Commercial

Some of my students are taking a videography class here at VCS (under the direction of my esteemed colleague and roommate Mr. Klein) and here are the fruits of their labors. Check out this video if you want to see just how funny and talented our students are. It's an advertisement for our Senior Store, which is the snackbar where students and teachers can buy American goodies. As a student once put it, "VCS is a place where everyone talks about American food, even people who have never been to America."

2 Versus 10

On our first day of meetings this school year, our director read us a story from Numbers 13 and 14. For those of you not intimately familiar with the exact timeline of the 4th book of Moses (that would include me) it's the story of how the Israelites, perched on the edge of the promised land of Canaan, wisely sent 12 spies through the land to scope it out. When the spies returned, they told of a land full of abundant produce...but also containing men who appeared like giants to them. Ten of the spies claimed that they felt like grasshoppers in their presence. Only Joshua and Caleb proclaimed that it was a good land, which, despite obstacles, they could conquer with God's help. (The sad part of the story is that the Israelites listened to the cowardly report of the 10, rather than Joshua and Caleb...and the people were forced to wander for 40 years as a result.)

So our director's challenge to us was to be like the 2 spies, not like the 10. As those two said, it was a good land, and with the Lord's help, they could achieve victory. In the same way, our school is an awesome opportunity, provided by God, to make a difference in kids' lives, but it's not without its own obstacles. We have kids' language barriers to overcome; attitude problems to overcome; home issues including who knows what; and a host of other things. But the spies weren't sinful in bringing back a truthful report; it was their choice to focus on the difficulties that brought them down. That story is a good challenge for me, to focus on God to solve the problems I have here, and to depend on Him to accomplish what he wants me to do. I thought it was a good note to start the year on.

I realize that I'm saying this next bit quite early, but...so far it looks like it will be an amazing year. My students are great; if you want to check out some class pictures and see how incredibly diverse they are, click here.

Summer Flashback #1

When I was in the States this summer, I spent a week or so visiting out east. While I was in Maine with my old college roommate, he mentioned a house he knew of which sounded so fascinating I demanded that we go and visit it the next day. We called the occupants (who were acquaintances of his) and invited ourselves over; we even got dinner thrown in.

The family, whose name I don’t remember, was running an orphanage in the Bahamas but was forced to return to the States. They didn’t have a house, but a rancher in Florida donated an abandoned metal grain silo to their cause. They took it apart piece by piece, loaded it onto a flatbed and drove it north, and then reassembled it on a new foundation in a remote part of Maine. The result: a 5-story silo house. It’s about 50 feet high and 30 feet in diameter. Most of the levels were one big room, and there’s a shaft in the center for an elevator (still waiting to be installed). They even built a wood deck of sorts on the roof. The entire house was a fascinating experiment in being resourceful with very limited resources. I think my favorite touch was the red, heart-shaped hot tub in the master bath, which they picked up quite cheap from a bankrupt motel.

Check out a few more pictures here.