A day in the life

I saw on my friend Lisa’s blog that she had posted “A Day in the Life of Lisa”. I thought this was a cool concept and thought I’d give it a try. If you’re reading this, it means that I decided it was worth posting and not just scrapping. So, here goes my day:

7:00 AM – I’m up. I don’t know why I wake up at 7 whether I’m working or not, but I do. As per usual, I start my day by scanning emails and reading the important news of the day (ie the hockey preview section on tsn.ca. Looks like my beloved Canadiens are considered a strong contender this year. Too bad Sudanese broadcasters can’t spell hockey, let alone broadcast it) BTW, am I the only one who gets excited to get email, and then disappointed when I discover that most of it is spam? I guess this is the modern equivalent of expecting a letter from a friend to come in the mail, and having to wade through weeks of flyers and hydro bills and past due notices for your cable bill. (I just had a sudden flashback to university when one of my idiot roommates didn’t pay the cable bill and it was cut off during exams, causing my other roommate great anguish as he scrambled to find another way to procrastinate). Maybe I shouldn’t write this before I’m fully awake. But then any of you who knows me well knows that this is how I think.

8 AM – finish reading the headlines, and decide to finish writing my vacation stories blog (which you’ll find underneath this one, I presume). Start to get hungry for breakfast, but decide to hold off until my guests (friends who work in rural Sudan and have come to the city for a break) wake up.

9:20 – realize I’m getting more hungry, and decide to start my new morning routine. 4 days running of the rowing machine, followed by some stretching and strengthening exercises for my back and knee which had been bothering me a bit lately after intense squash games. Let’s hope I can keep this up.

9:50 – finished cleaning up. Have just enough time to grab a quick breakfast before heading off to church (since Friday is the Muslim prayer day, it is also my day off and thus is the day I go to church)

10:35 – arrive at church 5 minutes late for worship practice. Surprised to discover that others are showing up on time now, and slink into position behind the microphone. For those that don’t know, I have been singing as part of the worship team now, and have been teaching them a few new songs on guitar during our practices. It is quite fun!

11:50 – I got word during the pre service that the speaker today is known for his longwindedness, so I decide to make a run for it, since it’s 45 degrees outside and the church is not always well cooled. I justify it by saying that I have to get caught up on work, despite the fact that I have to get caught up on work mainly because I haven’t gotten much done in the last couple of days (which I justified by the fact that the rest of Sudan, including everyone else on my staff, was on holiday to celebrate the end of Ramadan. I, however, had grand plans of using this time to get caught up on work that piled up while I was away on vacation.)

12:10 – get home and have some leftover peanut chicken for lunch that Chris and Bev made the other night. The night before that, I made them a teriyaki stirfry. I love having guests around. Cooking is so much more fun, and I eat better and healthier.

12:30 – contemplate going up to the office. Decide to pause to update this journal, and remember that I was having trouble transferring music to my mp3 player. Decide to investigate this.

2:00 – finally made it to the office. I discovered that some of my music discs are scratched and don’t play properly. No matter. I have thousands more songs. While I was trying to load my mp3 player, I decided to watch an episode of Spin City to kill time. Time for serious work now though.

4:00 – well, that’s enough work for my day off. Looks like I’ll have to put in some time tomorrow though. Gonna catch another episode of Spin City, and then head off to squash.

4:30 – on my way out to run some errands when I ran into Tim online, a friend who is getting married next year. It’s sad to miss weddings, but it’s not cost feasible to make it back to Canada all the time. We’ll see what I can work out.

5:15 – ran out of time for the errands. Head to squash with Edwin. The squash game wasn’t all that great. We had a good game on Wednesday, but both ended up a little stiff and sore today. Still good fun.

7:00 - had some more peanut chicken for dinner. Got to use up the leftovers. Ran into Mike and Leah (two fellow African travellers that I met in a mission prep course in Canada before I went to Malawi) on line and chatted for a bit. It’s fun to keep in touch with fellow travellers.

8:30 - Decided to put on a movie, and watched The Bucket List. I really enjoyed this movie. Two all time great actors, Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, tell a great tale of two guys who just found out that they have less than a year to live, and decide to live out some life long dreams. A lovely little film.

10:00 – Chris and Bev (my visitors and houseguests) come back and ask if I want to watch a movie. I figured I might as well (Chris makes great popcorn), but didn’t want another heavy drama, so we settled on some really light, cheesy 80s romantic comedy called “Can’t Buy Me Love”. Totally cheesy and sappy; fun for the whole family.

And there you have it. A day in my life, that strangely managed to cover much of my Sudan experience. Hope you liked it!

European vacation - Fall 08 edition

Well, I finally made some time to write out my latest adventures in travel. For my first stop, I travelled to Belfast to visit my friend Jane whom I had met in Sudan. I enjoyed the warm hospitality of her and her family and was reminded of the peacefulness and simplicity of rural living. And she was very tolerant of my need to cover my two main cravings that go unfulfilled in Sudan: bacon and beer. Made for a great breakfast every morning :)

On the first day, we headed out to check out a rope bridge, and to check out the Causeway. It was a fun day of exploring, in spite of the cold rain. We then warmed ourselves by a fire before finding a great thai restaurant for dinner (another one of my cravings that I fulfilled quite frequently during my trip.) The next day, we went to a different city (I'm too lazy to go find the names) where there was a lovely walk along the water that led up to this mountain:

After that, we headed to Belfast to check out the Botanical gardens. Though not as impressive as the ones in Cambridge I saw last year, they were still quite beautiful.

After dinner in a great Mexican place, we went to see the movie Get Smart, a rather witty and entertaining piece of mindless fun (I also miss movie theatres in Khartoum)

On Sunday, I got to check out her church in Belfast, both the morning and evening services, which were excellent. In between, we had a lovely Sunday afternoon meal with the family which reminded me of family Sunday meals of years gone past. And we also went for a walk around a beautiful pond.

On Monday I was off to Galway to visit my friend Melissa, someone I met in Toronto years ago who is now managing a hostel on the Aran Islands, just of the west coast of Ireland. We met up in Galway and enjoyed a night of live music (yet another thing I greatly miss), before heading off to the island the next day. However, we also made the mistake of settling on seeing the movie Step Brothers when other movies were sold out. I could rant in great detail, but in short I cannot state strongly enough that you should not EVER see this movie. Unless you want to see 40 year old men acting like 8 year old imbiciles for 2 hours, with a generous helping of offensive, inappropriate, and not particularly funny jokes. But I digress.

Out on the island, I enjoyed 3 days of fun, relaxation, good views, good food, good company, good entertainment, and good Guinness on the island. I also got to watch the movie The Commitments in Ireland, thus accomplishing a loosely defined life goal. On Friday, I stopped in Dublin for a night and explored a bit of the bar district, checking out some traditional Irish music. Saturday I made a stop at the Thomas Beatty library where they had a very interesting and informative presentation of the major world religions, including some very ancient writings and artifacts. I loved it.

Saturday afternoon I headed to England to link up with Andy and his family (one of my coworkers in Malawi who has settled back into farm life in England) I always enjoy seeing him and his family, and it was fun to see the kids all a year older. Kezi into some of the music I have listened to, watching Caleb grow into a soccer player (I’m glad he’s found an outlet for at least some of his seemingly endless energy supply). I enjoyed some wonderful home cooked meals, and I always feel like I’m part of the family when I’m there. Andy and I also snuck away one night to see The Dark Knight, the latest Batman film. I generally avoid the superhero films as I don’t buy into the genre (I’m not a comic book guy), but I had heard so much press about this film that I had to check it out. I thought the movie was very good, and probably as good as it gets for this genre, but I think that the people who talk of it being an all time great movie are overstating things.

On Tuesday, I ventured down to London for a meeting with one of our partners, Tearfund. On the way, I was able to grab a quick lunch with my friend Karen, another friend from Toronto who had just the day before finished her work as a grad school student at UCL. I’m glad I got to see her before she heads back to Canada. The meeting was productive, and worth the trip. I also got to link up for drinks with one of the Tearfund staff who came to Sudan to do some training. I love that it can be such a small world sometimes.

The final stop on my journey was a long weekend in Utrecht with Lisa, another friend from my church in Toronto who moved out to Holland the same time I moved to Sudan. I was proud to discover that I was the first repeat visitor (and glad to be welcomed back and to see her again) We had more amusing, interesting, and thought provoking conversations about God, living abroad, the changes at our old church in Toronto, and what the future may hold. I love getting her perspective on things because she has a way of communicating things that is honest, unpretentious, amusing, and thought provoking all at the same time. I got to meet a few of the friends that she has made, by going to movies, drinks, and being part of a dinner party she hosted. I also got to meet up with one of my best friends in Sudan (Edwin), who is a native of Holland and was passing through on his leave. And while Lisa was at work, I got to explore some of Holland, including the Corrie Ten Boom house. For those of you who don’t know who Corrie Ten Boom is, read the Hiding Place. It’s a great book. Here is a picture of the hiding place itself, for those that know the story.

All in all, it was a great trip. A few random side benefits of the trip included:

- a useful meeting with a physiotherapist to discuss some lingering knee pain. She helped me identify the problem and showed me some good stretching and strengthening exercises that have helped solve the problem. Which is good, because I was missing my regular squash games. :)

- I had lots of airplane/bus times to get through some reading. I read a bunch of books on the trip, ranging from the light novels of Jeffrey Archer and John Grisham, to a classic by Oswald Chambers (Gems on Genesis), another good book by Philip Yancey, Fever Pitch (not one of Nick Hornby’s best), and finally Perelandra by CS Lewis (considered by some of my friends to be the best book they have ever read)

- I discovered the wonders of sweet chilli sauce, which is quickly becoming part of many new recipes for me. I discovered it at a very punnily named place in Dublin called Abakebabra

- I met a couple of South Africans during some long layovers at airports, so I now have a couple of connections if/when I ever get a chance to travel there

- I got to walk for miles a day at a leisurely pace in places that weren’t boiling hot and seemingly endless plains of sand.

- I got to visit my 12th country. I’ve still got a ways to go to catch up to my boss’ 90 something countries (don’t know that I really have the desire to attain that though.) I knocked Ireland off the list. Now, the tops on my list are Italy and Australia. All in good time.