All the little things

It's amazing how many little things there are to get done and to make things work and make something come off well.
I've experienced it when giving presentations, planning events, planning and conducting meetings, and now with my job and the ways it impacts the life of me and my family. There are literally a thousand little things to take care of. If some of them don't get taken care of, everything is still going to happen but it just won't come off as well. There are also things that you take care of but if you don't redo them to get them just right it will be just a little harder when the event happens.
Pretty vague, right? Here is an example, but don't worry I won't give all of the detail. When I worked at LDS Employment Resource Services I put on monthly training meetings for employment specialists. It seems pretty simple from the outside, but there are so many things that make it happen. At one point I moved to a new building to better accommodate the group. It needed to be centrally located, easy to find, have parking, have an internet connection that I could connect to, have enough space for all the people, and give me access on the evenings I needed it. It took a lot of asking questions, prayer, visits and checking with people to find the right spot and make sure it was good. Then there is getting the right presenters, making sure they get there and know what to expect and have the right technology. There is also the other training to prepare, handouts, announcements, chair set up and take down, sound, communicating location date and time, recording who is coming, getting help for everything, and the list goes on. I learned that I should always go early and check to see if everything was okay and that systems were working, internet up, had the supplies I needed and so on.

Well, now I am in a job that entails moving myself and my family long distances frequently and it involves a lot of things in a way very similar to that. There are things normal to any job that changes, even within the same company. You have the new office, moving your things, your Email and access and passing things on and new supervisors and co-workers, etc. But there is also all of the details that need quite a bit of attention from a personal standpoint. There are things like, what about the car, what about insurance, the plane tickets, the connections, what will we bring on the plane to keep the children and ourselves occupied, what do we put in our luggage and what do we ship, when do we do those things, where are our connections, what's the right time to get the visas, what about medicine, etc. It can get pretty complicated and pretty important. And just like the meeting I described above, the clock is ticking and it's coming.
Wish me luck on my end of language training test this Tuesday. A prayer would also be nice.
Out.

Weekly Sampler - Summer edition

A sampler of some of the happenings this week:
A Family Home Evening lesson on the Creation taught by our five-year-old was good. He was only really able to do a little and I ended up doing a lot of the question asking, reading, and other prep, (like the True/False quiz), but I think that he paid attention to the lesson more this time than any other in recent memory. Maybe "he" should do the lesson more often!
I had a full week of language class on my own. It was fun, helpful, and tiring. We got into some pretty specific topics at times like what kinds of extraction industries are in Canada and how they get oil out of oil shale.
My eye has been irritated and watery since swimming a week ago and one of my teachers asked me a question every few minutes about it, (it must have really been bugging her, but didn't bother me very much). Try explaining in Indonesian that something is wrong with the eye but it doesn't hurt when they say that something is wrong or sick and something hurts in the same way.
It has been fun to try to follow the World Cup this week. I have had the chance to talk with a couple of my teachers about it several times. I find I am really having to keep more up on current events these days as fodder for language discussions.
This was the last week of school for my kids and we even attended a "moving up" ceremony that was just like a graduation for my oldest. I'm not sure how I feel about these sorts of things. I guess it's okay to have something like that since they are moving on, but I still can't help but feel that it might be okay just to graduate once when you actually finish public school, too.
We also had a chance this week to get our car washed in a Boy Scout car wash in which I think every one of my children jumped in to help with even though only one is a Boy Scout. They had a good time, though.
We also got to watch the children of a neighbor of ours so they could go to the temple as part of our church calling on the "temple committee". We had a good time and I must say that 2-year old boys really are hilarious  and fun but definitely need to be observed more often than I remembered.
The highlight of the week was today, Father's Day. My wife and children really helped make my day special with special meals, cards, presents, etc. They are the greatest. I really love and appreciate my wife and children. I am "home" wherever I am when I am with them.

The one constant is change?

As they say, "The one constant is change!"
This is especially true with life in my new job. (Honestly, that's part of what I like about it.) This week I began my couple of weeks in a language class by myself. I am definitely getting some language practice in with no one else to make comments or answer the teacher's questions or finish my sentences when I forget a word. I think this is just what I need right now. I actually have overstayed the class time 3 out of the 4 classes I've had on my own so far because we are talking about something and don't feel like stopping. The only hard part is that I find myself thirsting for some human interaction (from a peer, in English) since I don't get any in class. We'll see what a whole week of this brings this week. It will either be closer to fluency, closer to crazy, or both.
A bunch of people from church who are also FS are leaving this week. It's going to be different, for sure. My home teaching companion is headed out, so they gave us both another person as a companion to go with us and then with me next month with the idea that he would then continue with the families after I leave. It's a good theory, but coordination is just a little on the crazy side, especially since they added households in the process. I was planning on just doing the lesson in our visits this month but find myself also doing the coordinating. We'll miss those who are leaving. It's always strange to move, especially when you are helping to plan things or talking about things that are in the near future but you know you won't be here for it.
Oh, back on language learning, I found out that both of my classmates passed, so hopefully I'll be able to eek out the same result. (I guess it's easy to tell that's on my mind a lot.)

Yesterday was a busy day. When I woke up in the morning I decided I might be able to make the first session of the temple, so I hurried to dress and leave. I was too late for the first one, but got on the second one. Then when I got home I did some Indonesian study, watched World Cup, ate, nodded off a little and then went with the whole family to Old Town Alexandria. We walked around a bit, went on the water taxi across the Potomac to National Harbor, ate, got caught in the rain, and generally had a good time. Our kids have been dying for a "night swim" so we went for one. We didn't get home until about 10:00pm. Everyone fell asleep pretty fast. I am tired.
Every time we do something now, I keep thinking about how short our time is here. We need to see whatever we can while we have the time and enjoy Washington DC and the good ol' US of A! I love this country, despite it's flaws. It really is great. Hopefully we all can keep it that way. Some things, like good values, integrity, honoring the law, respect, and other like values should stay constant and not change so we can keep our country great.

Flight

This was a bit of a weird week, but aren't they all?
Every language class was our teachers trying to get us to talk about some hot topic or something in the news for hours. Every once in a while they'll ask some point blank questions and this week they seemed to be aimed at me. There we questions like, (in Indonesian) "How do you feel about the death penalty," and "What do you think about gay marriage?" O-kaaay. But the strangest thing about the class was to think that it was the last full week as a class since the other two are taking their final test in a couple of days and I'll be in a class by myself for about 3 weeks. We've been together every weekday since December and in some ways I'm going to miss the small group. For the most part it's been very pleasant and enjoyable to be with them, plus they're really nice and smart. I also find it fun and interesting that we have a Mormon, a Catholic, and a Muslim. But the one of the common factors we share is that we're all Americans and love our country and get along well. I took one last sweaty lunchtime walk with one of my classmates as a last hurrah. Good times.
We had more guests staying with us, some friends from out of town who came to see the sites. They pretty much   did their own thing and we saw them at night after they got home, but were able to have dinner with them and some of their cousins who live near us on the last night. It was fun to see them and reconnect. Hopefully they had a good time.

We are still trying to figure out our departure and flight plans. Unfortunately, going in and talking to the travel agent didn't solve our problems quite yet, and in fact brought up more questions. I have thought that I was going crazy a couple of times and wishing it wasn't eating up so much of my study and sanity time, but hopefully we'll have it worked out soon. But, I did book my flight back home for 4th of July weekend. Hopefully we can work out the tickets so my family will also be there!

The highlight of the week, of course, was a date with my wife. We have never been to Old Town Alexandria and decided to go there on a whim. We enjoyed seeing the docks and the Potomac and the old homes and shops and narrow streets. We even saw a guy playing amazingly well on some glasses! There were some pretty cool churches in the area also, including the one George Washington and his family attended. We ate seafood, since when I get near the water I can only think about eating seafood. It was good. Thanks to my wife for finding a sitter so we could go.

V

I was pleased to have visitors this weekend from my very own family! My Mom & Dad and one of my brothers and his wife came clear out here for the memorial day weekend to be with us. I really love having my family around. I hope they had fun, too. We realized even more while they were here how much there is to do and how much walking there is if you are trying to see sites in DC. It's impossible to see everything in detail in a couple of days but it can still be a great time. Thank you so much for coming.
It was so hard for me not to just want to show them everything I could think of and tell them all about what I've been up to here. I don't want to make it all about me; here look at this, have you seen that, did you see what I have done here, etc. It sort of feels like when you're a little kid and someone new comes to your house and you find yourself showing them all of your toys and your favorite chair and how you can do a somersault and your just being drawn into doing it by some mysterious force that you can't explain, like gravity, or a black hole. Every once in a while I would recognize that I was being pulled into it since I was so excited to see people I have cared about my whole life visiting and I wanted to show them a part of my life that it felt like they didn't know anything about. Then, sometimes, I would remember that I wanted them to actually enjoy being here and that I also wanted to know how they are doing. I miss them already but am very glad they could come.

We saw a large number of things, some of which I have already seen and some of which I have not. For example, at Arlington Cemetery I have seen the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, but I have never before heard the bugler play there. And I have walked past the Botanic Garden near the Capitol but never actually been in to see all the amazing plants. Honestly, I never really thought much about plants and so the thought of it didn't really spark my interest. But I really liked it. There is such an amazing variety of plant life. I really liked seeing the cacao tree and all of the cacti and so many others.
In work last week, it is getting interesting since my co-workers are coming up on their last week or two of classes and preparing to be done with language. I think they'll do just fine. I am keeping up okay, but could really use a lot more work. I am really trying to kick in a review of things I should have a lot more solid so they flow.
V is for visitor.