The Challenge

Recently the frequency of Luke's blogs has started to lag quite a bit between posts. It's quite understandable that the initial excitement of doing something new will create large amounts of fodder for blog posts and that over time that excitement will decrease, bringing about less and less desire to write down what's been going on. The other side of the story, however, is that there are lots of people stateside waiting patiently and checking every day for his next post. To us it's still very exciting to see and hear all these new things. We even check the posts of his fellow English teachers, people who we don't know except for through his and their descriptions, just to get a few little bits that he might have left out. So now we have a situation in which he is writing less and less while his audience keeps hoping for more. This cannot end well. Therefor I have decided to help big brother out because, after all, that is what little brother's are for. The main problem, as I understand it, is a lack of inspiration. Maybe if we're lucky I'll be able to help out with this. It is possible that what is needed is fresh eyes, or a fresh perspective. Grandmother has been telling us a story for many years, as is the case with a great many of her stories, that I think might apply well to this situation. The story goes like this. One day she was in class teaching (which she did for 44 years) and asked her fifth graders to tell her something that they had seen on the way to school that day. As you might expect of fifth graders they apparently they all told her they had seen nothing on the way to school. This seems suprising as you would expect them to have seen, at the very least, the inside of a car or possibly the ground as they stared at their feet while walking. She went on to tell them something along these lines and the she had seen, on her way to work, some skunks or racoons or something like that digging through one of her neighbors' trash cans. It may not be a very exciting story but the point is that even when you're doing the same old thing day after day there's always something new and interesting going on even if you don't see it. The idea is to make the effort to see it. Or maybe just to remember it. So the way I see it is that if I can write a blog about day to day life in my hometown then Luke ought to be able to write one about the foreign country that he's teaching in. So I'll start this challenge to Luke with a story of my own. The whole time that I've been writing this blog (at a coffeehouse in Lubbock, TX) there's been an older fellow who is a reguler here talking to me pretty much constantly about lots of different things and the following has pretty much been the progression. First he told me that he was doing nothing today. Then he told me he watched the movie 8 Below. I think that's the one with Cuba Gooding or his little brother or something. Then he asked me if I knew if there were Aurora in Antartica. I didn't know. Then he told me about a mumified seal in the middle of nowhere in Antartica. Not sure how he knows about that one. The he told me about how the diesel is thick like molasses in Antartica. Apparently they have to heat it before they put it into their trucks. I don't know who "they" are but i feel sorry for them. Then he told me about all the places he had fished on the Snake River up in Wyoming/Idaho. There were lots and lots of them. Just in case you were wondering it was a year or so after the big fire in Yellowstone. He also told me that Yellowstone is about to have to move some of their wolves. They apparently have too many. He also told me that it was the Pinon Pine that needs forest fires for the seeds to sprout. I think he's right about that one. Then he told me that he was never again going to lay tile. I agreed with him that the act of laying tile is not much fun. At that point he was finished with his coffee and so he left. This was the second time I saw him here today and I would bet money that he will be back in the next two or three hours. He does this all day. So that's my story. More to come later. Your turn big brother.