Cold with sun expected

I think I'll have to keep with a weather theme. The snowbanks are still hanging around but we have had some sunny days and things are beginning to melt. The weather is looking up (I hope) but we still had some cold windy days and I saw only a little of the sun.

On Monday I had a holiday and the day off work, but all the kids but my youngest were in school because they missed so many days due to snow. My wife and I ventured out and went downtown to the American Indian Museum because it was getting closer to lunch, we wanted to get out, and we heard that museum had some of the best food compared to other Smithsonian Museums. I loved it. The best thing about the food was the variety: I had venison with some kind of berry jelly and an amazing raspberry tart and some things that looked like potatoes but tasted totally different and my youngest had a buffalo burger, which I tasted. I liked the exhibits, too. I like native american things and, being from the West, have grown up with some of it. I always like arrows and different stories and cultures. I even did a native american dance! We also had a really fun time taking some pictures of "Flat Stanley" visiting the places where we were, thanks to my wife's sister and her daughter. I am considering taking "Flat Stanley" with me wherever I go in the world! It was a fun day.
My days and nights otherwise are all occupied with trying to keep up on language. I think they think I know more than I do. At the same time, I am surprised at how much I do know.
This week I spent the time I wasn't trying to study doing one of the following: watching the Olympics, trying to help Amy and do my part preparing the Sunday School lesson, helping my oldest finish his Pinewood Derby Car, or going to extra evening events.
I have been trying to watch as much of the Olympics as I can. I really like the Winter Olympics and especially like watching the snowboard cross, the short-track speed skating and the short-track speed skating relays. It really puts me on the edge of my seat and draws me in. I get nervous for them with all of the speed and the positions and the jostling.
It is difficult to get all of the lesson material read, processed, organized, and condensed for our Sunday School lessons with the Young Single Adults. If it wasn't for my wife and had to depend on me every week this would be a complete bomb. Thank you, Amy.
My oldest has had extra play practices this whole week and hasn't been done with school each day until 6 pm, (11 hour days). Consequently, it has been difficult to finish the derby car, especially without all of the stuff and space to do it. It is really hard to spray paint when it's 35 degrees outside and windy and you live in a huge apartment complex with snow all over the place. We got it done in the nick of time. Since I didn't have a scale until we got to the building on Friday night, we spent at least half an hour drilling out a lot of the weight I had melted and poured into the body of the car. It's a good thing we arrived early and there was a scale there.  Third place overall for both packs and first in his pack helped make it a fun night.
One night this week I went to a tax seminar to learn about all of the crazy things that I need to be aware of since I am in such a strange position as a resident of a couple of states or no state at the same time and having to pay taxes in all of them.
Another night I was invited to a dinner and reception at the Indonesian Embassy as part of our language instruction. We spoke (mostly) in Indonesian with the staff there and some speeches were made in Indonesian and we had Indonesian food. It was a good time but tiring and a late night too.
We also got to spend some time together on Saturday as a family visiting the Holocaust Museum and the Air and Space Museum (again). And a very awesome thing last night is that we had our first out-of-town visitors! My very nice cousin, Lesa, three of her amazing daughters, and the family of one of those daughters, Natalie and Rich and their children, came to dinner at our place. I was so grateful and happy to have them here. It reminded me how much I love my family and how much I love seeing them. We talked for a long time and I loved every minute of it.
Hopefully my ability to help with lesson prep, my ability to speak Indonesian, and many other things are looking sunnier soon. It feels like we're right on the edge of brighter, warmer days ahead.

Historic

I kind of like it when I experience something that feels historic. It feels good, and a little strange and uncomfortable. It's like something that is happening around you and inside of you that you can't really explain to others well enough that they can understand. Have you ever been in a situation that someone later wrote about in an article? Sometimes what is written sounds something like what you experienced but almost like something that happened somewhere else to someone else?
When I was a missionary in Latvia, James E. Faust came and dedicated the country for the preaching of the gospel. It was an amazing experience and something I will never forget. When I later read about it in the Church News it sounded similar to what I had experienced, but not exactly. But more than that, it felt different reading it than actually experiencing it. It was almost two different experiences from the perspective of how it felt.
Hmm... not sure if I'm explaining this exactly right. I have heard many people, including myself, try to explain what it was like to be a missionary. I remember others explaining it to me before I was one. The explanation and the reality just never seem to really match up. It is very difficult to give a sense of something experienced, especially something significant, or historic, in a few words. Some are much better at it than me, but I still think that what is sometimes conveyed well is a certain aspect of the thing when reality is much more layered and complex. It is much easier when the other person has experienced something similar, but still challenging. When they have a frame-of-reference similar to what you are explaining it is easier to understand and harder the more you have to explain, though perhaps not impossible.
That is my thought as intro to saying that it has been an interesting and in some ways "historic" week. We broke the record for the snowiest winter on record in this area. But that doesn't explain what it was like to be in it. It meant historic firsts for my life like having-time-that-was-not-really-work-and-not-really-vacation-and-I-didn't-physically-go-in, but my-work-is-learning-a-language-and-I-still-did-my-best-to-keep-up-with-it-and-progress. Some of the things I experienced include: running in the snow in the early morning and having to run in the street because the snow was piled as high as me on the sides of the road and sidewalks; seeing every member of my family nearly all day long for days; trying to study with children running around in our small apartment; outside looking like someone had a giant snow machine on for hours upon hours; my back sore for days because of the hours of shoveling; most of the hours of shoveling was just the space around my car; playing on a ton of snow on a tennis court on a sunny but cold day with my children on what should have been a work and school day; weeks without formal church meetings, which has felt very strange for me after having so many church meetings for so many years; stake conference being cancelled; attending a young single adult ward with my wife and children in Washington DC; teaching a class in that ward with my wife; having a good time on a date to dinner with my wife and our friends who are not members of our church; doing better than I expected on an Indonesian written test I took a week ago and only was able to check a week later; seeing ancient clay figures from China (terra-cotta warriors) on display with my oldest son; feeling far away from family; getting to know my own family; etc; etc. Naming it doesn't give a sense of what it was like, but it is a start. This week was historic. But isn't every week in some way in our own lives historic?

Snow-what!

Okay. I don't mean to sound repetitive since I already talked about snow a few weeks ago, but it snowed big again!
In December we had the biggest December snowstorm ever here and #7 on the all time list. Over this last weekend we had the 4th largest storm at Reagan National and it was #1 at Dulles Airport. We are located a little closer to Reagan, but in between those two airports. It was one of the largest ever. If we get just a few more inches snow it will be the snowiest winter ever in the DC area! The National Weather Service says that Washington DC has had more than 13 inches of snow only 13 times since 1870. Two of them have been this year! I'm not superstitious, but am beginning to wonder if it's me. Wherever I go, it seems to snow! It's a good thing I like snow.
Because the system here is not made to have big snowstorms, it cripples the area. We didn't have church meetings last Sunday because of that weekend's snowstorm, nor today for obvious reasons. We only had a half-day on Friday at work and it's cancelled tomorrow. Our kids have missed a lot of school and will have to make up days over holidays and spring break now. And another big storm is on the horizon for Tuesday night.
Having huge storms is what learning Indonesian is like for me also. I am getting a storm of vocabulary and grammatical elements and every day I am trying to dig out. It gets tiring, but it's also exhilarating. I met with the language learning consultant this week to find different ways to help myself learn the language fast. Before I met with her I took some tests to find out about my style and natural tendencies. Apparently I have a bit higher tolerance than the average learner at FSI for ambiguity, I prefer not to have structure imposed on me and want to do a lot on my own, I have to push myself to talk more, I need to trust my instincts more, I need to take breaks every day and on weekends (not counting sleeping) to let everything sink in, and I shouldn't worry since my learning profile says I should be very successful learning languages. It still feels like I am falling behind and like I will never get to the level of fluency I need. But I can see progress. And most importantly, I am still amazed that I am so blessed to have learning a language as my job. It's a dream come true. So, I took a break on Tuesday night after the consultation and watched Groundhog Day, since it was Groundhog Day. Six more weeks of winter. Really.

One-Liners

Events for the week:

Flashcards
Crash-and-burn dialogue in Indonesian with Instructor
Daughter's birthday
Fun at mall for birthday: hot noodles, ears pierced

Discouraged I can't remember words I've studied

Understanding more anyway

Lecture on Islam in Indonesian for 3 hours

Brain workout every day

Flashcards
Early morning lecture by man who worked in Tehran and became a hostage when the embassy was overrun
Finishing moving someone I am assigned to home teach - finally
Had to borrow a truck to move the bed
But it wouldn't fit up the stairs in the new place
Staying up late preparing first lesson for YSA Sunday School
Catching sight of new family I home teach at FSI just after they found out they're heading to Kuwait
Flashcards

More snow just in time for the weekend
Fun watching "Operation Repo"
Thought daughter lost outside in snow but not lost, just playing in stairwell
Church cancelled in YSA ward
Church "postponed until next week" in our own ward
Trying to read Lehi's Dream part of Book of Mormon in Indonesian
New family I home teach over tonight for cookies and chit-chat