"Waking a Dream" jamming to poetry

This is a poem my sister's husband wrote, and we made a song out of it. Totally made up (except for the words) so post your comments again!

Another test 1.....

We've been jamming for a while, my sister and I, this is in reminiscence of one of our first jam sessions. Please write your comments! What you like, don't like, etc. on all of these

testing... 2...3...4...

Testing... 1...2...3...

I'm working on it

So I have a job, I went back to the planetarium and Dr. Palen was real excited to put me back on the list. This was three weeks ago. Somehow I'm still not on the system. It's weird. I thought it went straight through, because I went to the info desk for an unrelated matter and my name showed up as "hourly," so supposedly it was all good. Oddly though, I was never able to clock in for the first week, so I gave my hours to the secretary and she was confused why I couldn't clock in so she made some calls and it seemed like it would take about a week more... so I continued. The next week I gave her my hours again because I still hadn't been able to clock in. And then this week my boss and secretary and someone in payroll were madly sending emails because it was the end of the pay period (and they want to pay me). One of them was entitled "pointless paperwork" and I was instructed to go to a certain website and fill out a job application. For the job I'd already been working at for two weeks. Uh-huh. Interesting. It was very strange writing a cover letter saying why I should get the job seeing as I already had it! I was summoned to the payroll office yesterday to fill out more paperwork thanks to the Department of Homeland Security. Then I had to go back today so they could see my passport (don't ask me why I need a passport to work on campus!) and so HOPEFULLY tomorrow I get a paycheck... I'm still working at any rate.

And about the title of this post, I working on getting my mission pictures into some kind of organization... here's a teaser:

2 items

1st item
Yesterday I ate boiled eggs for breakfast, pancit canton for lunch, and lumpia for dinner. How Filipino of me :-)

2nd item
Today I went to the pool. It bit me. Happens every time. Even after a two year break! I think it made up for lost time because the gash in my toe is quite large/deep--took 20 minutes to stop bleeding. But I should be fine :-)

culture shock in forms (or phones)

So my adjustment is going pretty well but yes there has been some weirdness for me. I guess that's what culture shock is. At first is was mostly about food. Why is there never rice? And there's the spoon-and-fork thing. There's stories here: so the FIlipinos eat with a spoon and a fork. When I was new out there I tried to watch my trainer eat and copy her. And it was very hard. After 2 or 3 weeks I noticed something--everyone else ate backwards from her. My trainer was left-handed! Once I switched hands, it was SO much easier! Then I always ate like a Filipino, unless there was a shortage of spoons then I ate with a fork like an American but that didn't happen very much. (If there was a shortage of spoons AND forks, I could also eat like a Filipino--with my hands). Here's the real story: On my last day, we ate in the mission home and at one meal we had salad first. I dished up my salad and was thinking (and I probably said something) about how American it is to have salad first. Then I promptly picked up my spoon and fork, and . . . had no idea what to do. Serious, there was some kind of conflict in my mind, "how am I supposed to get this on my spoon?" and "I know forks and lettuce go together but my fork is in the wrong hand" and such, for a few moments really. Then I realized, yes I need to be American and use a fork, and I did and ate my salad successfully. Since I've been home, there was a day we ate meat and I didn't want a knife I just wanted to use my spoon.
My biggest culture shock that I am still going through is the cell phone. In the Philippines Quezon City mission, since I got there, all the sisters have one cell phone per companionship. The senior companion would hold it. I was a senior for the last 11 months and so got quite used to the Filipino style of cell-phoning. This is going to be hard to explain . . . . Most of the time you don't call anyone, but if you do it's usually not because you want to talk with them. You text people. Texting is more efficient money-wise. There are no phone plans in the Philippines, it's all pre-paid--you load your phone with money and as you use it the amount goes down, and talking to people makes it go down faster than texting people. So, you text people. If you text someone and they don't reply, you may call them, but not to talk to them! It's so their phone will make noise, they will hear it, read your text and reply. They call it "missed call". Then if they still don't reply after you missed call them, it means they have no money left on their phone and so if it's pretty urgent then you really call them, and you get straight to the point or you're going to run out of money too. Really, you just say what you need to say, get an answer, and that's it. Introducing who you are and other unnecessary chit-chat are usually omitted. Earlier when I was impatiently waiting for people to reply, because I know I can't do the "missed call", my Dad said "have you CALLED anyone?" And it was just kind of a weird feeling that "yeah, I guess I could call someone--and talk to them." So I did. And it was rather abrupt. But yup, that's my culture shock. I have unlimited text at this point and it's fine with me! If it's not fine with everyone else, sorry, it's just going to take some time to get used to American-style cell-phoning again.