Busy Week (as always)

Princess' hair is finally long enough for pigtails. They don't stay in very long, though, so enjoy em while you can.

I think things are far enough along that I can admit this publicly: I am the new Economics Department Chair. Our former chair is a dean, an interim dean, AND an associate dean all at the same time. It was felt it was time for someone else to chair the department.

On Friday we went to a party to welcome new faculty and staff. There were a few too many people there for Prince's comfort, so we went outside to play on the brand new playset at the Club.  The #1 thing we were worried about missing from the States (other than family) was a park or playground. We're very happy to see this.

We were very sad to learn one of our dear friends here is leaving rather abruptly.  We and most of AUN are saddened to see him go. He did a lot for this university and will be greatly missed.

Joy got to do the socializing at Friday's party. This was a very good thing since you can see how stir-crazy she has been.

Not really. What you see before you is Joy's latest toy: a mortar and pestle for making pounded yam. You take the bark off these enormous yams, boil them so they aren't poisonous anymore, then pound them in that drum.

"I had a nice Saturday afternoon," Joy reports. "Prince played with our neighbor kids and I visited with the Mom. Princess explored and got to know their little baby. A good time was had by all. We plan on having them over on Fridays regularly."

We hadn't been back long before the bugs welcomed us back. Prince had 11 bites just on his arm in one night. More were on his face and other arm. I sprayed his room, only to come down with half a dozen on my ankles the next morning. When you get bit out here, you really know you've been bit.

I'm teaching development economics again, intermediate macroeconomics for the first time, and two sections of the AUN Freshman Seminar for the first time. I finally have all the textbooks I need (two weeks in) but at least one class is still trying to get hold of their copies.

The good news is that we are now finally all on the same time zone. Derrill has been on Middle East time falling asleep during dinner, and Joy's been somewhere in the Atlantic unable to get to sleep. It was kind of like Bizaro World.

First birthday party

My first birthday was a ball. About 100 of them, scattered all over the dining room floor. It took me a while to figure out what to do with them, but Daddy and Prince showed me how.

The plan was that we were going to go to the LA temple, then visit my great-grandmother, Grammy, for my party. Then we had a flat tire just south of Oxnard.

It took almost 2 hours to get a loaner tire and be on our way. By then we figured it was too late to go to the temple, so we just went straight to Grammy's. That gave her some private time with just me before everyone else descended on her.

Pondering Meat and God

Over the summer, my urologist told me to cut my meat intake in half, avoid all salt, and otherwise pretend I'm 20-30 years older than I am or TRAGIC CONSEQUENCES could follow. How he determined that from five minutes with me, I'm not sure.

For not-the-first time I was stuck between multiple doctors giving me conflicting dietary advice.

Princess: What I Did This Summer

We went to the temple several times. We went to the LA temple. Here we are at the Redlands temple. After going to the Redlands temple, we went to Dairy Queen. The owner gave me a free ice cream I refused to eat. Daddy said those were the oldest, stalest Spanish peanuts he had ever eaten and couldn't finish his peanut buster parfait - he was sad. At least he got to eat my ice cream.

Here are me and my dad at AJ Spurs near Solvang. I climbed up on the buffalo (Daddy may have helped). I liked feeling its rough hair and then sliding down again.

As my brother said, I went to Disneyland for the first time. There will be more pictures later, I hear. Here I am as a pretty princess.

I got to go to the beach. Sand doesn't taste good. I kept getting closer to the waves, and that was fun ... at least until I sat down on the shore and the wave soaked my pants. That water is freezing!

I like eating oranges. I like eating orange peel mostly. Mommy won't let me eat orange peel in Nigeria. I miss it. Mommy tries to peel the orange for me, but then I'm not interested anymore. I liked Grandma and Pop's orange tree. 

This is my first taste of hamburger and Prince's first taste of milkshake or ice cream. I like it! I like food. I like anything Mommy and Daddy eat. I point to what I want and say "This!" or I say his name if I want what Prince is eating.

I felt the prints of the nails in the Christus' feet at the LA Temple visitors center. This was on the day we had the car accident and never made it to Utah. I think Daddy will probably talk about that some more later.







Mostly, I just spent the summer being cute and loving.

I learned how to walk into Pop's office and tell him, "Go!" I taught him that means I want him to take me outside and watch me play. I could tell I was getting better at it, because the last week we were there he came outside with me almost every time I asked.

I walk around our home in Nigeria looking for other people. I can't find Pop or Grandma or Steve or Emie or Lanna. It makes me sad and I need Mommy to hold me some more. Thank you, family, for loving me.

Prince talks about: Disneyland

I liked my adventures in Disney. And I love the ride of Mr. Toad.

"Why is that?"

Because Daddy loves me. I really like the Toy Story ride. Because I love Grandma.

I love Splash Mountain. Because I love Mommy.

I love the Winnie the Pooh ride. Because I love Hyrum.

I liked the character breakfast. That's because I love Daddy again.

"What you do you like because you love Pop?"

I love the railroads, the Goofy ride. [We start helping him remember what we did]

I like IHOP because I really love Lavinia. I love the hotel and I love the Cars land and I love the Mader ride.  I love the caterpillar caterpillar caterpillar ride.

Nemo! Nemo! Nemo! Nemo! Nemo! Nemo! I love Nemo!
[He now starts doing that for every ride we mention, so no telling what else he thinks except...]

I LOVE EVERYTHING AT DISNEYLAND!

Translations beneath the fold:

Home schooling

Prince won't be returning to his school this semester. We'll see about later. But for now that means Joy will be homeschooling our preschooler while toddling after a toddler. So far the plan is to build his schedule one piece at a time.

The first thing it means is that part of his morning routine before breakfast includes writing out the phrase "Jesus loves me" or another appropriate lettering exercise after he says his prayers and before he plays. He is very excited about it. This morning he realized Joy hadn't included lines for Sunday. "I didn't mean for him to do homework on Sunday," she explains. I figured writing "Jesus loves me" was thoroughly Sabbath appropriate, so I drew some more lines for him. He then drew lines for all of next week.

They are planning some reading time every day and an art project.

Joy says, "I plan on keeping it flexible, just things that happen during the day. I think one of the benefits of him being home is that he won't have to have a regimented schedule. We'll do some math because he loves numbers. Derrill's going to work on story problems in picture form with him. We got a LeapPad for some more independent learning activities."

It made a lot of sense, seeing how much he loved the LeapFrog video of learning how to make words. We haven't given it to him yet, though, so we don't know how well it will work.

"We're going back to doing his scripture study with him." He can often read half or more of a verse of scripture with us by himself. We also started reading scriptures first thing in the morning because I'm teaching an 8am class twice a week. The kids are a LOT better behaved at 6:15am than at 6:15pm. I'm becoming a convert.

"Derrill's trying to help me figure out sections of time that I can spend with each of the kids, and to find time for myself too."

And as one of the nice side effects of this practice, this is what he wrote me this morning: I LUV MI DAD. He later expanded it to say "I LUV MI DAD AND MOM AND LUVY AND HYRUM."

"I will also be working with him about 20 minutes a day on flexibility, conversation skills, and sharing."

Ruth and Boaz in Nigeria

On our way here, I read the book of Ruth and noticed something that made me smile. Boaz has promised to marry Ruth, assuming the unnamed nearer relation does not. So he needs to meet with the fellow, sound him out, contract the business, and get witnesses together for the transaction. They don't have cell phones, so how do they get together?

Then went Boaz up to the [city?] gate, and sat him down there: and, behold, the kinsman of whom Boaz spake came by; unto whom he said, "Ho, such a one, sit down here." And he turned aside and sat down.

And he took ten men of the elders of the city, and said, "Sit ye down here." And they sat down.

How do they get together? He sits in a public place and waits. How long? Who knows; who cares. Ah, there he is, good old Mr. Suchaone. He doesn't tell him the business at hand, just asks him to sit. Then they wait until they get a minyan together, asking each one in turn to join them until they can get down to business.

It sounded so much like Nigeria it made me smile! Even though most of the poorest have a cell phone now, there is a still lot of sitting around and waiting. We do a great deal of it ourselves for reasons that are never entirely clear to us. There are even people hired to stand in line for others. And most everything happens at the last minute. Even such modern industries as airlines assume you are buying tickets for the same day, not planning for a week in advance. Some of the AUN faculty left for the summer without knowing if their contract was renewed for this year or not, and I only just learned about changes to my teaching schedule this week.

So the moral of the story is that in Nigeria you need to have a very flexible idea of your schedule, because you never know when your near kinsman is going to ask if you want to buy some land and marry the widow that goes with it.

Food Surprise

I have been surprised to learn that I like eggs and potatoes better in Nigeria.

Another surprise to me was that when I baked a cake for Derrill I didn’t need to cook it twice as long and it cooked perfectly (wow, what happened while I was gone?). Before we left I was having to cook things twice as long and they were not raising right. I am also glad to find that our gas problem to our stove must be fixed or we would  not have had any to cook with when we got back. I am surprised not to find any bugs in my flour that I left behind.

And the best thing of all. Last night we got out our Magic Bullet for the first time to make banana ice cream for Derrill’s birthday and Derrill read in the instructions that the bullet will grind meat. What joyous words to the soul. We ground beef last year in a hand grinder, but it hurt my wrist so bad, that I have decided I will not use it again. So Derrill took over the task, but it still takes so long and  is such a mess with the blood all over. I have just been wishing that we had gotten an electric meat grinder and been thinking about it for the past 2 or 3 days. So when Derrill read that, I was ecstatic! The beef is so much nicer ground up and it is cheaper than the chicken.
Joy

Blessing of Health by Airplane

Hi Everyone,
We are back in Nigeria. I had a wonderful time visiting my husband's family. Thank you, mom, Pop, Steve, Emilee and little girl for the great time! We will miss you and we are sorry we missed my family too.

I was having a very hard time with my allergies the last 2 weeks or so before we left the United States. I even received an answer to pray about how to best take care of myself when my allergies are acting up. Prince has been very concerned about anyone in our family that is sick. He is very good  at following up to find out how we are doing later. When we got to Nigeria, Prince asked me if I was feeling better. I was not feeling good again, in fact I was feeling worse (my eyes were all swollen and I couldn’t breath through my nose at all).

Prince asking me helped me see a blessing. I realized that most of our trip out here I was feeling better and that it had not hit me full force again until after all of the travel was over and we were home so that I could take care of myself again. My answer to Prince was that I was not feeling very good, but I had a blessing from Heavenly Father that helped me to feel good for our plane trips. I'm blessed not only for that but also for the opportunity to share my experience with my son of the spirit working in my life. I also remembered that I was granted the strength for our journey from my father’s blessing and I am grateful for all the evidences to me that God watches over us even in this land so far away from our family.

We are well and love you all,
Joy

Coming Home to Nigeria

What makes us feel like we're coming home?
When we went down for breakfast at the hotel in Abuja on our way to Yola, we found our former-neighbors there, who are some of our best friends here. Several other friends flew in with us on the same plane. A student recognized me and greeted me happily. Our compound's guards laughed and rejoiced to see us return. Friendly faces make for nice homecomings.

Prince excitedly cried, "I'm going to go see my room!" He crowed, "Look at all these great toys!" Then he grabbed up ... "Yoshi! Oh Yoshi, I missed you so much!" He spent the next minute talking to a plush ridable dragon.

Princess, who was not allowed on the floor until the cockroaches were swept up, explored the house for the first time on her own two feet and also found her room and the wonderful toys therein.

What was Joy delighted to see? "I can find my can opener! That means I'm home."

My delight, of course, was finding my work computer and being able to sit down at my own computer for the first time in three months (story in a coming post). The other electronics are still at an office on campus, so it's just a question of how long I can be kept from heading over there before I have the rest of them again.

What makes us feel like we're coming home ... to Nigeria?
Having the electricity shut off at the hotel and seeing all the faculty/staff present say, "Welcome back to Nigeria!" as they take a deep breath of air -- some of them like they're getting ready to dive in, others as if they were smelling mother's cooking.


Joy rejoiced at how clean our home was. I reminded her about the cockroaches on the floor. "Well, yes, but it's really very clean ... aside from the cockroaches." I swept up a full cup of them plus two grasshoppers.

I realized at some point that my inspection of the house when I came in was to see 1) how many lights broke while we were gone; 2) what else needs fixing; and 3) if was anything stolen. I never acted that way in Ithaca.

Coming home to Nigeria also means reshifting expectations: