He moves

So it’s been a while.  Two years or more in fact, but let that not stop us!

In attempt to put into words what has happened in the last two years, and log what in fact has begun to happen, I have relaunched this blog and renamed it, hopefully aptly.

I’m looking forward to hearing what you think.  Whoever is out there.

Amy

Wow.  What a week!  A week that already feels as though it has been a month long.  We’ve driven highways through hills and plains and mountains, seen Deer, Cariboo, Marmots and Chipmunks, stayed with friends and stayed on campsites of all ranges and prices.  To think that we still have 4 more weeks to go!!

Saturday 5th May: Left Vancouver and drove to Hope and stayed at Othello Tunnels campground. 

Sunday 6th May-Tuesday 8th May: Made our way to Vernon, BC via Merrit and Kelowna.  We stayed at Sparkling Hill resort and Spa and had the treat of our lives!! A hotel adorned with $10,000,000 worth of Swarskofski crystals, several exotic steam rooms and saunas (including one that was -110c!!! No kidding, and it was $50 extra.  Rip off!!)  We had buffet breakfasts and gourmet dinners and even had a visit with a chipmunk in our room.  We hiked, swam, walked, sat, read, slept and rested very well.  Beautiful.

Tuesday 8th May: Noahs Ark Campground, Revelstoke, BC.  It sounded great from the website: family friendly, pets, childrens play area, gift shop and great showers.  We got there to find it under construction, with a half built ark!! But at $18 per night, including electricity, it was a steal.  So we stayed, and it was not too bad: we even got free popcorn and started our new addiction to 24!!!  On Wednesday we had a small tour around historical Revelstoke and Bas enduldged himself in the train museum while Dorothy got a new fan belt fitted for just $100. Beat that, Kaltire!!!

Wednesday 9th May: Golden, BC.  After a long drive from Revelstoke we reached Golden and found a ‘golden’ campground.  Great price and we met some fellow Europeans with whom we shared a bottle of red wine that evening.  Ben and Nina were from Switzerland and were also touring Canada.  A very sweet couple, both nurses and both had a wicked sense of humour.  We enjoyed a random evening with them.  That night was-COLD and we woke up to about -1c.  But Dorothy keeps us warm and we drove on to meet some very good friends…..

Thursday 10th May- Saturday 12th May: Nordegg, AB.  We crossed over to Alberta!!!! Goodbye BC, hello Rocky Mountains J  We took a leisurely drive towards Lake Louise to have a look at the beautiful monument that Canada boasts so much about.  Well Canada, it was frozen.  And BLOODY freezing!!!!  Needless to say, Lake Louise only saw us for about 5 minutes as we quickly shot some pictures and made a run back to the van.  However, Lake Louise Village was slightly warmer and more inviting with its candy store, café and bakery.  Yes, that’s more like it.  We also bumped into some fellow tourists from the UK.  Conversations usually look like this:

“So where about’s in England are you from?”  I say.

“kjbdflsjdkbfgljksfd,” the tourists answer. “And you?”

“Essex,” I respond, sheepishly (knowing that the reputation of my poor county precedes international boundaries) “Don’t laugh!” I add.

“Oh, but where? I have some friends/relatives/dog/ that lives there”

At this point, I never really know whether or not to say my hometown, which is about as well-known as a Llama in pyjamas.  “Colchester, but my hometown is really Tiptree.”

Now, on this particular day, these fellow tourists responded in a way that I am not usually accustomed to.  They beamed.  They knew where I was from!! They knew of my home town and it’s jam!!

“My niece works there, as a dentist” responded the gentleman.  “Katie”.  Now, there’s only one dentist office in Tiptree, complete with 3 dentists, one of which used to be nicknamed “The Butcher” for reasons I won’t go into.  He was later replaced by a really handsome young man that people often had to go to with some dental complaint or other.  I on the other hand, never had that priviledge. I was stuck with Mr Bainbridge who never wore gloves and sprayed saliva as he talked.  He also flirted with the dental assistant.  Anyways.

“Oh, no way!! Katie Robson?!” I respond, shocked.  If this is the same Katie, then she is the dentist that did my first ever filling.  I won’t tell her Uncle that she actually hurt me, and appeared quite moody most of the time.

So there you go.  Across the world, yet I bump into people that know someone I know. 

After our adventures, we made our way to Frontier Lodge, Nordegg, where our good friends Sarah and Jesse took good care of us for two days.  We stayed in their guestroom (yes!! A real bed!!) and snuggled with their Husky/Golden Retriever dog, Eska.  She was a flirt, with her blue and brown eye and wagging tail.  She was also very smart and knew where to take us when we first set foot on the campground.  It was great to see Sarah and Jesse.  They work as camp staff but also lead a Bible/Adventure program called Ascend.  They do wild, crazy stuff like ice climbing and cave diving, and after a hard days work having adventures, they study the bible with their group and build relationships.  I like the last part better to be honest…..

We were treated as camp guests, invited to breakfast, lunch and dinner and I soon felt quite at home after 5 years working with the Anvil Camp that I love and will miss so dearly this year.  On Friday, Bas and I found ourselves quite tired, so we napped, took a short walk to the lake and watched 5 episodes of 24.  We are quite big fans of Kiefer Sutherland.  Saturday was our last day in Nordegg, and the end of our first week on our road tour of Canada!!  Keep watching for week #2…….

Yes, today is the first day of our goodbyes here in Vancity.  What a wonderful 8 years I have had here, and I’m sure Bas can say the same thing for his 4 years here.  I wish I had the time to write about everything we’ve experienced, but I think it will take some time….. but for now, here’s a quick update on our travels.

May 1st-May 4th: Goodbye Vancouver.  Bas and I are staying around in Vancouver for a few more days to wrap up affairs and accounts, and to say ciao to our favourite place.

May 5th-June 13th:  Cross Canada tour….with some stops in the USA.
We’re leaving at 6am on Saturday, to start our driving tour.  Our first stop?  Somewhere between Hope & Vernon to try out our camper van for the first time!  From then on, we’ll cruise across the country, stopping sometimes in the USA, and making our final way down to New York where we’ll fly to the Netherlands.

June 13th-July 9th: Settling into Zwolle, Netherlands.
We’ll be living here for a couple of years while Bas continues to work for Control Union Zwolle and I will be teaching ESL students.  We have an apartment for 2 months courtesy of the company, but after that we have to find our own.  We’re pretty hopeful that things will be available when we’re there.

So that’s it for our Canada Chapter!! We’ll be updating our blog as we go across, albeit sporadically.  Hopefully you’ll enjoy following along.

See you soon!
Amy & Bas

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

A San Francisco cable car holds 60 people. This blog was viewed about 2,000 times in 2011. If it were a cable car, it would take about 33 trips to carry that many people.

Click here to see the complete report.

This is my last entry for the Creative Writing course, ENG 265.  It has been a great discipline to know that I need to write entries in order to pass this course, (and hopefully to write good entries at that!)  Here are a few things I’ve learned from this new habit.

1.  I’ve learned to be more observant of the events around me, or events that I am involved in.  I have been thinking more about how these events could translate into anecdotes or fun thoughts to share.

2.  Experimenting with style, word combinations and the like has also been a really fun, creative experience.  Practicing with blog entries has made writing papers a smoother experience.

3.  Because of this need to write blog entries, I have been hyper aware of other’s writing styles, be it in magazines, on websites or in books.

4.  I have been discovering other anecdotal authors such as Anne Lamott and Donald Miller.  They are my aspirations.

5.  I’ve been really enjoying reading much more lately.

I probably could go on, although I shouldn’t.  After a while I might just be making up things to fill space.

The title of this blog entry is The End of an Era.  Or a couple of eras. . . And the reason for that is the season of change that Bas and I find ourselves in.  We are both foreigners in this city, like many of Vancouver’s inhabitants.  And like many of these inhabitants, we are also transient people.  Knowing that we wouldn’t be here forever, we had planned on moving back to Europe at some point, finding ourselves jobs, settling down and having a family.  Little did we know that this transition would be coming around so soon.  At the beginning of the year, we talked seriously about the possibility of moving and started coming up with ideas of what we could do, where we would live and how we would go about this process.  To cut a long story short, doors opened up easier than we thought.  Bas was offered a job in the Netherlands as of the beginning of July 2012 in a town called Zwolle, and so we are moving back to Holland.

Just writing that sentence alone brings up a lot of emotions.  Moving to Canada was one of the most major turning points in my life so far, and it will be a real wrench for me to leave this city that I have made my home in.  The city itself is appealing, enjoyable and offers a lot of different amenities, but that is all easy to leave.  I can find those things, or joy in new things, in our new home town of Zwolle next year.  The hardest thing for us both to leave is our new found family.  We have family in England and Holland, family that we were born into.  But while we were away from that family, others stood around us, loved us and encouraged us as we learned new things, experienced new events and took challenges on.

I’ve been here just over seven years.  A quarter of my life here and I think I can safely say that I have some definite Canadian traits about me. . . (well, maybe more Vancouverite traits)  I have found my identity here, grounded my relationship with God here and established morals, beliefs and traditions with myself and my husband.  It has been a cocoon for growth and maturity, and now I have to step out of that warm incubation and move on.  Thankfully Holland doesn’t get much colder than Vancouver, so it won’t be a cold experience!

So thus endeth two eras.  This writing course, and my time in Vancity.  I guess I can’t really write much more about it because there are so many things to think about.  It is for sure an emotional experience that will take a long time to walk through, and I am sure, get used to when we transition over to the Netherlands.

Until next time, because there will be a next set of blog entries, despite not needing to write in order to pass courses. . .

I love people: they are strangely curious creatures.  I love the shifting, changing nature of communities, personal lives, philosophies.  I love to listen to people’s thoughts and dilemmas and in my mind, crawl across the table and into the inside of their heads to see what it might be like looking through their eyes.  I try to imagine holding their responsibilities, the things that weigh on their shoulders and what it could look like walking the path they have chosen.

These last two years I have learned to shut my mouth and listen more.  I think it was Ghandi that said something about two ears and one mouth, meaning we should listen twice as much as we talk.  And listening, well, I often think that that is a good remedy for a bad day, a sad heart, or a hurting friend.  Oprah, Dr. Phil, Jeremy Kyle (the british Oprah) and all the self help books collecting dust on our shelves already tell us of the 100 more things we should be doing/thinking/praying/believing/meditating on.  The last thing someone needs is to be told one more thing to do/think/pray for/believe or meditate on.  The last thing I want on a “bad day” is to be told one more thing to think or feel or try or buy.  I’m done with it all.  For Pete’s sakes, just listen.  Please.

Working in youth ministry also taught me to listen.  Actually, it forced me to listen.  Anyone who knows a teenage girl knows that man, can she ever talk!  I often wonder if electricity could be produced by the talk of teenage girls and their excitement over Twilight, Justin Beiber, Robert Pattinson or whatever the next craze is.  (When I was a teen, Tamagotchis were the “thing”, now it’s vampires.  Go figure).  However, once I’d explored the jungle of the teenage girl’s latest boy crush, most hated subjects at school and most loved film stars, we’d often get to other topics somewhat deeper and more vulnerable than the previous.  Rejection, divorce, cutting, self image, desire, loneliness, desperation.  These things and more plague the teen girls heart, and to her, they are all very real (no matter how much we rationalize on our own position of what they’re going through).  A young girl’s heart can rise and fall in a single day, depending on a graded paper, a conversation with a guy, a nasty look from a girlfriend.  So when she steps into my office and opens up her heart, the last thing she needs is to be told what Bible passage to look for, or what to say, or what to do or think or feel.  School already does all of that and more.  She needs to be heard.

Isn’t it so nice when you have the freedom to tell someone you trust something that is plaguing you?  Or how about opening up and sharing your fears about faith with someone from church?  Doesn’t it feel so great to just be listened to, with no interruptions.  You have the freedom to verbally vomit all the things that are jumbled and tangled in your head, and not be judged for them.  A safe environment, a trusted friend or spouse or stranger.  Sometimes I imagine that it would be like that talking to Jesus, but at the end of your rant He’d having something incredibly profound and life changing to say.  He, on the other hand, can get away with it.  After all, He is God.  But you and I are not.  Our words can complicate things, our secret, unconscious motives get in the way, or even our pride.

“Doesn’t that sound good?” My subconscious sometimes whispers while I’m proudly dolling out advice. “You sound so wise for such a young age”.
“Why thank you!” I respond, silently.  Then instantly I realize I have a friend in front of me, pouring out their heart about a delicate matter.  In my mind I scold myself.  “Just shut it and listen”.  Stupid pride.

But seriously.  I think we may have an epidemic on our hands: the inability to listen.  And I’m not commenting on this because I’ve had a bad experience recently.  Not at all, in fact my husband is a great listener as well as my close friends.  But generally speaking.  As a Christian community, I think we need to be quieter.  We need to listen, to catch on to every word that someone utters to us.  Give eye contact, nod our heads in agreement.  And when someone is done, let there be silence.  Let all that they have said sink in slowly into our own hearts and if you are that way inclined, silently reach out to God in our hearts to say “I have no clue how to respond.  God, this is your cue because my experience in these subjects ended a while back in the story.”  Cue God.  Cue God when we let go of our own ideas about how to fix others, or how others should behave.  Cue God when we silence our own thoughts and let the Spirit weave in between the words that have been spoken to form questions in our mind.  Cue God to help us tread carefully forward when someone has laid in front of us their vulnerability, hurt and insecurity.  Cue God because in reality, we have no idea how to go about this world any more than the next person does.

And isn’t it the case that you know what the answer is already?  You know what it is you need to do more of, or less of. You know what to think or feel or explore or let go of.  Surely, in the sharing we’re not always asking for advice.  I know when I share with someone, I already have the solution.  I’m reaching out to you and asking you to listen, not because I need fixing but because I’m asking you to help me in my loneliness.  I’m sharing my heart and tangled thoughts because I need someone sane to help me remember that I’m totally normal and that sometimes feeling crazy in this world is an okay response.  I also need to be reminded that you are my friend, my trusted companion.  I am holding out my hand to you and asking you to quietly join me – walk alongside me on this journey, just like the Lord would.  Listen, observe and tell me you understand.

And at the end of it all, when it is your turn to go through something, reach out to me and I will be there, waiting to listen.

Well, I’m not really Canadian, as most of you know, but I have lived there long enough to consider myself “part of the furniture” as Oliver would say.  Yet one week into my two week stay in the UK, my home land, I’m feeling quite strange.

I do not fit in here, but, I do fit in here.

Living in another country has made me proud of my roots.  “I am English,” I’ll say.  “From tip to toe and toe to tip!”  Cute right?  But now I’m here, the rose tinted glasses are off, and I am starting to remember why it is I left.  Hopelessness, poor government, lack of inspiration, rubbish television, yet at the same time I have something precious right in front of me that I refuse to ignore: family.  They are where my heritage is, they are from whom I have been given life and character.  They are what make up a part of me and they are what I treausre the most since leaving.

It’s all well and good leaving your small village in Essex (famous for jam) to live in the big wide world.  At first it’s great: you laugh at the local newspaper writing a tribute to your leaving.  You’re famous, if all for five minutes (and to those only who live in the same said village.)  Nonetheless, you feel proud for doing something that others have not, yet.  You arrive in a big city and you realize just what it is you’ve done.  So, you spend the next 2 weeks crying at night, realizing that you actually relied on your family much more than you wanted to admit.  Small things, like buying shampoo and stamps, throw you for six.  You have to learn new coloquialisms, where the good food stores are, say words like “store” instead of “shop”, or “pants” instead of “trousers”, get used to the unusual amount of water in the toilet bowl, and driving on the right hand side.  But soon enough, these things become habit and they’re not such a novelty anymore.  Much like a chameleon, you blend in to your surroundings and start to soak them up.  You smile as you look out of the window on the bus, remembering where it is you live and basking in independance.  And then after a few years of this, another feeling sets in.

My cousins are the closest things I have to siblings, and I love them.  Charlotte and I grew up together being only two years my junior, and we spent many a weekend together playing, growing up, making up and talking.  We journeyed through teenage-dom together untill I jet setted off to North America to “find myself”.  Just two years ago she had a baby, and for the first time next week I will meet him.  My childhood friend got married a month ago, and I sadly looked on via facebook, wishing I could have been there for her, just like she was for me on my wedding day.  Dad’s sister fell seriously ill, as did my Mom’s Mom.  People have aged, changed jobs, got new boyfriends, girlfriends or apartments, lost, gained, felt, and I am on the other side of the world experiencing my own life, somewhat independantly.  Half of my family has not even met my husband of almost two years.

I live too far away.

The Great Adventure has been great so far in these seven years.  Each time I’ve come back to the UK for a visit I’ve been glad to see family and friends and familiarality, but I have also been glad to get back on the plane to go “home” again to Vancouver.  This time though, with thoughts of the future in mind (children and such) it is harder to think about the journey to the airport, saying goodbye and going back home.

Even though we have Skype, letters, emails and parcels in the mail at Christmas, the world does seem an awfully large place when you realize that your family is worth more to you than you originally thought.

For my course I have had to submit two concrete poems.  I had to wrack my brains to dig up High School information to actually remember what a concrete poem was.  To be honest, I was so excited when I found out!  I love the opportunity to create and play with image and words.  For those of you whose English class memories are tucked behind some other important information, here’s a reminder.  Concrete poetry is word play: arrange the words of your poem into a form that represents your theme.

I found a great website called Tagxedo where they provide a platform for creativity.  You type in your words, poem, blog etc, and choose your image.  The program processes the words into the image, but then you get to edit how it looks.  I spent almost 3 hours on this yesterday, playing around and finding out what I liked best.  Here’s the first creation I came up with for school.

Enjoy!

On this morning, the third morning of hearing the news from London and across England, I am angry.  I feel helpless, hopeless and frustrated at the amount of talk that is going on over the news.  Speculation:  how will the Police force cope tonight?  What do you think has caused this?  Let’s hear from so-and-so, the leader of Economics at some prestigious University.  Let’s now go to bigwig leader-from-some-important-part-of-the-government.  Sure, speculation is all well and good, but what are we going to do?  Talk is cheap if changes are not made.  What really is the source of all this unprecedented violence?  It’s not even making a point!  It’s just a bunch of angry young adults who think they can do what they want.  Youth around the world protest for human rights, my young adult community is looting JD Sports and Curries to steal computers and sneakers.  Wow, what a point you lot are making.

I grew up in England, I am British, from toe to tip and from tip to toe.  I was proud to be English, but I am not proud of my country right now.  I have lost faith in the government, faith in the education system and faith in the people of my generation.  I am now a true Brit: I am hopeless.  Generations before me have worked hard for a healthy country, members of my family fought in World War Two and fought for freedom. Families have set up businesses and have moved our economy on. My generation?  We’re angry, and we can’t tell you why.

Please take a listen to this clip: BBC Interviews Riot Girls

“Everyone was on a riot, just goin’ mad like, chuckin’ fings, chuckin’ bottles. . .it was good tho’. . .it was good fun . . . ‘course it is!”

The interviewer asks “Have you been drinking all night?”

“Yeah. . .it’s the governments fault . . . conservatives whatever, whoever it is, I dunno’.  We’re showin’ the police we can do what we want.  That’s what it’s all about, showin’ the police we can do what we want.  And now we have.”

“Do you reckon it will go on tonight?” asks the BBC interviewer.

“Yeah, hopefully . . . it’s the rich people, the people that got businesses, and that’s why this is all happened . . . we’re just showin’ the rich people we can do what we want.”

I am shocked, disgusted and ashamed.  All of my bitterness towards my generation is now at the forefront, all that I’ve believed in the past about hopelessness amongst a class of young people is now inflamed: maybe we are a hopeless generation.

The two girls involved in the interview do not even know why they are fighting.  First they blame the government (whom they clearly know nothing about), then they claim they want to show the police that they can exercise their right to freedom.  Then they go on to blame the rich, or those who have businesses.  Surely they know that those who own businesses are not always rich?  That there are people out there who own family run stores struggle each month to stay afloat while the economy drowns and rent rises?  They are clueless.  I want to tell them just how wrong they are, that they can fight another way, but they will face what they have already faced: the feeling that they are so small while the problems around us are so big.  How can we make a difference?

How can young people make a difference in a country that doesn’t even have a solid government?  How can young people make themselves heard when their education system has seemingly failed them, council housing and benefits have made it easy for us to become lazy, and we have so much information in front of us we’ve forgotten how to make a way for ourselves?  How can a group of people fall so far between the cracks?

It is easy to become dispirited, and I am certainly becoming more and more dispirited as I watch the news, follow Twitter and hear people’s reactions.  But I saw this picture this morning and I have seen a glimpse of hope.  After all of this, maybe there is not as much hopelessness as I once thought.

As looters and rioters smashed up shops, looted and fought with police in Camden Town, Philippa Morgan-Walker, 25 and her husband, Jonny Walker, 31, made tea for the police who were protecting their street. Some of the officers had been on duty for more than 30 hours.

True British Spirit: let’s make a cup of tea.

But in all seriousness, this really did give me hope this morning.  These two people are friends of my cousin, and their love for their community drove them to do what they could: care for those who were working hard for their town.  A cup of tea, a cold glass of water, biscuits, sandwiches, anything like this is more than what it seems.  It reminds the British Public that there are people in our country who care.  It reminds me that even though we could be consumed by this sad news, there are young people who have hope and who want to make a difference.  I hope and pray that this is the worst of it, and we make our way towards a brighter future from here on.

In Liverpool, which also saw rioting Monday, 21-year-old bartender Charles Jupiter set up a "Liverpool Clean Up" Facebook page that brought about 100 volunteers onto the streets Tuesday morning. "I thought, 'Not in my city'," Jupiter said. "People were posting, 'I'm embarrassed to be English, I'm embarrassed to be from London or Liverpool.' "I reposted and said, 'I'm not. That's why I'm going out there to help clean up.'"