Greece In July

We are back in Cambridge for a day after coming home from Greece yesterday. So we are washing clothes, repacking, then leaving for Venice tomorrow. As you will see from the pictures, my parents are over here. Jason's parents come on Friday for his graduation ceremony. We are busy trying to fit in as much traveling as we can before we go back to Canada. I'm really looking forward to seeing Venice.

We only have a little over a week before we fly back to Canada and so far we haven't done any packing or organizing. We have lots of stuff to get rid of because we can only take 20kgs each on the plane. We may have to buy new wardrobes when we get back to Canada (I wouldn't mind...)

Here's some pictures of Greece.
This one is of the big storm that arrived the moment we checked into our hotel. It was awesome, the thunder echoed off the surround hills and mountains. There was an amazing downpour with lightening. And we thought Greece was going to be all sun...



This is a picture of Jason and I in front of a Venetian fortress in Nafplio's harbour.




This was the view from a restaurant we ate at one night.





Us in Athens at the Acropolis




My dad dressed up... Ha, just kidding. This is a guard in Athens.




Ancient theatre at Delphi




The family at Delphi



A day at the beach (the back on Jason and my mom's head)



The view from our hotel at night during the full moon.

Midsummers In Sweden

Well, life is really hard at the moment. We leave for Greece tomorrow. Two weeks of sun-worshipping and sight-seeing...
My parents are arriving in Cambridge this morning after traveling in the northern part of England and Scotland.

Last weekend, we took a quick trip to Sweden to see my good friend Carin and her husband Marcus. It had been a year exactly since we had seen them last. We arrived in the midst of Midsummer's celebrations. Celebrations include: dancing around the Maypole (the pole being some sort of fertility symbol from the days of paganism), BBQs, wreaths of flowers, and just generally being out in the sunshine (although, as always the case with holiday days, Midsummer's day normally sees some rain as well).

On Saturday, we spend the day in Stockholm. We watched the Sweden/Germany football match with some of Carin and Marcus' friends. Sweden lost, so there was about an hour of depressive moods in the room. After, we went to a park near the ocean and had a BBQ.






Sunday, we went to Carin's church, where she is a pastor. They had a visiting choir from the USA. A gospel choir from the South, so there was a lot of fun and clapping. The sermon was in English, which was a bonus. After church, we went to Uppsala, a university town where they also have huge burial mounds dating back to the 6th century. The church was built over pagan remains and was the site for the baptisms of Swedish kings.

We had a great time in Sweden, as usual. Hmmm, I definitely could live in Sweden. It's such a beautiful place.

Cranberry Juice Drink

Once again I've been mislead to believe that I was buying cranberry juice but actually it's cranberry juice drink, the clue is the word 'drink' which means the first two ingredients are water and then sugar! Ah, I need to read labels IN the store, not when I get home...

I worked a night shift last night which means this blog entry will be slightly crazy due to my sleep-deprived mind. All the summer balls are going on right now at the colleges. The rich colleges have these really, really nice balls (basically a big, fancy party). They have fireworks, all you-can-eat-and-drink, amusement park rides, and entertainers. It's really cool. Churchill College (the college Jason belongs to) has a ball but it's in February (our college isn't one of the richest). Because February isn't the nicest time of the year, the college gets a discount and the ball ticket prices are a bit cheaper. Some of the big colleges charge £100 per ticket ($200 Canadian for ONE ticket). Anyways, this week I generally see students stumbling home at 6:30am when I'm on my way to work. If you are really hard-core, you stay up all night at the ball and then you go punting (boating) down the Cam to Grantchester for breakfast... I haven't done that.

Happy Anniversary to Brendan and Renny!!!

Summer BBQ's

We had a BBQ today with our small group from church. A "farewell" bbq for us. It was nice to get together. These are the people that we have really gotten to know in our church. They have become our church family and we have really enjoyed the time we have spent with them. This is a picture of Jason and Patrick.

The sermon at church today was on Jeremiah 32. One of the key verses was 41, "I will rejoice in doing them good and will assuredly plant them in this land with all my heart and soul". Our pastor spoke about how God delights in doing good things for us and in our lives, how it gives Him pleaure. This is a quote from Spurgeon that our pastor read.

'While meditating on this theme, I said to myself, “Come, come, this will not do—with such a subject as this you ought to sing for joy.” I felt that my preparation for the pulpit ought to be one continuous song. The Lord blesses me with His whole heart and with His whole soul, what better news can I hear? This sweet assurance is a bath of milk. Of the man who believes it we may say, “Butter and honey shall he eat.” You breathe the perfume of Heaven when you can get at the meaning of this text. Oh, the joy that lies asleep in these words, as odors hide away in flowers! Come, heavenly wind and wake the slumbering joys—constrain the celestial perfumes to flow abroad, that we may exult in them.'

I think we will really miss our church. The people and especially the pastor. He is really passionate and I think he thinks the same way as Spurgeon. If he could, he would preach as one continuous song.

Day Off!!!

I have a day off today, which is great because I have lots to catch up on. It also means that I was able to stay up and watch hockey last night. The game didn't go very well (Oilers lost) but it is always nice to watch a sport that we haven't been able to watch over here this year. Football (or soccer) is huge at the moment because of the World Cup being on in Germany. It's kind of fun being here while it's on. England flags and banners everywhere!! I was working at the hospital when England played their first game (against Paraguay) and none of our patients used their call bell for a whole 2 hours... it was great.

Time is ticking away here. We are frantically trying to fit in dinners, drinks, BBQ, etc. with people that we will be leaving. On Sunday, we had a BBQ with all of our friends from our flat building. It was a great time and it made me think about the blessing it has been to live in such a tight knit community for the last 3 years. And a multicultural community as well. We have enjoyed getting to know people from Mexico, Chile, Sri Lanka, Denmark, England and different parts of the States.

Tonight, I'm dining out at an Italian restaurant with the girls from our house group from church. A farewell dinner. Everything we go to is a farewell-something... Anyways, it should be fun.

Early Morning Hockey

Currently Reading
Moby Dick
Herman Melville

After months and months of listening to hockey games over the internet, we were finally blessed with watching the images with the sound last night. One of the tv channels here is actually playing the Stanley Cup playoffs! We were so excited about getting a chance to watch the playoffs that the time of the games doesn't even put a damper on the enthusiasm. So, in the wee hours of 1:00am, Jason awoke to his alarm and ran out to the tv. I, on the other hand, was having some sort of dream that prevented me from climbing out of bed until halfway through the second period. It was a great, exciting game, right up until the end. At the moment, my heart is sunk as the Oilers goalie is injured and after seeing the replacement goalie play last night, our prospects of getting the Cup are looking grim. I haven't given up yet. And I will get up again at 1-ish to watch the next game!



While I was up, watching the game last night, I thought it would be fun to call people and pretend that we were all in Canada, watching the hockey game together. I only managed to talk with my brother, who's informed us that him and Renny have bought a house! Congrats to them. They will be moving out to Sherwood Park (the 'burbs) at the end of this month.

The weather has finally turned nice here. So, we took full advantage of it over the weekend and tried to spend as much time as we could outside. That ended up looking like this: us, friends, patio. We did manage to take a walk to look at the "freak festival" going on. It's actually called the "Strawberry Festival" (And no- it's not called strawberry because that's the color all the British people turn after being in the sun!!! Ha, ha. Jason told that joke and it still makes me laugh, 'cause it's true!). Any ways, it's like this drug fest/food fest/music fest/any excuse to get loaded in public fest. We walked around the grounds, gingerly walking over garbage, people, dogs, bongo drums and really bad jewelry stands. That was Saturday.

Sunday, due to my neglect on filling up my scooter, I managed to have yet another adventure with it. This time called: running out of petrol. Silly me. I was actually in search of a filling station as I ran out. So I had to push this stupid scooter of mine for 5 blocks, thinking that this was a crappy way to spend my Sunday afternoon.

I'm beginning to distance myself away from my belongings here. Everything I look at, I ask the item "Now, will you be coming or staying?" And I really don't mind leaving most of it behind. Now, don't think for one moment that I've managed to separate myself from the desires of earthly belongings here on earth. Nope- I'm just tired of all the junk we have here. I really can't wait to get back to having a car, some proper furniture and all my old wedding gifts that have been in hiding for 3 years (where did that bread maker go?!). But fickle as we usually are, all those "things" that I miss stored up in Canada, will be old soon enough and I will be looking for new, bright, shiny objects to make me happy. What a sad state are we!

Viva Voce!

Currently Listening To:
Jose Gonzalez
Veneer

Viva Voce- this is the new latin phrase that I have learned this week. Living in Cambridge, home of Darwin, Newton, Watson and Crick (just to name a few), you tend to pick up latin just by walking down the street! I picked up this phrase from Jason, who just completed his Viva Voce.
Viva: A. adv. By word of mouth; in speech; orally. (Freq. in parenthetic use.) a. As distinct from writing. Also in or with viva voce.

Basically, the phrase is used here for when a student defends his work, orally. For Jason, this was defending his PhD thesis in front of two people selected by his supervisor. Jason completed his viva this week and now has completed his PhD. He's not Dr. Olfert until his graduation day in July, but yeah for him! Three years of work completed!!! (Side note: While living in Cambridge, we have managed to see Stephen Hawkins (at a Korean bbq night-weird!) and I have had a Nobel Prize winner as a patient. Those are probably the smartest famous people we have come across during our time here. Just thought you'd like to know).

On to other celebrity spottings (I should write in People/US magazine!) Recent Christian celebrity spotting: Now there has been rumoured at Eden Baptist (our church here), that a certain Christian author was in the midst, visiting during his sabbatical. And sure enough, this last Sunday, we happened to sit behind John Piper, author of "Desiring God: Meditations of a Christian Hedonist", among other books. One of our friends really likes Piper's writings and get his pod cast everyday! So, we said hello and introduced ourselves. He seemed really nice (of course). It was one of those conversations that end quite shortly after you say hello and how much you enjoy his writing and ask how long will you be in Cambridge. Maybe we will be blessed with a sermon from him. I'll let you know.

Other going-ons this week: The Thirty-Third Cambridge Beer Festival.
I think Jason went to the festival everyday. Mostly because he was celebrating his completion of his PhD but also 'cause it's a cool place to hang out. I managed to pop in for one pint on my day off. It's hosted by a group whose campaign is to support small breweries and so it's mostly local ales and beers.


This is a picture of my very annoying, waste of money, scooter. Which, in theory, was a great idea, but in reality has been nothing but a flop. I believe it was the day after I got my learner's licence and I was riding it back from church (in the rain none the less) that we had our first of many breakdowns. Since the beginning, it's been unreliable and very, very aggravating. But, currently, it's decided to work due to the nice-er weather. I say nice-er because in all truth, the weather's still crap in England. The only problem now is that you have to make sure that you don't get caught in a rain shower because then the motor cuts out (Jason could explain the reason why this is). Which, in England, is really hard to predict whether it's going to rain or not and it tends to rain alot. I have had too many incidents to write about, but the latest is when I had a bright idea to take the scooter to the grocery store while the sun was shining.... Cut to me coming out of the grocery store and it's hailing out!! So, I tried to ride the scooter home, which continued to stall (once when I was going into a traffic circle/roundabout). Not the best place to become stranded. Our next challenge with the scooter is to sell it... on a nice, sunny day!!

Smiling When You Don't Mean To...

I was reading a friend's blog about how she found something terrifying but at the same time funny and wanted a word to describe it. She ended up creating a word (humourfying). It made me think of a character flaw I seem to have. The flaw is that often when dealing with a situation that is horrible for another person, I tend to smile as I talk about it. Let me give you some examples (as you begin to think that I'm a completely terrible person). At work yesterday morning, I was give a verbal report to the nursing staff starting their shift for the day (remember: I had been up ALL night working), and as I was telling them some pretty horrible things (a patient not having a penis due to genital warts gone mad/bad, a patient who was dying), I kept getting this stupid grin on my face! It's not that I was happy about the things that I was talking about it, it was that I was just reacting to situations so tragic that I was having trouble reacting to them in any other way. It's like mentally, I know there horrible situations but emotionally, I was unable to truly react to them. It made me think of a time in high school when Jason told me about a friend's parents dying in a car crash, with a grin on his face (I should have ran then). Now, I knew he was upset about the news and I knew that he didn't think it was funny but it just appeared that the situation was so shocking and incredulous, he was having trouble reacting to it. So, are we two, callous, hard-hearted people, perfect for each other, to laugh at people's misfortunes as we go through life? Or are we completely normal is the sense that we often have a hard time emotionally taking in difficult news/situations that require a deeper part of our selves to react? And is there a word to describe something that is so horrible, it's peculiar/funny in a tragic sense? Insensitive? Maybe.

Another thing that happened during my night shifts, is that I discovered Google Earth™. Basically, it's the whole world, in satellite picture. It's really cool. I was looking at it with my co-workers who were from all parts of the globe. One nurse was from thePhilippiness, the other from Zimbabwe, a doctor from Australia and me! We were flying all over the world, looking at each other's cities and tops of homes. Edmonton's satellite pictures, currently, show some parts of the city still covered in snow and other parts green and lush. Could this be the current situation in Edmonton? Quite likely. More likely, however, is that it is covered in blue and orange due to all the fans of the Edmonton Oilers out on the streets celebrating (rioting) the Oilers' win to advance to the Western Conference final (yaah!!). Jason and I had a laugh at this quote from an Oilers fan in the Globe and Mail.
“We cheered for their anthem and we got it done,” said Oiler fan Morten Feddersen. “We might be a bunch of rednecks, but we have class. That's the whole difference right there and we won for it.”

The quote is in reference to the San Jose Sharks booing the Canadian national anthem at one of the hockey games in San Jose. For anyone not from Alberta, that quote is pretty much what a typical Albertan sounds like.

I probably should have made this blog site my own as I think Jason will probably not be contributing to any of the blog entries (although he does deserve mention as a huge creative influence).

Trip to Ireland

Here's my first blog on our new blog site. Our other site will soon be non-existent and I was finding it difficult to post blogs (or at least that's my excuse). So, here's to a fresh start and (hopefully) much more blogs!

We just back from Ireland yesterday. We went there for our anniversary. We had a great time. We spent most of the time driving along the coastline. We thought that the country was really, really beautiful and the people we met were really friendly.



We flew into Shannon and stayed there for the night. We drove around the "Ring of Clare", seeing the Cliffs of Moher, the Poulnabrone Tomb (and ancient burial site) and the Ailwee Cave.




Here's me posing for the brochure.

Then we drove down to Dingle Peninsula where we stayed the night in a great B&B facing the ocean. The next day we drove around the peninsula on cool, winding roads. There was gorgeous beaches and old ruins everywhere.






This crumbling castle was in a sheep farmer's field, who we got permission from, to walk across his land to the castle. It was really cool.




So six years of marriage! We like to celebrate our anniversary by going on a trip every year and we try to take turns planning the trip. We also try to make the destination a surprise for the other person. It was my turn to plan this year's trip and surprise! I did actually manage to get Jason to the airport without him knowing where we were actually going. I thought that telling him he should definitely bring an umbrella would raise suspicions...
Here's a list of our previous anniversary trips (in order):
Jasper (Pyramid Lake)
Peru (on a hike to Manchu Pichu, celebrating with 12 other people)
Jasper (see a pattern?)
Bath (and the Cotswalds- oh so British!)
Berlin (with my sister. It wasn't technically a anniversary trip but it was our anniversary and we were traveling...)