Hippos are my favorite animal. My little Ellie back in the States drew me a picture of one which hung in my room and was one of the few drawings I brought with me to Germany; she also always remembers to take pictures of the hippos at the zoo when she visits so she can show them to me. One Christmas season, I sang "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas" too many times and my parents decided to inundate me with Christmas hippos (perhaps so I'd never sing the song again...). I honestly can't tell you where my delight with hippos came from, but I'm even more delighted with words and their origins. [...]

I just submitted the last late assignment for my first quarter grades, and it's a little disheartening when your Bible students submit work copied off the internet for their quarter project, but it gave me reason to think about my own recovery. I had a super intelligent student realize that he'd slacked off too much in my class the last week of the quarter and had a D when he should have had an A. In an attempt to boost his score just a tiny bit, he handed in the quarter project a week late and barely half completed. The assignment wasn't remotely what it should have been, and a simple Google search produced a paragraph he'd quickly copied down hoping to get points for - unfortunately for him the paragraph didn't even fit the requirements for this project. [...]

I spent a few minutes trying to come up with a clever title alluding to Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" because I went for my first walk alone this afternoon, but the title wasn't working. I decided just to break out the good news in the first sentence.[...]

My friend Q is a brilliant writer, and that title came from her. She recently posted on her Facebook a reflection on her struggles and concluded with the idea that she needed to remember to take life ten minutes at a time. This is a lesson she's been living for eight years, and I've just joined in nine months ago.[...]

My dad is a morning person; my mom is the furthest thing from it. I take after my mother.

I've never liked mornings, and they are all the more difficult for me now. Each morning my first medication alarm goes off to tell me to take the muscle relaxant an hour before I get out of bed and take more medications. The first alarm doesn't require a lot of conscious thought, but when the second alarm goes off, I have to remember that my feet don't move on their own, that my hip and leg muscles have stiffened up again through the night, and I have to fight to get them to move to even roll over and get out of bed.[...]

This Friday Germany celebrated unification day, so there were no classes for any of our students. All of my juniors had packed up Thursday night for a long field trip to Normandy ending Sunday night in Paris. The school graciously allows them Monday to recover from the sleep deprivation which meant I had a long weekend with time for adventure as well as prep before the students' return tomorrow.[...]

According to one of my students last year, I told my Bible class that I hate people and I love shoes. While this is a true statement, I was a little surprised I admitted it to children. [...]

Tomorrow marks my eight month anniversary. Eight months ago my life changed forever. I have had lots of landmark moments in my life, and this one isn't the most significant though it is the one most people are very interested in.[...]

When I first stepped on the plane to Germany thirteen months ago, I was terrified, but I safely made it to the other side of the Atlantic without backing out. I was pretty terrified when I was loaded onto the ambulance eight months ago, too, but I didn't have a choice to turn around. Getting metaphorical cold feet couldn't change anything - I needed emergency surgery.[...]

One of my Bible college roommates dropped out - er - transferred to nursing school and became a rockstar medical professional. When I was in REHAB, she offered to come stay with me the first few days I was out on my own in the real world. Rather than have her there in the summer when I had time to make a few mistakes in my schedule, I asked her to stay with me for the first few days of school. Cat wasn't able to get here for the opening ceremonies, but she's been with me since Thursday and will fly back to Tacoma on Wednesday morning. I've been so blessed to have a personal nurse helping me out with going to the Apoteke to get prescriptions, to practice my therapies during the day, and to laugh with me about old jokes and new experiences. [...]