Random Thoughts on a Monday

This is not going to be a pithy blog update. Sorry, but it's Monday, and I'm running low on pithy. Prepare yourselves.

1. New Friends. Through Facebook and a mutual friend, I've met another Minnesota native teaching English Literature in Nigeria. He's 200 miles away from me in the western part of Nigeria, but he's got a kick-face blog (tendrilofthought.blogspot.com) and you should totally be jealous of his photography. I so wish I could a) take pictures like that and b) have fast enough internet to upload them.

2. Taste of Winter. Today I discovered that I can taste snow here Nigeria. If you would like to know how this is possible, given that today's high was 82 F (23 C), kindly secure yourself a box of sugar cubes.
Next, freeze them in the freezer (so the ants don't get to them). Then, as you are about to drop two cubes into your steaming cup of tea, revert to childhood for a moment and pop one in your mouth.
Before you get it all slobbery and it becomes a puddle of congealed sweetness on your tongue, however, inhale through the cube. (Good lord, I feel like such a child for even typing that. Alas...)
Take a breath of frozen-sugar-flavored air, and in that moment, my friends, you will taste SNOW. Or, at least I did. And I thought about all my childhood winters growing up in Minnesota, eating not-yellow snow in the front yard, and it made my heart glad, even if I felt like a child for doing it.

3. I get to represent my alma mater tomorrow, and I'm obnoxiously excited about it! The US Embassy is hosting a college fair for American college and universities, and not only am I sponsoring a booth for Wheaton and bringing my 10th-12th graders to the fair, but the fair organizer asked me to give a brief presentation to everyone at the morning session about Admissions Deadlines in the American system.
You see, in Nigeria, time is relative. The phrase "I'm coming" could mean: "I'll be right there," "I'll be there in an hour," "I'll be there next year," and it also means "I'm leaving."
Translate that to the world of application deadlines and you can see how a culture gap could leave some aspiring college students in the lurch when it comes to getting into college.
So tomorrow, I'm going to tell all these Nigerian students that in America, we take our deadlines seriously. If the application materials have to be in by January 1, that means send it in before January 1, don't start thinking about it on January 1 and get around to it by February 1.
I'm going to wear a suit in an effort to convince everyone that I'm more than 15 years old. It's not likely, but I'm going to try.