SOOC Monday: Because Time Is Relative

Time is relative. Sometimes it's even illusory. So even though Melody hosts Straight Out Of Camera Saturday on a Saturday, I'm joining in today. Heck, I only managed Team Up Thursday on Saturday.

I'm coming to you from the bottom of a black hole today. Don't ask me why. If I had any hormones left I'd say it was hormonal but maybe I'm just caught in the seasonal slump that seems to be affecting so many of my blogmates nowadays. The temperature is dropping, we're sourcing firewood, it's freezing cold in the mornings as we get up and, unlike you northern hemisphere types, South Australians do not generally have central heating. I have a tickly cough, sore ears and a sour outlook on life.

But look, there is my baby up there. Last weekend we attended a fundraiser for Ugandan orphans, organised by a girl at our church for her personal school project. I had offered to face paint (after a long absence) and the Baby Angel had a little stall selling off some of her stuffed toys and other extraneous items. My face paints kind of got taken over by teenagers but that's ok; and these are the only two butterflies I managed. The BA chose to wear hers into her netball match later that afternoon. It was a bit like a Maori tattoo. Intimidating. Well, it must have been, cause they won :-)

I really enjoyed the face painting. I'd like to have more opportunities to practice. It's so different to what I do everyday. So relaxing and rewarding.

But I digress. My black hole. Same old same old. I'm so sick of teaching kids who don't want to learn. They almost feel as if they come in determined NOT to learn. It is pretty soul destroying and I wonder why I turned down that full time job in primary that was offered to me at the end of last year.

On top of that, we had been getting very excited about the possibility of a French exchange student. For reasons I can't fathom, the BA loves learning French. She had two years of appalling French instruction at her last school, I knew something was amiss when she counted for me
'un, dux, troys....' Unfortunately there were insufficient students interested in the language in her class and, I suspect, her poor teacher was feeling rather like me and clawing her way through each teaching day. Nevertheless, the BA maintained her desire to learn the language and has entered into it with gusto in her new school. I am filled with admiration for her attempts because she is miles behind her cohort but she gets onto Babelfish and talks to Grandad (a fluent French speaker) on the phone and generally wants to learn.

One of things she had her heart set upon was the French exchange. When we heard the cost at the outset, we knew it was a long bow; but we thought that with support from various family members, maybe she could do it. Well as life sometimes plays out, the $5500 trip to France was out of the question and so the BA's lessons in life's disappointments began. To her credit, after her initial devastation, she rallied and said she would still like to host a student here. Given the weird nature of our adopted family, I was somewhat taken aback; but after some thought we decided it was possible and we sent our forms in.

We had all been getting quite excited about the prospect of a foreign student and were only minorly shaken by a suggestion yesterday morning by email, that the student might not be a girl but a boy!! Apparently they had more girls than boys offer to host students and they were looking for a suitable family (with boys) that might be able to cope with a male student. The BA was game (disconcerting perhaps?) and we replied immediately in the affirmative.

Himself and I discussed the issues of hosting a male student and even came up with some activities we could undertake with him to introduce him to Australian life and culture (hem hem). Everyone was quite excited.

So imagine the crush as we read the email this afternoon, explaining that it would probably be unwise for us to have the male student as he wouldn't spend much time with us since he'd be at another school and thank you for your interest etc etc etc........

Rats.

I'm not sure who was more disappointed, the BA or I.

It's my 'black hole' I know but I feel like we have been rejected and I feel bitterly disappointed for the BA. Priority was given to girls who were able to make the exchange trip to France and so we were way down the list. It's even more irritating when I know there were other girls who could afford the trip but who 'chickened out'.

At the end of the day I've got to admire the BA's response. "God really didn't want me to get involved in this exchange, did He?" she said tonight.

She made me think. Maybe we would have been the wrong family. After all, the Lord is looking after those exchange students as well as us. Maybe we're the family in reserve? Sometimes families don't get on with students and a change is called for. Maybe we're the back up plan? The one thing I know is, it's ok. Its all playing out exactly the way it should.

The BA and I salved our disappointment by practising flicking teatowels at each other's legs in the kitchen tonight. The BA mastered her first ever whip like crack. Wooooow it stung!

May we all count our blessings and trust that the universe is unfolding...as it should.

For those of you who have not had the pleasure, click over to Slurping Life and see the magnificent Wil as he prepares for his swim in the Special Olympics Summer Games. From there you can check out many other quality blogs on Straight Out Of Camera Saturday.

Image credit tattoo

Image credit Joan