It's been an embarrassingly long time since I've last posted - sorry Dad. 

This quarter has been stressful, crazy, and wonderful. My fingernails never stood a chance. So I guess I pretty much failed my new year's resolution, but as CJ always asked me, "In the light of eternity, what does it matter? Diddlysquat."

Andrew was here this weekend, it was so wonderful. We hung out in the sunshine, ran down the queen anne hill, saw a play about Satan and some drunk irishmen. I miss that kid. 

I sometimes regret being so far away from home, it's hard to know that my brothers are growing up and I'm not there to watch them become the amazing men that they are. 

Today I'm working on my final pieces for my creative writing portfolio. It's been so great to HAVE to sit down and write poems and stories this quarter, I really love it. It's hard, and I don't know if I want to ever pursue it professionally, but I love it - so that's good, right?

Monday mornings

I wake early.
Before the sun stirs the city’s inhabitants.
Before the anthill metropolis swarms with
busy busy students, professionals,
rowdy families, and 30 something singles
with their canine children.
Before the morning breath of
stale routine pollutes the mountain air.
Before we glue to-do lists to our foreheads.
Before we drip espressos, and dress the kids
all alike in plaid uniforms and
before we send them marching single-file down the street
into classrooms where they sit in rows and aisles.
Before we follow them, file onto busses which follow
circuits, follow routes, follow each other, and
stop on the o’clock dot,
and open their doors that we might stream out
and disperse into the maze of
skyscrapers and city blocks.
Before we follow our feet to boardrooms, banks, and bars,
and stop at bakeries on the way home,
before we file onto busses, feed our children,
greet our spouses, clean our homes, set our alarms
and crawl into our beds.
On Monday morning I wake early
before the anthill swarms.

It's beautiful outside today! My computer can't get the exact view that i have, but this is from my window sill. I'm sitting at my desk, on top of a pile of laundry soon to be hung, and watching the boats on the canal. 

I woke up around 6:30 this morning and caught the 7:30 bus with Christo. We went to the 8am service at St. Luke's Episcopal church. I really enjoy early mornings, when the world is still and quiet. I also really enjoyed the service. There was probably 20 elderly people at the service; the presence of older people is something I really enjoy and lack in my life. The service itself was slightly more casual and charismatic than a lot of liturgical services I've attended (though not nearly as much so as the later service at this church, which included some wonderful dancing). And while I didn't have words of prophesy to contribute, I felt at home singing familiar hymns, reciting the creeds, and kneeling for communion.

 I also realized how neat it is to be a church in a neighborhood like Ballard, or a city like Seattle. While the priest was reading the gospel from among the congregation, a homeless man named Mark came into the church and was greeting the congregants. I couldn't see him well, but it appeared he was mentally or physically ill. Mark progressed up the isle and shook hands with the acolyte, and then Fr. John. The Fr. paused the service, placed his hands on Mark and prayed with the congregation for healing and blessings upon the man, and then explained (probably for mine and Christo's benefit) that Mark comes like clock work every Sunday. Then Mark left and the service proceeded. Too many church's would resent Mark for disrupting the service, too many priests would expect the greeter to take care of him and would never think of pausing the service to greet and pray for him. Which approach is the better picture of the gospel, the uninterupted presentation of the gospel reading, or living it out?

Since the purpose of this blog is to keep my family up to date on my doings and musings, and the majority of what I do and think is school related, I'm posting a draft of one of my creative writing assignments.

Snapshots

Kali Wagner

The ridges on the back of my eyelids shelve the photo albums of my memory. Sometimes I look through the thick green album, and glance at the photos that narrate my pre-SPU life, to try to piece together who I am from snapshots of where I’ve been.

I open the album and flip through the pages.

Honolulu, HI. I stand next to fair Danielle – my fearless leader. She wears a frilly dress, white gloves with matching shoes. I, my hair boy-short and brown, wear a Laura Ashley floral-patterned sleeveless jumper. No frills. My brown hands and chewed off fingernails are exposed to the tropical air and hold the handle of my blue Easter basket. Black mary jane’s suffocate my calloused soles that mom worries will surprise a centipede like those under the centipede tree or like the giant one that we found in the shower at the pool. 

Flip.

A quadrangle of red brick - home to numerous families stationed in Fort Riley, KS. 40 D Sheridan place. The address I proudly memorize. Inside apartment D, our play room has 3 windowed walls. On the one inside wall is a door to my parents room that remains locked and a windowed door to the boy’s room that Andrew brakes with an oversized plastic yellow baseball bat in a fit of frustration the one time it too is locked. When mom pulls me out of my overcrowded kindergarten it becomes our school room, the birth place of a 12 year homeschooling legacy. It is a room of discovery where I play, learn, and find Christian on the floor with partially chewed cockroach legs dangling from his baby lips. 

     Flip.

Mom, baby Christian, toddler Andrew, and I stand at the gate of the airplane that is taking my waving, camo-clad dad away. Deployed. At Easter, we follow him to Germany, where he is stationed instead of Bosnia. Once there, I lose my first tooth eating spaghetti ice cream and explode in a bloody fit of un-German excitement.  Infected by the magic of Broechen , “Danke,” porcelain dolls, knudels, and kinder eggs, chronic wanderlust seeps into my bones.

    Flip.

 A pencil drawing of 16801 89^th AVE E, Puyallup, WA, that I sent to my grandparents. On the cul-de-sac in front of my 4^th home, blonde Devon and brunette Kylie, my best friends, play vicious games of exclusion and mockery at my expense. Inside 16801, at the top of the stairs, Dad looks into my puffy eyes and says “What does it matter what they think?” I conclude that it didn’t matter, then, or ever again. Later, in the backyard, the green canvas for my mother’s earthy artistry, I watch her hunt under cover of darkness with flashlight and bucket of salt, for the boogery slugs that corrode her leafy sculptures.     

        Flip.

A man in a dress, bearing a cross, walks up the isle of St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church. As I experience my first liturgical service, the worship I would later crave, I view with a  skeptical and creeped-out expression. It is suspiciously Catholic, and I’m not sure if Catholics are Christian. Turns out they are, and so are the congregants of St. Christopher’s, I was sold.  When 6^th grade arrives, I enthusiastically transition from child, to young adult, with my long-coveted acceptance into EYC – the Episcopal Youth Community. My parents insist I call adults “miss” or “mister,” but upon special permission I call our youth director “Becky,” like all the teenagers; like Ben and Jane.  Jane is my friend and we both have crushes on Ben. When Dad gets out of the army and relocates us to Jackson TN, Ben asks Jane out. But he tells me that he liked me first. I’m ok with that.

             Flip.

The album opens to a page titled “Tennessee,” the first in the chapter.  There are at least twice as many pages as there were in any of the previous chapters, for there are 7 years worth of photos rather than two or three. n

On the second page, my best friend, Caitlin, and I stand in the parking lot of Madison Academic Magnet High School, matching Hawaiian print backpacks slung over our shoulders – our survival kits for our first day of public school. Madison: socially stimulating, intellectually stagnant, my day-home for one year before I “drop out” and embrace the freedom of homeschooling.

                  Flip.

Our living room on Christmas morning. The tree sparkles, the windowed doors on the back wall glimpse a mottled, brown green acre of woods. I sit on the couch in front of the window in my pajamas, cradling my baby brother Matthew. This is the happiest picture of Matthew, a gift. His body is relaxed, seemingly absent of the pain that plagues him and threatens his genetically diseased body. It is a morning of hope after months of tears and prayer, a memory of peace to cling to in the turbulent year that lies ahead of me following his funeral a few weeks later.

                          Flip.

Reba, the black Toyota Matrix I drive, parked in our three car garage. On her rear window is a sticker that reads “Seattle Pacific University” in maroon and white letters. It is my signal to the world that after months of agonizing debate, I am rejecting Wheaton, my parent’s alma mater, and forging my own path in what my southern priest’s wife dubs “Satan’s Playground”: Seattle, the heathen world beyond the borders of the Bible belt. I might burst with excitement.

I turn the last page,                                                                                                           

     Close the cover,

  and reshelf the album.

            

I've already failed at my blogging resolution. I have however, been successful in the stop-picking-my-nails resolution thus far. Baby steps. 

I'm attempting to write a poem for my Imaginative Writing class about a cup thrown by my mom. It's about the cup, but I really think it's about mom, or even me. The themes in my head are all so beautifully layered and intertwined. My poem open in my word processor, however, is no more beautiful or artistic than crap flung on a wall by monkeys. 

I just caught myself picking at my thumbnail. 

Shoot. 

Early Morning

it's 3:33 am. 

I stand upon the brink of this new year and I resolve, among many things, to blog once a week. 

I won't succeed, but I like to fool myself. 

Dying, is the pessimist's word for "living." So I've decided to do away with the gloom as time slips through my fingers, to not grieve its passing - it's life, after all. The "draft autosaved at 3:47 AM" at the bottom of my screen is comforting, for time moves a lot more swiftly than I compose. 

3:50

I think I'm done for the night. 

There is life after Africa

I didn't originally intend to continue this blog after Africa, but my

 parents like it and I like the idea of it, so we'll see if I can keep it up. 

The post-Africa summer which seemed to creep by at a snail's pace is finally speeding up and is rapidly ending. I leave for Seattle on Tuesday, am going to spend a few da

ys with my roommate and her wonderful family, and then I move into my dorm on the 20th for a week of leadership retreat and orientation-ing the freshmen, and then school starts on the 29th! 

This is what summer at home has looked like:

I spent a wonderful week with my family at my favorite place in the world - indian lake, NY

Laughed and cried (sometimes simultaneously) with my best friend, Caitlin Riggs

Michael Frank, a wonderful friend from school, flew out from CA to shadow my dad and some other docs at work. Oh, and to hang out with me and Caitlin on our favorite bridge at the old Green Frog Village and cotton farm museum of the South of course! 

I've spent some time with a handful of other people who are dear to me (but I've been a slacker on the pictures) and have spent way too many hours of my life working at my dad's clinic, sitting at a desk, feeding patient charts into a scanner. 

The brightest point of this career path was the day that I discovered the plethora of podcasts available from NPR. Instead of listening to country music (which I admit, I've slowly developed an appreciation of) or the shrieking of the scanner when it tries to eat the staples that elude the jaws of my removal toy, I've been listening to short stories read by actors, histories of people told through interviews and radio clips, stories of unique individuals in South Africa (I was very excited about that one, because I had been to the township in which the girl lives), New York, Bozeman Montana, who were given voice recorders. It's all absolutely enchanting. 

Tomorrow is my last day of work. And while I enjoy the six hours days of NPR, I will not miss the scanner in the least. 

So i'm sitting back in Cape Town listening to Avril Lavigne's "sk8tr boi" on the radio. Life is surreal sometimes.

So yes, we are back to where we began our trip, at the Backpack hostel in Cape Town. And we are once again writing a paper. It's even the same paper because it's a rewrite of the first one we wrote. Who said time is linear? it's so not.

We left Grahamstown on Saturday and drove to our hostel near the safari park. We slept in the most wonderful mud huts with grass roofs I could ever imagine (with indoor plumbing and a heater and everything)! And in an orange tree grove nonetheless. It was a beautiful two days. We spent the first day on safari. First we drove in cars/vans through the elephant park and saw SO many elephants. The baby ones were my favorite. Then we got into open safari jeeps and drove out into the wild. We stopped, literally 10 feet away from a lion and lioness. I had a very false sense of security inside the vehicle until the female feline got up and started walking towards my side of the jeep and our driver goes *in a hushed and eerily calm voice* "keep all your limbs inside the vehicle." My limbs weren't going anywhere.

She didn't eat me, don't worry.
We also were close to giraffes and saw hippos and kudu and crocodiles and bunch of other animals i don't remember...
and then we ate kudu and springbok for dinner! mmm..

The next day we went to the lion and croc park, which is set up more like a zoo. We saw huge crocidiles that looked kin to godzilla. and then, the highlight of the week,
we played with lion cubs.
not baby simbas, but teenage simba sized cubs.
It was a bit intimidating at first, but they were kinda just like puppies with claws and sharp teeth.
there's a hole in my sweatshirt, it's from a lion. how many people can say that? *don't worry mom, it's just a tiny hole. Scout has ripped much bigger ones).

So, Ben Troop, if you ever read this, I wrestled lions - If that's not flirting with death, I don't know what more you want from me.

Oh, a few of us also went and got massages. soo nice. Dr. Segall and I got ours together, it was precious bonding time, really. We entered the room and our massage persons ( i can't spell what they are called for the life of me) go "Ok, so just take off your clothes and get under these towels and we'll be right back!" How many people experience that with one of their favorite professors?

So now we're back, after a day of driving. The next group of Irish students arrived, there's a few of our friends from the last group, but it's kind of weird to have all the new ones around.
And we're just working on our final paper (it never seems to end) and then we're headed home on Friday.

Tomorrow we're visiting a TB clinic. So that should be interesting. And then doing some shopping.

I'm so ready to go home and see everyone! I miss you all. And you people at school, I'm so excited to be able to call you all and regularly correspond again!

Plettenburg Bay and Grahamstown

I'm back online! Internet in Stellenbosch was uber pricey, and then upon arriving in Grahamstown we found no better prices. However, we found a place with decent night time rates, so here I am! And thank goodness too, I felt so far away and disconnected from the rest of the world.

ok so RECAP! (and for your sake, Chris, I'll try to be a bit more concise this time!)

So we finished up building with Habitat for Humanity in Mfuleni, the township outside of Stellenbosch. I have reflections on my experience and interaction with poverty, but I'll transfer them from my journal to the web sometime later, so keep your eyes open. Anyway, we bid a nearly tearful goodbye to our Northern Irish friends and embarked for a long drive to Plettenburg bay where we would spend a day before going on to Grahamstown for the National Arts Festival.

I think I've been endowed with superhero like abilities when it comes to sleeping during travel. I slept almost the entire flight to africa, and it seems nearly every car trip as well.

I woke up after about 4 hours when we reached a gas station for lunch. Not only was there a gas station, restaurant, and playground, but a petting zoo as well. Africa is surreal sometimes.

Plettenburg bay was beautiful. The day we had there was a free day so we went about various activities. A few students chose to sea kayak with dolphins, since we were right on the coast, and some sought more of a thrill. Mom, I'm appologizing right now for my decision to join the latter group, I'm not sure what got into me. You might not want to look at the pictures...

This is me, jumping off the highest bungy jump in the world. the highest IN THE WORLD. I couldn't help myself.

This is us! plus a few random people from Ireland (we told them how much we love the Irish) and South Korea.

That was the most terrifying/exhilerating experience ever! Free falling, though it's only for about 5 seconds, is the scariest feeling. I was screaming my lungs out thinking, how the heck did I get mid-air? Is the cord ever going to catch me?

Sooo after bungy jumping, a few of us hiked down to the beach. It was beautiful, but already cold outside (it was about 4 pm) and everyone was wearing sweatshirts. Josh and I however, emboldened by our bridge jumping experience, were determined to test out the waters of South Africa, the Indian Ocean, the closest water to ANTARCTICA I've ever jumped in! And in we went! and then OUT we went. That water was absolutely freezing!

Then we had class that night, wrote some essays, did some reading.

Next day we drove to

GRAHAMSTOWN

So here we are, all up to date! We arrived in Gtown on friday , checked into our rooms (single dorm rooms at Rhodes University - a beautiful English campus. And oh it's so very nice to have a room to myself!) and dived right into the arts festival with a theatre performance of the play "Cissie." Saturday we scoped out the market. Talk about overwhelming! The whole city is buzzing with merchants sellling every African artifact you could ever want, and a pair of nikes to boot! Then we attended a Jazz performance and an extremely upsetting movie premier about a poor, incestuous, Afrikaner family. Today we saw an amazing ballet of Romeo and Juliet (OLIVIA!).

And I've got so much homework to do, so I'll leave it at that for now, but I love you all, and am looking forward to either seeing you in a couple weeks, or hearing from you soon!