With silver bells and cockle shells!

 I was good. I practiced self-restraint. A few weeks ago, this was the extent of my plant collection. Yeah thats it. Just two basil plants, a house plant, and an aloe vera (the other aloe vera is a previous room mate's and she still hasn't come to pick it up yet!) However, the one basil somehow died, and then I kept walking by beautiful gardens in our neighborhood, or seeing picturesque places like this at Ms. Pat's house:

 Amber hasn't been feeling all that great lately, both physically and emotionally, so I bought her flowers and left them as a surprise on her doorstep. I knew she wanted hydrangeas and I found them at Trader Joe's while I was grocery shopping for half of what the plant nursery was selling them for, so I bought her some. She is going to plant them in the garden plot to the right of her front door.

 See? Aren't they perty? However, this set off my plant-lust.

 Now in my defense I already owned all these by this point, and the majority were grown from seeds that I bought over a month ago. There are Bush Beans (which I thought were pole beans. Woops. Read the package next time, don't just look at the picture!!) The seedlings on the far left are Cucumbers, as well as Lemon Verbena, Rosemary, and Sweet Peas in with the Bush Beans.

 And then on the other end of the porch the two planters on either side is Lettuce, and the pots in the middle are Lavender which I started from seeds for the first time. Dude they take FOREVER to grow from seeds!!!

 See? Teeny baby Lavender!!!

 And here's me herbs: Closest to furthest: Rosemary, the pot that's empty is actually Columbine that hasn't sprouted yet (okay so not all herbs) my Lemon Verbena and Basil. Yeah I move the plants around off the ledge and back onto it depending on how hard the wind is blowing.

 Here's the Bush Beans and Sweet Peas. This one is okay, but in the other pots this size there were two bean plants and two sweet peas growing. I knew that wasn't going to go well for very long before they started crowding each other out. Well I thought I had enough pots to house everything, but I knew I needed more potting soil. So I started out for Walgreens this morning as I knew they had potting soil and I wasn't feeling good so I didn't want to go too far from home.

 Well, there was a nursery about half the distance to my house than Walgreens, and I knew they would have potting soil. So I pulled over and checked. And wouldn't you know it they had herbs for half the price I had been getting them. And I found CURRY! I don't usually cook with Curry but it was really fragrant and unique, so I bought one. And then they had large, beautiful Lavender so I bought some of that, as well as two more Rosemary plants. My late grandfather was able to coax his Rosemary into huge beautiful plants that he then planted under his wife's kitchen window. I LOVE that idea. I don't want to plant the rosemary at my current residence but I'm hoping if I baby it and keep it in a pot until I have more permanent residence it will be established enough that I can do the same thing. Or just have huge potted Rosemary. I know in Tennessee it will grow out of doors and be a perennial but I think Kentucky is too cold, so I might just have to keep it potted. 

 So I brought all my goods (including 2 bags of potting soil - waaaay cheaper than at Walgreens as I'm sure you can imagine) and realized I now did not have enough pots. My room mate Amber (different from Hydrangea Amber) came home, saw all the foliage and said, 'Mary Mary, quite contrary, how your garden GROWS, and grows, and grows! Girl where did all this come from?' So I confessed and told her my predicament. 'I need accountability. I need to go to the big nursery and get more pots because the little one was out. But I'm afraid I'll get the itch again and will buy more plants!' 'Oh girl I'll go with you. I'll keep you accountable. I'll yell 'PUT IT DOWN! We ain't got no more room!!'"

 Well as SOON as I parked and she got out of the car and saw all the beautiful blooms, she said, "oh crap. I'm getting the itch too! This is not good!" She has an Aloe Vera plant (its a popular gift in these parts, apparently!) that desperately needed repotting. And of course this nursery not only had regular terracotta pots but amazing pottery pots that were three times the price for fru-fru gardeners. So we spent 3x's the time I thought we would as she walked back and forth between the pretty pots and the terracotta pots. Finally I suggested she paint the terracotta pot and she caved. I also got a hanging planter for my indoor plant, and she liked that idea so started perusing the hanging pots. However they were $20. So I talked her into leaving and we left with pots and some miracle grow plant food.

 Here is what the Aloe Vera planter looked like when she finished it. She painted it black and then spray-painted silver flacks onto it. As you can see, we have enough Aloe Vera to last us a while!!

 Well we went back to the smaller nursery to get potting soil and she found a hanging Fuchsia for $17.00 so she bought that. And here is our lovely porch, way too much $$ and two hours later:
 

Now I need to STOP playing and get this study guide done for my Theology 1 Final on Tuesday!!! :-D However, like I said, whenever I garden there is something incredibly refreshing and RIGHT about it :-)

He he.... woops. Henna

(warning to any guys who might be reading: This particular post contains extensive information regarding fashion and girls' rendition of how their hair looks. Continue at your own risk) My room mate was able to go home for a while and brought back Henna as part of my gift. And I've always known that Henna was used not just to paint crazy patterns on your hands and feet (that freaks out fellow students, who at first think you've burnt your hand terribly... and then immediately afterwards ask if you have gotten a tatoo. And it also starts an intriguing conversation with the barista at the coffee shop down the road, who has tatoos in Hebrew and is fluent in modern Hebrew and is interested in the fact that you speak Hungarian. Not that any of this has happened to me...) but can also be used on one's hair to give it a wonderful, silky feel as it is moisturized and nourished. I also knew that it tended to give one's hair certain hues pertaining to the individual applying it. Now, you see, my sister has used Henna before on her long blond hair. And it made it slightly darker, a little copperish, but very attractive. Add to that her incredible tan and I thought that it looked amazing. However. my hair is not my sisters. Now I'd gotten strawberry blond highlights a few months ago and they've grown out and faded. And my hair has just in general been driving me nuts, 'cause the style is grown out of it and its thin and wispy and if I don't do it just so its wispy and crazy and bumps up in one spot making my skull look square-ish and my bangs stick straight up or lump in a particular direction making my prominent forehead resemble that of a Klingon's from Star Trek, and on the left side swoops gracefully in and on the left side flips out, making me look like I'm generally traveling in a left-to-right direction at all times and my hair has followed suit.
Yeah my hair was driving me nuts as you can tell.
Now, if I keep my hair ridiculously moisturized and style it for a half hour then it looks fine. The exact same at all times, but at least not an eyesore.




(note to girls reading this: Now is NOT the part where you all swoop in as supportive gal friends and go overboard with affirmations on physical appearance, because I'm being rather tongue-in-cheek with my self deprecation. It keeps me humble. I like how I look and have a good self image. Chill.)
SO... Henna. It has moisturizing qualities. It makes hair silky. It prevents breakage and "the falling out of hair" as the packages says.
Voila.
My room mate helped me mix it; you make a paste that in texture resembles chocolate mousse and in appearance resembles something you'd find in the back field after the cows had been there. And it smells very earthy. Not a bad smell, just earthy.
My friend came over and goofed off with her feet while I applied it to my hair. She laughed and said it looked like I had gotten in a mud fight and lost. ;-)
SO I left it in for the prescribed three hours after that; you CAN leave it in for four hours, if you'd like.
Now, while I left it in, I wasn't watching my hair. I left it unsupervised while I tried to figure out Microsoft Word on my computer, talked to my mom on the phone, made dinner, cleaned a little...
And then I looked in the mirror.
Now, it just looked LIGHTER at that point. I could see there was some... shall we say... some slight changes in the color tone of my hair, and a lot in the highlights of it. But that was fine. It was driving me nuts anyway.



So I rinsed it. And I didn't think it was that bad when my hair is all dark and full of water and doesn't resemble whatever color it is supposed to be at that point in time. But I could see rather vibrant red on my scalp. I just figured that was because Henna makes your SKIN so red, but for whatever reason, as the chemical make up of hair and skin are different, my hair wouldn't be THAT red... so then I dried it.



And... you remember on Anne of Greene Gables when she dies her hair to turn it a beautiful raven brown, because she doesn't like that its red, and it turns out green? Well my hair wasn't a raven black, but now it was definitely no longer any kind of washed out blond.




As my other room mate said, I look like Cheryl from the old Archie comics. Which is fine, a new unique look for a new semester that will hopefully be unique in a GOOD way. However, I am just not sure I have the wherewithal to carry t he look and reputation that comes with Miss Cheryl Blossom at this school...



SO I'm a redhead now. Actually its more of a brunette. I don't have any other really good pictures of me yet, because I rinsed it out at 11 pm last night, and today is Saturday and I am not going anywhere or making myself look like anything other than a bed-head college student with too much homework to read.
But I'll try to post some better pictures soon.
The other thing is that when you put the Henna on your hair, it starts to dry right away. SO you really have to know what you are doing to get it all even. AND I had the washed out highlights in my hair, AND as I said my hair strands are thin but there is a lot of it. So it was rather difficult to get the same amount of Henna distributed evenly all over my hair. So the 'under hairs' down by my neck are still more brown, its just the 'top hairs' that have gotten very patriotic for Valentine's day. ;-)
Oh well. I'm a unique person all the way around, and now my looks just prove it. ;-)

~Princess Ouch~

you know you are a missions major when...

I sent the following list to my supporters when I was volunteering at an orphanage in Romania in 2006. I thought I'd post it here as a comparison to a more recent list:

You know you're in Romania when...

1. Cold Cereal is a sweet thing of the past.

2. When you ask to put milk in your tea, you get funny looks

3. If you wear a scarf on your head and it's generally known you're not married or a Pentecostal, you get funny looks.

4. It's not unusual to see a Semi-truck parked next to a horse hitched to a wagon full of firewood.

5. No one thinks it's odd to see a guy in 19th century clothing herding his cows or sheep home and chatting on a cell-phone.

6. Most of your friends 30 and over have gold teeth, black teeth, or several teeth missing.

7. It's safer to drive on the wrong side of the road and risk getting hit by an oncoming car than it is to drive on the right side of the road and risk hitting the potholes the size of the grand canyon as you swerve to miss hitting the pedestrians who are casually walking down the middle of your lane, or the gypsy wagon with hand-made brooms sticking out in all directions. (Disclaimer: just for the record I haven't done this as I'm not brave enough to try driving here. But my friend's have)

8. When a person walks out into the middle of a beyond-busy street in the middle of the city with driver's who invent traffic laws as they go, you're immediate reaction is not "SUICIDER!!" but, "Oh good. Traffic will stop for them and I can cross at the same time and get to where I'm going on time instead of being late!!!" (pedestrians have right-of-way and often take advantage of this. Yes, Csaba, I'm talking about you.)

9. "We have to leave right away" really means, "We have to start getting ready and be out the door sometime in the next ten minutes." (in the villiages)

10. Unless it's exams week, getting up at 7 am is the crack of dawn. "Getting to bed late" means getting to bed around 1am.

11. If a friend offers you a ride in their car to church, (thus cutting the travel time from a freezing 40 minute walk to a 10 minute drive) you begin thinking of ways to get the pope to saint them, even though they aren't Catholic.

12. You watch your feet when you walk, because there aren't laws about keeping animals contained, and they (the animals) often leave "gifts' on the ground. If the ground is 'gift' free, the pavement (or lack thereof) is so riddled with cracks and potholes that it sometimes takes talent to keep an even gait.

13. When someone shakes your hand you automatically begin to kiss them on both cheeks.

14. You're guilt-tripped into taking 3rd helpings at mealtime.

15. You have to say "no thank you" at least 4 times before they believe you really won't accept what they are offering.

16. Doing laundry is a 2 to 3 day event. (2 1/2 days are spent geting the clothes dry as there aren't clothes dryers here.

17. You don't find it odd to see a woman wearing a red and white striped t-shirt with a black checkered skirt, brown stockings, berkenstock sandals, and a hand-knitted sweater over it all.

18. You have to budget "eating out" at that really fancy resturaunt, McDonalds.

My two roommates are from Nagaland, India, and I am gathering more and more friends from India. So I decided to make a list of 'you know you have Indian roommates when..." list.

You know you have Indian roommates when:

1. you buy black tea in bulk

2. most meals include large quantities of garlic and onions, and those are the bland dishes.

3. your spice cabinet consists 70% of chili-related spices that threaten to catch Americans on fire simply by looking at them

4. helping verbs or articles are rarely used in sentences. In fact, quite a few sentences consist just of subject and verb.

5. To emphasize something, it is simply repeated twice (it's HOT hot, not just hot.)

6. Most material possessions are not bought but acquired from the Indian or international network. Actually this can be said of most Seminary students as well, just subtract the 'international' descriptor.

7. Chocolate is considered bizarre

8. Bollywood movies and songs are consistent occurrences.

9. Arranged marriages are not considered abnormal, although preferable is a debated descriptor.

10. Grocery shopping occurs once a month, and is done through catching a ride with a friend or walking the 6 blocks to the store

11. You know what Chai is. You also know that Starbucks doesn't sell it.

12. You know three different ways to make chai.

13. you buy the ingredients to make chai in bulk

14. You think people who don't drink chai regularly are abnormal

15. You know five different locations of international grocery stores, and might know their owners on a first-name basis

16. Most of the foods in your pantry and refrigerator that have labels not in English

17. 'Eating out' is Burger King.

18. Nodding one's head no longer occurs in an up-and-down movement. It is done through making the chin lead one's head in a side-to-side, bobble-type motion. Sort of like the Albert Mohler figurines you buy at Lifeway bookstores.

19. you know saffron is not just a color, you know where to buy it, you have an inkling how to cook with it, and you are considering paying the $5 an ounce for it because its that good.

20. Curry doesn't scare you.

21. your 'Auntie" or 'Older sister' is not biologically related to you.