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Showing posts with label Baha'i. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baha'i. Show all posts

nediuhbub

I promised to tell you all about Camp. 

...Sorry, I lied. 

But mainly only because Camp is one of those indescribable things. 

The other reason I won't be telling you about it (at least not immediately) is because I'm operating on three hours of sleep last night and no food all day. Were I to attempt to say anything more I'm sure it would be incoherent. 

Therefore I leave you for now to go eat, sleep and be merry. 

Camp

We're leaving for Camp (with a capital C) this morning. I will not return until July 3rd. 

I promise to tell you all about it when I get back. 

Ciao. 

Windstock '09


Windstock was awesome. If you want photos, you should look HERE. The above photo was stolen from there. It belongs to the venerable Chad Booker, not to me, as do all the photos there. Got that? 

I managed to avoid the camera really well, so there are only a few pictures of me in there. I'm going to post those here, since this whole blog thing is really only to feed my (already huge) ego. 

Without further ado...

Me, looking tired and trying to concentrate. 



Me, with Alonso, Brynne and Carew sitting on the bench under the window on the left. 


From front to back in the first row, Carew, me and Brynne. This was right before the talent show. 


I'm at the far right, sitting on the floor. Brynne is sitting behind me on a bale of hay, and Carew is next to her, half cut out of the picture. (That must hurt!) 


The obligatory group photo (or two). Hint: I'm wearing the same hat as I was in the last two photos. 


dpbtiubx

This afternoon, Brynne, Carew and I are going to a Baha'i youth retreat called Windstock. I'm excited, but also worried because I won't be able to shower for four days. Eeeeep. I don't think that I've gone for longer than three days without a shower in the past five years. 

Hopefully the dirt won't kill me. 

in which I'm still slightly insane

Hey, what think you of the new layout? I think I like it. It's quite a change, though. 

I know that I probably lost most of my readers due to my last bought of craziness. I hope I at least have a few valiant souls left. In my defense, I was operating on about three hours of sleep. I can't defend Brynne though. Her behavior was inexcusable. (Just kidding!)Anyhow, now that I've had a good night's sleep, I'm slightly more sane. 

I apologize in advance if I don't get to blog regularly as I usually do while I'm here, because my schedule is a bit crazy (note: three hours of sleep is definitely crazy). Plus, there's really just not that much to say about what I'm doing here. I'm studying, I'm taking care of the most adorable little baby, and I'm eating a bunch of really good food. 

food is lovely

A bunch of people are going to Ann's house for pie. Rational pie! Yummy! And there's a potluck Christmasy kind of dinner on Saturday, because we managed to get hold of a turkey. Mom and I are taking five-cup salad, which is our traditional family Christmas and Thanksgiving dish, because even though we don't really celebrate either of those holidays, we used to spend them with family when se lived in the States. 

Anyhow, the salad has one part canned pineapple, one part canned tangerine segments, one part coconut flakes, one part mini marshmallows, and one part sour cream. Anyhow, you mix all the stuff together in a big bowl and put it in the fridge overnight. Mmmm.... 

ME!

Look what I found! Photos! Mainly of me. A whole stack, that somehow didn't get shipped back to the States. And since we don't have a scanner (or a printer, for that matter), I had to photograph the photos, which means the quality is really, really bad, but...


Okay, so this one isn't of me, exactly. It's of the clinic in which I was born. I took this picture on my fifth birthday, when for a birthday treat I wanted to see the place where I was born. So. Clinica Santa Catalina, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Las Islas Canarias, Espana. And sorry, you don't get accent marks or tildes. I'm lazy.


We somehow skip the first few years of my existence. Here's me at age four. I think this was my second passport picture. My first one was the first picture ever taken of me, and I was a week old.


Me on my fifth birthday, in the Canary Islands, with Yasmin, the daughter of my parents' friends.


Me in the middle, at almost-six. The picture was taken at our going-to-China party. The girl on the left is Raina, whom I last saw when I was almost thirteen, and Andrea on the right, whom I last saw when I was eleven.



Me, at age seven. This picture was taken at a Baha'i conference in Hong Kong.


Me at eight, and already a tree-hugger. In my defense, trees are nice. And I think this was also in the middle of my tomboy stage, during which I climbed and fell out of trees regularly.


Me at nine, reading a book of poetry. I think this picture pretty much epitomizes my early years.


Me at almost-eleven, at the beginning of my girly phase. Eeek.


Almost twelve, the beginning of my awkward, dorky phase. Also the beginning of my love for rats, a love which remains to this day.



Almost thirteen, with two (more) of my childhood friends, Layli on the left and Jasmine on the right. This is why I spent most of my childhood being called 'Layli Rose'. The other Layli was 'Layli' first.

a lament about my lack of shelves

As I've been putting books on my shelves, I've noticed that I have er... interesting taste in books. And is it weird that I have eighteen books by Isaac Asimov? And I have Iranian poet Rumi sandwiched between J. K. Rowling and E. Rose Sabin. 

Here's a brief overview of the books on my shelf so far (I'm begging for more shelves, we'll see if I get them or not. ): 

  • science fiction, 29 titles
  • fantasy, 26 titles
  • classics, 20 titles
  • historical fiction, 9 titles
  • young adult fiction, 7 titles
  • Baha'i fiction, 3 titles
  • children's fiction, 1 title
And that's all that fits on my pathetic shelves. :(

...even more airport

Just a quick update before I get on the plane (again). I'll blog about serious stuff like anthropological psychology later, after I've had some time to think, and some sleep. I get something like five hours last night. I don't trust alarm clocks, and I was absolutely TERRIFIED of missing my flight. 

Anyhow, I'm wearing a marvelous Nerdfighter T-shirt that Brynne made me after I saw the shirts she made, and when I went through security here in Vancouver, one guy looked at my shirt, laughed and told me that an awesome person deserves an awesome day, and that he hoped I would have one. It definitely made my day, which, If I'm not mistaken will be all of 15 hours long. Or something like that. 

And, disappointingly enough, nothing has happened in my fourteen hours stuck in the Vancouver airport. Not one hint of excitement. I did, however, have a dream that I saw John Green in the Seattle airport. That would have been exciting, but... 

And I've decided that I'm actually going to try to have as many posts per month as there are days. Because hey, I enjoy blogging way more than I thought I would, and there's no reason not to. Plus, writing things down helps me sort out my thoughts and gives me a chance to write about stuff I wouldn't usually even think about. 

Also, I'll be going to a youth retreat from the first to the third of October. Yeah. Two days after I get home, I'll be leaving for Shanghai. I'm hoping that it will help me get settled in China, take my mind off my woes, and give my mother no reason to complain that I stay cooped up in the house way too much. Hopefully I can get over jet-lag enough to enjoy myself. 

And I just looked at my blog, and realized that I'm going to have to do something to attempt to organize all the links I have on the left. Meh. Will deal with that later. Procrastination is just another word for prioritizing, isn't it? And right now I should be focused on making sure I get on the right plane. It would be just like me to end up in Liechtenstein. 

on whatever popped into my head

The retreat was awesome! But I really don't have the energy to blog about it right now. We got home Sunday evening, and I was thoroughly exhausted. Yesterday, I was sick, and today I have no brain. Seriously. This morning, Gareth asked me what eighty-eight divided by five was, and I told him it was fifteen point six, when I knew it was SEVENTEEN point six. For some reason, my brain shut off just as I started talking, and everything I said came out all jumbled and wrong. I guess it's just one of those days. 

I finished 'Speaker of the Dead' by Orson Scott Card last night, and I thought it was amazing. In fact, I have to admit that I like it slightly better than both 'Ender's Game' and 'Ender's Shadow', even though I really don't know why. Maybe part of it is the fact that there's always been something about books that question whether or not all truths should be told or not that fascinates me. 

One of my random lists is about to make an appearance. Yup, here it is. 

Things that fascinate Layli: 
  1. truth
  2. good and evil
  3. possibilities
  4. paradoxes
  5. reality
  6. thought patterns
  7. brainwashing/manipulation techniques
  8. psycholinguistics
  9. artificial intelligence
  10. humour in different cultures
I guess I am plagued by the typical INFP fascination with good and evil. THIS is an interesting article, written by an INFP about our 'thing' for good vs. evil. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, go down to the 'Links' section and read 'About the Myers-Brigg Type Indicator'. 

Have a nice day! 

on friends, blogs, books, Baha'i retreats, pseudonyms, saints and (not) writing

As you certainly have noticed, there have been major changes made to my blog. It's really all Brynne's fault. She made me the banner. If you don't like the new template as well as the old, blame it on her. Or, better, go check out her blog. It's awesome, and you'll get a different view on what we're doing. Plus, she's doing a better job of posting all of our exciting doings around here. 

Anyhow, I've finished 'Sorcery and Cecelia' and 'The Grand Tour', both by Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer, and am now 128 pages into 'The Mislaid Magician'. After I finish that, I'm going to read 'Speaker for the Dead' by Orson Scott Card, and then the advance reader copy of 'Twilight of Avalon' by Anna Elliott, since Brynne and her mom both say it's very good. 

On to other things. Brynne, Carew, Gareth and I are leaving this afternoon to go to a Baha'i retreat. We'll get back on Sunday, and I'll be sure to write all about it sometime soon after. 

And finally, since Brynne Annaë made me drool, and since I thought of a wonderful plot twist for my WIP (of which I recently deleted about 20,000 words) which involves me having a pseudonym, Brynne and I used that as an excuse to look at names instead of write. Now I have two that I can't choose between, Zuleia Meital and Zenaida Meital. Right now, I'm leaning toward Zenaida, just because of this, but... I like the name Zuleia slightly better. And I do realise that they're both utterly unpronounceable. 

prolix (go look it up!)

Well. It's been quite a while since I last was on blogger. A lot has happened in that time.
  1. I'd been having headaches, and found that my eyesight has actually gotten BETTER and needed to get new glasses, or lenses at least. Since, at long last, my frames were a wee bit narrow for my face (I've had the same frames since I was nine), I also now have new frames. Half-frames, actually. They're a nice, metallic blue, not light blue but not navy either. They match my eyes perfectly and "show off my oddly black eyebrows and lashes which do not match my hair at all", as Mom put it.
  2. A last minute trip to Suzhou, the end of the silk road, was made this past weekend, to look at Xi'an Jiaotong Liverpool University. Mom has a job offer there. It's a college campus (new and, while not unbearably ugly and institutional, still not pleasing to the eye or an architectural joy) plunked into a field. I hope the cows have been evicted, but I can't say for sure. Now there's a bunch of construction going on around it, so the effect is somewhat less than satisfactory. The school itself is okay. We still don't know which of the two offers to take.
  3. I've been reading Dick Francis. Again. In chronological order. All his heroes are very similar-- analytical, penetrating, ruthless, and an interesting combination of optimistic and realistic. The heroes also have a habit of taking the law into their own hands and being too proud to let people get away with harming them.
  4. I've been looking at online high schools which offer AP/college courses and are affordable. So far, the one that Mom and I like the best is Brigham Young University's online high school. I'm happy because it offers psychology, AP psychology, sociology, astronomy, creative writing, journalism, poetry, philosophy, Latin, Spanish, French, AP biology, human anatomy, integrated physics and chemistry along with bunches of other courses I'd like to take. Hopefully that'll keep me busy next year.
  5. I took half of my English final on Friday and missed an A+ by half a mark and a stupid mistake.
  6. Met the Suzhou Baha'is, who were charming and Persian as all get out. The food was wonderful.
  7. Found a copy of "The Essential Rumi". I plan to read it sometime...

packing up

Now all of our books and boardgames are packed. I have no idea why we've started so late this time (we've moved nine times in the past fourteen years). Surely you can pack without knowing where you're moving to? We still don't have full information on either of the jobs, so Mom is very hesitant about making a decision.

Uh-oh. I just realized that I haven't packed any of the reference books or Baha'i books yet. Dangit, I thought the job was done!

Anyhow. It was ninety degrees Fahrenheit yesterday, with ninety percent humidity. It wasn't that hot, but it sure felt like it was. I'm looking forward to not being in Ningbo for most of the summer. Boiling to death in my own sweat isn't the most pleasant way that I can think of to die.

news...almost

Layli is procrastinating. Layli has a history assignment due in 5 days and Layli hasn't started even looking at it. Layli believes that referring to herself in the third person is very fun, even though it probably annoys other people...

I'm listening to Wonderwall right now, and thinking about the junior youth (and youth-- you guys are awesome too)... Mom got two job offers, one here in Ningbo and one in Suzhou. We need to make a decision soon. I'll know what's going on probably by next week. It's nice to know at least which continent we're going to end up in. I had nightmares about moving to the Netherlands (Mom applied for two jobs there). I don't have anything against the Netherlands, I just don't personally want to live there.

So that's the news. Or the promise of news soon. Thank goodness.

yet another Saturday night...and I didn't even get to sleep late!

Today was, once again, a very busy Saturday. I woke up at six and couldn't go back to sleep (poor me). Then I went to a friends house and listened to a tape Amatu'l-Bahá Rúhíyyih Khanum gave on "The Dawn Breakers" in Haifa. Her voice and mannerism remind me of my grandma, Na...

Then Mom and I went to the dental clinic, and I sat there for about 2 hours finshing The Belgariad. It was good. I thought the ending would be super predictable, but it wasn't at all, so that was a pleasent surprise. However, the cushions in their waiting room are somewhat less than comfortable. I don't think they were meant to be sat on for a very long time.

When I got home I curled up and watched four episodes of The West Wing straight. I was going to watch two, but they left me hanging at the end of the second one I watched, so I decided to go on. That's the only TV show I find even mildly addictive. I wonder why...