So...guess who has a two week holiday from school.....
This girl does!
Seriously, one of the best things about being a teacher is the regular school holidays. I really love my job(s) but kids are exhausting, and I need regular breaks from them. This break, I'm not travelling far, and not travelling for long, so I get to spend a lot of time at home doing not much. I'm so excited! This is how I define 'not much'
I'm driving to a city about 5 hours away for a few days. The main reason for the trip is a friend's wedding, but I'll be spending a few days there visiting my sister, my grandmother and a few good friends.
I got lots of books out of the library the other day. I've already finished the Grumpy Old Men diary, but hope to get read 'On the Road', 'The Slap', and 'The Restaurant at the End of the Universe'. And I've also recently discovered the DVDs at the library, so now there are many episodes of Blackadder to watch.
Speaking of TV, my mum has taped a few documentaries that I'd like to watch, so I'm going to spend a day at my family's house watching their TV. I've also recently acquired season 3 of Community, which my housemate and I are watching together. This is quite exciting because I have already seen seasons 1 and 2, which I watched again with her, but I haven't seen season 3 yet. Hooray for new Community episodes.
I'm also going to spend a day with mum visiting a few local art galleries, because there's a visual art festival happening in town, and my mum and I like to pretend that we're cultured. This will be a few days after a day hiking through nearby mountains with my dad and brother.
I should also probably do some gardening. Gardening isn't my favourite task, but I like the pretty roses that result from a little bit of maintenance.
My housemate and I have agreed to go op shopping, because it's something we've been talking about doing for ages, but it's a little bit hard to fit around a full time job.
I've got a few choral arrangements floating around in my head that I'd really like to get onto paper (or into notation software anyway). I love doing arranging, which I'm not ashamed to admit because I've decided to embrace my inner nerd, but I rarely get time during the school term.
I'm also vaguely thinking about hosting a party at my place, just because.
So much for a holiday spent doing not much. I'm not sure how I'm going to fit all the above in two weeks. but I'm certainly going to have fun trying :)
Friday, September 28, 2012
Wednesday, September 19, 2012
Living as a Christian woman
This post has been stewing around in my brain for quite a while, but tonight I have decided to stop agonising over every point and just write. Believe me, I'm a very long way from having everything figured out, but this is where my thoughts stand at the moment. Feel free to disagree with my opinions, as long as you can justify your own.
This is a post about me. As you can probably figure out from the title, I have two X chromosomes, I've made a decision to follow Jesus, and my heart is still working. When you reduce everything down to those basics, it all seems very simple. However life can often be anything but.
Recently, I've been reading through some of the harder books of the Bible, including Proverbs and Ecclesiasties. Proverbs in particular I've found challenging. It seemed to have very little to say to or about women, and that it did say wasn't very helpful. The three types of women referred to in the book are the good wife (Proverbs 31) the annoying wife and the adulteress. There wasn't anything there for somebody who fits in category D: none of the above. (That wasn't an emoticon!)
After finding links from a couple of the other blogs I read, I've rediscovered the Boundless webzine. And almost every article I've read has annoyed me. I consider most of the advice offered to be too pro marriage, and some of it downright mysoginistic. For example:
And it's just plain frustrating when all the advice about making the most of your single years is written by married people with children.
Okay - so I'm just going to say it: I like boys. While God hasn't revealed all His plans regarding my future, I'm still hoping that a husband will turn up someday. Now this may just be a problem at my church with its current demographic, but unmarried men and women aren't particularly good at hanging out together socially. Youth Group supper is a post-evening service tradition where I worship. I've started noticing of late that the guys will all sit in one big group, the girls in another, and never the twain shall meet. And that bothers me a lot. There's also a girls' social night and a boys' social night weekly for the church youth. Of course, there is a time and a place for hanging out with friends of the same gender, I feel that this has become too much the norm. This might be partly because there are a lot of high school kids in the church youth group, and very little acknowledgement of people who have moved on to the next stage of their life without picking up a spouse on the way. While I love all my girl friends from church, I think that I, and a lot of other people, are missing out on their personal growth from their limited social interactions.
I hope this post doesn't portray me as some kind of bitter single woman. Ninety-nine per cent of the time I'm perfectly happy living and working as a single woman, trying to figure out how to honour God in all aspects of my life as it is now.
This is a post about me. As you can probably figure out from the title, I have two X chromosomes, I've made a decision to follow Jesus, and my heart is still working. When you reduce everything down to those basics, it all seems very simple. However life can often be anything but.
Recently, I've been reading through some of the harder books of the Bible, including Proverbs and Ecclesiasties. Proverbs in particular I've found challenging. It seemed to have very little to say to or about women, and that it did say wasn't very helpful. The three types of women referred to in the book are the good wife (Proverbs 31) the annoying wife and the adulteress. There wasn't anything there for somebody who fits in category D: none of the above. (That wasn't an emoticon!)
After finding links from a couple of the other blogs I read, I've rediscovered the Boundless webzine. And almost every article I've read has annoyed me. I consider most of the advice offered to be too pro marriage, and some of it downright mysoginistic. For example:
- Successful women are not marrying because they out-earn the men in their peer group.
- A woman travelling for a few days to attend a conference and leaving her husband with the house and children is contrary to God's design.
- Modern women are described as 'aggressively independent'. (If it's 'aggressive' to have a job I enjoy and be able to pay my own rent, then I'm guilty as charged.)
- Women need to live with their parents (or another Christian family) to protect them from men who would take advantage of the opportunity that a single woman living alone provides.
And it's just plain frustrating when all the advice about making the most of your single years is written by married people with children.
Okay - so I'm just going to say it: I like boys. While God hasn't revealed all His plans regarding my future, I'm still hoping that a husband will turn up someday. Now this may just be a problem at my church with its current demographic, but unmarried men and women aren't particularly good at hanging out together socially. Youth Group supper is a post-evening service tradition where I worship. I've started noticing of late that the guys will all sit in one big group, the girls in another, and never the twain shall meet. And that bothers me a lot. There's also a girls' social night and a boys' social night weekly for the church youth. Of course, there is a time and a place for hanging out with friends of the same gender, I feel that this has become too much the norm. This might be partly because there are a lot of high school kids in the church youth group, and very little acknowledgement of people who have moved on to the next stage of their life without picking up a spouse on the way. While I love all my girl friends from church, I think that I, and a lot of other people, are missing out on their personal growth from their limited social interactions.
I hope this post doesn't portray me as some kind of bitter single woman. Ninety-nine per cent of the time I'm perfectly happy living and working as a single woman, trying to figure out how to honour God in all aspects of my life as it is now.
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