Normal?

This week seemed pretty normal: language, area studies, working hard trying to put a new language into my brain.
It was normal, except for a couple of things: shots, White House, and training change.
I had to get shots in both arms! I try not to look on these sorts of things since I don't really like needles poking into me, but I'm pretty sure one of the vaccines was purple and another was red. But maybe it's my imagination. Anyway, I'm pretty sure I've been having dreams and daydreams about purple fluid floating throughout my body and it makes me cringe a little. Now that I think about it, I guess it's okay, since I like the color purple. Yes, my arms have now recovered and no, I didn't faint or anything.

I was in the actual White House this weekend! Some friends had tickets for a while and since the others who were going to go with them couldn't, we got to go with them. It was cool to walk inside and see it. It is like a museum but they actually still use it and live there, which makes it even better. They can't tell you whether or not anyone, (like the President), is actually there when you are there, but just about 1/2 hour or so after we left cars were stopped as the presidential motorcade whizzed by on the street right next to us. After the White House, since we were already downtown we decided to take a look at a few other things, some of which we've seen before. We visited the White House Visitor's Center, saw the Bill of Rights, Constitution, Declaration of Independence at the Archives, and went to a few other places. It was pretty fun. We also went later to the Marine Wars Memorial (Iwo Jima) and out near the airport to see the planes take off and the boats on the Potomac. I am grateful of the opportunity to see such amazing things right now. We have a great country.
Things worked out this week on a training schedule change for me so we can leave a couple of weeks sooner so our kids won't miss so much school and a few other good reasons. I'm grateful it's working out. We have been blessed on this change as well as so many other things.
Onward and upward!

Roller Coasters

At the beginning of the week I was informed that my fellow classmates and I were going to take our second progress test in Indonesian at the end of the week. They moved it up a little bit from what it would normally be to accommodate the others who are all taking the final test within the next month. It was a little bit of a surprise.
I have to say that for me, I was still more worried about the work I had to do in class every day and how to not come off looking really stupid every day than something clear at the end of the week. On one day, I was assigned to give a short speech on a subject to a fictional group of Indonesian students after which they (or really my co-workers pretending to be students) would ask me more questions. I realized this was going to be even more difficult than I had first supposed when I thought about how little I really knew about the subject in any language. I have been busting my brains trying to get the language. The test at the end of the week went fine, not a particularly shining moment for me but much better than the last time I took one a couple of months ago! It's important to hold on to any progress you can in the up and down of emotions while learning something hard.
I've also been going back and forth with a few different people on an idea to change my training schedule a bit so that I can arrive with my family at post a couple of weeks earlier than originally scheduled. I'm not 100% it will happen, but my wife and I have been going over all kinds of scenarios for what we would do differently with the change and our summer plans.
Also, on Saturday, I got to have fun on some real roller coasters at Hershey Park as a chaperon for the local middle school band as they played at a competition and then spent the rest of the day at the park. It was fun spending time there with my son and some of his classmates. We had fun on the many roller coasters there. I still love the thrill of it. My ideal thing at an amusement park would be to have dozens of intense roller coasters and I would run from one to the other and ride without any line all day long. I can still feel it now.
Happy Mother's Day to my mom and my wife! I hope you had a good day today. They are both the best. It was fun to see the kids cards and presents to my wife today and to try to make her day special. I hope it was. It was also fun to talk to my mom for a few minutes today. Thanks to both of you for all you do and have done for me.

May Day!

I was happy to complete my presentation and present it on Tuesday afternoon to my colleagues. I think it went well. I had a lot of good information on volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, mudslides, and so on in the region we are going to live in for the next couple of years. It has plenty of all that. Since the first presentations went long, as soon as mine was done everyone clapped and then split within about 30 seconds without even asking any questions. It's good to have it done so I can again concentrate some more time to language and my family.

I can not believe that April is over! The weeks are flying by. Yesterday was May 1st. The day also known as May Day, but best know in my family as my wedding anniversary. My wife and I have been married for 12 awesome years.

To celebrate this year, we did something out of the ordinary and participated in a race together. We had a lot of fun racing on the same team, "12", in a scavenger-hunt-like race throughout downtown Washington D.C. with over 500 other teams of 2 to 20 or more people each. They gave us 12 clues, then we had to figure out what they were talking about, make our way to each of the clues in whatever order we wanted, take a picture of our whole team at each place, and do it as fast as we could. We walked or ran for miles throughout the city in search of locations we had never heard of in most cases. We didn't win the $750 first prize, but we were close to the top third of teams finishing!

Most importantly for this day, we had a lot of fun on the DC Challenge, got to spend a good part of the day together, and went out to eat afterwards together. We even had a little time at the end to take our kids out with us for some ice cream. A big thanks to our nice friends for being with our kids most of the day!

My wife is a big part of the reason that I can pursue my dreams. She is so supportive of letting me pursue my dreams and what I'm good at. I try every day to think of the ways I can do the same for her. Looking forward to continuing the good times with her. I love my May Day Anniversary.

A Disaster Waiting to Happen

This week, besides regular language study and the birthday of one of my children, has been consumed by my preparations for a presentation I have to give next week.
As part of my training, I have the chance to study more in depth each week, in English, about the region where I will be posted with others who are going there. I think I've written about this in a previous post, but there you have it again. As part of our study we each have the opportunity to do some kind of independent research and present it to the rest of the class. We are supposed to pick something about that part of the world, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, and the Philippines, in our case, and also pick something, hopefully, that relates to the job.

This whole week and all day Saturday I have been spending any spare moment gathering more information and putting it together for the presentation I will give on Natural Disasters in Maritime Southeast Asia. It is hard not to get distracted watching YouTube videos of volcanoes exploding or hearing again about how when Tambora exploded it lowered the average temperature of the world that year which had all sorts of consequences around the world. This was the biggest volcanic explosion in recorded human history and it happened in 1815 in Indonesia.
One of the most interesting consequences of Tambora exploding, in my mind, is that the summer of 1816 was especially cool in New England and many farmers even had crops fail because of late frosts. It was a contributor to a lot of problems around that time. (There was also a big financial crisis about that time in the U.S.) What is so interesting about this to me is that this is one of the main reasons the Smith family moved west to Palmyra, New York. They moved there and rented some land that they began to work to try to dig themselves back from the failures they had suffered. Part of the problem was caused by maybe the largest volcanic eruption in human history, which they knew nothing about. But they were put right where the Lord wanted them so that Joseph could begin the work of the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
The chain of events is just so fascinating to me. Amazing. The Lord can always make something good come of any natural disaster if we will listen to Him and follow Him. Something to think about.

Fun Rocks

For my job right now I am learning a language. I do it all day every day, except on Tuesdays. On Tuesday afternoon I have to participate in a part of my training called, "Area Studies." I get to learn, in English, about the culture, history, economics, you-name-it of the area of the world where I will be working when my training is done. My area is Insular Southeast Asia, which includes Singapore, Malaysia, Brunei, Timor-Leste, the Philippines, and of course Indonesia. Usually, it is just about Indonesia since most of us in the class are going there and it is the largest of the countries in the area. Mostly there are guest lecturers, but each of us also has the opportunity to do some research and present it to the class. Well, mine is coming up. I learned long ago that it is best if you pick something somewhat interesting to you when doing research, and I also had to pick something that relates in some way to my work and that part of the world. I am presenting on natural disasters in maritime southeast Asia. It is more difficult and time consuming than I though it would be however. It is very hard to put together, but I have had a couple of breakthroughs this week. If anyone has a good source of info to recommend, I would welcome it. The fun part is that I have to do research on something that I would like to know about but probably would not have enough time to research if I didn't have to find the time. I hope it goes well. I really want a good video of a volcano exploding or something to spice it up, but we'll see.
It was really fun to see my youngest son break some boards in his martial arts class this week. I have always wanted to do that myself. The closest I have come is when we were doing some remodeling in the house I grew up in and we got to destroy the wall between the kitchen and dining room. That was really fun breaking the drywall.

On Saturday as a family we went to a local National Park called "Great Falls National Park." We had a lot of fun looking at the falls, walking on the trails through the trees, going over bridges and rocks, and especially putting on our hats and hiking shoes and Camelbacks. At one part, we hiked down a little descent to a cove that was half sea shells instead of sand and was surrounded by really interesting rocks. Some of the rocks had holes in them filled with water. Some of them only had a little water and some of the holes were as big as me. We had a great time playing on them and jumping off some of the rocks onto the soft sand/shells. We had a bunch of complaints when we let the kids know we were going there, but I heard almost every one of them say that that was one of the best days of their life while we were there. They all want to go back. Funny how that is sometimes. Fun rocks.

Tidak Pernah Sebelum

I really like it when I get to do things I have never done before. Sometimes I don't like it or it's painful, or whatever, and I don't really want to do it or taste it or experience it again and sometimes I do. But it's exciting to find out and I always like to find out more about things and about myself.
I did several things for the first time this week. Some I will have to do again even though I don't want to and others I enjoyed but will probably not do again and some that were in-between or I want to do again. Maybe that last sentence is confusing, but I'll leave it anyway.
Some specifics:

I went to a Harlem Globetrotters game for the first time in my life. (I didn't go alone, in case you were wondering. The whole family went together.) I have wanted to go to a Harlem Globetrotters game ever since I can remember knowing that they existed. It just seems like so much fun. I was happy to fulfill this dream with discount tickets thanks to the Boy Scouts of America. Our seats weren't bad and it was fun to watch. They really can do some amazing things, and the Generals, who they play, really aren't too bad themselves. It did move a lot slower than I expected, but maybe I'm just used to all of the things that are action-packed these days. It was relaxing and enjoyable and I am happy I went and probably won't go again. But if you get a chance, it's fun.
While we were in town in DC, we walked around since it was a beautiful day and ended up going to the Postal Museum, among other things. They had a really fun sorting game that was timed that everyone in our family liked. I also saw the duck stamp collection. My cousin, Dan, made a painting of Ducks that was in the competition for the stamp a few years back, and it may not be his, but one of the stamps looked a lot like what he paints. It was nice to imagine it was his, if it wasn't.
I also went to a local Farmer's Market, where all of my children now want me to buy sausage every time they go now. I also had fun riding my 5-year-old's scooter even though he didn't think that was very cool.
I also did what we call "consultations" with my supervisor on Wednesday. She is also here in language training and invited me to come along. It was pretty interesting and I'll have plenty of times to repeat this type of activity. Basically, it's a good idea before going out to post, (out to the place out of the country where I'll be working), to make contact with, meet, and get updates on the particular area of interest of some key employees here in Washington with whom I'll likely be making contact regularly. It's easier to work with someone if you understand a little what they deal with day to day, what the current issues are, and meet them face-to-face.
And the last experience I'll write about might be a bit of a revisit: it's taxes. But I have never filed taxes for another state before. Since I technically work in Virginia, I filed non-resident taxes for Virginia, which also meant that I needed to revise my Utah taxes and file an amended return. It turns out that I'll be paying just a little bit more than I would have otherwise, but not much. The really tricky thing is that I'll need to do it again next year and Virginia likes you to pay estimated taxes for the next tax year or they give you a penalty. So I will also be sending in something for that since I haven't had it coming out of my paycheck for Virginia. It will be much easier for 2011 taxes since I will just need to file Federal and Utah. But Utah still wants my taxes even though I am overseas. It's a complicated life, but someone's got to do it, and I'm glad it's me.
That's it. Oh, in case you are wondering, the title means "never before."

Spring has sprung

The kids were all on Spring Break this whole week. The days were beautiful. The trees are showing signs of life. One of the great benefits of having a nice wife and kids out of school is that I had a ride to work and pick-up service after work. That was really nice. Now when my wife drives up to the guard gate, she rolls down the window and the guard says, "Here for a drop-off?" before she even says anything. It's also nice to escape at the end of the day right when my afternoon class is done at 4:30 instead of getting the 5:10 shuttle since my head is usually pretty cloudy by that time and tired from concentrating. And just in case you are wondering about my schedule, I usually have more than enough studying after work, which is my work right now, so it's not like I'm really done. But when the kids are out of school and the sun is out, you have to take advantage of it. I played some basketball with my two oldest, watched all of them play by the stream and around the bridge in the little park by our place, and spent a little time outdoors.

On Saturday, we went to the local Easter-egg Hunt in the morning and the Farmer's Market, and then in between sessions of General Conference we went to a bigger park a short drive from our place. We played a little Frisbee, played on the swings, and walked through the forest. The forest all around the park is so thick, it was really fun. We thought we were going to find to Terabithia or something. Oh! I almost forgot to mention that on my morning run a dog ran up to me from the side and bit a hole in my nice running pants! Luckily I saw the dog just before it attacked me and it just got my pants. Crazy!
We had a fun Easter weekend and enjoyed conference. Our older children actually listened to quite a bit of it this time, and we were able to watch it on a local cable station! I was thinking about next year in April and how if we can get the satellite of the Priesthood Session of General Conference live, it will start at 7:00 Sunday morning. That will be fun for my oldest and me to attend for his first!
At work, my language class is down to 4 people, including me. This is actually still a little on the larger side for language classes at FSI. We have such a short time to increase our proficiency that we're all trying to help each other but also competing for time with our teacher in class. Unfortunately, I am sure I am the back of the class now. The others seem to know and spit out so much more vocabulary than me; it's sad. My teachers sometimes ask if I'm okay or wonder why I am quiet. I am just having a hard time getting a word in. Some of it may be that not one of them has family with them, like I do, but I'm sure they also have plenty they have to take care of after work. I'll learn it, but I just know that I don't learn it the same way as many others. When I was learning Russian, I never felt like I was the top of the class, and on my mission I felt like it took me a while, but by the end I spoke well and clearly and with a good accent and I certainly didn't have to think about anything in order to say it right. Hopefully that will begin happening with Indonesian. Diligence and patience!
Happy Spring!