Almost There...

Friday morning and not a lot of people are sick so I get a few minutes to breathe. Is it irresponsible? Probably. I'll keep it short.

One day. And then we get a really busy but nice weekend. And then one week. And then we're done teaching in the UK. Which is definitely coming with its share of perks. No more scary standradized tests. No more school uniforms worn defiantly sloppy. No more quite-unpleasant teenagers (at least for a little while, we are teachers). No more houses, form tutors, and A-levels. No more b-tec verifiers and no more target grades.
Are all these things bad? No. Travel broadens the mind and I think I really do understand now why they're done. I can see how they contribute to one of the better education systems in the world. But they're not like home and they, like every good idea a person has, come with their own share of problems and unpleasant side-effects. It hasn't taken me long to figure out that you don't get very far trying to explain to British people that education here may not be naturally superior to that in every other country on Earth. I had one teacher I chatted with about it keep trying to steer me towards acknowledging that education in Canada was probably on its way to developing into the more mature British system. Like some kind of cultural evolution. Ugh. But, then again, maybe they have good cause to be a bit defensive; this is the standard by which education worldwide is usually judged.

Anyway, we're excited about a week of cleaning, packing, seeing our last few big things and then coming home. Pray for us. That we would finish well. That we would hold up through rough kids and demanding conditions. That we would keep our heads. And that we would find a way, somehow, to say goodbye to all the places and people we've grown quickly to love here without disintegrating.

News from Away - May 16

How's she goin' dere b'y?

Very pleased to announce there IS some news! Hooray
Gonna make you work for it though:

Work - is work. And some days it's more work than others. Today things were pretty light but that has more to do with Wednesdays in general than anything else. Alyssa's school is slowly dropping classes from her timetable one by one and sometimes giving her cover lessons to fill the gaps. There's a weird kind of staggered finish thing going on here; not all students go until the "last day of school" - the yr10s and 11s are writing their big standardized tests and finding out if they've passed their classes now. So the final half term in June-July (i.e. when we'll be gone) will be spent revving up for next year and complaining about not getting part marks. Younger kids have lots to do until mid July. I have no idea what the A-level kids are doing in yr 12 and 13; killing themselves over the stress of tying all their academic achievement up into 3 or 4 big tests, probably. I don't mean to sound too much the cynic, but if I don't rant about what I miss in the Canadian education system to someone else every now and again, I might really aggravate my poor, patient, long-suffering wife.
It seems like every week I'm feeling more involved in church than less. Odd, but I don't mind. I am clinging doggedly to my decision back in the fall that I wouldn't hold back from doing life with the people God would bring us to just because it wasn't forever. If you let that be a reason to not pour yourself into relationships, you won't do it. And though it is really, really, really going to hurt saying goodbye to our new family here, I'm happy we came and did it anyway. There will be plenty of time for catching up later.
Of course, we've been doing a study in homegroup on heaven and misconceptions thereof, which has been really enlightening. Last week was a discussion of why the classic "left behind" model of the rapture might not be the best biblical interpretation of how the last days will go. Blew our minds. It's good to challenge your preconceptions. Like any growth, though, it can sometimes be a bit painful.
Travel - Last weekend we went on a really lovely sea side day trip with Helen and Anthony down to Bournemouth on the south coast and a country drive back through the New Forest. Photos and more detailed story-telling pending another good opportunity to write and upload, hopefully soon. We were lent a couple passes that will get us up into St Paul's Cathedral free (each parish gets a couple, apparently. They say we're "welcome guests". Cool!) that we plan to use Saturday, hit the london eye around mid-day, and then maybe hit the imperial war museum, maybe just go home. Depends on our legs.
Our big exciting weekend plan still is the following Saturday - we're going to try to do the monopoly day and it looks like we'll very likely have at least a couple friends available to come with. We have to have a chat tonight with some of them and send an email round, though. Anna had a great idea that we do a kind of theme thing where we carry around facsimiles of the monopoly pieces; someone with an iron, someone with a top hat, someone with a...scottish terrier?

The big news, however, is what's coming, and not just us to Canada.
I got a job. For the summer, mind you. I got offered a spot doing the interpretive natural heritage education thing at the provincial park I did two summers ago. Not only is it a lot of fun, but the pay isn't depressing and it is actually a really nice opportunity to use my qualifications and education in an unconventional environment. I am very seriously keeping an open mind to non-classroom teaching-ish work. Could be a future here.
That notwithstanding, I start almost as soon as we get back. Which means our detour through Brampton en route to North Bay will be less of a pit stop and more of a bounce. The scheduling of errands and seeing people has commenced quite furiously.
SO, if you're in Southern Ontario and you want to see us before we go 4 hours out of reach, the suggestion: come to my parents' house, dinnertime, Tuesday the 12th. We'll do a BBQ, and hang out together. If you can't make Tuesday, you're welcome to crash the quieter, less-extravagantly-catered Monday night homecoming. And we MIGHT be staying in town on Wednesday, but that's pending some schedule-shifting. That, I'm afraid, is all the South gets. Just like the civil war.
We'll be heading to North Bay for the summer. We'll work, we'll go to whatever bible study might be running that fits our time off, and we'll be in a good spot for camping trips, visits, and hurling applications at schools in every corner of the country.
And then we don't know. God's been working on me and my faithless tendency to keep worrying that we don't have teaching jobs. He's set a road before us and all we need do is walk it, and I'm learning that I can trust Him not only because He's never let me down, but because He really does know better than I do.
If you need any details (timing, arranging a visit/excursion, my parents' address, etc), then email or message me.

I think that about wraps it up. Phew. Tired fingers.
Dreading leaving but can't wait to come home. Peace.

News and Musings: May 8th

Hey,

If you're strapped for time and can't afford to read the whole thing, here's the spoiler: not too much is new. Life goes on

Work is OK. We had a couple shaky weeks the last couple but both mine and Alyssa's situations seem to be on the upswing. Which is nice. The more optimistic we can feel about teaching now, the less hopeless the job-hunting process for next fall seems. So far there's not much, but the postings don't really come out until pretty late. We are strongly considering places other than Ontario, though, which opens up possibilities. I know it seems a mite odd to come back from England just to go far away from friends and family again, but coming home really is more about settling down then being with family. There are hiring freezes in my hometown and there's never any jobs in North Bay, so the likelihood of either of us living close to family wasn't going to be really great either way. We're still hopeful to find something somewhat close one of our sets of family, but if we have to head out west or something, we want to be prepared.

We're fresh off the heels of a bank holiday weekend (read: long weekend), which had - among other things - the added bonus of being able to go to the Sunday night post-church pub night. We almost never go because hitting the pub Sunday night seems to be a recipe for a killer Monday morning, but since we could sleep in yesterday, we took full advantage of the opportunity. I realize that we miss out not doing it, and we're thinking about sacrificing some sleep to make that investment in the relationships we're building here. I spent most of the evening in a really great conversation with our minister about denominations and doctrine and traditions and other some such things. Which is *so* much better with a pint of bitter. I had a thought this morning (I'm on a free period right now; not slacking off) that if we overextend Paul's metaphor of doctrine as spiritual food - that the base doctrines and the gospel are like milk and more difficult teachings like solid food - it may not be useless to think of denominational doctrinal differences as different foods as well. That we were all raised and nourished on the same root sustenance; the gospel. The same nourishing, life-giving milk that every human being gets (or used to get in the pre-formula age). But after that we develop and we differentiate. In food this has a lot to do with culture. But in many ways I think that our denominational emphases are dependant on a kind of spiritual culture. If you grow up as a conservative evangelical, then you're going to gravitate towards substantial, meaty, tough to chew and nourishing food. If you grow up charismatic, your religion might naturally be a bit more firey. Does that make it wrong? Bad? No. All Christian denominations have some bitter and some sweet; it's the interplay between flavours and differently-balanced emphases that makes for the difference. Lots of people switch. When I was a little younger than I am today I pursued a much more dense diet than in my childhood, and recently I've started experimenting a bit with small samples from other palates. My point, I think, is that so long as the food is nutritive and substantial, it's good. Some might be better than others. Some might be good for a season but not as a steady diet. But it's all food. Naturally, to extend a metaphor is to invite errors, so I think I might cut it off there before it gets too out of control.

What was I talking about?

Right, news! Besides the above, we haven't done much travelling. We spent the bulk of our holiday weekend sitting inside glaring at the weather and listening to me cough. I'm almost over the cold that flattened me a week ago; I like to think I've won the day but I still have to drive it from the field so that it never dares rise against me again. If nothing else comes up (HINT, London people!), then the plan is to do our round-the-city Monopoly excursion on Saturday. When monopoly came across the pond, they didn't cling to the absurdity that we do of keeping the chicago street names. They picked London ones. Londoners have never heard of Boardwalk and Park Place. Cool, huh? Anyway, our plan is to do a photo scavenger hunt of all the spaces on the monopoly board, pick up a box of london trinkets for all the pieces and then, once we're home, put together our own UK monopoly game. A home-made souvenir. We aren't desperate to do it by ourselves, though (HINT!), so if anyone wants to come along (HIN...well, actually quite explicit now) then that would be brilliant.

Running out of time. Thank you, friends and family back home, for your prayers and well-wishes. You're in ours. Peace.