25 Random Things About Me

This is a posting going around Facebook right now and I thought I would post mine here as well. These are 25 random things you might not know about your beloved Jess.

1. I hate cheesecake.
2. I am unable to snort- you know, to make a sound like a pig.
3. When I was a kid I was considered bold and talkative. Since reaching adulthood, I get shyer every year.
4. I have malaria as I type this.
5. I love intellectual discussion about religion, God, spirits, the nature of the universe... I read my old religion college textbooks in my free time around here. I should have double majored in anthropology and religion.
6. Birds tend to pick on me.
7. I eat more vegetables and less meat in Ghana than most obruni vegetarians I meet. I, however, do not consider myself a vegetarian. But I love tofu.
8. I don't match my socks. To each other, that is.
9. When I was four years old, my older brother taught me how to read and do simple arithmetic so I could do his homework. Worked for awhile, but then our parents caught on.
10. I am embarrassed to admit that after 5 years of spending winters in Ghana, my Twi is very poor. It's not until you move out of the Romance languages that you really get the feel for what learning a “foreign” language is like.
11. I am allergic to mangoes and black pepper.
12. My number one childhood fear was demon possession.
13. I went to an African herbalist to get relief from my migraines. I know the herbs work for scientific reasons, but man, this medicine works like magic.
14. My childhood nickname was “Messy Jessy.”
15. If I had a bird feeder, I would sit and watch the squirrels and chase the birds away.
16. Wilhelm Dafoe hit on me when I was fifteen years old.
17. I need 9 hours of sleep every night to be a healthy and stable human being.
18. When I was a small child, I used to daydream that one day I would travel to Africa during a big drought, and I would kneel on a big balcony before a crowd and pray for rain, and it would start raining and I would dance with thousands of people in the rain.
19. I currently live in a place in Africa where it rains almost every other day right now, and while I don't encounter thousands of people here, I did dance in the rain with three other people the other day. It was nice, and no prostration was required.
20. I love the Buttered Popcorn Jelly Belly's. This makes me an excellent friend to share jelly beans with.
21. I've only been in one fist fight (so far). I was about 11, he was an older boy, and it ended when he ran away crying.
22. My mind, when left to its own devices, is a fairly dark place. I'm trying to change that.
23. I've been known to lose things. Like my keys. Or my wallet. Or a whole slew of my friends' bathing suits.
24. I have recently discovered that I enjoy cooking.
25.One spring I spent my afternoons playing softball in the backyard with Grandma Schiller. I was sad because I was always picked last for softball at recess, so Grandma offered to help me (in between cleaning the whole house, doing the laundry, and cooking us dinner, of course).