Happy Things

• A new niece!!! Top of the list. Hands down. Born September 19. Gwyneth Jewell S. The Arabic spelling of the name is still evolving.
• An amazing care package from friends at home
• Diligent students
• Student arguments in class over their own version of "Shark Tank"
• Getting to love on friends who have lost loved ones
• My friend's mother telling her to tell me when her grandma died, because the mom remembered that I had asked if I could visit the grandma in the hospital when she was sick
• My friend liking the nesheeds I played for her when we drove a town over for her cousin's aza'a (mourning--like a funeral)
• The whole aza'a tradition (see a previous post that I'm too lazy to link tonight)
• Looking forward to a friend having her first baby. I was there for her engagement, her wedding, and I'm still around for this!
• Fall foods with Andrea!
• Better-trained language helpers ... and that my language helpers really are great friends
• Hearing my name hollered by students when I visit their company
• The way my local friends roll the r in my first name
• Telling Lydia "I love teaching" nearly every day and convincing her that I truly do
• Board magnets
• Board messages from Lydia
• Spying on Lydia's English class and noting that one student in particular was paying very close attention. Turns out that he's the one single student who also winks at her through class. Hmmm.
• Having a friend who is a tailor and can fix my clothing woes
• Having friends over to our apartment
• Doing dishes and listening to my Arabic recordings
• Feeling a touch of cool at night now
• Starbucks white mocha frappes, which complement
• Drives to and from the capital. It's a gorgeous drive every time I do it during the day.
• Another company shirt from my students. Which is actually embarrassing for me, because when I told them that I had a shirt like their work shirts, they understood me to say that I wanted one. What a miserable teacher I am.
• Ashraf, our school's assistant and a great friend
• Long conversations with local girlfriends about marriage, and being able to understand the uncertainty of being single
• Feeling like a kid in a candy shop because so many of my current students are single, and I want them to marry my friends here. (I'm not eyeing them for me!) I know that I shouldn't matchmake, but it's so tempting!
• Having friends who share my wicked sense of humor. I met one of my friends' brothers yesterday at her aunt's house. I messaged her and told her, so she asked, "Where did you meet him?" I answered, "In a hotel, at the bar." Which, fortunately, she thought was as hilarious as I did, because neither he nor I would be frequenting bars. Of course, when one of her cousins found out, he wanted to know which hotel and which bar and what I was doing there! What goes around comes around.
• My fabulous book of proverbs from this region. Dee-light-ful.
• Eating with my hand. I still make a mess.
• That I can now pay my language institute through PayPal. It's a good thing that I've already had my little chats with my home gov't, because I'm sure it could interest them to see payments going from my account to--ahem--where my language institute is located.
• The Iranian guy I have not yet met who knows who I am and is dying to meet me ... because he works in the same gift market as one of my friends. He loves America and told my friend that "Iran and America are together now" before I had even caught up on my news to know why. Well, lucky for him, I love Iran, too.
• Friends who have visa emergencies that require them to visit me from another country
• Catching up with other friends who are passing through
• Starbucks mugs, because they are big and remind me of places I have travelled and like to pray for
• Pictures of baby Junie W. on Facebook. I feel like she partly belongs to me because I lived through Hannah's worst morning sickness. (Ha ha. Like I suffered at all.)
• The two people who still read my blog
• A bed that's calling my name