The Events of Tuesday, February 15, 2011

                At around 7:45, I woke up today in the most comfortable bed, under the cleanest sheets, in the darkest room, in the quietest neighborhood, that I have awaken in for as long as I can remember. Even though we were permitted to sleep in until eight, my and my siblings’ bodies have become accustomed to waking up at seven, so we all woke up somewhere between seven and eight.

                We took turns showering, and dressed and spent quiet times with God, before eating breakfast with Miss Beckham. It was a scrumptious feast of cereal, bananas, and bagels with cream cheese.

                After breakfast, we hung out for a while, doing laundry, talking, working on the jigsaw puzzle we started in honor of Valentine’s Day, until Miss Beckham left for work. Not long after her departure, our parents arrived, and shared with us about their splendid Valentine’s Day celebration.

                Next, we sat together at Miss Beckham’s table and had our family devotion time. Afterwards, we continued to wash, dry, fold, sort, and distribute laundry, make furniture, and piece together the abstract heart jigsaw puzzle, until it was time to leave for our planned event of the day at Baylor University.

                So Dad, Ben, Lindsey, Abby, and I left Mom to continue laundering. We parked at Ferrell Center and had lunch in that parking lot, next to an orange Mustang. After lunch, we walked to the Science Building, which, as we learned on our tour yesterday, has the distinction of being one of the only two buildings on campus that forms a bear claw if viewed from the air, demonstrating true school spirit!

                Inside the Science Building, we went to the Atrium Café, where we were to meet Eun Jeong, an international student from Korea, who would show us her biology lab. Miss Beckham’s parents are Eun Jeong’s “Welcome Family”, a service provided by Baylor University to all its international students. She has become like family to the Beckhams, so Miss Beckham was able to arrange this special tour of the biology lab, and on a very special day, too – Eun Jeong’s birthday. We were a few minutes early, so we sat down to wait for her. At exactly 1:30 (our planned meeting time), Eun Jeong walked up, introduced herself, and led us up to the third floor. There, we entered a biology lab and were introduced to a professor of biology, Chris Kearny, who works in the same laboratory as Eun Jeong, but he and his students work with plants (plant biotechnology), while Eun Jeong, Professor Lee, and Eun Jeong’s classmates work with worms.

                First, we met our tour guide’s “babies”, her worms. Eun Jeong showed us normal worms, plump worms, long and thin worms, and worms that rolled over to travel instead of slithering like snakes and other worms. These worms were microscopic; we literally had to look through a microscope to see them.

                Eun Jeong next took us to a room adjacent to the biology lab, labeled simply “Microscopes”. Here, she showed us a more powerful microscope with a sort of attachment that helped us to be able to see worms that had been injected with a certain DNA containing fluorescents. So we turned off the lights and closed the door and looked through the microscope at some glowing worms. The first ones we saw had a red outline on the outside of their bodies. The second fluorescent worms Eun Jeong showed us glowed with cream-colored polka dots.

                In the same room was an instrument used to melt thin glass tubes into needles with extremely thin points. Needless to say, this machine gets pretty hot. Eun Jeong wanted one of us to try it, so I stepped forward. While attempting to melt this tiny glass tube, I accidentally burned myself on a part of this odd contraption. It left three small white lines (no more than a quarter of a centimeter long each) in a small red spot on my left pointer finger. Though it hurt a bit, it was such a cool burn mark that I was more proud than in pain.

                After visiting the microscope room, we went to another room down the hall to transfer some normal worms from one Petri dish to another. But this is more complicated than it sounds. One has to find the worms in the first dish, scoop one up with a thin stick with a curved end and then put it into the second dish, all while looking through the microscope.

                We each had our own microscope, our own dish of worms, our own empty dish, and our very own stick tool with which to pick up the little buggers. Abby did it first, and then Lindsey, and Ben, Daddy, and I all completed the task at about the same time. Then we talked for a while about her studies and such until Miss Beckham arrived.

                At that point, Eun Jeong gave Miss Beckham an abridged version of the biology lab tour.

Then Miss Beckham asked Eun Jeong where she eats lunch in the science building, because Miss Beckham had brought a birthday cake as a surprise for Eun Jeong, and knew that food is not allowed in biology labs, for obvious reasons.

                Eun Jeong showed us a few other rooms first, so Miss Beckham continued to ask her, “Where do you eat food?” until Eun Jeong finally led us into a room where food was OK, but she still did not catch the hint.

                There, we met a fellow student, who had come from China to study biology at Baylor University. The professor of biology, Chris Kearney, also joined us just in time. While Eun Jeong conversed with the Chinese student, we arranged the plates, napkins, and forks Miss Beckham had brought. We even opened the cake box and put in four candles before Eun Jeong noticed what we were doing. Her expression of surprise and her delight in American traditions of singing “Happy Birthday” and making a wish before blowing out the candles on her cake were fun to see.

                Next, Miss Beckham cut and distributed the cake, and we all sat down and talked and ate chocolate cake. It was a fun, spontaneous little party. After we cleaned up the celebration, Professor Kearney went back to work, and the Chinese student went to meet a friend, while the rest of us (Miss Beckham, Eun Jeong and the all Taylors except for Mom) walked down three stories and outside before saying goodbye. Miss Beckham and Eun Jeong returned to their tasks, too, but Dad drove us kids home.

                As we did more laundry and made more furniture and pieced together more of the puzzle, we shared with Mom all she had missed. Though she sorely missed the chocolate cake, she needed some alone time to work on the computer, and she had almost finished putting the loads of laundry through by the time we returned.

                Daddy took the RV to have its thirty thousand mile tune-up, while the rest of us made dinner. When he returned and Miss Beckham came home from work, we sat down to a delicious homemade meal of savory herb pie, flavorful Italian garlic herb bread, sweet yams and delicious butterscotch brownies. After dinner, we talked together over the jigsaw puzzle, while Ben finished his third assemblage of furniture in two days. He has put together two bookshelves and a filing cabinet in an impressively short amount of time. After he finished, Miss Beckham, Mom and we kids all attacked the jigsaw puzzle with vengeance.

                Mom had to pull each of us away from the puzzle to take our turn getting ready for bed. At 9, we went to bed, but Mom and Miss Beckham talked more and put more of the puzzle together, until it was time for Mom and Dad to return to Miss Beckham’s parents’ house for yet another night of restful, relaxing sleep.