I'M COMING BACK TO KANSAS

I'M SO EXCITED TO BE HEADING BACK TO KANSAS TOMORROW!!!  Maribel is taking me to the BART station at 445am (what a saint), and then I'll BART down to the airport, where my flight leaves at the comparatively late time of 730am (usually the flights for Kansas leave at 530am).  I've a layover in Denver, and I'll be back in Kansas by 530!!!!!!  Then I'm spending the weekend, Monday, and Tuesday with my family, driving to Bethel with my little sister on Tuesday, and then leaving for Oakland again on the following Monday.  Hopefully I'll be able to catch a bunch of friends before they head off to Europe and Costa Rica for Interterm (if you are one of these people, YOU HAD BETTER COME SEE ME BEFORE YOU GO).  I'm planning on lots of Mojo's dates, lots of swing-dancing with Brian and Nate and Shayne, cold weather and warm houses, open skies, straight roads, and a distinct absence of sirens.
See you all in a few days!!!!

An Oakland Catholic Worker Christmas

       Merry Christmas from the Oakland Catholic Worker! Here is what we've been doing lately.

       Last week, Ben and I took Maria to Christmas Tree Lane in Alameda (described in detail in this post). She LOVED it. She came back and announced “Oh my gosh, I've been to Disneyland!” I remembered my camera this time, so here are a few pictures.

  

Maria was SO EXCITED!!!!

Volunteers from the street

Christmas lights.  On their MOTORCYCLES!!!

 

I guess this is what you do if you are a Jew but still want to be festive.

Tacky tacky tacky

        I woke up to a text from Ben this morning at 8am, and then couldn't go back to sleep, because after all, IT'S CHRISTMASSSSSSS!!!!! So instead of making a Christmas supper, I decided to make a Christmas dinner, and then spend the afternoon and evening digesting my food. I bought a ham and a can of apricots yesterday and threw them together to make a delicious meat dish. Then I sat by the stove and waited for it to cook. Since it's just cold as balls out and our house is neither insulated nor heated, I sat next to the stove and read for an hour or so until the kitchen warmed up. 

        Then I made some bacon to put in green beans, heated up some leftover rolls, and tossed it all onto the table. And yes. That is actually a lace curtain, and not a tablecloth. Don't judge. We have lace tablecloths, but they are at the bottom of a closet and I didn't want to get them out.

       And finally, here is that nativity scene picture you've all been waiting for. Unfortunately, Baby Jesus #2 was kidnapped and hasn't been returned, but we still have the “Support our Troops” star, the giant Jesus-eating sheep, and the assortment of African mammals.

Now, like every Unruh should, I'm going to go take a nap on the floor and let my food digest.

Merry Christmas to all, and thanks for reading!

Noah's Container Ship

        It has rained and rained and rained and rained and rained for the past several days. I think I must have missed the divine revelation to march all of the Oakland animals (racoons, mice, cockroaches) onto a giant container ship and set sail for China or something, because gosh, it has just not. stopped. raining, and it makes my life kind of a hassle. Since I'm from Kansas, where it rains for 20 minutes every six months (except in September, when it rains for 30 minutes, or enough to completely flood the lower part of Bethel, whichever comes first), I feel like I should really appreciate rain, since it's such a transient phenomenon. In Kansas, when it rains, all the ditches flood, I can put on my black rubber farm boots and go stomping around in the mud, or put on my black and white polka dotted boots to go to class, everyone busts out their colorful umbrellas and makes a giant umbrella-snake when they go to supper (or maybe that's just my mod...), people dance in the rain, go sliding in the mud, and really just have a good time. In Kansas, rain is a source of much joy and happiness (unless it's during harvest), and few people complain about it.

         In California, it's a different story. It started raining in mid-November, and it hasn't stopped since then. It rains at least once a week for several hours. When they said “rainy season,” they weren't joking around. But half the time, it isn't even productive rain – it just drizzles pitifully for awhile, just enough to get a person uncomfortably wet if they spend any time outside, but not actually enough to be worthwhile. The other half of the time (like today) it pours for hours and hours, with cold gale-force winds (Ok, actually the wind advisory on weather.com says “30 mph gusts.” Haha, 30mph? Whatever. Noobs. We Kansans call that a light breeze). It is just miserable. Everything is impossible, especially travel, because a lot of people don't have a car, and have to hike a mile to the BART station or wait for 20 minutes for a bus. Everything is wet, nasty muddy gutter-street-water gets tracked into the house, the streets stink more than usual, and there are huge giant puddles everywhere because the gutters and drains are clogged with trash. Yuck. Also there's no lightning or thunder. WHAT'S THE POINT OF RAIN IF THERE'S NO LIGHTNING OR THUNDER?! I saw on my Google homepage that there was supposed to be a thunderstorm and I was like OMG YES PLEASE. But no. Nothing. In Kansas, rain rarely occurs without at least some sort of pitiful cloud-to-cloud lightning, if not a full-blown balls-to-the-wall electrical spectacular, but here? Nothing. Just constant drizzly rain. Blech.

           But on the bright side, IN LESS THAN ONE WEEK I WILL BE BACK IN CIVILIZATION!!!!!! Back in Kansas!!!!! So for all you people who want to see me in the next few weeks, I'll be in Clay Center from the 28^th through the 2^nd, and Newton from the 2^nd to the 6^th. GET YOUR PARTY HATS ON.  

Como Hacer una Pinata

      Between this week and last, I learned how to make a pinata. One of the guests, Maria, heard about a pinata-making class at the local library, and she invited Maribel and I to go. On the way in, we saw lots of little kids, so we figured we'd be the oldest people there. We weren't, but just in case, we decided that we could pretend to be Maria's kids.

So here are the materials required:

Plastic Christmas-tree ornament

8.5x11” Card stock

Tape

Paper mache mix (flour and water works just as well)

Newspapers

Tissue paper

Scissors

And here are the steps:

1. Cut your pieces of cardstock in half the short way so you have two square-ish pieces
2. Finagle the pieces into cones and tape them into place
   Trim the top of the cones so they're flat
   
   
   
3. Make a bunch more cones. You'll want 6-8, or maybe more. A crazy old postman next to us had like 14.
   
   
   
4. Snip the edges of the cones so they'll lay flat against the Christmas ornament
   
   
   
5. Start taping the cones to the Christmas ornament
   
   
   
6. Keep taping them. Try to keep them symmetrical and stuff, but really, it's whatever
   
   
   
7. Smile and laugh with your fellow classmates
   
   
   
8. It's kind of hard to tape around the hanger-thing on the ornament. I just cut some extra room in my cones. For heaven's sake, don't put a cone OVER the ornament hanger-thing. Because then you'll have nowhere to hang it from! And you'll also have to pull all your cones off and start again. Not that I would know from experience or anything...
   
   
   
9. Paper-mache the crap out of it. Don't get the strips too wet because then you'll have an ungodly mess, but make sure you do a good job and cover all the cardstock and tape, because this is what makes the pinata nice and strong.
   
   
   
10. Leave it to dry for a week (or maybe just a couple days, I don't know).
    
    
    
11. When you come back to it, get yourself some tissue paper. We used some that was super long, idk the dimensions or anything, but I suppose it was probably an 18” square or something like that. You'll want to fold it in half, then half again the same way, so you've got a paper folded into a big strip with four layers.
    
    
    
12. Then fold that strip in half the other way, and then again, so you have a little fat rectangle with a bunch of layers. Then here's the tricky part. Cut the two long sides off. This way, you have a big long strip that you can unfold. You could also just cut along the fold, I guess, but then you have to worry about not cutting exactly on the fold and having those little folded-over bits on the edges, and those are just annoying.
13. Then snip a fringe into your little rectangle. I'd go about 2/3 of the way up or so.
    
    
    
    
    
14. Make lots of fringy things.
    
    
    
15. Then take a pair of scissors and run the blade along the fringes so they curl. It's like what you do with curling ribbon, except harder, because tissue paper is fragile. You'll get the hang of it after you've ripped off a couple of fringe pieces.
    
    
    
16. Now you can take some artistic licensure with the rest of these instructions. This is just what I did, obviously you can do whatever you want. I took a piece of the fringe and wrapped it around the tip, securing it with more paper-mache paste. But not too much, because tissue paper is fragile and it'll just break if you put too much on.
    
    
    
    
    
    
17. Keep adding layers and strips of curled fringe to the arms of your pinata, securing it in a few places with each trip around the arms (you don't want to put too much paste on because otherwise it will just be a wet sticky mess, and tissue paper sticks to anything that is even thinking about being wet and sticky).
    
    
    
18. Take some time to make silly faces because this is actually kind of a frustrating part of making pinatas.
    
    
    
19. Just keep adding fringe
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
20. Close-up
    
    
    
21. Just keep adding fringe
    
    
    
22. The library kicked us out after 2 hours, so we went home and made some flour-water paste and finished our pinatas at home. Yay, Maria is done!
    
    
    
23. Maribel and I are still slaving away...
    
    
    
24. Covering the spaces on the “body” of the pinata is the hardest. Just use your best judgment, and when in doubt, shove some curly tissue paper in there and paste it down.
    
    
    
25. Yay, I'm done!
    
    
    
    
    
    
26. Don Petronilo heard our commotion and came hurrying out of his room with a big stick (idk why he has a big stick in his room) because he wanted to break open our pinatas and eat the candy inside.

 That was a helluva lot of photos, you have no idea how long it took to upload and organize them all. I guess if I'd been smart, I would have broken it up into two posts, but I didn't, so thanks for suffering through the mother of all blog posts.

 

Christmas Tree Lane

        East Bay Supper Club is an FMCSF small group that meets every Monday for supper at a group member's house. They like to say that they were the “original” supper club, since their activities have spawned a San Francisco Supper Club and a South Bay Supper Club. Everyone knows that East Bay is the coolest, though. This week's meeting was at pastor Sheri Hostetler's house with her husband Jerome and their son Patrick. We started by sharing our favorite Christmas hymns.  The almost-unanimous decision was "Lo How a Rose," which a couple of people didn't know, so the whole group just burst into song.  It was like an episode of Glee, or something!  Then we all had some soup and talked about kids. Most of the people have kids, and one of the couples just announced that they were expecting, so a lot of the conversation tends to center around children. I didn't find that I had much to contribute, so I just ate my soup. I did find out, however, that one of Sheri's neighbors has parents that live in Wayland, IA, which is where my aunt and uncle are from! And it's a tiny town, like 500 people, so they probably know each other! How exciting is that?!

         Sheri and Jerome live on Thompson Avenue in Alameda, which is called “Christmas Tree Lane” during the winter, due to the FANTASTIC amount of Christmas cheer on their street. It's incredible, really. There are 50 families that live on the street, and almost every house (there are a few humbugs) is decorated within an inch of its life. The house next to Sheri and Jerome's has a light and sound display that alternates between “The Nightmare Before Christmas,” which plays every half hour, and “The Nutcracker” which plays on the alternate half hours. So every fifteen minutes, there is a show. And the lights blink in coordination with the music. Jerome says it gets a little old after awhile. But it is very impressive.

         The street also has a Santa mailbox, and volunteers from the street write back to all of the kids who dump their letters in. Every night of the week, one of the dads or guys from the street dresses up as Santa (Jerome's turn is this Thursday), other people sign up to be elves to pass out candy canes, and still more people sign up to be crossing guards (Santa's sleigh is on a median, and a lot of cars full of rubberneckers drive by in the evenings). It's magical, it really is. It's like a chunk of the 1950s (complete with LCD lights and state-of-the-art timers) right in the middle of Oakland. And it's not even tacky or kitschy or anything!

         I was super dumb and forgot to take my camera with me, so here's a link to their Facebook page, where you can look at lots of other people's (inferior) photos - http://www.facebook.com/christmastreelane

Maribel and I hope to take the guests there this week so that they can see it, so maybe I'll be able to take some pictures there.

Weekend in Photos

This post is a couple days late, mostly because I didn't want to write a full blog post. But I didn't want to not post, because I don't like it when I'm trying to keep up with someone's activities via blog and they don't post regularly (AHEM RYAN GOERTZEN). But today is my lazy day, so I'll just put up some pictures from my weekend.  Enjoy.  

1.  Turns out California can have some nice-looking sunsets too!

2.   FMCSF had a caroling/cookie eating event. We all brought cookies (all homemade, all delicious, because we're MENNONITES) and then walked around the city and sang.

3.   We had to practice a few of the lesser-known songs first.

 4.  We sang at an HIV hospice, streetcorners, and the houses of people we knew, or people who stuck their heads out of windows and asked us to sing for them. We sounded damn good.

5.  Tree. Made of bread.

6.  Ben's new best friend from the dog park. He is cute, even if he is a drop-kick dog.

7.  I bought these boots on Haight Street, and paired them with orange tights from Target and a vintage skirt from Haight Street.

 

 8.  Afternoon at the dog park.

9.   Ben's reading material, after he finished a Sudoku puzzle. Can you say “NERRRRRRDDDDDD”?

10.   AUSTRALIAN SHEPHERD THAT LOOKS LIKE MY DOG. I hope that lady wasn't freaked out by the ten or so photos I took of her and her dog. 

So that was my weekend, in photos.