Hi, My Name is Steven. STEVEN! STEVEN!

My morning has commenced in full ADD mode. Since going to Thailand, I am flat broke until we get paid Wednesday, and this means I have to get really creative this Saturday. I am sitting on my heated floor, talking to Rachel (who is leaving for Chile in a few hours- lucky!!), drinking coffee, eating cookies, surrounded by a messy apartment and books.

Last week I morphed into a kindergarten teacher. Just like transformers. It was more like I got to work and my boss told me I would be teaching small children who maybe didn't know the alphabet. GREAT. The first day, when all five of them came in, they sat at their desks and squinted at me the whole time. They couldn't understand a word. They understood my name was Audrey Teacher, but they didn't understand I was saying REPEAT, REPEAT, "MY NAME IS STEVEN!" I looked at Steven (about 6, wearing a red puffy coat, bright white teeth and shiny black hair), "Ok, I say then you say. My name is_______."

"Steven!"

"Ok good, but, say this- MY. NAME. IS."

"STEVEN!"

At which point Todd (he picks up quickly) started hollering at Steven- "La lalalalalalalalal Korean allaallalalala -my name is Steven- lalalalalalalalal" and Steven looked at him increduously, then back at me, and patiently repeated, "Steven."

Ok whatever. They know their names.

The next day I spent an hour and a half planning and researching online. Ok, change activities every 10 minutes. Drawing, singing, dancing, games, ok ok ok. Amazing that I got an education degree... but never quite learned anything about kindergarten (oh yeah, DIFFERENT degree).

So, day 2, we sang for 10 minutes. We danced for 10 minutes. I made matching cards and we learned new words like "book, pencil, bag, table." We ran and touched different colors. We made "RRRRR" sounds and "GRRRRR" sounds and "FFFFF" sounds. I shoved all the desks to the back of the room and we sat on a blanket. I am teaching them to say how they feel every day, by making faces with them. "ANGRY! HAPPY! Sad. Sick. Hungry. In love." We're learning days of the week.

They rattle off in Korean the whole time, but it's helping me learn Korean. When I learned to say, "repeat after me", in Korean, everything was transformed. Christina (glasses and a long black coat with a sparkly fur collar) likes to translate for me. When Martin (I HAD to name him that- he just looked like a Martin) and James didn't have their books, and I was trying to help them find them, Christina looked at me, crossed her arms (this is the Korean symbol for no, I will accidentally be doing it a lot when I get home) and saying, "BOOK, NO! BOOK, NO!" Yesterday when Todd was doing the pee dance, Christina looked at me frantically and said, "TEACHER! TODD! Mayigotobatroom?" I let him run out. Of course, Steven suddenly realized the unstoppable urge to do the same. "Steven, is it an EMERGENCY?" I asked slowly. (How stupid of me, Steven can't answer that.) "TEACHER!" Christina shouted. "STEVEN! MAYIGOTOBATROOM?" At least they are learning some functional vocabulary. Christina has also mastered "Here you are," and spouts it off every time she tells me something."

I had no idea I would love teaching kindergarten. But it's really, really exciting, because we're starting from NOTHING. Yes, I do have to dance and sing and make faces the whole time, but, it's crazy thinking that here's a little person that can't say ANYTHING, and I get to teach them classroom words, bathroom words, kitchen words, and hopefully after 3 months, they can communicate what they want. And they pick it up SO QUICK. It is crazy. I hold up something and ask them what it is, and even though they can barely write their letters, they wrinkle their forehead and shout "PENCIL CASE!" (which was what it was, yesterday). They get right up in my face and shout their colors. Steven and Martin are obsessed with Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes and giggle uncontrollably every time I play the video on YouTube (a small child in a sumo outfit comes stomping out, and he's joined by 10 others. They just can't control themselves during this part and they march around like sumo wrestlers). Everything gets them super excited. In the game I made where you match cards, whenever they find a pair they shriek like it's a live rabbit jumping up from the floor.

So yes. I have all new classes. That's the most eventful thing in my life right now.

The other night, maybe a week ago, I was laying in bed, unable to sleep, really frustrated with a lot of things, feeling really discouraged, not wanting to be a teacher, and God just reassured me by saying, "You have a compassionate heart. That's why you're teaching." Then I fell asleep. And ever since then, I've felt a lot better. Just that God gave me a word like that to hold on to... I definitely need those. Especially when I'm doing something I know He's called me to and I feel completely unadequate and like I don't even enjoy it. Knowing that I'm being obedient but being frustrated with what purpose it might serve.

Oh. I haven't told this story on here so TA DA. Sorry the writing is probably abyssmal today, that's because I'm listening to music and talking to someone. Sophomore year of college I decided I would try and go to Nepal for the summer. I really felt like I should go the summer after my freshmen year, just because pictures of poor South Asian kids had always made me cry and I was dying to help people in poverty, and I felt like Jesus wanted me to do that, but I was lazy and missed the deadline. So the next year I knew I should go. Digressing. We had to go to orientation and talk to other college kids and get interviewed and everything in this big cabin in South Carolina. As Baptists tend to do, they gave us about 5 worksheets stapled together of things we were supposed to pray about and think about. So one afternoon I was laying in my bed, praying through some of the questions. Things like- "What is your major? Why? Have you prayed about it? What do you want to do? What are your hopes and dreams?"

I was 19 and at the time my major was media communications. I think? I wanted to be a journalist and go to poor, war-ridden countries and shove my microphone in people's faces and write really good articles. You probably can't tell by my writing, but, I wanted to write. I was hating all my classes though, especially public relations, where my professor just told us to lie about everything and make it sound better than it was so people would buy it. My classes were dead... I was working hard and learning some things but I didn't fit. I had thought about majoring in international business, music, studio art, English (I haven't changed, I still want to do a million things), but I just didn't know. It was such a big commitment to make when I still didn't have a clue.

So in the bottom bunk of that weird blue and green room, with a few other people milling about I prayed about my major, just kinda hung my head down and said "God, I hate communications, I don't know what to do...." and dee dee dee, like one of those hideous planes that flies over Myrtle Beach advertising an all-you-can-eat seafood buffet, I saw "elementary education" in my head. Of course it shocked me. I popped my head right up and said, "No." For my entire life I vowed I would never teach. And some people annoyingly say that God makes us do the last thing we want to, and no I don't believe that because I don't think He's a cruel sadist, but in this case, He pulled that card. The more I thought about it, the more it made sense.

I like school supplies, and kids, and... right so there still isn't much of a foundation for my path in life. Which is why I still doubt it.

So I went back to Charleston, walked right up to the gorgeous old white education building in the middle of the brick commons, sunlight filtering through the Spanish moss of the Live Oak trees, and signed a paper changing my major. I took on an additional year of school, and took out substantially more money to do it. I studied in Italy and took classes that went towards my major (turns out if you're teaching you need to take even more prerequisites, which is so bizarre. I don't know how to teach children to read but I took Italian Opera and Renaissance Art history.) I smiled when my intro to education teacher told me the nose ring was a "bad choice" and thoughtfully looked down at my new tattoo my fifth year of college, realizing how much I didn't fit in with the Polo dress sporting, Vera Bradley toting gorgeous teachers-to-be in my "teaching art to children" class. I will say that that class was incredible- I got to cover my friend's face in paper mache and lay on a huge white piece of paper and have someone trace my body. Digressing....

If you've made it this far, you're my mom and dad. Hi mom and dad. So I'm here today because God called me to a major and ... gahhh I still don't fit in. But that's part of why I'm here.

The other day I was reading about Daniel, how he was just smart and God let some crazy king pull him into the kingdom to teach him the language of the Chaldeans, and then work for the king. I'm also plowing my way through a Martin Luther King Jr. biography, almost 600 pages long (BUT- science says old people have to keep reading or their brains will melt!) and he was just chilling in Alabama, just took a new job with a new wife at a church and wanted to help people. The way he evolved (initially reluctantly) as a civil rights leader was completely led by God.

So, at the very beginning of the civil rights movement, years before the march to Washington, he got this terrible call at midnight, someone telling him they'd come blow his brains out, and he had an epiphone...

"And I started thinking about a dedicated, devoted and loyal wife, who was over there asleep. And she could be taken from me, or I could be taken from her. And I got to the point that I couldn't take it any longer. I was weak. Something said to me, you can't call on Daddy now, he's up in Atlanta a hundred and seventy-five miles away. You can't even call on Mama now. You've got to call on that something in that person that your Daddy used to tell you about, that power that can make a way out of no way.

And I discovered then that religion had to become real to me, and I had to know God for myself. And I bowed down over that cup of coffee. I never will forget it... I prayed a prayer, and I prayed out loud that night. I said, "Lord, I'm down here trying to do what's right. I think I'm right. I think the cause we represent is right. But Lord, I must confess that I'm weak now. I'm faltering. I'm losing my courage. And I can't let people see me like this because if they see me weak and losing my courage, they will begin to get weak."

Then it happened: And it seemed to me at that moment I could hear an inner voice say to me, "Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness. Stand up for justice. Stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world."... I heard the voice of Jesus saying still to fight on. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone. No never alone. No never alone. He promised never to leave me, never to leave me alone." (pg. 58 Bearing the Cross, Garrow, D. J.)

Like that citation? I still got it! Anyways, God takes normal people and does really cool things with them. My life feels so NORMAL right now. So I can't wait to see what He'll do. Anyways, it's Saturday. Time to get out and DO SOMETHING.