Darla the Destroyer!

Darla's sand art.

Darla's favorite place to sleep.

We took this one as she was "attacking" us and caught her off guard.

Ah, Darla the cat-child. We only have Darla for one more week. It's been fun to cat-sit for these past few months. She has been a great play-mate for us. We have games that she likes to play. One is where she stalks us from the floor while we are on the bed. If we move out of view she pounces at us. She's too timid to really do much and usually only gives us a pat on the arm with her paw. She also likes to chase me through the house attacking my ankles when I'm wearing a dress. (FYI: This is Annie writing. I don't want to start any rumors about Brian!)

While she has been with us, Darla has earned the name "Darla the Destroyer." This is because of her many antics. She loves to get into the window sill and look out into the world. As she has done this she has bent three sets of blinds. Also, for some unknown reason, she enjoys chewing on the blinds. Strange. When she is angry (usually because we've put her in the bathroom too long) she kicks her cat litter all over the bathroom floor, which looks like she is trying her skills at Japanese sand art. She enjoys jumping onto the back of the kitchen chairs and attacking her own tail through the cut outs in the wood.

Darla demonstrated her newest trick last night. We came home from a lovely night of Chinses massages and Vietnamese food with our good friend, Tanya, to find Darla stuck in the shower. She'd managed to jump over the shower door to get to the window in the shower. Then she was stuck. We've decided to just leave the shower door all open so that she doesn't have to do this stunt again! Crazy cat!

Week 2: What We'll Miss About L.A.

The Hollywood Bowl! This past weekend we joined some friends to see the L.A. Philharmonic play the Looney Tunes at the Hollywood Bowl. The orchestra played along with the cartoons on the big screen. I can't take credit for taking the picture above. I found these pictures on the internet from someone who had much better seats than us! I loved how they made the rainbow colors on the shell.

This was our annual trip to the Hollywood Bowl. Last year we saw a concert with fireworks. The Hollywood Bowl is the largest ampitheater in America. While enjoying the concert you have a view of the Hollywood sign, the Griffith Observatory and the few stars you can see in the sky through all the light pollution.

Thanks to our neighbor and good friend, Patrick, for organizing this fun outing!

A Year From Now...

As Brian and I look ahead at our future plans we realize that about a year from now we will no longer be living in Los Angeles. Yes, we will pack up the truck and leave Smog-ville. Although there are many things that make us crazy about L.A. (pollution, overcrowding, the freeways--to name a few), we realize also that there are things that we will miss about this city of over 12 million people.

One thing we will miss is our lovely running club. About a month after we were married we were running through our neighborhood and discovered a little running store. We stopped in and found out that they have a weekly running club. We've been running with this club every Monday night for the past four months. It's a fun and very mixed group of people. There is enough diversity that for some of us the only common bond is the joy of running. We do a group stretch, run through the park (either 3.3 or 4.8 miles depending on the route), eat snacks and stretch more. Brian and I have enjoyed getting to know the people in the group. There is a kind of heart to this rag-tag group.

When we leave L.A., we will miss our running group.

Heatwave 2008

We never thought that we'd be so happy to have a daytime high of 95 degrees. Yesterday, we were almost giddy. We cooked at home for the first time in about four days, and we even used the oven to bake some brownies.

Why is this so monumental? Because we had a solid seven straight days where the temperature was at least 100 degrees. The temperatures topped at 107 degrees more than once! This is the longest heatwave that we could remember. We often have a two or three-day run of 100 degree temps, but not seven straight days!

Over this week Brian and I spent a lot of time at our local library and other places that had good air conditioning. As this is our first summer in our new apartment we weren't aware of how poor the insulation was. We were only able to air condition our bedroom, and we had to keep it running all night long to be able to sleep. Our poor foster-cat quickly learned that the best place in the apartment was on our bed where the fan from the AC was blowing. This was after about two days of her "yelling" at us. We imagine that what she said was something like, "Turn off the heat, you dummies!"

But, all three of us made it through. I managed to come down with the flu over the past four days. Having a fever during a heatwave is not much fun. Brian took very good care of me. We made it through! I think that Brian and I ate our weight in popsicles and ice cream. That was the fun part!

THANK YOU!!!

We just want to take a moment to thank you all for the support that has been coming in and for your prayers. We are so humbled by the generosity of so many of our friends and family. We are thankful for your prayers over our preparation and for the students that we will be teaching overseas. Thank you! We couldn't do this without your partnership.

"Give thanks to the Lord, call on his name;
make known among the nations what he has done."
--Ps. 75:1

Picture time!

This blog has been lacking in photos, so here we go...

(p.s. Check out our website for more photos and fun: brian.annie.smith.googlepages.com)

By the way, we got married. Here's the evidence. Special thanks to Cliff, the Canadian papparazzi, who snapped this during the ceremony.

Our first hiking group! This was our group for March. Brian and I hope to organize trips every two months or so. This was at Malibu Creek State park. We thought we'd hike only 5 miles, but that turned into 8! We never found the "pretty view" but did find an old abandoned house. I (Annie) was there too. Someone had to take the picture.

No matter how much or how hard I tried, this one just would not rotate. So, lay your head on the side of the table and enjoy BRIAN-FIL-A! This was Brian's graduation day from Talbot. He was required to attend. We decided that if we had to drive 35 miles we'd enjoy some Chick-fil-A too! The closest one to us is aboutt 25 miles, so this was quite a treat. See! Brian is enjoying it very much! Oh yeah, and he is happy to have completed his second master's degree.

This is Darla, the cat-child. She managed to get up in the window even though it was only open a few inches. Amazingly, she managed to get out too! She definitely lives up to the adage : "Curiosity killed the cat." She is quite feisty and likes to get in places where she doesn't belong.

Hike #2, Memorial Day at Griffith Park. This is an area of the park known as the "old zoo." It really was the Los Angeles Zoo until the mid-1960's. The cages are now open for anyone to use for fun photo opportunities. I don't know if we ever agreed as to what kind of animal we were supposed to be. And for this one we figured out how to set the camera on a rock and set the timer so that we could take a picture with everyone in it!

Real stories make the best movies.

This weekend Brian and I went crazy watching movies. We hadn't been to a movie in about 6 months. As this is one of my favorite things to do, I had been greatly anticipating what we would see next. We took Brian's 16-year old friend to see the new Indiana Jones film. Overall, it was entertaining, but it was a little disappointing. Some of the story just got too far-fetched.

Saturday morning Brian showed me an ad in the paper for a new film called The Children of Huang Shi. I had really been wanting to see it! So, we hopped in my car (lovingly named Beeper) and headed off to the matinee. We are both so thrifty that we saw no other choice than the 1:00 showing. The film is based on a true story of George Hogg, an English journalist who found himself in Japanese occupied China in 1937. Through a course of events he ends up at an orphanage. When the Chinese nationalist soldiers show up asking to recruit the boys Hogg makes a tough decision. He gathers the boys and all the equipment they could carry and takes off on a 700-mile journey up the Silk Road in winter. I was so touched by the story. And, Brian and I got excited every time they said something in Chinese that we understood. I highly recommend this one!

Sunday evening we'd planned to go salsa dancing with the couple that live downstairs in our building. There's a great place with free lessons at the Universal Citywalk. And, what happened at Universal Studios on Sunday? It caught on fire!!! There was a major fire in the backlot that burned through some storage areas that housed old films and video tapes. As if we didn't have enough pollution already, all this gunk was floating in the air. Universal Studios was told by the fire department not to open the theme park or the Citywalk area. The really sad part of this story is that we've been trying to get together with these friends to go dancing for about two months now.

But, we had an alternate plan. At the church they were having another movie night with a panel discussion afterwards. The movie of the night was Freedom Writers, another movie based on a true story. Again, I was greatly moved. The stories of these children who lived in a racial warzone was almost unbelievable. After the film, Erin Gruwell, the teacher, was on the panel discussion. It was almost strange to see her in real life. She really made a difference in these kid's lives. And, I guess she inspired me to write more.

As I look at the themes of these movies, I notice that they were about one person taking interest in the lives of a group of children that had been abandoned in many ways. Too often this still happens. It makes me even more excited to go to China so that Brian and I can hopefully make a difference in the lives of our students-to-be. We hope that Father will guide our paths to those He is already preparing for us to befriend.

I guess you don't have to survive a war or the streets of Long Beach to have something to write about.