Messy and Stinky

I promised that I would write a little about our two exchange students.  Let me preface this post by saying that despite the drawbacks to having them in our home, the benefits make up for them.  Not only that, but I actually like both of them.  They are both very sweet girls with whom we genuinely enjoy sharing our home and our dinners.

First is Messy.  She's our little Saudi Arabian.  Messy is Muslim which is no big shocker, but the common sect of Islam in Saudi Arabia is Sunni and she is Shia.  We learned this while her father was staying with us.  One of the benefits to her of living at our house instead of somewhere else was it's proximity to the mosque.  Turns out, it's the wrong denomination.  Oops.  There are some differences stemming from both her culture and religion that we've had to adapt to.  First is the meat.  We can't just go to a regular supermarket anymore for meat.  She only eats 'halal' meats.  Basically it means that the animal has to bleed to death and someone has to invoke the name of Allah while it's dying.  If there's a complete lack of 'halal' meat, kosher is a good alternative.  This turns out to be a benefit, because we end up having a lot more vegetables at dinner.  There are just some nights where meat is too hard to come by and cook.

Now the reason I call her Messy stems from both a cultural and a religious reason.  She's required to wash five times a day, so her personal hygiene is impeccable, but when she uses the bathroom, she must stand in the middle of the floor and dump water over her head because the floor is soaked when she's finished.  Her room is a constant mess with clothes strewn all around and on the floor there are always papers and wrappers and boxes.  Also, back to the bathroom, she doesn't seem to try and put trash into the trash can.  Meg has found trash in the drawers of the sink, in the toilet ... oh and she tries to flush her 'feminine products' which has stopped up the toilet twice.  It doesn't matter much because the water on the floor is already, from what my friend Jeremy says, pooh water.  She has a gardening water pick thing that apparently isn't for her hair.  The water has been so bad in fact, that it's seeped under the door and soaked the carpet so that a water stain has formed in the hall.  Messy messy Messy.

OK now for Stinky.  This is a lot shorter and easier.  While she doesn't keep her room any cleaner, she does do fine with the share bathroom.  Or maybe she just doesn't use it.  She kind of smells.  Whereas Messy has a pleasant scent, Stinky does not.  She must not own deodorant or jut not like the feel of it, but she also showers less often than I do which is saying something.  It's not uncommon for me to go 2 days sans-shower.  And at home, it's even less than that.  I shower at work once or twice a week to save a little $$ on the water bill.  Stinky it seems, might shower twice a week total.  Maybe it's just that she can't get in with Messy hogging it all the time.  Who knows.

Let me reiterate here, that I do actually like both of them.  Stinky is a very caring friend and has been very open to our family right from the beginning.  Messy is very generous and has filled my gas tank at least 3 times, and paid for my parking ticket when I dropped her at the train station.  They both are great with the kids and very willing to play our dinner games with us (Telephone, I'm going to the moon, etc.) and we have shared many laughs with them both.

Services vs. Service

This isn't a fully congealed concept so I apologize ahead of time if the thoughts are kind of random.

Let's go!

We have an exchange student. Two actually. Messy and Stinky are their names. I'll maybe write another post later about why they've been dubbed as such.

Messy, has been with us since the end of February I think. And we took on Stinky the middle of April. Messy we thought, would be leaving us on Sat. and Stinky is scheduled to stay until Sep. Here is the conflict.

Our little French Girl that stayed with us last year, had asked around Jan. if she could come stay with us in July for a month and bring her friend. Meg and I adore her and were happy to agree to it. They'll be sharing a room since we only have 2 bedrooms available for students and only one will be available, so we thought. It turns out that Messy, will not be leaving on Sat. and that she is in fact staying until Aug. 20. So we have 0 rooms available for our French Daughter.

With all that set in place as background, here's the thought that I had. I was thinking about how our sense of community in a capitalist system are based on services rather than on service. See I really like all three of these girls. They're all very sweet, and each has their little quirks, but I wouldn't want to hurt any of their feelings ever. Sharing a home and meals together makes it feel like they are close to family. Really though, they are tenants. Our relationship wouldn't have existed if not for the service that we provide of room and board.

Mulling on this idea while driving Messy to school this morning, it sparked the idea that whole communities are built on this idea of being able to sell goods or services to each other. Even in old agrarian societies (somtimes current ones) the way that people would initially meet was "I have corn you have potatoes, I'll give you some of mine if I can have some of yours". Barter became fruit stands, became farmer's markets, became the town, spawned a need for government, and the next thing you know there's town hall meetings.

By comparison, if all things were equal and everyone has ownership of everything, and personal property is non-existant, the sense of community wouldn't depend on reciprocation at all. Service would be the norm instead of services. One of the great things about churches and to a lesser degree local community organizations, is that money is taken out of the equation. At church, no one get's paid for what they do. All service is provided out of caring for individuals and maybe sometimes from a sense of obligation, and in fact the best of them will pay money for the priviledge of being about to serve the of the group. A peculiar people indeed.

Do I? I really don't... Do I?

It occurs to me that most of the blogs that I follow are families documenting fun experiences they're having. I have spent woefully little time posting pictures of myself, or my wife and kids or even making commentary on their lives. Mostly I do that on my Facebook though, so I feel kind of justified.

Sadly this excludes a lot of folk from getting updates on how my family is doing.

The reason I think I do this is that my favorite blog is more along the same lines as this one. That person is quite a bit smarter than I am (don't get a big head Evan), and has some great thoughts on politics and life and I really enjoy his posts.

Everyone that's not Evan (I think there are four of you haha) please don't feel slighted. I do enjoy your posts too. I'm just trying to explain why it is that I post the types of things that I do.

In an effort to see how many people actually read this though, I'd like comments on a specific topic.

"What should I do when I grow up?" And by I, I actually mean me. The person writing currently. If you know where this blog is and follow it at all, then you know me personally and have some sense of the things that I'm good at. Please think about what I currently do and throw that out the window. I'd really like suggestions about what you've observed I'm good at and things that you've seen me doing when I've been happy, actually smiling.

I will not take offense to any suggestion, so feel free to write anything. The only suggestion that I will be displeased with is some form of "Only you can know what you should do for a living!" That type of answer is not what I'm looking for here.