October 7, 2008
I love it when that old man calls me. He makes me laugh and feel like I’m still his little girl.
Most of the time a song we love is playing on the radio and he turns up the volume so we can both hear it.
And sometimes he’s thinking of a song we love and wants to ask, “Baby, who sings that song?” And sometimes he says, “Baby, can you sing it like she does?” Or sometimes it’s “Oh, baby, she can do it, can’t she?”
These days Daddy’s fallen for Sugarland.
He figured out how to work the remote control so he could watch their music videos and he asked me to sing one of their songs at his New Year’s Eve party last year, but only if I could cry like she does. Only if I could make it sound like it hurt me.
Talk about pressure, but I did it for my Daddy.
He pulled a chair up close while I sang and he watched and listened like he’s done one thousand times. Except this time there was a crowd and a microphone instead of a hearth and a hairbrush. And when the song was over, he hugged me tightly, grinned, and said, “Baby, you did pretty good. Now, tell me, did I see a tear?”
Sugarland is coming to a town not far from ours and I asked Daddy if he’d like to go. He put up a fight at first and said he was too old for all those sorts of things and he reminded me that the last concert he went to was The Carpenters, but I heard the faintest hint of excitement in his voice.
So, I worked it out (sort of) and two tickets are headed his way.
I’m to repay my friend in cash or kisses. That’s the sort of part and y’all KNOW I’m not about to kiss a boy. I mean, ew, but I’ll deal with that later. For now, my Daddy’s going to see Sugarland.
And just maybe while he’s there he’ll dance with my Momma and miss his big girl a little.
Posted in family 
6 Comments »
October 6, 2008
I teach at a private school where the tuition rivals what I paid for my college education.
Our campus is tucked neatly into the back corner of a hidden away street outside the city. In the past 20 years it has changed from an old farmhouse into a picture of growing perfection. Red trim on white buildings, bright yellow doors, a Colombian flag that whips in the wind, starched uniforms on children that have plenty, imported teachers with native English tongues.
And just around the corner, less than a mile from our manicured lawns and gated campus, is our sister school.
Her playground is a concrete slab and her classrooms are cramped and tiny and divided by the bamboo poles that hold up their roofs. Her children wear hand me down uniforms and eat the food that our school donates to them- the leftovers, the gifts we put into baskets one week out of every month.
And they are happy.
The fifth graders at my school made them gifts for Love and Friendship Day and we delivered them. They were tiny paper hearts with words of affection on them. One side in Spanish the other in English and tied to them with string were small pieces of candy.
I’m not sure if my kids got it. If they understood. If it affected them at all.
But I understood and I was touched and torn by their smiles, their looks of wonder, their whispered thank yous, their waves goodbye.
Posted in colombia, teaching 3 Comments »
October 2, 2008
Lindsay thinks I’m some sort of super star teacher. She said so in this post. (this one, too come to think of it. Thus, I must offer a rebuttal.
Note to Lindsay: I ain’t nuthin’ special.
Seriously, I think Linds has this fluffed up idea of me. That’s probably just because I tell funny stories about my students constantly or share their funny quotes and because I’m lame enough to think others are remotely interested.
They aren’t.
The truth is, I couldn’t do anything else if I tried (or wanted to). So I teach and that choice in and of itself makes me crazy the biggest part of the time.
I am teacher. Hear me roar (or sob depending on what sort of day it is).
But Lindsay, dearest, I am not sane. I promise you. In fact, today I heard myself say out loud, “Son, do you value your life?”
And then I passed out a crossword.
Posted in teaching 9 Comments »
October 1, 2008
Coffee is a staple of Colombian culture. Go figure, right?
The line of people going into and coming out of the staff room with their steaming mugs is as constant as a train of ants at a church picnic. I admit that I look at them longingly. I want to fit into that social circle. I want to be a part of it. I want to look all grown up and sophisticated and slightly mysterious like coffee drinkers do.
Alas, I do not.
I am not mature nor mysterious. I loathe the taste of coffee and I’m dying to tell about half of the aforementioned sophisticated population that their breath smells like poo, but I won’t. Because I want them to include me. But the truth is that I, Emily Witt, am not cool enough nor adult enough to be a coffee drinker.
But they don’t have to know that, now do they? Of course, they don’t. Because I have discovered this.
And friends, the mug still steams.
Posted in colombia, rambling 10 Comments »
September 30, 2008
I’m a low maintenance sort of gal. I’m not about curls or lace or frills. No fuss here.
But there are some things that I’d rather not live without.
In list form, of course:
- mascara (this kind is my favorite)
- lip stuff that lasts (for example)
- these shoes Sisser bought me (before they were cool)
- good ponytail holders
- jeans with holes in them
- old school camp t-shirts
You?
Posted in lists 7 Comments »
September 25, 2008
The Andes Mountains are all around me, their peaks covered by the morning mist. The Colombian air is crisp and cool and I drink it in.
My eyes wander toward the steep slopes and the houses that are perched there. Small communities shoved together in a makeshift suburbia. Houses with concrete walls and floors and corrugated tin roofs. Clothes are on the lines and I think I can hear them flapping in the mountain breeze.
Families are scattered about. Men leaning in doorways, ponchos slung across their shoulders. Mothers shuffling and sweeping, the worn soles of their shoes making a gentle shhh shhh sound as they move. Children playing happily with strings and sticks in what is meant to be a yard.
I think that I must have known a place like this existed, but I didn’t know it like I know it now. I had read about the third world and seen pictures of it and parts of me had cringed at the sight. But today, in the here and now and for forever, this third world and her people are mine. Her children are mine.
Sebastian is one of her children.
He is nine years old and he likes to run in the afternoons. He goes to school and helps his mother with making beds and because of Compassion International he feels the burden of poverty just a little less.
Sponsoring a child through Compassion is easy and it’s life changing. It changes the way you think, the way you see the world, and the way your heart breaks. Because once you sponsor a child, your family grows.
But there’s more than just you.
Sponsoring a child changes the way children in 25 of the world’s poorest countries live. It gives them letters and pictures and stories from places that they can’t even imagine. It gives them health care and education and a chance to feel proud of who they are. It gives them hope that they can cling to and a Jesus that is tangible.
You can make the difference to a child. You can change their world a little and I promise, they’ll change yours just like Sebastian is changing mine.
Is today the day that you extend your family?
Click here to sponsor a child that has been waiting over six months for a sponsor.
Posted in colombia, faith, home 2 Comments »
September 24, 2008
I think I’d like to be a pirate.
I can paint pictures in my head of swords and tall ships and pirate flags a flyin’. And sometimes I can feel the roll of the ocean and taste the salt in the air. I can hear their songs and cannons ringing out in the night and their longings for merchant ships and adventures and a lawless life at sea sneak into my childlike imagination.
Yes, I think I’d like to be a pirate.
Or maybe stories about Anne Bonny and Mary Read just make me feel brave. Or it could be that I’ve listened to Jimmy Buffett’s issues with aging one too many times. Or perhaps I think that Blackbeard could have stolen my heart along with the rest of his treasures.
Then again, maybe I’m just a bit of a dreamer. A dreamer that wouldn’t mind billowing blouses, barefeet on boatdecks, or sunsets out at sea.
This post inspired by my future first mate and The Ballad of the Pirate Queens by Jane Yolen.
Posted in crazy dreams 4 Comments »
September 22, 2008
I love writing this blog. It gives me an outlet and a chance to scribble a bunch of nonsense every once in a while and that’s a good thing. Otherwise my brain gets all crowded and I say things out loud in front of strangers. And then said strangers look at me like I’ve lost my marbles. (which could, in fact, be sort of true.)
Not cool.
I think I forget that people actually read this stuff because I sort of write it for me. That’s selfish and egotistical, huh?
Here I am writing a bunch of fluff half the time expecting it to make me feel better and I forget that there are you kind folks. You folks that are reading my hogwash and wondering when I’m going to write something new. That adds some pressure to the mix, but I like it.
Still, I can’t help but wonder if my crazy isn’t more evident via blog. I mean, I can play normal in person. But sometimes my written words give me away.
That’s a scary thought.
I wonder if I haven’t revealed too much about myself here. Heck, I told you I was an emotional trainwreck and that I don’t play well with the opposite sex. That’s deep, dark secret sort of stuff and here I am spilling it for the masses on the world wide web.
What am I thinking?!
I guess I’m sort of thinking that it’s easier. It’s a cop out, perhaps, but I’m embracing it. It keeps me from clamming up when people ask hard questions. It keeps me from having to see a shrink for all of my issues. It keeps me from moving to a foreign island and taking up chain smoking.
Writing here keeps me connected to me. And to you.
Because let’s be honest, shall we? If I didn’t write here and some of you didn’t ask me when I was going to write more here, I just might be a completely antisocial type. The kind with cats that sits in an old chair and smells like moth balls.
The kind that is creepy.
And that, my friends, is way less cool than I ever long to be.
Posted in rambling 8 Comments »
September 18, 2008
Seriously, guys? I mean, really? Five of you were brave enough to actually say, “Who is he?!” in the comments and another fifteen or so more discreetly sent me an email begging for the insider’s scoop.
Y’all are sweet (and reaching and nosy and all of those other things that I love about you).
I guess you’re right, though. I should have thought before putting a picture of me with a boy (who happens to be handsome, married, and my principal) on my blog. Not smart. You people just have entirely too much hope for me.
Newsflash: I don’t play well with men. It’s a character flaw.
OH! And then there are those of you, well one of you, who shall forever remain nameless (*cough*cough* Sisser), who left this very relevant comment on another post:
why in the world would you need a friend with an “is he right for me?” radar when you have a “does he have a ridiculously miniscule flaw that should keep me from liking him?” radar. generally your radar eliminates guys way before any of your friends get to. but for those few you do let slip by, thank heavens i have my “emily, be cereal” radar to make you think straight again. and yes, i said ‘emily’ because that’s usually what i have to call you when you’re not listening and making ridiculous arguments like “but he likes books, and he can write letters, and he likes frisbee” when really he’s the most socially awkward person on the face of the planet and generally just not cool at all. was that mean? maybe i’m bitter too. i mean, be cereal, em. just stick to boys that burn stumps on the weekends. at least they’re cute. or just quit all this dating nonsense altogether and hang out with a sisser. lawd knows i ain’t got no life. we can get a dog.
She’s funny, huh? Funny, honest, gentle. All of those sweet sorts of things that I’m just not.
And she’s probably going to be my roommate forever cause lawd knows we ain’t either one got a life. Or a prayer with the opposite sex.
Yep. We should get a dog.
Posted in sisser 9 Comments »
September 15, 2008
Seriously, sometimes I just don’t have it together.
I think I’m all buff and I want to be super athletic and hard core and all those other things that my heroes are.
But I’m not those things. At all.
I’m no Linds or Whit or Jimmy (I’m SO NOT JIMMY). I’m just me with another 13.1 miles under my belt.
And friends, if I EVER– I mean EVER– tell you I want to do another one of these things, hug me with two arms and then threaten me with my life. ‘Cause I don’t really (not really) want to do another one of these things.
Especially in Medellin. Which is four hours down the curvy road. Into the valley. On a bus. Where it’s hot.
But that’s another post altogether.
For your viewing pleasure:
The pre-race pig out.
And the post race it’s hot as all get out and this race didn’t start until 9:00 and ohmygosh I hurt all over and whyohwhy did I run in a cotton t-shirt and DAVID please, please, please quit leaning on me I’m about to pass out picture.
And for those of you who wondered, no I did not meet my goal. Not even close. In fact, I was LOTS slower than the first one of these idiotic efforts I put forth. I’m blaming it on nerves and the heat the absence of my psycho fast-she-wears-pink-and-I-don’t sister-in-law.
And other things that I shan’t include via blog.
You’re welcome.
Posted in colombia 6 Comments »
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