Surprise!

Today I set up an appointment with one of my classes to review for their exam tomorrow. They are my favorite class - only 11 students and they are all really cool and fun and involved in the things we talk about so each time I am excited to go to that class and smiling all day afterwords - I love them. Well today, I come into class and it's all decorated and there's a cake on the table and they all yell "surprise, happy birthday" with beautiful beaming faces. Now, I've never had a surprise birthday party before, and I was definitely surprised for this one, not least because my birthday is more than 4 months away.
One of my students, Tim, has a very fun sense of humor. We learned in his first speech that he has taken the movie Wedding Crashers as inspiration and has crashed more than 20 weddings, along with other parties. In his 3rd speech we learned that he and some friends made up a fake MySpace girl and got a guy they knew to correspond with her and even arrange a date with her before finally admitting she was fictional. So, today we learned that every semester he gets one of his classes to believe it's the teacher's birthday and arranges a party. It was very sweet. They had an ice cream cake and other snacks and were in the middle of signing a birthday card for me when I came in. I was very surprised and smiled and thanked them and then said, "but it's not my birthday." There was a guy at the back of the room not from our class taking pictures to document the event. My students kind of stared at me and then stared at Tim and then stared back at me while he had a big goofy grin on his face. He had emailed the class earlier saying he had just learned that it was my birthday and wanted to have a party. Some of them said they had wondered if it was serious, but not enough to question him.
So my first surprise party turned out to be a surprise for all but one of the people involved. Well done, Tim!

Another addition (?)

Well, this weekend has been nothing if not interesting. Today, we had another piece to add to the craziness that is our home. Jordan's friend Rosa was coming over to see Jordan when she saw a cute little kitty outside. Rosa recognized the cat from a lost cat paper she had seen and came to get Jordan. Jordan (without informing me first of course) went to get the cat and bring her into our house of two humans a cat and a dog. Well, needless to say, the craziness escalated from there. Kiki went crazy over the cat, jumping up and barking and trying to play, so she got locked in Jordan's room. Sheba was less than thrilled over a new cat and added some more growls and hisses. The new cat (with her front AND back claws out) hissed and spit and generally showed her disfavor with the whole situation. Thankfully in this case we had a phone number and Jordan called to get the cat's owner. The owner was on the other side of town and wasn't going to get back until evening but Jordan and I went to see the students from our school perform The Messiah and so I wasn't about to leave two cats and a dog alone in the apartment. The lady came to get the cat - who calmed down a lot when Kiki was with Jordan, Sheba in my room, and the kitten with me in the living room. The owner came about 5 minutes before we were leaving and, thankfully, identified the cat as hers so we're back to the two animals. I'm not sure how we suddenly became the shelter for lost animals, but I told Jordan two at a time is about all we can handle - more than we can handle actually, so we'll try to settle down over the next week...

An Unexpected Visitor

Well ladies and gentlemen, it has been a very interesting 18 hours. Yesterday after school, Jordan rode her bike to a friend's house to see if she could play. On her way back she encountered a girl with a dog looking to find the dog's owners. The dog is a little cocker spaniel puppy - maybe 9 months old or thereabouts. The weather yesterday was rainy and cold and so the puppy was shivering and drinking out of puddles. The girl had not been able to find anyone, so Jordan quite unselfishly offered to take over the job. So, 15 minutes after Jordan left with her bike she returns with a bike and a puppy. Now this puppy has had some care - a bad haircut on the top of its head the main indicator - so I told Jordan, and Jordan didn't argue, that we had to find the owners. Our first stop was our apartment office to see if they recognized the puppy or could let us know if anyone was looking for one. The office was closed (apparently on Fridays it is open from 10-12 only). Our next stop was the neighborhood surrounding our complex. We asked everyone we encountered - dog owners and kids especially - to see if anyone recognized her, but nobody did. So, our next stop was home where we bathed the poor cold shivering dog and got her some cat food to eat. Jordan then set out to clean her room to eliminate choking hazards and I had a chance to entertain the puppy. She really is quite adorable and snuggly and funny. She found one of our cat's toys - one the cat has no use for - and enjoys playing fetch and pouncing on the toy.
Jordan, of course, is delighted with the dog. She gets more and more sure that the dog will be ours as the day goes by. I remind her constantly that the puppy belongs to someone and our job is to find them, so last night when she said her bedtime prayers, she prayed that we find the owner and that either they take the dog, or tell us we can have her, whatever God thought was best. I thought it quite mature of her, however I'm afraid she'll be a little heartbroken when we have to say goodbye and I admit I'll be a little sad, too. Last night, the dog slept with Jordan. Since Jordan's bed is a little high, we moved the mattress to the trundle and the two of them snuggled together on the bed while Sheba and I slept in my room locked away from the dog.
Sheba is less entranced by the puppy (who we're calling Kiki Darling at this point). Jordan has finally gotten her wish to see a dog chasing a cat and skidding and running into a wall. It's happened several times already. When Molly the dog visited us last week, Molly was pretty uncertain about the cat, and Sheba dominated her. When Luke came for a short visit, he nearly killed her and so we kept them completely apart. Kiki is much more interested in playing, and Sheba resorts to hissing and growling and overall letting everyone know how unhappy she is. This morning, Jordan and Kiki and I were sitting on our Lazyboy all together watching a little White Christmas together when Sheba came into the room. I don't know if she didn't see the puppy, thought she was a blanket, or otherwise mistook the situation, but she walked over to the chair and jumped up on it as if she was going to join us. It took her about .15 seconds to realize her mistake, puff up her tail, arch her back, and start growling as she dashed away. This was one of the points when Kiki chased, skid, and ran into the wall while she chased Sheba.
As I said, it's been an interesting 18 hours - only 6 of which were engaged in sleeping. We're heading to the office again in a little bit and then I'm going to see if the puppy has a identification chip to let us know who she is. We'll see how long she hangs around...

Operation Snow

yesterday morning, Jordan and I woke up and prepared for church as usual (choosing the 2nd service since we both slept in until 8:45!). As we were driving down the road we noticed, to the northeast, a sight I hadn't been sure I would see here in my new home... snow! The previous two days brought LOTS of rain to our area and not the warm sprinkles that we got in August. No, this was cold, wet, shoe/clothes-drenching rain more on the level of PA and MI than OR. So the cold annoying rain we got here brought some lovely white to the peaks of the mountains that surround us. Jordan and I were a little bit excited about the idea of snow. Those of you who recently survived the ice/snow-storms in the east may be groaning or making inappropriate gestures toward the computer screen at this moment, but snow sounded really nice on the 2nd day of December so Jordan and I decided we would spend the afternoon seeking out snow. We stopped first to pick up some Christmas presents and a map of the county so that we would be less likely to get lost and then we headed east.
This is the kind of driving I love to do, just jump into the car with no preparation whatsoever (except the purchase of the map - past lessons learned) and see where we end up. I honestly had little hope of finding snow since it was only on the peaks of the mountains and generally mountain peaks don't have roads leading to them, but we headed off anyway to see what we can find. We headed east until the snowiest parts were immediately to our left and then found a good road (on the handy dandy map) and headed north. The road, unfortunately, was more a northwest than a north road and so began to drift back toward we came from, but as we hit the crest of the foothills and started heading back down into the valley, we passed a bunch of apple farms. I had no idea that apples were grown in this area known for its oranges, but there it was, 45 minutes from home. We stopped in first to a farm that had some animals to pet, some craft shops, and a place to buy caramel apples (for Jordan), caramel burritos (warmed up for me) and fresh, cold apple cider (to share). It was quite delightful. After looking through the shops and bothering the emu and goats, we headed for another little chain of shops. Unfortunately they closed at 5:00 and we were there around 4:45, but we saw more cute little crafts stores, a place with more animals and a "reptile cave" and some little booths with food, train rides, etc. We will have to go back another time when we can look around some more.
All in all, despite the fact that we never found snow (although one of the shops was called "snow line" so maybe later in the season...) we had a great time hanging out together and having an adventure. We'll have to do this again soon!