carecare

Life sure is funny huh?

It never turns out quite the way you expect it to. 

And when you step back and observe as the events in your life unfold according to some master plan, you're usually pleasantly surprised how things actually turned out. As if God knew better than us humans!

I always marvel at who I've become good friends with -- and ironically, it's usually with the people I've initially sworn off because they're too snobby, girly or simply weird.

Take my friend Vi for example. I met her the very first day of our Teach For America induction program when she plopped down next to me. The moment she said her first sentence, I said to myself in a very soft, but audible voice, "I am never going to be this girl's friend. She's soooo weird." Yet somehow, we ended up living together, we became friends..and the rest is history!

I'm tickled by seeing who's dated who and who's married to who. In the end, I think most of us end up with a person whom we never imagined ourselves with. And by God's grace we find that person who compliments us or who balances us out.

I never thought I'd seriously date a Chinese guy! Or a computer engineer.  I always pictured myself married to a tall white guy with a much cooler job!

And the biggest surprise to me is how I wound up in teaching. And discovered that I liked it. (for the most part). Or that I ended up in LA, or that I did this or that...you get the idea All I can say is God is GOOD and He knows what we need MUCH more than we know for ourselves!

*Jeremiah 29:11

carecare

2 things that I know for sure in the deepest recesses of my heart:

1.) that God has blessed me with SO MUCH

2) that I am surrounded by people who love me!

I'm ashamed to say that I constantly forget these truths because I am so absorbed with happens in my classroom, with my crazy students and all the other things in my life that suck up so much time.

This past weekend, Matt and I flew back to NC. And I FINALLY got to see FALL in NC with all its vibrant colored trees and piles of pine needles and leaves after 3 years of going without it. It was definitely worth it despite the freezing weather (CA has made me a wuss), the sleep deprivation and the painfully sore muscles.

This weekend at HOME in North Carolina was such a great reminder of what I do have...

From friends who hosted us in their limited amount of time, picked us up from the airport, fed us many times, gave us a place to stay, invited us to play flag football with their church and/or simply spent time with us talking and laughing LOTS...

to my family who always welcome me with arms wide open and drop everything in their schedule to be with me

to Matt who bought me a ticket home, agreed to spend time with my family (that's huge if you understand the history between him and my dad), carried my luggage throughout the airport and shared his biscotti with me (even though i didn't take it from him)

I told him he was "as sweet as the biscotti he just offered me" and that i was impressed with how he's improved in his role as "boyfriend" (look 2 entries down) muhaha. ok. yes. corny. but true!

Can't wait for the holidays!

carecare

Hi I am back from my trip to europe. I will post on that experience later.

First, in the name of travelling, I would like to share this AWESOME youtube video with you

Here's the description on youtube: A battle between a pride of lions, a herd of buffalo, and 2 crocodiles at a watering hole in South Africa's Kruger National Park while on safari. The people who took the video also created a website at http://www.BattleAtKruger.com.

Watch it if you haven't seen it yet. It's craaaazzzyyy.

carecare

***i recently wrote an entry on marriage and divorce and made it a friends-only post due to potential privacy issues. If you're dying to read it, email me at chcaro@gmail.com to get it or create your own tabulas account and have me add you to my friends list to see it.

MYTH: Matt is whipped.

TRUE?

FALSE?

Answer: You decide

We had just flown into Dallas for a wedding and were meeting the guys at their hotel. We needed to carry our bags inside because we had to get changed for the wedding rehearsal. All the girls' luggage was taken up by some of the guys, but I found myself carrying my own duffel bag up to the hotel room and Matt was nowhere in sight.

To which Cindy made the comment, "How come Matt's not carrying your bag?"

"I don't know! I can't even find him!"

"How come we all think Matt's whipped? He's actually not!" Cindy exclaimed in surprise. (Haha).

I wasn't really sure at the time why we all thought Matt was whipped, but really, I never thought he was. I ask him to do things for me and sometimes he will, sometimes he won't. But he doesn't jump at my every whim like a trained dog. (but I wish! Jk).

So I spent the next couple of weeks investigating and observing him. And suddenly, two nights ago, the answer appeared! 

It's summer vacation now and I have been off from school for about a week and a half now! Before jet-setting around the world, I wanted to spend a couple of days with Matt. I'm down at his house and we had been playing rockband all weekend to the point where my eyes were crossing and drying out due to not blinking for minutes at a time. So I asked him if we could do something else besides play video games and I suggested that we watch a movie instead. He said, "Ok."

After dinner, we get home and before we pop the DVD into his xbox, he logs into xbox live and Halo 3 to show me some recorded footage from a game he played the other day. As if that impresses me. Please. But I indulge him and pretend to be interested. Heehe.  While we are watching scenes from his Halo game, his friends message him to get him to play. Matt tells me he needs to get on to tell the guys that he can't play.

"Hey guys, I just logged in to tell you I can't play," he informs his friends.

"LAME!!" they respond through the headset.

"Uhh..Caroline's sitting right next to me," Matt says

"Ohhh" and suddenly all his guy friends understand.

"Yeah, uhh.." and he looks at me nervously while saying this because he knows it might get him into trouble, "Caroline wants to watch a movie..."

Here we have it folks. The reason why everyone thinks he's whipped is because of Matt's deliberate presentation of the situation to his friends. He could have said, "Caroline and I agreed to watch a movie together instead..." and he wouldn't have made me seem so umm..dominatrix-ish?

Perhaps he's a little whipped (as most boyfriends should be), but is he as whipped as everyone thinks? You decide.

carecare

Guess who I got to meet yesterday? Oh, it's every science teacher's dream! He came to my school to give a talk..

Recognize him? It's Bill Nye the Science guy...soon to be Bill Nye the Math guy perhaps. He was telling me of some math series he wanted to do dealing with algebra concepts. We'll see what happens with that