First day of work

Tuesday June 9, 2009

It was sooooo cold today. I woke up absolutely freezing and couldn’t go back to sleep. I had a dream last night that my airplane crashed in the ocean, a shark bit off my leg, and I ended up in Hawaii alive. Crazy dream.

For breakfast I had porridge. Its basically oatmeal, but a soupier version. I have never had it before and it warmed me up well for the day. I’m having it again tomorrow for breakfast. I would like to try it with some raisins in it.

I got to work at 8:15 this morning and worked on the internet. I had 40 new messages! It seemed like it took FoReVeR to get anything to load. I sat at the computer for (I timed it) 30 minutes waiting for the screen to load. I was beginning to think that I had come to a place with bad internet. I talked to the pastor about it, and he said that there were three computers sharing out of the same box which made the internet run slow. It was about 10Mpb. Very slow.

We had morning tea and conversed a little. I met the chair of the board. Finally everyone left and Pastor David and I talked about some of the projects that I will be taking care of and participating in. Some of such include taking pictures and getting interviews for a time capsule, working with the youth groups, preaching and leading in worship, helping to further along a young adults group, helping out with the holiday program, going to meetings, and working on the web page. There is so much for me to do! I am very excited!

For lunch we met with other ministers in the area for lunch. We were going to go to an Italian place, but it was closed. I was kinda glad because I would have spent around $13-$15 on a salad or soup. That was the cheapest meal available. For a bottle of water it cost $3. Instead the ministers went to a café. I got this wonderful chicken and avocado melted sandwich with a chick pea salad and water. Cost me $8. When I sat back down, the men gave me a strange look because I had only ordered water instead of coffee. It would have cost me another $3-$4 to but a small cup of coffee to go with my meal. I would have enjoyed having a coffee because it is such a cold day today, but I know I can’t spend that kind of money all the time. Conversation seemed to drag on until 2:00 when we left to go back to work.

I finished up posting my blogs and pictures, sent some e-mails and got caught up on everything. Then I started working on my sermons. I printed off different translations of the scripture verse and did a tiny bit of studying. About 3:45 I went to the Mall – to the post office, the grocery store, and target. It was a cold and blustery day with rain. I had to wear a scarf and some gloves.

Since I have an oven available to me, I had the urge to bake something. There is a really easy recipe that I have cooked before – chocolate peanut butter chip cookies made from cake mix. Yummy! It calls for oil, eggs, cake mix, and peanut butter chips. So I went to the store and easily found the cake mix (for $4.59) and then had to search for the peanut butter chips. Guess what? Couldn’t find them. They don’t sell them here. So I bought white chips instead (for $4.99). I also bought some cereal ($5. 77) to snack on. I have been having a sweets crave towards the end of the day, and Special K chocolate will help me with that craving. As I left the store I thought that this was going to be the most expensive cookies I have ever made!

I then went to the post office and then to target. I only packed one long sleeve night shirt, and the other one was short sleeved, and I knew that I couldn’t wear that to bed with as cold as I have been getting! So yep. That’s what I bought.

My feet were starting to hurt and I got a blister on my left pinky toe. So I took off my shoes and walked back to church where Jeff was waiting to take us both home. For dinner we had roast with carrots, pumpkin, onion, and potatoes. It was very good. I had an apple with my meal. Jeff and Rosemary thought I was very weird because they thought I was eating my dessert with my meal. I was thinking that the cookies that I was about to make would be the dessert. But they weren’t. Rosemary offered banana cake with custard, yogurt, or ice cream and fruit for dessert. It wasn’t until after evening tea and coffee that I baked the cookies. They turned out pretty well.

At 7:30 Suzanne picked me up to go to the Life Streams contemplation session. Its basically guided meditation. Nobody showed up, so Suzanne performed the meditation on me. Towards the end of the session I got a bit fidgety, but the message was really great and got ingrained into my head. Run to God when you are scared or worried and he will protect you.

Two funny stories:

1. This morning a man came into my office and asked it I had any rubbish. I knew what rubbish was (trash) but it caught me off guard. I looked around to see where the trash can was, but I didn’t have one in my office. The man kept saying “ do you have any rubbish? Any Rubbish? Do you have any rubbish? I am the rubbish man. Do you know what rubbish is?” I told him that we didn’t call our trash man a rubbish man, but a custodian. He told me that that sounded like a better name than a rubbish man. I had a good laugh afterwards!

2. This evening, I was talking to Rosemary about what lunch I wanted to take with me to the office yesterday. Rosemary asked me if I wanted to take a musli bar with me. The way this is pronounces is “meeee sleeee” bar. I thought she was asking if I wanted a small and worthless bar (measly). I didn’t know what she was talking about. She didn’t know what the equivalent a musli bar was to in America. I named a few things off and finally it got around that a musli bar is the same as a granola bar. Even though we both speak English, there can still be language barriers!