Upswing

I am writing this from the "Faros Holiday Village," located in Cyprus. It's a fairly nice place, along the ocean beach, with a pool and a dedicated staff, who are the kind of friendly that after one day has you wanting to hug them, and after three or four has you wanting to punch them in the kidneys. I'm sure you konw the type. Fortunately, I've only been here one day, and have managed to restrain my hugging impulses.

To continue the story from my last post, the last few days of yearbooking were as much of a debacle as the rest of it. I ended up pulling a near-all-nighter (I slept about 2-3 hours) on Thursday, going to school, and barely finishing the yearbook for the deadline. The school's business manager, Nasree, and I went to the print shop to give them the file.

Let me back up. Last year's yearbook suffered from serious printing problems. The size of the file created by the yearbook team didn't match the size of the page the printer's software wanted to create, and so various things were cut out of the yearbook, etc. To avoid this problem this year, we invited the printer to the school and asked him which files he wanted, in what format, what size, etc. I have spent the intervening months working on the basis of this information. When we arrived at the place, promptly at noon, we found that the person to whom we spoke at that time had since been fired, and that the new computer guru wanted an entirely different file format.

The next 8 hours were me reformatting existing files to fit in with those particular plans. The interruption was an interview with Bruce Cannon, the school's departing principal, who is moving back to Montana to be with his family. He will be sorely missed. Aside from that pleasant interlude, it was an incredibly frustrating time. I had psychologically and emotionally been DONE, and to have to spend extra time on the thing was tough. I finished it, however, and delivered it to Nasree, who kindly stopped by the school (where I was working due to my computer not having the new necessary software) to pick it up.

It was incredibly draining. I ran around all over town picking up this file and that file from various students, and frequently slept about 4 hours a night. I didn't really eat right, or enough, or often enough. Then, too, I was tormented by the spectre of failure, the thoght that

Throughout this whole process, God has been there for me, and I'm very grateful to him for many things he did. In the first place, my staff has been uniformly amazing (well, there were one or two exceptions, but no more), cheerfully accepting a lot more responsibility than I would have been comfortable putting on them, had there been any possible alternative. A girl named Miki, one of my English students and a 9th grader, has been the most indispensable member of the team, not excepting me, and as far as I'm concerned is completely ready to enter the professional world due to her organization, intelligence, and dedication. Others did equally well.

On one occasion during one of my late-night duels to the death with a bunch of pictures, my trusty laptop cord finally stopped working. I was talking to a student at the time, and told him that I had to go out and buy a new one. His reaction was "at this time of night?" It was about 10:30.

I went to Garden Street, where there are lots of computer stores, and returned to a store where I had previously spotted a cord for JD55 (US$80). This was more than I wanted to pay, but I was out of options. I was thrilled to see that it was still open, and dashed inside to buy the thing and get back to work. A bored-looking clerk informed me, however, that the maintenance department was closed, and that was where all the used parts were kept. Despite all my entreaties, he couldn't open that part of the building, nor sell me the part.

I walked back along a bustling Garden Street in something very like despair, simultaneously praying hard and formulating what I was going to tell my boss/the kids/their parents when we missed the printer's deadline. When I had nearly reached the place where I was planning to get a cab and go home, I noticed an open computer store surrounded by three other closed ones (I had previously passed no fewer than 11 closed computer stores). In this store, I found three shabaab (young men) smoking a hookah, who clearly saw no reason to close the store as long as it was providing them with comfortable office chairs in which to sit. It was a filthy little rat hole of a place, and I somewhat hopelessly pulled out my trusty laptop and asked the guy if he had a cord for it. While he glared at me resentfully for interrupting his argila sunset, he did bestir himself and find me one. The price: JD22. 60% less. And that was the only open store. Coincidence?

I arrived home that night, and chatted with Melissa Villanueva. Melissa's in town for a semester abroad at a local seminary (she goes to Moody normally). I was very bitter at the time, because while Bruce had suggested that I take a day off to work on yearbook, I had been unable to find a substitute for as much as a single hour (of 5), even among those teachers for whom I have covered time and time again. I hadn't asked Melissa to sub, because I didn't expect her back from a backpacking trip in a small country west of Jordan until it was too late to matter. But she came back, and eagerly agreed to substitute for me, so I had the whole day to work on yearbook. This was crucial to me making the deadline.

If you're keeping track, I'd call that three minor miracles in the span of an hour. That's what it's been like, with God's incredible faithfulness even in mundane things sustaining me through one of the most stressful times I've ever experienced.

So now, here I am in Cyprus, eating pork (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), swimming (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!), attending some workshops and playing volleyball and basically loafing. I'm going to try to buy a frizbee while I'm here so I can scratch that particular itch (I can't find one in Jordan). I'll be here 'til wednesday, after which there will be 3 more weeks of school. I anticipate arriving in Minneapolis in early June, which should be in time for everybody's wedding if you're worried.