One of the things I've grown to like while living here is coffee. If you ever knew how much I hated the smell, taste, or thought of coffee before coming here, you would understand how marvelous that is. Now, I still dislike black coffee, but put a bunch of milk and sugar in a cup of coffee and I will drink the whole thing. Fortunately my host mamá somehow makes the coffee exactly how I like it! I still haven't quite figured out what she does to it, but I've managed to approximate the taste when I've had to make my own. Tomorrow afternoon we U.S. students are hosting a little coffee party (cafecito) for our host mamás and I'm looking forward to that. We'll be serving small sandwiches (sánguches in Spanish!) and brownies in addition to the coffee.

... I always have lots of things planned to do. I don't normally get around to doing them quite when I meant to, though. Anyways. One of those things was to update my link list on the side there. Honestly, if there were a way I could conveniently link my Google Reader list to my blog sidebar, that would be great. But there is not. However I can give you examples... I have several folders. The ones I actually read are "Geekish" (yes, that's the name), "Christianity and life" (for which I couldn't come up with a better name), "Language" and "Friend blogs". "Geekish" sample: Futurity.org which basically collects fascinating scientific breakthroughs/studies for those who don't think the newspaper covers it enough. "Christianity and life" sample: Pyromaniacs , run mainly by a man named Phil Johnson. Fascinating theological discussions, and Spurgeon readings on top of that! "Language" sample: OK, so I love...

My goodness, last night was sooooo random. Story first, then intro to country music browsing. First of all, my student group studying here in this Central American country decided to cook dinner for the special speakers that came this week for chapel. See, lots of people at this institute were signing up to host them for dinner (i.e. take them out to some random restaurant), but as of Tuesday morning nobody had yet signed up to take care of them Wednesday night, and one of my fellow students suggested we do something for them. Originally the plan was to take them to a local restaurant, but we changed our minds and decided to make something ourselves. (We're college students. This was cheaper and would be just as delicious!) So last night, we convened in the institute's kitchen (which we were allowed to borrow, fortunately!) and made ourselves a large batch of heavenly alfredo, and heated up some rolls as well. So, after chapel last night, we sat down to a delicious dinner of al...

I don't really like CCM. Maybe some songs are fine, and I do like "Blessed Be Your Name" (when I'm playing & singing, anyway...), but I need some better music than the bulk of what I heard on Christian radio. Mostly, I get tired of boring melodies and lack of instrumentation, so I guess my issue is with the musicality, but I would also appreciate good lyrics. I've not heard a single Christian radio station for about two months now, and I don't miss it. However, I would like to find some good Christian (or something other than love-song-themed!) music... so I browsed the recommendations on this other blog post over at Boundless, and what follows is a summary of what I've been thinking. Sufjan Stevens: I searched YouTube for just "Sufjan Stevens" and pulled up a song called "For the Widows in Paradise" which was curious. I liked the ukelele and the different harmony, but still it's a bit monotone. I listened to "Chicago...

1. I'm going to the beach tomorrow, and haven't gone to bed yet! But I'm not tired... and I've actually slept well this week. I think I shall just need some rest on the four-hour bus ride... because I'll be meeting everyone at five in the morning, i.e. in exactly six hours and twenty minutes. 2. I love the movie Fireproof, and I just got to see it in Spanish! 3. Piano is a really fun instrument... I played piano spontaneously for our worship team practice today, because our pianist didn't show. It wasn't really that hard, and it all came together well. I won't be playing for the real thing next week--this was just so we could all practice with getting the instruments together--but for this bit, it was great, and I was really glad to play an instrument.... it's been weeks since I last touched a guitar or a piano. 4. I have officially been here, in my adopted Central American country, for half my semester. I now have as much, if not more, time I've...

Totally on a different note about Facebook. I just went through and deleted all those useless quiz applications on my Facebook account. However, I did keep a few.... Just saying. Apparently, the geeks have the best senses of humor. Also, I myself wrote the "What kind of clock are you" one, with my roommate. My favorite, though, was the math equation one, and then "what are you?" one (very similar to the random object quiz).

I just found a random blog editor that plugs into Firefox. Since I use Firefox, I figured I'd try it... it's called ScribeFire and seems kinda cool. However, I can't seem to figure out how to navigate to the "view source" part (where I can fix miscellaneous HTML mess-ups), and not all my little tags appear... hmm. It's handy when I'm trying to look at another website and type at the same time, though! EDIT: Ick... the formatting is horrid....

So, I just went on a weekend field trip (kinda like this one , only longer than just a full day) to the rain forest, and it was wonderful. However, I was also sick about half the time. Well, I had been sick on Wednesday, just from a reaction to too much sugar... basically, I ate two, largish, peanut-butter-topped, wonderful homemade brownies, and some pop, in the same night. Not a good idea for me. Anyhow. So, I was well again Thursday and Friday. Until, that is, I happened to have a snack that contained chocolate. Apparently I had a delayed reaction of sorts--I was sick from chocolate on Wednesday, so my body didn't like the chocolate on Friday. That turned into slightly sleepless nights and a sometimes-not-so-happy stomach... but, somehow, I still had a blast. I was just well enough to do the hiking and the ziplining Saturday morning (think about it! Ziplining from peak to peak in the rainforest!!) and managed to stay alert enough during the Quaker meeting (more on that later) to...

A lot of my friends watch "The Office." I've seen it, a few times, and it's OK. Not exactly the best show on earth or anything. However, last night and this morning there were a lot of comments on Facebook about the most recent episode--the wedding between two main characters, set in Niagara Falls. (And I thought inter-office relationships were out of bounds in most offices... but this show is all about the hyperbole, and is not meant to be real!) Anyhow. I woke up kinda early this morning (about 6:15) and nobody else here in my host family was up yet, so I just went online and watched the episode. Mostly because I was bored, but also because I was kinda curious what would make a TV wedding so great. Meh. Half the show was vulgar jokes (more than usual), and the only good part was the wedding on the Maid of the Mist. Give me that five-minute part where the gal breaks down in a nervous wreck the morning of the wedding, and the guy takes her out to marry her spontaneous...

So odd. Today, the third person in my group of students today revealed she didn't realize I had siblings. If she had thought about it, she may have realized it, since she had seen her when we met at the airport to leave the States, and I had said she was my sis. Once before, I was hanging out/prepping for a presentation with a couple other students in my group, and for some reason I mentioned my sister (or maybe my brother) and they, too, told me they had thought I was an only child. Now, we've been studying the differences between "warm" and "cold" cultures in one of our classes--one difference being the emphasis on relationships that warm cultures (like here in Central America) have, versus the emphasis on doing things or getting work done that cold cultures (like that of the United States) have. It occurred to me that this sort of thing would never have happened in a cold culture. I couldn't have been in a group of twelve students for six weeks withou...

So yeah... my little hermanita woke up at like five-thirty this morning, no kidding. I woke up then too, as I do almost every day (and then try to fall back asleep). I did manage to fall asleep again, and slept till eight. That was amazing. Anyhow. Here is a random bunch of links I found this week: Interesting Pile. My roommate and I love this kind of thing. Most random link compilations on the Net. You can play piano on Ohio. No joke. Fun Flash game. One of the London newspapers will be distributed free. (That's my obligatory journalism note. :D ) Star Wars is soon to be remade... collaboratively . This "blog" is fantabulously "funny" and "amazing." (Grammar Nazis only!) Sweet photos of Detriot. I just love photography. And a few various related articles that perked my interest: The importance of real-life relationships. On a journalism-related blog. Who'da thunk? What we lose when technology mediates a relationship from a blog about church ...