So there have been some new things in our lives lately…we’d like to introduce you to the a new Little Fine!
Elias is now eight weeks old and we love him more than we imagined possible. He is opening our eyes to a whole new world: a world in which coos and gurgles are conversations, poopy diapers are things to be proud of, and sleep is…wait, what is sleep, again?
We thank God for this precious life!
Lovely Fall
Today is my fifth day of being sick with a sinus infection — my second one of the school year. Ah, school germs. Keane has been a stellar caretaker, especially considering I am a huge baby when it comes to being sick.
The upside to all of this, of course, is that being sick has offered me some time to reflect on the year so far, as well as process the sad things happening in Europe right now. The news coming out of Paris has, of course, impacted everyone here. Some of our students grew up in Paris. Others grew up in countries where this kind of violence is nearly normal, yet to see it happening here, in a place they felt was so safe, is another thing entirely. Our entire junior class was in Paris just six weeks ago. It’s only a five-and-a-half-hour drive from here — shorter than the distance from Chicago to Minneapolis.
In the midst of it all, “normal” life carries on. (Isn’t it strange how that happens? Sometimes I wish all of life would just stop for a while, just to pay a little homage to the things we are going through.) We attended the high school play on Saturday, based on Agatha Christie’s A Murder is Announced. The actors were amazing, the show was a perfect blend of eery and hilarious, and two of my small group girls were the best stage crew members in the world (in my opinion). Christmas Banquet is less than two weeks away, so it’s pretty typical to see guys walking around school with roses, or balloons, or whatever props they need to ask girls to banquet. (I once saw a guy carrying an entire cake. Not even kidding.)
Keane and I have been taking German language classes twice a week this semester. The classes are great in a slightly-humiliating sort of way, but German isn’t really easy for anyone. Our teacher is the most patient person I have ever met. Our German accents are truly abysmal, but she keeps working with us, in spite of the fact that our German must be sandpaper on her ears.
The year has been flying by. After today, we have 20 more school days until Christmas break. Autumn finally seems to be over. The colors were amazing this year, vibrant yellows and rich reds, but now the trees are pretty much bare. The temperatures have been cool enough that our California friends have already said this is the coldest winter they’ve ever experienced.
I am not missing the Chicago winter, but I find that I am missing most other things. One of the things we have shared with people over the course of this semester is that we have committed to being at BFA for a third year. It’s a good decision, the right one. We know we’re supposed to be here. But almost as soon as we made it, deep homesickness set in. I miss friends, mostly. I miss being part of events that have become traditions, like birthday celebrations with my closest friends that always, always involve sushi. I miss hearing significant news firsthand, and watching friends progress through relationships, and drinking coffee with people I love. I miss the ease of talking with people within a greater community — like the cashier at the grocery store, or the bank teller, or the person you run past on the Prairie Path. A few words exchanged, that’s all, but it’s a small piece of belonging to a community. I’m working on that here, but it will never be easy. (I did, however, call and make myself a doctor’s appointment yesterday entirely in German. I’m ignoring how simple the phone call actually was and am celebrating the little things.) I think this kind of homesickness is really normal. We’re out of the honeymoon phase and now we’re living regular life. I’ve talked with others who have felt this way. And also, I don’t think this homesickness is a bad thing. If I’m being honest, my TCK heart never really felt at home back in Chicago. It’s the best kind of surprise to realize that I miss it, that it feels more like home than I ever thought it could.
Can I just say, though, that in the midst of all of this — the good, the bad, and the ugly of living in this place, at this time — I love how we are being changed. I am not a huge fan of change in general, but the change I am talking about here is the kind that Paul talks about when he says we are being changed into the likeness of Christ. We are shaped by the things we are going through, whether happy things like Christmas banquet, or the more devastating things that happen in life. Choosing to be changed toward Christ and into Christ, though…there’s so much joy in that. It is not always easy, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is something I am learning about and pondering these days.
Love you, friends. I think it’s time for me to take another nap.
Love, Sarah
For the past three years, while living in Wheaton, me and a group of friends would celebrate April Adventure League, a month filled with adventures, outings, and general tomfoolery. While the tradition has continued (and grown) back in the States, I thought it would be a good time to bring a little bit of that fun to Germany. So in light of that idea, I created an April Adventure League for my small group of Freshman guys: a month-long treasure hunt filled with clues, riddles, code breaking, and geo-caching. (In full disclosure, this was all heavily inspired by Josh Okerman.)
All of the clues together.
After the students returned from spring break, each of them was greeted with an envelope in their mailbox containing a name tag with gibberish written on it, and a welcome letter written in code. They worked together to discover that each of their name tags contained a piece of the code and, by putting together what they could figure out from their name tag, they were able to decode the entire note.
The first clue: name tag and coded message.
After they decoded the first message they learned that every Tuesday and Thursday a new clue would be released to a certain number of them. All the clues required everyone to work together.
It was fun to see different students get excited about solving the clues they were given. We did get in some trouble when some students working together solved a riddle in the middle of Math class and shouted out the answer.
Some clues were pretty straight forward, but others got increasingly complicated.
These were found hidden around the school, when combined they formed one clue.
As the month came to an end, they had to find the hidden treasure, which contained an immediate reward — and the promise of a future pizza party.
One problem we ran into was the fact that so many of the guys in our small group are constantly in sports. This meant that hunting for the treasure fell heavily onto one dedicated student (pictured here). He loves riddles and puzzles, so he was the perfect point man for this entire April Adventure League. The treasure was found just in time for the pizza party (and also before anyone in Kandern saw it and called the bomb squad because it sure looks like a suspicious package). Congratulations to my guys for completing their first ever April Adventure League!
It just blows my mind away when I think that this school year is nearly over. We have 23 instructional days left (that’s what the seniors tell me…they’re the ones who are counting!), plus a few days of final exams, and then our first year at BFA will draw to a close. The time has flown, not in the normal time-flies-when-you’re-having-fun sort of way, although this year has been fun. No, this year has been a whirl of change and excitement and frustration and enormous amounts of mental energy as we have tried to acclimate to a completely new environment. People throughout the year have asked, “Do you feel settled in yet?” Every time they ask, I answer with, “I think so.” Yet as each person asks, and as I give the same answer, I realize that what felt like being “settled in” two or three months ago really wasn’t. It’s not until you’ve emerged from the haze of culture shock that you can even appreciate what you’ve just gone through.
It finally, finally feels like we have reached a true state of settled in-ness here in Kandern. I can tell that it has because, finally, I feel like normal things are achievable again. I’ve been doing things like exercising and actually planning what we will eat for an entire week and studying German. I know those might sound silly, but honestly, before spring break, I couldn’t even begin to imagine fitting exercise into part of my day. That’s part of the process of experiencing so much change: At first you will feel like you aren’t capable of anything anymore, and that feeling lasts way longer than you think it should. But I promise you, the new normal will arrive. It’s a relief to finally feel this way, although life isn’t suddenly and perfectly put together. Now that the stress has settled into calm, I find that I actually have more mental capacity to think about life. To be honest, the absence of all that culture shock has left a bit of a hole in me, and now that I’m feeling all calm and settled, I’m also feeling…lonely. It’s hit both Keane and I in the last couple of weeks. We’re finally at a place where it would actually be feasible for us to spend time with people and invite friends over and it wouldn’t be completely overwhelming…and here we are, at the end of the year, when people are in all different stages of coming and going and working through their own adjustments. I think this just comes with the territory of being a first-year worker here, but suffice it to say, we are really looking forward to being returning staff next year. 🙂
In spite of some of that loneliness stuff, our time since spring break has actually been really rich, especially when it comes to our kids. Keane created a HUGE scavenger hunt type of game for his small group, which they are about halfway through figuring out right now. I’ve been able to spend some one-on-one time with my small group girls, whom I love so fiercely that it sort of takes me by surprise sometimes. I have the huge privilege of walking them through some heavy topics during the next few weeks of small group. It is so wonderful to be in a place where we can talk about struggles and hurts and injustices, and then point each other to Jesus Christ.
Well, I didn’t actually write about most of the things I wanted to share with you in this blog post, like some fun German vocabulary and our plans for this summer. Oops! Well, I guess that means I will have to write again soon. 🙂 If you’re reading this, know that we love you!
