Level Up

Yesterday the weather changed to what I suppose might be a more realistic expectation for the upcoming Scottish fall/winter. What?! It's not beautifully sunny, with crisp, clean air every day here? Yeah... not quite. The rain came in a serious way, along with dark clouds and wind. Lots of wind.

This morning, I went for a run. Here I am afterwards.

What this photo does not communicate well:

- How entirely friggin' soaked I am. Especially the lower half of my body.
- The two layers underneath my jacket.
- The toque on my head.
- The (sopping wet) fleece gloves on my hands.
- The sand plastered to my legs from the wind blowing down near the sea.
- How thankful I am for gore-tex.

And finally...

- The feeling of accomplishment for actually getting up, in what was essentially total darkness (at 7 am), facing down the inevitability of this weather, and running anyway!

What's up now, Scotland?!
















(OK I take that last part back. I think things may get worse. Or at least colder.)

Our First Expedition!

Today we ventured out on our first expedition to explore historic Scotland. We spent a full and wonderful day with our friends the Allens (Garrick & Andrea) and the Brewers (Chris & Rachel and their boys John and Sam). It was a fantastic time: a day full of beautiful scenery, fascinating history, and good times with great people.

Getting an early start, we caught an 8:10 bus and headed down to Dunfermline, about a 1.5 hour ride away. The main sight to see there is the old (OK, let's be honest, very old - it sits on the site of an abbey first built up in the early 12th century) palace and abbey. Dunfermline was for a long time the capital of Scotland, and in the (still functioning) nearby church, King Robert the Bruce lies buried under the altar.

Dunfermline Church from the northeast, standing over the ruins of the Abbey

Liana and I in front of the main entrance

The Great East Window of the Abbey

Stained glass in the Romanesque interior of the church

After exploring the ruins of the abbey and church, we hopped back on a bus and headed off to Aberdour, a small town a little ways away, where we grabbed some lunch. This is noteworthy only for the fact that Liana and I both tried our first bites of haggis! Garrick is a big haggis fan (and not Scottish - yes, these people exist), and let us eat off his plate. My opinion? It was actually pretty friggin' delicious. Think savoury, rich sausage, with a similar consistency to... hmm... somewhere between meatloaf and oatmeal... except way more appetizing than that ended up sounding. I guess it's tough to describe. You'll have to try it for yourself.

Scotland's national dish: haggis, neeps, and tatties!

Anyway, back on topic: filled with haggis, we wandered over to nearby Aberdour Castle, where we spent a good long while exploring the ruins and surrounding site. Aberdour Castle is one of the oldest in Scotland, inhabited continuously for almost 500 years from the 12th century on by the Mortimers and Douglases, and includes beautiful terraced grounds, a lovely garden, and St. Fillian's (a small 12th century church). Very cool stuff! I am such a sucker for that thrilling feeling that comes with knowing that the tightly curving stone stairwell you're climbing or the arched window you're looking out of (or whatever) has been climbed up/looked through by people for hundreds and hundreds of years! History is just fascinating.

Aberdour Castle ruins (the tower is the oldest chunk, dating to 12th century)

Liana takes in the view

Next on the itinerary was Elie, a small town in the East Neuk where we briefly stopped to check out the beach. The East Neuk is an area of several small fishing villages along the east coast of Fife, south of St Andrews. They are all quite quaint and charming, just what you'd expect.

Liana looking cold on the beach in Elie

Elie's exemplification of East Neuk quaint-ness

Finally, after yet another bus ride (ride 5/6 on the day - each of which averaged 45 minutes!) we arrived in Anstruther, another beautiful little East Neuk town, home to what is (apparently) the UK's number one place for fish and chips. It goes without saying that this was our dinner destination. My opinion? Well first, a little back-story. Apparently the people who started the Anstruther place sold it after it got huge, were out of the biz for a while, and then opened up another place in St Andrews (called Tail End) - which some claim is, in fact, better than Anstruther. We've now had both so I feel qualified to give an opinion. My vote is that as for the chips and the tartar sauce, Tail End was better. But for fish, Anstruther took it. The fish was crispier and less greasy than what we had in St Andrews. Pretty delish. The local fave is haddock, so that's what we had.

Anstruther Sunset

The gang in front of the famous "chippie"
L-R: Garrick, Andrea, Liana, John, Sam, Chris, Rachel

Another bus ride and we were home. What a day! It really made me aware of just how surrounded by history we are here. What an opportunity Liana and I have! OK. Enough exuberance for now. I'm exhausted and need to go to bed.

General Update

Hey friends! I thought another update might be in order, since much has happened over the past couple of weeks, as we have continued to settle in and make St Andrews our home. So here goes!

- Well, we've been in our flat now for almost two weeks. Over this period of time, I have felt a noticeable daily increase in how "at home" I've felt here. When we first moved in, both Liana and I felt very unsettled - in some ways, as weird and out-of-place as at any other point since we've arrived. I think this was probably due in large part to the fact of our staying with the Watts-es for our first week. We arrived to someone's home - a place that was lived in, set up, and filled with all the things (physical and otherwise) that make a home a home. Their gracious and loving welcome allowed us to make the transition here in a very comforting and comfortable environment. When the day came for us to move into our own place, well... it was just a place. The walls were bare, the furniture was odd... it just felt - unknown. And it has taken some "wearing in", as it were. The good news is that this continues to happen; slowly, yes. But it is happening. This will be a good home.

- Speaking a little less metaphysically, the flat itself is, all in all, pretty great. It's small, yes, but it has pretty much everything we need. Liana has been working hard at cleaning the place (ask her about the bathroom sometime - she had to deep-clean it in stages over a period of two days), since standards of cleanliness just don't seem to be quite the same as they are at home. Thankfully, we got the place through a great leasing agency, who has already (1) sent a handyman to fix the fridge door; (2) sent a plumber to fix the toilet; (3) sent another handyman to re-caulk the bathtub; and (4) convinced the landlord to purchase a new vacuum cleaner (the one already here looked like it was an early 20th century prototype). We've got some odd furniture: two IKEA poangs, a white/brown rattan chair, and a retro [in the bad way] wingback. The under-the-counter fridge is actually totally do-able with the grocery store so close by, and I've taken on the role of dishwasher, which I've actually been finding to be something I enjoy doing in the evenings. The best part about the flat is probably the location (it's directly across the street from the library, and only a five-minute walk (or less) from almost everything you'd want to get to in town. But my favourite parts are: (1) the fact that it's so close to my office that I can walk home for lunch; and (2) the big windows, especially on the eastern side, resulting in (a) the morning sun (when it shows up) pouring into the apartment, and (b) in this view:

Yup. That's the view out our windows.

- We rented a car and drove down to Edinburgh to pick up our shipment from a warehouse near the airport. I drove. That was... a little crazy. Once you got used to it though, it was pretty cool! And now I can say I've driven a Vauxhall! Wahoo. My lasting impression of driving here is that I was all of a sudden much more conscious of the fact that I was actually sitting on a certain side of the car. I had all this real estate to my left that I had to be aware of! I probably drove more safely than I normally would at home, simply by virtue of the fact that my brain was entirely engaged in concentrating on what I was doing the whole time.

- We've been here three Sundays now, and over that time we've gone to two different churches. The first week we went to the Kingdom Vineyard church with Steve & Elissa. The past two weeks we've gone to Trinity Church, which is the more contemporary service affiliated with Holy Trinity, a very historical church (John Knox's church!) affiliated with the Church of Scotland (Presbyterian). A number of folks who we've met through St. Mary's go there. We've enjoyed all the services we've been to, but we're not sure yet where we'll stick. We're both excited about this opportunity to try out some different places and different worshipping traditions. Still on the list to potentially check out are the "regular" (read: more high-church) Holy Trinity service, All Saints Church (Episcopalian), the Baptist church, and the Free church.

- The community of St Mary's has lived up to its reputation, as we have been wonderfully welcomed here with dinner invitations from five different families over the course of the past two weeks! Wow. Elissa jokes that the first few months in St Andrews it feels like you're going on a whole bunch of first dates with other couples/families, testing out the water to see who you're going to be a good fit with. :-) I guess there are similarities, but truly I have just been grateful that people have been so openly willing and excited to invite us into their homes, share a meal with us, and get to know us. It's been exciting - and a bit tiring. But good tired, if you know what I mean. We've continued to see Steve, Elissa, and Isaac whenever we can (including Sunday night Downton Abbey viewing parties), and I'm so very glad to be getting to know these wonderful people better. Praise God for bringing them into our lives! Hopefully, as time goes by, there will be some other relationships with some of the folks we've met so far that will deepen and solidify. We will trust in God for that.

- I know that some of you are probably very much wanting to read about how Liana's job hunt is going, and how my school work is progressing, but I promised myself I wasn't going to write super-long blog posts. So I'll set aside the former for Liana to tell you about herself, and I'll save the latter to update you on another time.

We are thinking about you all back at home. May you all know God's blessing as you work for the building of his kingdom with the gifts that are yours by his Spirit!

On a run this morning: the West Sands at sunrise.
 It's not really in the frame, but the St Andrews skyline would be off to the right.

Golfing the Links

I know that some of you are actively uninterested in golf; most are probably just ambivalent; and the rest - the golfers - are absolutely seething with envy at my situation right now.

This post is for the latter category. I hope we can still be friends.

I've managed to get out to golf twice now (I attempted a third time, but that was at about 10:30 am on a beautifully sunny and relatively wind-less Saturday morning - needless to say the course was packed), and that means I have now more than paid for my restricted student links ticket. I paid £105 for the year, and if I'd been paying regular price my two rounds would have cost me £140. I paid off my ticket after the front nine this morning. Everything else from that point until the end of next August is basically free. Don't hate!

So, what is golf in St Andrews like?

WINDY.Oh. my. I've never played in such wind. I have been laying in the fairway 115 yards out and hit a solid 6 iron and barely made the fringe. On the other hand, I smoked my 5 wood off the tee almost 280 yards this morning. I was grouped with three Scotsmen who have been playing the links for almost 40 years together, and you should have seen their drives. Not a single one went higher than oh, maybe 50 feet off the ground. They were putting from 30 yards out! It's a different mindset, that's for sure.

Deceptive. Where are all the trees? Why does this hole look so easy? What's that? You hit it three inches off the fairway into that rough? Oh. Well. Good luck. The wind and the rough are the toughest aspects, for sure. I tried to hit a full 5 iron out of about 6 inches of grass today and it dribbled forward maybe 8 feet. Apparently it's especially thick right now because of the terribly wet summer most of the UK had.

You wanna play rough? OK, we'll play rough!

Bunker-y. Those pot bunkers we've all seen in the Open Championships are no joke in real life. I actually had to hit backward out of one during my first round, because I had rolled right up to the front! I got the full experience. But the sand in them is wonderful, which is great. Not like that ground-up concrete we have at some courses back home.

Bunker in front of number 2 on the Jubilee Course

Beautiful. One of my favourite parts of golf is being outside and enjoying the walk. Obviously, we have beautiful courses back home (it's BC, duh!), but it is a different sort of beauty here. Wind-swept, rolling hills of grass and gorse bush, the ocean on one side, golden yellow fields on the other, with a medieval town on the horizon. The sun sits lower in the sky, so the light is always sweeping dramatically across your view.

All in all, I am very thankful for the chance to live and play here for a few years. What a blessing. If anyone wants to come join me for a round, I'm only a 9-hour* plane ride away!

*If you could convince the pilot to let you sky dive as you're crossing over Scotland. Hmm...

Coincidences / Small World Occurences

1. During my first round of golf in St Andrews, I was approached by a gentleman on the 16th tee box, who asked if he could join up with me. We began to chat, and it turned out that he was from West Vancouver. What are the chances? Clearly this guy had some coin, since he was a member of the R&A and in town on his annual two-week trip to St Andrews to golf. Blimey.

OK, maybe that one wasn't all that impressive, but try this one on for size...

2. Last week I received the keys to my office in the Roundel. This particular office has four desks, all placed together in the centre of the room. Upon entering, the first thing to catch my eye is, on the desk next to mine, a guampa. With a thermos next to it, covered in classic South American style leather, with "Paraguay" proudly engraved on the side. I couldn't believe it! A mate drinker! Seated next to me!

But just wait. It gets better.

Turns out that this guy not only drinks mate.
He is from Paraguay.
He is a teacher at the MB Seminary in Asuncion.
He is writing his thesis on conceptual theology based on the Anabaptist experience in Paraguay.
He knows Friesland.

Seriously. Kind of unbelievable, especially given the scarcity of Mennonites doing their PhD - even more rare in the UK - and a Paraguayan Menno at that. Wow.


The past two mornings we have had mate together in the office while we work.

The First Week Update

Hello everyone! Well, it's taken us a while but we've managed to set up a blog. I figured it might be good to begin with an email that I sent to a few family members about a week after we arrived. Much has happened since then, but I thought it would make good sense to begin at the beginning, for all who are interested. Happy reading!

-----

Well we've officially been out of Vancouver now for almost a week so I thought it might be time to send you all an update. I am sorry that we haven't been in more regular contact, but it's a bit tricky at the moment. Steve and Elissa only moved in to their apartment two weeks ago, and it takes about three weeks to get internet service hooked up (don't ask me why), so our online time has been snatched here and there from Starbucks visits and on their pay-as-you-go iPad connection (which for obvious reasons we don't want to over-use). I'm writing to you now from the university library (which, incidentally, Liana can't enter... I have to swipe my student card to enter and exit!).

Anyway, I don't intend for this to be a loooooong and drawn out email so I'll just give you a quick run-down of some aspects of our first week here.

- Our travel here was, for the most part, as smooth as can be. We ended up getting seated in exit rows on both of our flights, completely by chance. It was AWESOME. As much leg room as you could ask for. Only issue was a delay of almost an hour in Frankfurt because of some bad weather, which led to our shuttle driver in Edinburgh not being very impressed with us (as if it were our fault!).

- The biggest blessing of this first week has undoubtedly been the warm welcome given to us by Steve and Elissa. It has been a lot of fun and really easy to stay with them and their little boy Isaac. They have made their home ours. Liana and Elissa share many of the same interests and are coming up with all kinds of ideas revolving around revolutionizing the culinary scene of St Andrews (you can ask her about that). A highlight for me has been the post-dinner clean up in the kitchen of the past few nights (it has involved some pretty killer 90s music on the iPod).

- We have been walking around the town a lot and it is wonderful. Believe it or not, it has been predominantly sunny this week (with clouds blowing through the sky)... but that does not necessarily mean warm. They weren't kidding about the wind. Holy moley. I am looking forward to when this place actually feels like home, 'cause it seems like a great place to live. Pictures will be on facebook as soon as we can get them there.

On The Scores, looking west, with the Castle ruins behind us.

- We have met some pretty great people so far, most of whom are also part of the St Mary's community. Hung out with two other couples (one from Seattle, the other from California) on Saturday evening and a bunch more yesterday afternoon. Quite literally everyone has been very friendly, welcoming, eager to invite us places, make us feel a part of things, etc. It's quite something. Liana went to a tea (or brunch? I'm not sure) on Saturday morning with Elissa that was especially for St Mary's women, and came back almost two hours after it was supposed to have ended with a big smile on her face. That made me glad.

- I met with my supervisor (if you don't know who that is, you can ask me - all graduate students receive strict instructions that we are not to blog about our interactions!) on Friday afternoon and we talked for well over an hour. It was... well... it was both encouraging and a little overwhelming all at once. Encouraging: he's really keen on my project and thinks there's a lot to go on there; he gave me a few good ideas to poke into; he's very friendly and understands my feelings of not really knowing how to start. Overwhelming: there is a LOT for me to do. Good thing I've got three years! On the list for this first month: read, read, read, choose one important aspect of my thesis, look into it in depth, and come back with 5,000 words or so on it in a month. I met a couple of his other students yesterday, one who's been working with him for a full year, and she said that he has been far above and beyond what she expected from her supervisor. Available, helpful, pastoral. That made me very hopeful.

- I stood on the 18th fairway of the Old Course today. NBD. :-) Already purchased my restricted pass, so I am able to play 5 of the 7 courses (and the 6th I can play twice at 10 pounds each time). I cannot wait to play; I think I'm going to do so tomorrow (either the Eden or Jubilee Course).

- First Scotch tried: Johnnie Walker Black Label. A blend. Pretty nice stuff.

- My favourite Scots speech I've heard so far: "Och, dinnae get me wrong, it would take ye a wee while." Yes. Someone actually said that.

- We signed the lease for our place today and will be moving in on Wednesday. Haven't yet seen the interior, so here's hoping that all is well. No nasty surprises please. Our shipment is supposed to arrive in Edinburgh tomorrow, so we plan to rent a car and drive down there on Wednesday to pick up the stuff.


I think I'll draw it to a close there for now. God has been faithful and good to us in the transition thus far. It has not all been wonderful and happy, but I really do think that it has gone about as well as it could have, and he has placed some pretty wonderful people here to welcome us and show us his love. Please pray for us to have faith and trust in the fact that he has indeed called us here for his purpose. We miss and love you all!