Baby Birds and Baby Brothers

Every spring, there is a robin's nest built on the dividing wall between the back porches on our duplex. We can see it from the kitchen sink, and it's been so much fun to watch the mother sit on the eggs and then bringing worms back for enormous hungry mouths. This morning I had the blessing of an early morning bike ride and got to see them peeping from their nest. By mid-afternoon, I returned to see a familiar little bird sitting on the power line. The last one looked at me, gave a mighty tweet, and flew away as I locked up my bike. They're not in their nest tonight.

I'd hoped to get a better picture, but this will have to do. Nature up close is so incredible every time.



Daniel's solo with New World was quite spectacular. It's riveting to watch the intricacies of the runs while feeling the very clear rhythm, very artfully and skillfully put together. All of this in a well held stage presence. I won't gush too much or it'll go to his head. While one of the other mothers was congratulating Mamma on his stellar performance, she looked at me, "are you the girlfriend?" I think if I wasn't related to him, at least 4 years younger, and hmmm.... no. He'd drive me crazy. So glad he's my brother.

"Congratulations! How does it feel....?"

One week has passed since I officially graduated, and the one thing I hear the most is "Congratulations!" Sometimes they refer to the graduation, sometimes I think people expect me to realize what they're talking about. I love the affirmation, I really do... but I've spent a large portion of this week rather non-coherent. First, from lack of sleep and figuring out what to do, and then from a rather nasty cold-type ickiness my classmates so graciously shared.

Thus comes the next part of the question - following the congratulations, the question often follows, "it must feel great to have graduated?" or something along those lines. And yes, it does! But I guess I always assumed I'd graduate, and I haven't had much time to think about it. Even now, my head is in a sinus-pressure cloud, so I'm sure it feels great somewhere outside that cloud, but right now, I'd much rather sleep and get to point where singing at church doesn't knock the wind out of me.


Perhaps this is a little puddleglum-ish (that's for Narnia fans and Mamma), so I'd like to point out that this has been a rather wonderfully busy week too.

1) My dad is officially my hero for making sure that I have health insurance. Apparently most men don't take care of insurance for themselves... Go daddy.

2) I had the great chance to go on a downtown scavenger hunt with 4th graders - running around my home city (I love being downtown, period.) with 6 sweet girls was so incredible. Perhaps my favorite part was towards the end of the day when we were all sweaty, some rather wet from playing in the fountain, and another group of kids walked by dressed to the hilt. The adults were definitely looking down their noses at us, and the children were reciting their lines about not leaning on the railing. I couldn't have been more satisfied at that point to be with my wet, happy kids leaning as far as they could out over the water, just experiencing life.

3) I changed my own turn signal light bulb! Daddy suggested I come up there and have him help me, but I told him I'd just come if I had trouble. It's done. :)

4) My little brother "is a rock star" according to Phoebe Cheng. I couldn't agree more. We watched his final end of the year show with Counterpoints, and it was spectacular. Today he's soloing on the double bass with the New World Youth Orchestra. AND he's somehow figured out how to live well with our parents, much better than any of the rest of us did. So not more than a rockstar, I actually respect the kid. Way to go dwp.

The story of wonderful, unexpected, and possibly accidental adventures

This blog is hopefully the beginning of a well documented summer adventure, and possibly the home of postings that will share my life with family, friends, and those who may be curious.

Commencement ceremonies done with, these are officially the first few hours of my life as an alumnus of the IUPUI Biomedical Engineering Program. In exactly one month, I will depart for Tanzania with a group from Engineering World Health to learn, work, change my life, and hopefully impact those around me in a positive way. In the process of serving, it seems that often times we are the ones who are changed much more than those we serve... but I'll refrain from becoming philosophical, because I am trained to be an engineer, after all. ;)

Part of this summer's activities will be regularly scheduled instruction in Kiswahili (Swahili). In an attempt to begin familiarizing myself with the language, Google has become a good friend. I've created the name of this blog from searches on The Kamusi Project website (http://kamusiproject.org/). Please excuse me if I've gotten this all wrong, and feel free to correct me.

My search for the word 'Adventure' returned 'Shani,' which also can be defined as accident, adventure, catastrophe, curiosity, notable event, exquisiteness, important event, marvel, mishap, novelty, rare or unexpected occurance, or a startling thing. All of these seem to be true of travels and my life in general. Incidentally, Shani is also a girl's name in English, Swahili, and Hebrew, meaning adventure, curiosity, and crimson. I'm starting to wonder if I couldn't go by that name...

The second part of the title refers to telling a story. This is somehow conjugated, and I'll be honest to say that I don't really know how. Kufanyia hadithi was defined as the verb, 'to tell a
story', as I'm hoping to do here.