The second hardest thing about a blog is....

.... Thinking up a new title for each new entry...This entry could be called, Week 2 or Hearing the Voice of God or ...... So i'll go without a title. I have such a maths/science brain that I struggle to be creative. It was an epic story to even think of a domain name.. Anyway onto something hopefully a little bit more interesting.. So last week the classes were on Hearing the Voice of God. We learnt about different ways God speaks to us, hinderances that stop us from hearing Gods voice and taking time to actually listen. One bit of homework was to pick a classmates name out of a hat and then ask God to give us something for that person. I felt like I had to pray for my person but didn't know what to pray for. Then I heard them talking about something that had happened and my stomach flipped and I was like I will totally pray for my person about that. So that was pretty cool.I also had to do a 5 min presentation on the one of the names for God. I picked God as Living Water. Its for us to practice speaking in front of people in case we are asked to preach at a church or lead a study group or something.. ARRRRGH. IT went pretty well although a bit short on time 3.5 mons but I did speak a bit quick. Thats something I have been working on because sometimes the Canadians can't even understand what i'm saying hehe Much of the rest of last week is now a bit of a blur. The weekend I didn't do much. Worked on my journal or processing book and then I was on dinner duty for Saturday and Sunday night so that took up most of my afternoon both days. But the food turned out good and I didn't poison anyone!

Today we spent the afternoon researching the countries that we will be visiting. We broke into 2 groups, one to look at Malaysia and the other Thailand. Next week we have to present back to the other group what we found. Its really interesting looking at what is and what is not culturally acceptable to do. I think its going to be tough at sometimes to remember those things. Like you can't have your feet above someones head, or you can't touch people on their head at all.

Next week I am leading worship with another girl. She is playing the guitar and singing and I'm playing keys. We practise last night and it went pretty well. So that should be good.

So I haven't really said much about the neighbourhood we live in.. but its a pretty crazy place. A block down from where we live is the epicentre of Hastings Sunrise, the 'suberb' we live in. So there is 7-11 and Dairy Queen on opisite corners and thats where it all happens. I was asked the other day of I would like to buy some weed, (umm no thanks), then a guy that works at 7-11 asked me if I would like to go on a date (umm no thanks) and then there is the friendly (or not so friendly) neighbourhood prostitute. The outside the supermarket, starbucks and London drugs are usually the homeless people asking for change. Before moving here, I knew all that stuffed happened but it was never in my face. Now it is. Yesterday afternoon as I was walking home there was a massive fight outside of Dairy Queen. There was a guy on a bike and this other guy ran up the hill behind him, ouched him off his bike and laid into him with a baseball bat.He ended up against a fence in the foetal position just trying to protect himself. It was crazy!! Yet the guy on the bike was back later just hanging out at the corner again, with toilet paper stuck to his gashes on his face. I think he may have been a pimp, as there is a girl with him that is coming and going all the time.

Yeah all this stuff happens, but not once have I felt unsafe. There is definately a God bubble of protection over what we are doing here.

Well thats all for now, and its officially tea time. BBQ pork chops and rice. Smells YUMMY.

Catch you later.

Welcome

I'd like to take this time to officially welcome you to Vancouver and your journey with me at WYAM Nexia- DTS. We have pretty much now completed the "orientation" phase and first week of school. I can tell you straight up that it has been full on and overwhelming, but good too.

We have two schools doing the classroom phase for the first three months. So there is my school Nexia and then there is the Hockey school. All the hockey students are from Canada, there are about 11 of them and then 6 of us from various countries (3 from America, 1 Swiss, 1 Brazil and this little Aussie, with maybe one more to come (the guy to come is from South Africa, he is having some visa troubles). The living arrangements seem kind of crazy. We have 2 apartments next door to each other, guys in one girls in the other. So 7 girls in one place with a staff member and they boys in the other with their staff members. Us girls have it pretty good with space and stuff.  We eat meals together at night and just find a spot in either house where we can fit I am sharing a room with Linda, she is from Arizona and is also 26. So the nannas are in a room together which is good. And this little nanna got the top bunk YAY. Linda is happy to swap part way through so ill see how I go. I'm right once I'm up there, its just the getting up and down.

So yeah.. introductory stuff this week. Just finding about what we will be doing and how living in community will work. We have to sign up for 'job roles' so my job everyday is lunch clean up at school. Its pretty good. It was either that or cook tea every night for everyone haha.

So classes.. We have classes everymorning and then in the afternoons we break up into our schools and do our thing. The hockey students play hockey and we do what we need to do. The past two days we have been sharing our God stories and how we came to be at our DTS. Its been really good getting to know each other a bit better and where we have come from.

The sharing bit isn't always comfortable even just sitting at lunch and just chatting is tricky and at times I need to give myself a little internal pep talk to work myself up to it. I'm more than happy to let conversations go on and I will just sit back and watch or absorb what people are saying. I'll put in my 2 cents worth at times but sometimes not. lol. I have kind of challenged myself to push myself a little bit extra everyday. Like the other night I went to the boys house for tea when I would have preferred to stay at my house and quietly disappear afetr tea. Or today.. wait for it... I prayed out loud.. yep..EPIC And Anthea it didn't take me half an hour of laughing before I did it. Although the group I was with did laugh at me as I had to 'shake it out' after we were done cos I had to pump myslef up first haha. So that is good. As I was going to bed last night a line of a Supertones song came into my head. The line was - Don't take even a moment for granted, from the song Dedication. So thats the plan- not to take a moment for granted. It does make me tired putting myself out there but I think that in the long run that tiredness will be cancelled out with the what I gain form this experience.

So that about it fro now except for maybe the the answer to one of the biggest questions of all... Where is outreach??? I have told a few people and Facebook has probably done the rest but.... we are going to Malaysia and Thailand. Not sure in what order and the details of what we will be doing, but from the 4th ish of Dec till the the 22nd ish of Feb I will be somewhere in South East Asia.

So now that is really all I have. Totes time for bed now. Goodnight.

The hardest thing about a blog…….

....is knowing when you have something new to write about. I have been in Victoria, Canada for a week now just doing life and keep thinking that I should write something else. But then I go, but I have nothing to write about. But Em said to me that she wanted to hear about the mundane stuff as the would be exciting to her, and Anthea keeps telling me she want to know everything. So here is mundane and everything for the past week.

I left you last week when I was at the aiport and found that my flight had been delayed by four hours (which is how I finished my first post) The weather in Toronto was bad so the Toronto- Sydney flight was held up there which made my flight Sydney- Vancouver (cos they needed the plane) delayed. Anyway, they called us for boarding and then my name was called over the PA and I had to make myself known to the check- in staff. SCARY!! My little heart dropped to my stomach. I had no idea what they wanted me for, so I picked up my very heavy carry on bag, (trying to make it look like it was the lightest thing in the world) and made myself known. All they needed was to let me know that they had changed my seat. WINNER!! I was shifted from 19A which was a window to 19G which was an aisle seat WOOT! An even bigger win.  The aisle seat was great as I didn’t have to jump over people every time I wanted to get out, which was a good thing as the person next to me didn’t even give me the time of day. She would just watch me out of the corner of her eye, it was just like being at home with my next door neighbours lol. My first question of the flight was, why would you make us lowly economy class travellers walk through first and business class to get to our seats. They have a nice set-up and if I had the money that’s the way I would fly. What the airlines should do is make the upper class passengers walk through economy class just to remind them how special they have got it lol.

So 14 hours on a plane. The first 10 weren’t so bad. I was fed, I was watered and I had movies to watch and I got some sleep. There were so many movies to choose from. I ended up watching Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2 and Rango. It was the last four hour that I started to get a bit edgy, just because I was stuck between 2 times and thinking about what I had to do at the airport to get another flight to Victoria, as my flight was meant to be at 10am but we weren’t arriving until 11 so that was a fail in connecting flights. Getting off the plane it was actually good to not be under any pressure to catch another flight, as when we hit the customs hall the line was huge. All these people were huffing and puffing about their next flight I was just like meh, ill get there when I get there. The line did move pretty quickly so it only really took about 20 mins, It was my visit to immigration to get my permit that made me huff and puff. I walked in and there were about 30 Chinese exchange students aged between 8 and 18 all needing permits. The immigration people were collecting their passports and processing them in groups but the kids didn’t focus and when their names were called and it was an epic task. So two hours later I was out of immigration with my permit and on a mission to find out the time of my next flight and contact my family to let them know.  I ended up on the 15:30 flight to Victoria and arrived at 16:00, at last I had made it. Six hours after my original time. One  good thing about that was that I only had to stay awake for about 4 hours as opposed to 10 hours if I had have arrived on time.  

The next day, I went with my Aunty and Uncle to pick up my Cousin Cam from camp,  about an hour and a half drive up the island, we went to a place called Port Renfrew for lunch and then drove home through Sooke. Sunday we went to church at my families church. By comparison to Yorkie it was pretty small and pretty new, they are celebration 40 years this year. The service was most like our 8:45 service. My Aunty played the piano, my Uncle lead the worship and my cousin did sound.  The part I most struggled with was using the hymn book. If you miss the number of the song, by the time you have found it the song is all done. The last time we used a hymn book at Yorkie was probably to prop up a foldback or something lol.

Not me.

Sunday afternoon, my cousins and I went to this place called Wild Play. It is a high ropes course that is up in the trees. It was heaps of fun, except we had to sit on a platform up in the trees for about half an hour as there was a rescue mission for someone who had gotten stuck and couldn’t get off one of the obstacles.

Monday, Tuesday and yesterday I just chilled at home with my cousins. Had my first Canadian migraine yesterday so spent most of the day in bed. Feel better today though. This weekend is the Saanich Fair. My cousin Louisa has a horse called Rock, so she will be doing horse stuff with him at the fair, plus cupcake, watermelon and pie eating competitions and lots of other stuff.

So that is pretty much my first week in Canada, with a few drives, scenic views and trips to the supermarket left out.

I thought  that as  I go along I would a ‘things that are different’ segment. Apart from the obvious like driving on the other side of the road and the drivers seat being on the left side of the car. Other little things are different, so:

Milo- Sweeter and less malty. You also don’t really get the crunchy bits on top, they just seem to be soft bits of sugar

Light switches- up is on and down is off

Powerpoints- most that I have seen don’t have on/ off switches

Buttons on traffic lights for pedestrians – both buttons are on the one post as opposed to having the button at the post that is closest to the direction you are walking. Its hard to explain so I will get a picture.

Toilets and drains – I’m not sure. They seem to goo clockwise but I can’t remember what way Australia goes. Can someone please let me know? Thanks