Mother, teach us how to wait

People do not like waiting.

Some choose to smoke while waiting, some play or watch using their phone, some even call their friends on phone while waiting for other friends.

We do not like waiting.
I do not enjoy waiting too :)

However, the greatest lesson on waiting has been given by Our Lady.

Thirty years without any sign of miracles from her Son who was "Son of God"
Three days without knowing where her Son is
Uncertainties during flight to Egypt
Waiting to find a proper place to give birth..

Yes, waiting can be painful, especially with a spice of uncertainties.

Mother, teach us how to wait

Dealing with the cross(es)

This Saturday is the Feast of Exaltation of the Holy Cross. I guess this is a good opportunity to talk about the cross.

Last Sunday I received news that Paul's cousin, Ryan (the one I've been meeting to teach English) broke his leg. Doctor found a tumor around his thigh bone. We don't know yet if it's a benign or malignant. Please pray for him and his parents. The good news is, I think he is a brave little boy. He's good in entertaining himself too. (He was playing "parking game" when I saw him two days ago and he happily showed me how he could complete level 18!!)

How to understand this 'cross'? How to our explain to a 5-year-old boy that his suffering is not meaningless?
Sometimes we take it for granted that our priests and our Catholic friends told us to "embrace the cross". We may complain, "What are you talking about? Embrace the cross? Offer up the suffering? It's difficult!"

But have we imagined the situation of the people who do not understand about the cross? How tempting it is to think that the suffering is meaningless.

Now I really see the reason to be joyful on the fact that we need to carry the cross and unite our suffering with Christ's suffering. It's hard, it's challenging, but it's a beautiful aspect of our Christian faith.

7 Quick Takes Friday Vol. 15

- 1 -

Pope Francis declared yesterday as day of prayer and fasting for Syria. Just now I had discussion with my housemate regarding this topic because we were talking about the class on morality beforehand. After we talked about the three components to judge morality of an action: moral act, intention, and circumstances, she asked, "So, whether Obama should 'attack' Syria can be evaluated using this framework?" I said yes, but I think it's a complicated situation. Pope's message is quite clear that we shouldn't respond violence with violence.

- 2 -

Ups and downs are back (well, it's always there, but some stuff pulled you down heavier than others). I almost cancelled going to fish with the Girls' Club (the primary school girls' weekly activity) because I was feeling a bit down on Friday night. Thank God at the end I still went with them. It's good to keep doing something for others even though you are down because you don't focus on yourself. Furthermore, the difficulties will pass. I need to learn to be more patient. When I'm impatient like yesterday, my heart felt very heavy, to the point that I could feel the pain physically. It's very weird.

- 3 -

I got new 'student' last Friday. Ryan's friend came to play at his house so I taught both of them. It was more fun because we could have competitive games. Ryan was also more motivated. He would read then said, "I said it first!" Thanks to Progressive Phonics website, I think the free e-book was very useful. I could see how Ryan slowly got the pattern of "cat", "hat", "mat" after training him reading them using the e-book. It was a good practice for him!

We also discussed "What do we bring to the zoo?" We learned some new animals and I let them draw a zoo. This week was much much much better than last week. Fiuhhhh..

- 4 -

Talking about Girls' Club, the virtue of the month is "magnanimity", to have a big heart. Marie tried to explain that "magna" means great and "animos" means soul, a great soul. We focused on forgiveness as part of this virtue because some of them requested Marie to talk about forgiveness. They were quite aware that bullying occurred in school and they were discussing on how they could forgive and move on. Indeed, to forgive your 'enemy' is very difficult.

- 5 -

Have you read Pippi the Longstocking? I read it when I was in secondary school (a bit too late to read it right?). I couldn't recall the details, but the K1 children in a kindergarten were also reading this book. I ordered it online so I hope I could read it to Shalom and Ryan. HAHAHAHA. I hope they know children's classics when they are still children, not too late like me =P Sharmini was talking about Anne of Green Gables as it was also discussed in the catholicyoungwomen blog and I have not heard about these series before! Now I can start buying these books and give or lend them to the children around me. Hahahaha.

- 6 -

Every job has a kind of 'job hazard'. As research assistant, our 'job hazard' now is every time we see children, we try to guess their age. Hahahaha. The thing is a few months make a difference! For example, we tested the executive control of children from K2 (5-to-6 years old) and K1 (4-to-5 years old). The 4-year-olds already had difficulties in doing the tasks compared to the 5-year-olds. I'm a bit puzzled how they put all kids that were born in 2007 as K2 in Singapore, even though some of them were born in January and others were born in December! You could see the difference even though both of them are in the same class. When I was in Indonesia, the Catholic schools were very strict regarding the age at the moment of school admission. The academic year starts in June, so children who do not turn 3 by October of that year, must wait for another year. My brother was born on 30 December, so he joined another year. He would be quite left behind if he joined playgroup class when he was 2.5 years old (especially that he also just started speaking at the age of 2!). I also compared Paul's niece (Shalom) with my friend's daughter. The difference is 7 months and the vocabulary development is very different. However, when they go to preschool, they will be in the same batch! Hmmmm...

- 7 -

A normal question from my friend, "Are you going to take Master's?"
I said yes, but not so soon.

Oh well, life is not as straightforward as I thought :)

More quick takes at www.conversiondiary.com!

7 Quick Takes Friday Vol.14

- 1 -

This week I went to kindergarten almost every day to assess some K2's vocabulary. One of the K2 boy (around 6 years old) told my colleague:

xx: I'm very scared when I'm 18, I need to do army. I'm scared to die!
my colleague: oh, how old are you now?
xx: 6
my colleague: ahh. Don't worry, it's still 12 more years.

In Singapore, all boys need to do National Service (2 years military training). I didn't expect a 6-year-old kid to be worried about army!!

- 2 -

On Monday, the Legionaries celebrated my birthday with durian!! When I was outside the door, I smelled durian already, but I thought "Oh maybe durian cake!" It turned out to be real durian!! Yipeeeee!!!

Perhaps it's true that as you grow older, birthday becomes 'just like other day'. Nevertheless, Fr Mario told me that birthday is an opportunity to give thanks and to renew the struggle to be better :)

- 3 -

My spiritual reading now is on "The Soul of Apostolate". It's very good! Many people are so active here and there and forgetting their own interior life.

It's a good reminder for me to struggle better in my prayer and doing the norms of piety. At busy moments like last week, it was quite hard to do my prayer. However, thank God that this week is better! I managed to sleep for 7.5 hours for two nights and how big the difference that this rest makes :P Of course, when we don't get enough sleep, we shouldn't be grumpy!

- 4 -

My boyfriend is not a flower-giver, so when he does, it becomes super-special. Smart man huh!

- 5 -

The most difficult part when I run experiment with children is, how to answer the children who are not in our participants list. This week one of the children whispered at my ear, "Are you going to call me?" Another child asks, "Are you coming tomorrow? Can you call me next week?" So I tried to console them and said, "Don't worry, I'm still your friend even though you are not called to play in the music room. If I call all children in the class, no one will listen to teacher's story!"

- 6 -

Yesterday I attended doctrine class on Freedom, Conscience, and Natural Law. I was lost in the middle of the class. Luckily Father asked, "Any questions? Ferninda, do you understand?" Then I was like, "Urgh, I didn't get the last sentence." Krizia helped me to point the notes that I wrote (without understanding it!). Father was talking about the common perception on freedom of conscience and that conscience is independent of moral law. This perception is not true. Right or true conscience follows the moral law!!

- 7 -

For the following weeks, I'll be busy running vocabulary assessments for the kindergarten kids. We want to see how vocabulary is related with the result from the experiment. Pray for me!!!

More quick takes at www.conversiondiary.com!

How the children do apostolate

When I was in Indonesia, I just needed to walk to teach in the neighbourhood Sunday School. One of the catechism children stayed a few steps away from my house. She always played first in the morning (she was primary 2, I guess, now she's grown up already!!). Then she would stop playing and told her friend, "I need to go to Sunday School!" This friend of hers, is actually not a Catholic, but this little friend followed the child to the Sunday School!! Weeks over weeks! This girl even joined our Christmas celebration and the parents couldn't do anything because "She enjoyed going to Sunday School with Devi!" (Devi is the Catholic girl)

:)

Simple, natural, sincere... Kids are the best in these three things! ^^

Cute-ness of kids this week..

One fine day at a kindergarten, I was doing observation study. While I was holding the video camera, a kid asked me:

xx: Do you want to go to doctor?
me: nope.
xx: Why?
me: because I'm not sick.
yy (the friend): Pretend lah!

***

A legionary's 5-year-old kid came to retreat:

me: what do you sing in school? Humpty Dumpty?
xx: no, it's baby song!!
me: how about B.I.N.G.O?
xx: it's also baby song!
me: what do you sing at school??
xx: national song!
me: try to sing it?
xx: you sing!
me: national song? I'll sing my national song, I don't know your national song.

Wah, kids these days do not sing children songs???

***

Just now, me and my housemate bumped to a daddy with 2 kids and a helper.

boy: (to me and my housemate) look I have Hello Panda! (biscuit)
me: wah nice!!

then they went out first because they live one level below us.

boy: are you staying here? (pointed to the door opposite his door)
me: nope, we're going up.
boy: bubyeee!
(and the little sister blew kiss to us! =P) I didn't know I have cute neighbours! HAHAHA..


Have a great week! Just one more day to weekend!

7 Quick Takes Friday - Vol. 13

- 1 -

This post becomes a 7-Quick-Takes-Sunday. My retreat with Legion of Mary ended today. It was quite tiring but it was quite relaxed too compared to my personal retreat (that's why I told other members that they still need to go to their personal retreat =P ). It's very nice to encourage each other and to have a spiritual input. At least there's something knocked my head hard enough to wake me up and struggle harder :)

- 2 -

Last week flew very fast. I went to the kindergarten almost every day to do my observation study. One of the kids called me and my colleague "Suspicious girls" because we walked around with video and audio recorders.

- 3 -

I love the talk that was given in the recollection on Wednesday. The speaker talked about the topic "Bringing up happy and holy children". She explained 14 tips on practicing virtues (for ourselves!). She said, "To bring up happy and holy children, we need to be happy and holy too!" Even though most of the people who attended the recollection were married women, I've found the meditations and talk were very useful. The interesting thing was, during examination of conscience, one of the questions was "Do I realize that as parents, we hold the primary responsibility of the education of the children? Do I communicate this with my husband so that we can carry out this duty well?" Wow..... This is very very cool! Another point was, "Even If I have not been given any children, do I become a witness of genuine marital love for other people?"

- 4 -

Somehow I could not recall much on the past week. Oh thank God, I felt much better at work now. Things are getting tougher, but I do enjoy my interaction with the preschool children :) *sorry for writing this again and again!*

- 5 -

No time to do house chores for the past week. I was super-KO when I reached home.

- 6 -

Ohhh...we had sushi after Legion of Mary meeting on Monday! I hope we really get more new members.

- 7 -

Need to start running again... >.<