At the end of the day yesterday, I discovered that I completed many backlogged tasks. The pastor's job is demanding as I don't have a secretary or pastoral associate. I don't even have a building. I have five worship sites and I have to recreate everything from scratch.
I am discouraged by the choir this week. We've had a time set to meet each week and three members come on time and the other six or seven come nearly an hour later. They are trying to do too much. The real frustrating thing is that we are not learning any new music. The choir listens to Youtube videos and tries to remember what they heard. They often get at least one segment of the lines wrong and then they keep repeating the wrong verses. They move far away from the intended musical score. The musical notes means nothing to them. They only sing from the printed lyrics and make no notations at all on their sheets. They are not learning good fundamentals by this practice. I'm discouraged, but I realize it is Holy Week, which has its owns demons to it.
In art class today, I completed an etching drawing that I did not like at all, but at the end, I kind of liked what emerged. Then I was handed this extraordinarily difficult assignment. The instructor said it was complicated, but that I should give it my best shot. It look so long to get the dimensions right. Now, I brought it home as homework. I'm in the discouraging phase of his drawing, but it'll come around. Maybe the same will happen with the choir.
During class I heard crowds cheering. I imagined that perhaps it was a sporting event, but Jordan doesn't really unite around sports. (Everyone smokes here. Cultivating athletes does not seem like a cultural thing to do.) During the drive home after class, the roads were clogged. Apparently, the Jordan soccer team pulled an upset and beat the Japanese by a score of 2-1 placing Jordan second in the groupings with 7 points as Japan leads with 10. These are the qualifying rounds to see who goes to the World Cup. Congratulations to Jordan's soccer team. I imagine it will be front-page news tomorrow morning.
One of the tasks I completed was counting coins received in the offertory. The upside of this menial task is that I now know the coinage for the Dinar system. I never paid attention to it before this.
Yesterday I made some pizza. I took some Jordanian bread as the dough and I did not believe it would be usable as a crust, but it came out delicious. The crust was just right. I also made tuna melt sandwiches from day-old bread. That was quite nice. It is one of the first times I've had a non-Jordanian sandwich since I've been here. Eating sandwiches is rare anyways.
Drivers. I liken them to sheep. They are playful, bounce into one another, but not hard enough to cause serious infractions, and they bounce off one another. The well-behaved sheep are kept in line with sheep-dogs. How I wish there were more of those dogs on the street.
Oh, yes. I had a tasty brunch at the Four Seasons Hotel this morning to say goodbye to two parishioners who stay in Jordan has ended. I will miss them.
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