One of our favourite things has been taking people on tours of the Vancouver region and introducing the local wildlife. It's amazing the difference between how we approach familiar and foreign animals; from my perspective I thought raccoons were really cute, but most North Americans are afraid of catching rabies from them, but they are far too cute to carry rabies!
I had the chance to have a brief prayer retreat on Galiano Island as well as a class on Living in Creation that was taught on the island. Prayer retreats were a new thing for me, but I have come to see the value of a change of context and a more contemplative setting in helping me focus and have a more attentive prayer life. The class on living in creation was one of the most difficult but also most helpful classes that I took (and if you'd asked me 18 months ago I would not have listed it as class that I would have considered taking, another example of how God has re-directed what I thought should be priorities). Perhaps one of the most helpful aspects of the class was that it was taught from the experience and in the home of a couple who really practiced what they taught.
Over Christmas and new year we had the chance to visit the capitols of both our home countries.
In February we got to visit Jen's family and friends in California (courtesy of an extended study break due to the winter Olympics being hosted in Vancouver).
In May we graduated with our Graduate Diplomas in Christian Studies.
For our honeymoon we drove up to the corner of British Columbia to Golden, where we stayed in a beautiful cottage by a river, with great views if the surrounding mountains. Golden is in the midst of three national parks, so while there we managed to visit both Yoho and Banff.
We had fun with both of our families, and I celebrated my birthday for the first time on American Independence day in the USA; I was all set to enjoy the firework display only we got there to find out that Sacramento, for some bizarre reason, had their display a day early.
We got to see some beautiful and scary sites in both of our home countries.
We visited some ancient sites and saw some signs that we did not understand.
Jen found us a new home, but I was less convinced.
We went punting in Cambridge and visited the Eagle and Child, which is the pub where C.S. Lewis and J.R. Tolkien used to frequent.
We visited the Universities where we both studied (we couldn't visit all of Jen's as she did one term in New Hampshire, which was a tad too far to drive).
We visited San Fransisco so we wore flowers in our hair (scalp in my case), which I've wanted to do since I heard the song told me I should be sure to do so.
And we went on our first overnight camping trip in Lassen National park; it started off well but went down hill when we were woken by deer who persisted in eating the grass around our tent (though there was much much grass in other places) and when it hailed (which is virtually unheard of in September in California) and rained when we woke up.
There are many more photos that I could show, but these at least give a taste of where we have been and what we have seen.
2 comments:
I like photos. I like these photos.
Looking forward to seeing you both when we're all in NZ.
Nice photos. Good to see San Francisco put on some great weather for you. The hybrid flag pudding is pretty cool too.
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