Welcome to your first lesson in the “What is Angela’s Life Like” course.  This lesson will cover an overview of three main topics:  Angela’s home life, Angela’s work projects, and a quick introduction to Random things that make Angela laugh.  Before class is over, we will conclude with a short inspirational word from Angela herself.  But to take advantage of our time together, let us begin with topic one.

1.  Angela’s home life:  Little has been published about Angela’s home life other than a picture out the window of Angela’s house (with odd coloring for some reason) (and by Angela’s house, yes, we really mean Susan and Magdiel’s house).  To fully understand what Angela’s home like is life, let us get a clearer picture.  Starting from the largest scale, Angela lives in a “compound” for lack of a better translation.  It is a small gated (and guarded) community containing only other Adventist Division workers (35 people live in this particular compound).  The church owns two such compounds and one apartment complex in the nearby city of Aguas Claras.  The best part of the compound is the safety factor.  Unlike other parts of the country, there are no bars on the windows here.  Windows are even left open overnight to let air in.  It is perfectly safe to walk around the compound late at night, even alone.  There are even security cameras placed in the trees in the middle of the compound.  The community fostered by the compound living is also a great way to feel connected to others.  When Angela moves out of her boss’s house into her “own” apartment, she will be moving to the other compound a few hundred meters down the road.

2.  Angela’s work projects:  While this is a difficult subject to study due to its ever-changing nature, it is an important subject indeed, although may be regarded much the same as history because by the time you know what she’s doing, it has changed and you now know the history.  At the beginning of the week, Angela’s project was a magazine to translate to English to be distributed at the General Conference Session over the summer in Atlanta.  After 40+ pages of translating, the Division found out that the publishing house had already translated it (despite the fact that it was no one’s request).  Following that confusion, Angela took advantage of her “free time” and began planning her English classes.  But this lull was not to remain.  Several projects have now passed over the desk of this hard working translator including but not limited to: Emails (from the South American office to North America and vice versa), more press releases (indeed, the news has not stopped from Chile), reports to the General Conference (which is “easy” because there’s a lot of copy and paste, but difficult because they are not always written by the best communicators), editing the aforementioned translated magazine, and most excitingly the Handbook for the Directors of Communication in the South American Division.  Considering Communication was Angela’s field of study, she has been overlyqualified to work on this translation, not to mention learning in the process.  The latest development has been that Angela is now officially translating from Portuguese to English when necessary.

3.  Random things that make Angela laugh:  This list is not comprehensive and we will likely add to it throughout the course of this um… course.  The drawers and doors don’t slam shut in this house, there’s an automatic slow down mechanism.  No matter how hard you try and slam the drawer it will ALWAYS slow down.  The paper towels are shorter here.  There is no explanation yet about why.  The plastic cups for the water (at work) come in the most amazing dispenser.  It’s too dificult to explain, but you pull a little lever, and the cup flips out.  Amazing.  People who speak English here say “I reckon,” and it’s amazing as well.  There is a toucan living in the compound as well, and apparently they’re rather mean creatures (not to mention carniverious).

Now, to close our class, let us read a short clip from the mind of Angela (p. 2,352):  “As with any habit, it’s so easy to lose all momentum simply by missing a day.  Well, the difficulty of a blog is that it’s not a scheduled event.  If I have something to write about, I write, if I don’t, I skip a day.  The problem is when every day begins feeling too normal to write about.  Then one should conclude that they’re simply not looking hard enough.  Even if you don’t blog, take a bit of time to evaluate your day.  What did you learn?  What is there left to learn?  And my favorite, what do you do to make your life special?  A person’s life isn’t always special by circumstance, but rather by action.  This action doesn’t need to be earth shattering or amazing, but it should always be special to you.  So close your computer and go do something that makes your day memorable.  I think I’m going to go hunt down that toucan and teach him some manners.”