I should have known, when I looked up at the sky on the afternoon of my small group’s long-planned final picnic, that things weren’t going in my favor. Okay, so maybe the funnel cloud is a slight exaggeration…  But it was cold–bitter cold–and after four straight weeks of nothing but heat and sunshine, it sure […]

…or maybe it’s the other way around. These have been exciting days.  Days of soccer fan’ing… …of fan-photographer’ing (isn’t she beautiful??)… …of concession stand’ing… …and general issue-having (note t-shirt)… But before soccer became the piece-de-resistance in BFA’s spring banquet, the entire student body was driven to Basel by a Friday night activity, where the students […]

I like them… …a lot. And yes, they do drive me nuts (nutser, to be precise).And no, I wouldn’t want it any other way. And you know what?  They’re brilliant.

And not a moment too soon… It was my pleasure, on the girls’ first evening back, to take them into town for kebabs and ice-cream.  I’d like to say I was motivated solely by a missionary’s zeal to minister to her students, but the fact is–I kinda like junk food too!  And it’s always convenient […]

[Note:  see the section after the pictures of Cinque Terre for an update on the search for my Italian Stallion…) Well, boys and girls, I went, I saw, I took pictures.  And it was worth every penny and every hour of insane Italian driving!  Cinque Terre is….it’s stunning, that’s what.  And though my legs and […]

I’m off to Italy in the morning!  I’m being foolhardy and actually driving my car there, which means it may very well come back lacking some paint and a tire or two, but who am I to distrust my Italian neighbors?  I’m heading out with my favorite traveling companion, Mari Ellen, to see this: Cinque […]

I’m feeling–how shall I put it?–feeling tired.  Or as the southern might better say, “Tahred.”  Pretty much as wrung out as my buddy Spud, pictured here: The ICEC conference is finally over, but it was so much more than I expected it to be.  It pushed me into some decidedly unfamiliar or uncomfortable (as in: […]

It all began quite innocuously.  We were celebrating the last poetry class before Spring Break with the traditional Kickaboo-Joy-Juice-brownies and silly games about rhyme and meter, when I made a potentially lethal suggestion.  “Let’s go take some pictures outside,” I said, looking out the window at the sun we hadn’t seen in so long.  Had […]

It’s on days like today, after a week of irritatingly foul weather (pardon the previous snow rant!), that I come to profound realizations that go something like this:  “Huh?”  As in, “What have I ever done to deserve this?”  I was out on a walk this afternoon in the hills above Riedlingen, looking across the […]

There is something about snow that shoves me precariously close to the edge of sanity—that drop-off where relatively lucid and balanced missionaries turn into raving lunatics whose vocabulary and general countenance are anything but honorable.  I’m not sure where the pathological aversion comes from.  It’s not like I was once stranded in a blizzard in […]