the guest speaker at church yesterday spoke of the wonder of the bus bell – of why children love to press the bell because they know that when they do so, the bus will…get this..STOP. imagine that! the wonder of the ‘ting’ – small sound, big action. he also spoke of how as we grow up and become more world-weary, not only do we lose the wonder of the bus bell, we also lose the sense of wonder about God. God is, amongst many other t(h)ings, really wonderful – full of wonder.

i took a long time to walk back the five busstops after delivering the ginormous pyrex containing achar to uncle y’s place (oof, poor arms). the crunchy-leaf-radar was on high alert. my crunchy-leaf-radar is a vestigial structure that never disappeared despite having evolved from a primary school kid. whilst it took me ten min to walk to class in the mornings, i took thirty min to walk home. mainly because i diverted off the track to step on crunchy leaves and snappy twigs.

the wee cousin didn’t get the idea of the crunchy-leaf-radar. he had his tissue paper radar. every tissue paper he saw in sight, he’d take it, wipe his nose, and hand it to me. thanks a lot kid. but to make up for it, he was highly entertaining. he had this tiny flag with bugsbunny on it and everytime you gave the flag to him, he’d clutch it, stand at attention and sing some garbled form of the national anthem, replete with all the cymbal clashing noises. all thanks to his party sympathiser brother who just learnt it from primary school.

apart from the irritating non-questions asked by people who i see only once a year , i love chinese new year. all the cousins get to hang out, makan, forget about our crappy jobs/litreviews/NS, and remember the saturdays when we were young where we watched mary poppins everyweek, played pepsicola/waterguns/nintendo, and drank copious amounts of orange pop at chinese new year.

now, family, is a wonderful ting.

as part of ‘fieldwork’, i attended A’s catholic mass service today. i knew it was going to be interesting because the moment i opened his book, it said ’second sunday in ordinary time’. wow! immediately i thought of one of my favourite books, ‘if no one speaks of remarkable things’, that celebrates the ordinary.

i really thank God for 1) the ability to sight-read/sing the music score in the hymn book and 2) for being a good anglican girl by recalling how to sing the liturgy and not baulking at the sight of the spiffy incense swinging thingamajig. *gives self congratulatory pat*

the feeling i got from attending that service was really different, the most apt word would be ‘reverential’. (ok, and i thought my eyes were kidding me when i saw Jesus smiling from the ceiling. apparently the famous hanging sculpture has Jesus smiling one side and frowning the other). but the thing which made me do a double take was this simple line in a hymn which went ‘may the words of God comfort you’. it made me rethink my normal attitude towards the Bible (ala 2 tim 3:16… All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness), and made me smile inside, something that has not happened in a while.

and when i got home, i watched wall-e! yay! mummy borrowed the dvd because the dvd rental shop lady said i would like it. and we all did, laughing at the silly bots! it was already a good sign when Piaf’s La Vie En Rose played. and it was such a sweet show, with little words but so much heart. *holds some virtual hand* *pets some wonky robot’s head* aw! i’m glad it won some spiffy award at some spiffy awards ceremony recently. it is chockfull of sparkly awesomeness.

*beams*

sometimes in life, i make very bad choices. this has to be one of them.

in beijing i had a deep sense of foreboding, real nightmares about you, and despite all the spitting/pollution/oilyfood i honestly didn’t want to come back. and now its back to the same-old-same-old, no thanks at all to you.

so whats so happy and whats so new about ‘happy new year’?

hello, my name is jiejie D and i’m your newly-minted primary 2 sunday school teacher.

the children were so funny. at the age of 8, they were not the ‘too cool for sunday school’ types and hence laughed at every single joke, sang every song with gusto and did everything they could do with their 8-yr-old’s might just for that extra sticker on their attendance card.

of course there were the discplinary thingamjigs of the non-stop yakking, the ‘I WANT TO GO PEEPEE NOWNOWNOW’ (just before entering the sanctuary for communion. good grief. talk about social embarrassment.), and the kop-ping of ALL the sweets at the church reception desk immediately after communion but not as bad as i imagined it to be.

we sang one of my favourite sunday school songs ’shake a friend’s hand’ and one of the actions was ‘bump a friend’s hip’. well, if you are 24 and the kid is 8, it is more like ‘bump your teacher’s leg and she bumps your shoulder’ kinda thing.

and they REALLY CAN TALK (and talk and talk). they entertained each other with talk about their holidays and marvelled at how each other’s life was so similar. ‘i have a gu-gu’, ‘ME TOO! i also have a gu-gu!’, ‘ME THREE ME THREE!!!’. um yes kids. gu-gu is a generic term. they iz not samez personz. srsly. HAHA.

even from the first class i can tell that being a sunday school teacher will be stretching in a multitude of ways. for one, my love language is definitely not ‘physical touch’, but these kids are bundles of hugs and hip-bumps and hand-holding. i didn’t realise the last part until we were going to the eatery for refreshments and then this sweetie pie came up to me and held my hand.

excuse me as my heart melts a little.

squee!

edited to add: in line with the theme, this vimeo is irresistible. squee! hippopotamus!

Once upon a time… from Capucha on Vimeo.