Sunday, August 30, 2015

Wow the Crowd

It's not often that I wow the crowd. I had the pleasure of doing it twice this last week...

First - The Math Quiz

Parents' Team at the Math Quiz

I volunteered to be on the Parents' Team at the Year 10 Math Quiz. Luckily I already knew 2 out of the other 3 members of my team, so it was easy to have a fun time!

For some reason the kids were allowed to use calculators during the exam and parents weren't.

The first question on the math quiz was...

which I solved using basic long division...

After the timed exam, we talked over the math questions with our sons and the other boys from Boys' High.

Gavin (one of the boys) to parents, "You skipped the first question, right?"
His dad to the kids, "No, Holly knows how to do long division!!!"

It seemed like the entire room hushed for a minute, as everyone stood in awe....*

And if that moment wasn't great enough, a few days later we were talking about typing speeds** and I said that I thought I typed about 100 words per minute. When I proved it, Mercy and Sage started cheering like I'd just scored a touchdown!

I wonder if either of these skills can be definitively linked to long-term satisfaction in life or success in relationships?

I also know how to dial a rotary phone, use a card catalog, and start a record - does that count for anything?

_____________________________________
*except Oak who learned long division at a private school before we moved to New Zealand.
**current typing speeds in the family: Joyce 3wpm, Sage 8wpm, Mercy 40wpm, Oak 43wpm, Danny 60wpm, Noah 56wpm, Mike 63wpm.

Thursday, August 27, 2015

Choose One Thing

If I had to choose one thing that summed up my day-to-day life...

In the Bronx, I would have chosen...the elevator.

We lived on the 16th floor (out of 28)

Elevator: Usually crowded. Groceries and laundry, fresh air - all at the end of the elevator

From our life in Germany, I would have chosen...bread.

sold by weight

Belegtes Brot, the bakery truck, rolls, knowing the baker - the whole bit.

If I had to pick one such item here in New Zealand, at least if you asked me today, it would be ... birds.

bell bird

When I returned to New Zealand after being in the USA for 5 weeks, I had fresh eyes and ears for observing my surroundings. One of the things that I noticed was all the birdsong - unexpected since I'd arrived back in New Zealand in the middle of winter.

wood pigeon - they look too heavy to fly

I hear bird calls almost all day, except during the wettest downpours. I hear the birds singing in the morning during seminary and while I get the kids off to school. At night I hear the pukeko and the morepork.

fantails- flit around the house windows

I notice birds when I walk out to the car, driving to school, errands, or to keep an appointment. (Thankfully we don't have an attached garage.)

Tui (sometimes sounds like R2D2)
Notice the interesting white ball under the chin!

There have been times when we are Facetiming piano lessons, that I wish I could hush the background noise of the birds singing.

pukeko

There are also all the seabirds. And our very own chooks. And kea on the South Island.

When Captain Cook arrived in New Zealand in the 1770s he noted that the bird song was deafening.

I notice the birds and the bird song every day, even when I'm indoors. It's one of the things that makes me feel that, even when I'm in my house, I'm still half out-doors.

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Desegregate Yourself

562: The Problem We All Live With

JUL 31, 2015

The most interesting thing that happened to me this week was listening to This American Life podcast about desegregation.

link to podcast, episode 562 "The Problem We All Live With"

In the podcast, a journalist tells about watching the media coverage of the Michael Brown shooting and the following Ferguson riots, but this journalist noticed a detail that was missed by most other reporters. This journalist saw the video footage of Michael Brown's mother approaching the body of her son, as he lay in the street. When the mother saw her son's body, her first anguished words were caught on camera, and they weren't what the journalist was expecting.

I witnessed this "Problem We All Live With" when living in the Bronx. I taught a youth Sunday school class. One time, as part of some Bible lesson, I asked all of my students - kids from the SouthBronx - to write down one wish.

Andre D., age 14. As if he didn't want his words to speak too loudly, he wrote his wish all scrunched up in the top margin of a full piece of lined paper. He wished for a schoolteacher that would teach something instead of sitting behind his/her desk and waiting for the bell to ring.

I would recommend another compelling glimpse of the effects of segregation... "Promises," a documentary that follows 7 children growing up in the Arab/Palestinian conflict zone.

Documentary about Palestinian/Israeli conflict

One of the NPR reports about the 1-year anniversary of the Ferguson riots concluded by asking the question, "what can we do?" The answer on the radio was that all other solutions were unsustainable or ineffective, so "look around your neighborhood, and if it's not diverse, then move."

Segregation is the problem we all live with.

I'm thankful that it's been possible for Mike and for me to desegregate ourselves to some small extent. We desegregated ourselves by moving to the Bronx instead of staying in our home state for graduate school, joining the military, choosing to move to Europe and to NZ when the opportunities presented themselves.

We've also chosen to desegregate ourselves without moving. I helped a young woman do her Laurel project by visiting all the other churches in town and went out of my way to find hispanic students to add to my all-white piano studio. We recently found ourselves eating with our fingers at the home of Meera, a Sri Lankan colleague and neighbor.

The world is a big place, though, and there are still many people and places of which I have little understanding.

Here are some things that I think can help us all...

read widely
travel
study abroad
serve missions
join the military
visit other churches beside your own
adopt, be a foster parent, accept an exchange student
volunteer in your larger community
make a point to nurture friendships from outside your ethnic group/religious group/age group
ask questions

Sunday, August 9, 2015

USA Trip: Bloopers, Funny Quotes, Unplanned Happenings

Living Art at the Getty Center

"What's that white thing? ...it's an EGG!?!"

-Mercy sees an egg on her first morning in the USA (eggs in NZ are brown)

Unexpected:
First roller coaster ride for Mercy and Sage-
Pure EXCITEMENT!

The Fancy Soda Machine

See the machine in the background? It seemed so modern to the boys that they used the cup a stranger had left behind, just so they could try it....Ew!

A good laugh: Practicing for a haka performance, the boys start substituting names of towns in NZ for the Maori words they can't remember.

3 flat tires in one weekend!

The wrong lug nuts meant that we needed all new wheels just a few days later....

10-mile hike over High Top on a whim and without warm gear. The snowball in Mercy's hand was just the beginning - freezing rain, hail piled like snow, thunder and lightning, and electricity from the storm that made our hair stand on end.

"This is what the Millers do for fun." -Uncle Larry gives a warning to Johnny, his daughter's fiancé.

"It was cold...but we've done colder." -Oak's description of jumping into Lake Louise on this same hike

Unexpectedly large amounts of dental work that needed to be done and unexpected generosity from our uncle dentists.

Thanks, Ammon and Aaron!

Holly to Danny, on our first day driving around Utah, "What do you think?"

Danny: "Dry. There are lots of dead bits. Like there. And there. And there. And there...."

Danny and Noah: amazed at the big roads "right in the middle of the town! Look at this thing!"
(They were speaking of the "big"road that goes by the Timpanogos Temple.)

Audrey, "Is this LEGAL or ILLEGAL?"

Bridge jumping for FHE - when police showed up and started taking my details, I thought I might get my first police record...

Oak in the loser stance. Noah is about to hit a ping pong ball at Oak's back to see how big of a welt he can create...

Sting Pong - who would make up a game like this?

Uncle James to Sage: "Do you want a hot dog or a hamburger?"

Sage: "What are those?" (she is used to meat pies and sausage rolls...)

many epic crashes

Heather and Scott's young boys were very excited to go boating with my big boys - until they began to realize that they (younger boys) could ski circles around my big boys.

Unexpected: Running into Mr. Swenson at BYU

"Can I drive home? How hard can it be?" -After picking up his learner's permit, Danny wants to drive from Draper to Pleasant Grove the first time he's behind a wheel...

Ani: "What? Did I just hear you call it a waistcoat?"
Noah: "What else would you call it?"

Noah and Oak leave to hike Timpanogos with no gas in the truck - running on fumes and coasting down the mountain....

Unexpected: Sage learned to drive a 4-wheeler all by herself,
and Mercy goes on a long horse ride with Ellie Hale.

Noah: "Even if it's just overnight, I don't want to go camping with dumb equipment like jeans and a hoodie." (it's polypros and water-resistant gear or bust...)

Noah was thrown from his horse when it stepped into a deep bog. He twisted his ankle, broke the horse's harness, and was lucky that he didn't end up with a hoof print on his chest.

Noah: "What is this? I had to come back to the car just to get my shoes."

Danny: "Wait. Does it ACTUALLY say that?"

Mercy: "The best part of my trip to Nauvoo? Pulling 3 chairs off the bottom of the lake with Joseph. They were covered in BLACK SLIME!"

Unexpected remodeling delays...Amelia and Tyler welcomed us for
Sunday dinner in the basement.

Sage on airports: "Why do they make airports so expensive? There's no use for it!" (Sage is amazed at the ritziness decorations, architecture, and shopping in American airports.)

Unexpected: Balancing Joyce on top of 2 suitcases and a luggage cart for a sprint across LAX. Mercy pushed another cart ("I think this feels like an adventure race") while Sage ran with her big backpack yelling, "I CAN'T DO THIS!!!" at the top of her lungs.

I started yelling, too: "EXCUSE ME!" facing forward; "YOU HAVE TO DO THIS, SAGE" facing backwards. What a spectacle!

The Air-New-Zealand man at check-in said we were too late, but was convinced by the atomic time on my iPhone ("there's still 3 minutes") and my red, sweaty face.

Before the airport adventure race.
In the background, note the extent of decorations in our local airport - a local rugby jersey.

"Rookie traveler..." -Noah and Oak harass Danny about losing two pocketknives at security.

Tuesday, August 4, 2015

USA Trip to See Family: One of the costs of living in New Zealand

USA Trip to see Family: Part of the Cost of Living in New Zealand

I don't think I've ever had such an "up" month. Every single day was precious to me.