Some small celebrations

First some words... if you are lucky, i'll post some photos later...

but i'm in town, and aware that I've gotten "behind" and i can't get bogged down or perfectionism will get the better of me.

tomorrow is Mary's birthday, so i hope to write about her tomorrow! But today there is some coordinating about parties and celebration.

We live on campus at Uganda Christian University and it houses probably two dozen family units, about 8 of those families are ex-patriate families... so due to the nature of birthday celebrations (many Ugandans wouldn't know their own birthday, Ugandan school kids celebrate birthdays by getting the birthday child wet "bathday", and generally speaking there is less pomp and circumstance for Ugandan birthdays). In the days when I  could convince Mary and Rachel that UCU day care was fun, we would send a cake with them to daycare and share in that context.  But Mary, like Daniel, has decided that she's grown out of daycare and her birthday party will likely involve inviting the handful of ex-patriate family kids around.  And I suspect we'll make crepe paper flowers (thanks Grandma Kay) and eat cake (thanks grandma for napkins) and call it a "happy birthday".   And she'll think its awesome.  And I'll remember that such low key birthday celebrations are a gift of living here...

As for other gifts, UCU has put the residences on the generator... I think I've gathered through my off-campus connections that power has been mostly off for the last three days.  wow, great timing on that generator thing---while on an environmental side, you kind of wonder if generators are the cure we want to be celebrating, this circumstance is a little lower guilt.  As explained to me, when you run a certain capacity generator, it is putting out a certain amount of power no matter what.  And UCU's generator was producing more power than the campus was using and as of now it seems the excess power can be used by residences without a "cost"/just using the balance of generated power.

I am also celebrating being done with teaching-- I'm not so sure that I feel I'm a big classroom teacher.  Small groups, one on one discussion, written analysis, you can give me all day. I've decide that I could be an awesome online teacher!!! :)  But the 20+ faces staring at you is enough to unnerve me.  and I have this feeling that my actual skill set (visual, verbal) excludes presentation/oral/on the spot skills.  Mark claims teaching is a skill you develop and that because something is hard or feels unnatural does not mean that one lacks the skill set.  But I think i beg to differ. :)

Anyway, these are some of the small celebrations going on in my world.