A Productive Day

My definition of a productive day is when I write a long to-do list the night before, and then take great pleasure the next day in marking each item off the list one by one until they are all completed... before I go to bed that night. To-do list in hand, I had good intentions this morning. And then...

I had breakfast. With Jo-Lien. My breakfast was a healthy bowl of Special K, with berries and yogurt. Mmmm... and it makes the milk turn pink in the end. Which Jo-Lien was fascinated by. So I spooned up a little milk and held it out for him to try. He loved it so much that he lapped up every last drop of it! Then he smelled my Pumpkin Spice Chai tea, which naturally smells marvelous. So I spooned up a little tea and held it out for him to try. He made a terrific face - very much like my own face when I tasted tamarin leaf tea. Yuck! I laughed and shook my head, note to self - no chai for the kids. But then Jo-Lien took my spoon, dunked it in my cup and very carefully held up a spoonful of tea for me to drink. I let him feed me just as I fed him, and we got through about half the cup that way, both giggling and spilling tea all over. So breakfast took about an hour longer than planned...

Then Pastor Meng Pu came over for ESL class. I had planned to move forward in great progressive steps toward a greater understanding of (ironically enough) time, but the poor man was stuck on properly pronouncing the English  "Th" sound... didn't really help that one days of our week have that sound in them and that in ordinal numbers, most dates end with it... just picture a twenty-minute lesson on sticking your tongue out! Pretend you have sweater fuzz on your tongue, I tried to communicate... oh, the spraying that occurred in the process! Once he got it, after laughing until we were crying, he said, "Oh tank you teacher Connie! Hallelujah! Amen! Tank you!" More laughter as I corrected him - "Thhhhhhhhhhhank you!" So much for a greater understanding of time...

Then the boys took a nap, so Lian wanted some girl time, so she made coffee and we sat and talked for about two hours... about middle names. She is so frustrated, for Burmese names are not like American names, and Americans don't seem to understand that. She has three names: Dim Ngaih Lian. But all three names are important. They aren't like first, middle, and last names for us. So shortening it to Dim Lian is not really ok. It would be like making my name Con Ler. This presents problems at important places such as banks. So I listened and nodded and sympathized and drank my coffee for two hours as she vented in broken English about her middle name, or lack of...

Now it is time to have some soup and go to youth night! Where did my day go?? I spent most of it at the dining room table, talking like Daffy Duck ("thhhhufferin' thhhhhhhuckatash!"), making a mess with a two year old, and learning to be sensitive to the value of names in other cultures. I love days like this. I love that even though only a couple things were marked off my to-do list, it was still a full, productive day. I love living life in Little Burma.