we leave.  we have raided the local swap meet (actually the place where local artists and merchants sell off their surplus wares, pretty amazing).

We have been to the Mighty MO(the place where the end of world War II was signed), the Oklahoma Memorial, the Bowfin(submarine), and the Arizona memorial, and have been appreciating our military.

We have spent many hours reading in many scenic locales. We have been swimming in clear, warm, blue water(It's sooooooooo weird). We went to the pineapple plantation.

Tonight, we will be going to the cultural center to see reenactments of Native Hawaiian lifestyles, and then later to watch a hula, and then a fire dance.

And then all too soon, we will be boarding that 6 hour icebox known as Hawaiian airlines, and adjusting to 108 degree weather and life three hours earlier.  But until then, I'll be enjoying my time here, with family, and/or as a tourist.