On living with a bride-to-be

This morning the last of the wedding entourage disappeared... and once again we are a flat of 2... ah twas a beautiful day and so special to be so involved! Tis rather sad though... I have made more than a few new friends over the last weeks and have got to speak a lot a French! :) Living with a bride to be has been an experience...! You might get accidentally mocked in the father of the bride's speech because he thought a message written on your noticeboard was written by his daughter and not by you, have to deal with a constant flow of people (no difference there really though!), have to deal with frequent mood swings, end up with twice as much milk as what you started of with because the mother of the bride wants to make up for "invading your space". All in all it has been a fun and chaotic few weeks and I'm very glad that Mr and Mrs Sharpe have only moved around the corner :)

Prince Caspian

Saw this tonight with two of my flatmate's bridesmaids-to-be and it was amaaaazing!!! Again the C.S Lewis magic was beautifully captured on film, beautifully played, the characters came out brilliantly and were well developed over the course of the film. I love the fact that a plot can be so fantastical yet the characters, their personalities and inner tests and struggles they go through are so tangible and easy to identify with :)
And again Edmund proved to be my favourite character of all, Lydie (maid of honour/la dame de la cote d'or) put it beautifully when she said "I love that he's so humble, or rather so humbled. Edmund's living under grace and he knows it."
I also love the fact that my heart goes a putter and I get excited shivers when Aslan appears!
...and I'm going to see it again next week with the bf and sis! woop woop! :)

On hen parties, samba gigs and helping little old ladies

I was just thinking of what I've been up to over the last couple of weeks. I've been unemployed and not loving it, but now that I think about it... I've not exactly been bored, what with job-hunting, tidying and re-tidying the flat, organising a rather large hen party, attending another, dancing my socks off in my favourite venue, enjoying the parade, getting a free 3 course meal in returning for helping a lost little lady on the street (blog post to follow), staying up too late and then catching up on sleep again, baking cakes at silly hours, accumulated copious boxes and musical instruments - we now have a keyboard, a trombone, a violin, a couple of guitars, cello and darbuka (drum) - (only the latter 3 actually belong to flat residents), the chaos that ensues when a flatmate is getting married, some jamming and mix that in with a touch o frustration, excitement, joy, grief...
I'm so thankful that God doesn't change even if everything else does!
And also for laughter :)

living in "holy fear"

I've been thinking about this for a while... So it's summer now and as soon as I found a way to relax post-exam time (took a lot longer than expected) I hit that post-exam lazy period and instantly found myself battling with both laziness and numbness... Yeah I know it's important to relax and all that, but there must be a balance somewhere, right? So right now I'm striving to find that balance. In the midst of everything I've been doing (see previous post), with that summer feeling and the job-hunting and everything else, I want to still be seeking God with all of my heart. So how do I keep the balance...?
The phrase that has stuck in my head the last wee while has been "holy fear", it comes from the NIV version of this verse "By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family." Hebrews 11:7 though I guess a better way of putting it would be "reverent fear" like it says here. I think we often forget or at least I often forget that God is magnaminously holy... and His holiness is kinda scary! It's incredible that he shows us any mercy at all! But then that's what makes it so amazing, that's what makes it grace... we can approach Him, be part of His family because of Jesus! But then I should be living my life in light of that... in light of grace, every breath is a gift and I should always be aware of that.
I think there is an antidote to laziness, to complacency, to taking God's grace for granted and it's knowing God, knowing His justice, His righteousness, His mercy, His holiness, His gift of grace. Surely if we start to grasp these things and that they are all characteristics of the one and only God, then we couldn't possibly live in vain!

summer begins...

hmmm summers... not sure what I think of them really! Nearly all of my summers, except perhaps the last one have involved lots of waiting and trusting till I reach the end of my tether. This summer has been no different. I have been trying and applying and trying and applying to go away on mission abroad this summer and nothing has suited or fitted or worked out. I was supposed to go to Romania with Africa Inland Mission and now (because I was the only confirmed accepted member of the team) I'm not, clearly God has other plans! There was a jury citation sticking out like a sore thumb this week but I didn't get picked for that. So I've been job-hunting and recording an album and going to what has seemed like a million birthday parties (which have included...

a trip to Dumfries, a surprise for the flatmate, about 20 bouquets of flowers in our kitchen, seeing people I haven't seen for ages in a nice pub and an international food/fancy dress soiree) and hanging out with folk and cooking a lot and eating icecream and going to the park and catching up on sleep and saying goodbye to internationals (a post devoted to that will follow), hmm maybe (with the exception of goodbyes and mega uncertainty) I do like summers... :)

When a scar becomes a feature...

"When everything's grey - colours become really evident."

I was really aware of this in exam-time where things like bumping into someone in the library or a nice dinner become a huge treat. (Though now my exams are over, I'm having to work harder to enjoy little things with all the post-exam fatigue and busyness I'd put off for after exams hogging my time!)

I'm also really aware of this looking back at the last couple of years, after a long time of feeling like Humpty Dumpty. Tis such a sad nursery rhyme really. When I was really really little I used to sing those last two lines with my saddest voice possible:

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

All the king's horses and all the king's men

couldn't put Humpty together again :(

I don't think I am always aware of my scars, but then something triggers off a painful memory or an uber-emotional response that catches me off guard and I remember again. They are scars accumulated over the last couple of years in particular, that lie dormant just under my skin and that have always been easier just to ignore. And it's easy enough to ignore them in busyness when everyone else is oblivious to them. Still when I am aware of them, they've always seemed so permanent, making me feel like a Humpty Dumpty. Anyway in recent months, some healing has finally been taking place. The King can put Humpty together again :)

The bizarre thing is, I'm starting to realise that the scars will be a permanent fixture but this is actually a good thing! The acts that caused the scars were most definitely not good, but the scars themselves are playing a part in defining me. They keep me aware of my brokeness and aware of His grace, kinda like it says here, because I am aware of my fragile broken jarofclaylike nature, I am more aware of the fact that it's His power working in me that makes things happen... and it's as though pieces are being put together but in a different and perhaps better combination to the way they were before.

Things also seem brighter before they did before, because I went through the grey, because I did break into many pieces, I am able to better appreciate wholeness and sunshine when I have it! It's a bit like with Glasgow and sunshine: on one of those rare beautiful days, the whole city is out soaking it up because they are rare. We appreciate the beautiful days so much more!

What is amaaazing and what I do want to draw your attention to is that, He's able to regenerate, restore, renew, resurrect and yet what is made whole again is always better than before!!! It blows my mind! Tis crazy that we have such a powerful yet compassionate God! :) Thankyou

blue sky patches in the cloud that is exam-time

Sunshine, wearing flipflops, jamming/studying/wandering in the park (of which I do have pretty photos, but these are on my flatmates computer which is currently down in London with her fiancee, doh!), heartbreaking news, playing in the pitchdark planeterium with the band, new beginnings, giggles, silly late nights, scrabulous, getting fed, plenty banter, bonding over exam pains, fluishness forcing me to have a day off when I needed it so much, hearing and being freshed by the gospel yet again at one of those leader days run by them, sunshine, good jazz (both live and on lastfm.com)...

And I finally finally saw Once! Bizarrely realistic! :- from that first jamming encounter where everything just clicks, band practices in tiny bedrooms, the jamming dinner party... and all so beeeeyooootiful!

And the cloud ends (at least for me) on Thursday afternoon.... oh yeah :)

Animated Iranians

I'd originally intended not to blog until exams are over. But to be honest, I need a brain break!
Plus this film (which I saw on Tuesday) was truly amaaaazing, I've been dying to rave about it!
Why is it amaaazing?
Because: (in bullet point form)
- It's aesthetically beautiful
- The characters are so real and well depicted
- It's witty and often very funny
- It's highly educational! I didn't know anything about Iranian politics or political history yet didn't feel lost at all since it explains it all really well!

Amazing I tell you! Go see it!

Wanted: Polaroid

A fellow sortofGlasgower Emma is going to Uganda/Rwanda in 8 weeks. I definitely recommend checking this out

gems

Lastfm.com is genius... especially when one is procrastinating :D
You stick in an artist you like into a box and it generates a whole load of music that is similar to it!

And through this I have fallen in love with these gems...
- Fionn Regan=purty!
- Adem=ohsobeautifully constructed music
- Kings of Convenience= very chilled but luscious harmonies
- And I've been a fan of Beirut, which I found via 3hive, for quite some time now

And then I've discovered that artists I'd originally dismissed as boring have actually made beautiful songs, notably KT Tunstall with the song "Silent Sea"

Good music does help me to study! Honest!

What would I do without bbc i player?!

Completely forgot about this until someone "beboed" me to tell me they'd seen me on tv yesterday! Doh!

It was filmed back in November to be fair! Songs of Praise (episode 2) - from 14 minutes...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b00b099r.shtml

I've got cabin fever...

This is what silly long hours in the library does to me...




Cabin Fever ah!

At the age of 40, by 9' o clock

Just to give you background on this post. On one of our many french lesson tangents, I was challenged by him to write a story with that first line...
Now just to inform you, what a lot of people don't know is I used to be a compulsive story writer. I was addicted! It was better than TV, better than reading, better than music (maybe that says something about how exciting my life was back then :S)
Anyhoo I tried to write a story based on that title and didn't do so well. In fact I realised I couldn't anymore, there is too much going on in real life to escape it anymore or to make a new one for myself, which is what writing had always been to me. It was, back then, in childhood, escapism. And now I don't want to escape, I want to live! And all I can manage is this jarbbled prose-esque poetry. See I still love words but I've forgotten how to lose myself in another character. I can only write as myself. So this is what I came up with... a genuine fear...

At the age of 40, by 9' o clock, on a Tuesday morning, when the rain has stopped, and the kids have just left for school and the husband for work and the people carrier is sitting vacant, still, after a morning's work, what will I be? What will move me?
If I get a stable job, "career" I should say, a comfortable life, "settle down", will I still be living? And when I say living, I mean really living... breathing, wide-eyed with each breath. By sunsets, scrumptious chords, silly words, real smiles.
Or will I just be numb? Settle for little. Half-hearted days, hollow nights. Comfort having blunted the tips of my nerve-ends. Content just to stagnate in a detached house, drive the kids to music lessons, dance classes, day job, kiss my man good morning, good night. Content that my chat is just gossip, my friends just middle-class, drifting along with what comes easy. Never to engage with the world beyond my front doorstep, beyond what I can see and hear, beyond this suburban dome. Content to give money but never my life. Never to reach up, reach out, yearn for more, love, knowledge, truth, understanding, likeness, lifeblood of my maker.
The very thought strikes chords of fear in my heart, phantom of the opera-esque. "To die slowly" and not . To never have given my all...
Even if I choose that suburban lifestyle, though right now I can barely imagine myself in it... I want to stay here, on a rock that is higher than I, in awareness of brokenness, always in need of that which I do not deserve, always seeing more that needs to change, yet always ever more amazed, ever more in love with Him, in love with them... I don't want an ordinary life, I want one full to brimming.
A prayer to the God of my life... At the age of 40, by 5'o clock, on a Tuesday morning, when the rain has stopped... that's where I want to be.

In need of pruning

These are my roses which sit by my (as you can see) grubby window, hardly get watered, yet still seem to flourish regardless. Or at least that's what they looked like a couple of days after I returned from a 10 day long stint in Edinburgh last week. At first they'd looked very sad and wilted so I gave them some water hoping that they would spring back to life as they have done in the past which they kind of did - well as you can see... they became this mixture of dead and living leaves growing from the same branches. It was kinda like the dead leaves were getting in the way, just hanging on even though they were dead and impeding new leaves from sprouting. "in need of pruning" was my first thought...

And then that got me thinking... that's kinda like me. I'm a mixture of living and dead bits I think. There are some parts of my life that are flourishing, where God has been moving and I get excited and feel alive just thinking about them. And then there are other parts... they need to change or just go. I can't grow anymore when there's all these dead leaves getting in the way, just like the plant.

So what are these dead leaves? There are a lot of them and I don't think I could put a name to them all or am even aware of a lot of them. But I think most of them stem from pride and selfishness, and that in turn stems from not fully understanding or always being aware of the fact that God is the centre of the universe not me. In Him all things hold together, everything is sustained by Him, depends on Him and that includes me and everything I do.

I think one of the biggest traps I've been falling into of late is thinking that what I do and how well I do it defines me. I find myself drawing identity and self-worth from this. And those thoughts hinder me. They hinder me cos I think I need to do everything, I start doing things just for the sake of feeling useful or used. Sometimes I start doing too much and man oh man are my motives throroughly messed up!

I've been learning over the last while that this is my identity. Not what I do or how successful it is, though God wants me to do everything as well I can and use what He has given me. This tells me that God doesn't actually need me to do His work at all. He's God after all, creator, sustainer, author and perfector of everything. But out of His grace He chooses to use me, to use any of us. Though we mess things up and don't always do things His way and make mistakes which are often humungous. He still wants to make us a part of His plan! Wow!!!
I read this earlier and noticed this:- God uses the Samaritan women to spread the word about Jesus! I mean, a Samaritan woman! She would have been undesirable in every sense of the word; because she was a woman, because she was a Samaritan, looked down on by Jesus' own countrymen and probably looked down on even by her own people because of her loose morals and messy marital history. Yet Jesus gave her the time of day. And people believed in him "because of her testimony"!
That challenges the way I look at myself and also the way I look at others. Even amongst people who are "marginalised" and my role is to love, it is so easy to take on a patronising self-righteous "I'm helping these people" attitude, not treating them like the equals they are, and I will still find myself drawn to those with decent banter or looks or even with "potential". Yet Jesus sees worth in everyone that we can't always see. He sees people as people, made in God's image.

I'd like to see that too.

P.S Apologies for the length of that! Those were a lot of thoughts building up over the last wee while. And I am spending loooooong hours in uni library right now!

Lied

This post has been a long time in coming... I gush enough about these guys in person I may as well do it in a blog.




So from left to right...
Loik - Breton guitarist extraordinaire (also has a remarkable talent for french pffffffffffffts)
Ilhan - dutchman with east kilbride accent is provider of pistachios, also perfectionist drummer (I forget what kind of drum it is), recorder and author of the "bits analyses"
Elaine, scottish lass with beautiful voice and remarkable talent for making up melodies on the spot to beautiful chords that Loik plays
I cello and giggle (both of which get caught on cheap mp3 player) and eat most of the pistachios (they're as addictive as biscuits ;P)

Together we jam and laugh and eat pistachios and jam some more, and everytime we jam a new song is spontaneously sparked. So we record it, Ilhan emails them to us complete with a bits analysis e.g "3.56-3.58 - perfect guitar bit" and we can then play and refine and play and refine some more...

aaaaaaaah I love it! (in case you hadn't already guessed) :)

decompartmentalisation

Pheeew... that's a long word to describe what I'd like to achieve in life!

I came back a couple of days ago from a weekend where everything went click in my head. I remembered who I am and how that works out in life and felt like I was looking at the best news there ever could be i.e God's grace shown to us in Jesus, with fresh eyes. But now I'm back in everyday life I'm remembering how difficult it can be to put these things into action.
If only I was always aware of...

God in my living
There in my breathing
God in my waking
God in my sleeping
God in my resting
There in my working
God in my thinking
God in my speaking

Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything
Be my everything

God in my hoping
There in my dreaming
God in my watching
God in my waiting
God in my laughing
There in my weeping
God in my hurting
God in my healing

Christ in me
Christ in me
Christ in me the hope of glory
You are everything

I like this song because it reminds me that though I have such trouble including God in every part of my life and not compartmentalising, He actually is in everything, whether or not I am aware of Him. He is there in the unexpected and the expected and the clean and the messy. He is there whatever my state of mind may be. I guess it's the awareness that's the key and also what I struggle with - living in continual awareness of God and of who I am in relation to him. I cleaned my desk a couple of weeks ago, and it's still clear today! (though the rest of my room is not so clean) and I have recently discovered the joy of sitting at my desk by my ohsosunny window, drinking green tea and just being with God. Those times just seem to be getting less and less frequent as I am getting busier and busier though they are becoming more precious as a result. I do appreciate most of the simple pleasures in life, like a scrumptious chord or a collection of crocuses or uncontrollable laugh or an understanding glance between close friends and I know it's good to enjoy these things. I just want to be more aware of God as I go about enjoying them so I can remember that they come from Him and so that I'll thank Him because He is the source of all that is good and love in this world. I'd like to live in continual wide-eyed grateful awe and appreciation...
And that's only one side of the coin. What about when I'm down, agrieved, stressed, guilt-stricken... I want to be aware of God and love Him in that too - by trusting and continuing to love others regardless of my internal state or situation.
It's a challenge, but I want to try and love God in everything...

banter of the last wee while

photoworthy banter of the last wee while

- much jamming (there will be a post devoted to that shortly) and getting acquainted with a jembe at a haggis party (now I can't stop drumming! Got in trouble for drumming at the table the other day)
- Global Village - many stalls manned by international students with many dishes. Things I may have sampled the cuisine of roughly 10 different countries, needless to say the french couldn't get themselves organised to have a stall there. We paid four quid and could sample them all and then were treated to live music and dancing. I discovered that Iranian food is really quite a treat!
- a couple of gigs with the strangers
- a couple more birthdays of the psychology crew, another one coming up on Saturday
- pictionary with a random collection of native and non-native english speakers
NB A. It helps if there is some secondary language in common (in our case french and dutch) then if a word comes up that some people don't know, it makes it easier to explain

B. overcomplicated drawings may be funny, but do not win a game... take for example... Jellyfish

- Nor do abstract interpretations of concepts... here are two drawings to illustrate...
one is literal

the other a little more abstract

both mean "revolution"
C. one must add on looking the word in the dictionary time i.e "Ah I know what the word is but I don't know it in english!" to make things fair
D. don't drum on the table unless you have a deathwish

Slowly getting used to me new camera and so to illustrate these bullet points...

For those of you who found us sitting and smiling with blank faces comedy, you can now watch the unedited version of that interview, gaelic, english and all here under "agallamh"...

saturday

Mmmm... I love Glasgow Saturdays! :)

Time to catch up on things and chill and sort myself out and enjoy quiet...

Last night I saw Juno - amaaazing film! Definitely almost on a par with that comedy gem Little Miss Sunshine! As per usual did a shed a tear or two. I tend to get somewhat emotional in films. What surprised me was what happened to me this morning as I was standing waiting at Glasgow International airport before picking up and redirecting 19 Canadians. Was watching all the people drifting in through the International arrivals door from a Toronto flight and it was more moving than watching a film... there was a mum smothering her small boy with kisses and a couple of cuddly couples that blatantly hadn't seen each other in a long time and friends reunited with delighted grins and digital cameras everywhere. It could have been a scene out of Love Actually, though (thankfully) a lot more believable! And before I knew it I found myself getting weepy! Completely took me by surprise and had to stay composed to greet the pile of Canadians that soon followed out of the door.

Oh and all this sunshine after so many months of grey... I feel truly photosynthesised! :)

"do not give way to fear"

On Friday night at the stall, I was listening to a lad (who was highly intoxicated I hasten to add) rant about his ex-gf and how, since they broke up, in order to make herself "feel hot" i.e desired and loved, she apparently goes out in the most revealing of clothing or whatever it takes to "pull". He told me, in very drunken terms, that he respected the fact that I didn't feel the need to do that. But being completely honest with myself, I don't think I'm completely free of those inclinations. I think most girls have a teeny-skirted, overly-flirtatious, sometimes desperate, silly girl somewhere inside of them. We want to feel beautiful and to be desired and wanted. But we often miss the point, thinking that to be desired is to be loved.
This is one of those bits of the Bible that most christian girls know in theory. I know I always gloss over it, thinking I don't need to hear it. But when I looked at it the other day I spotted something I hadn't noticed before. The section ends "...do not give way to fear". What fear? The fear that most of girls have of being single? Of never being loved or desired? Why should we fear that? Perfect love drives out fear... and this year I have become more and more convinced that "perfect love" is the love God shows us. The kind of love that doesn't fail us or disappoint us or is unfaithful. But one that lasts in spite of our weakness and no matter how we look, think or act.

Got to quote this again... says it better than I could.

"I ask him to satisfy my longings and fill my hollow places with his unfailing lavish love, this frees me from craving the approval of others or requiring them to fill my 'cup'. Then if someone does demonstrate love to me that's overflow! I am free to appreciate and enjoy it, but I didn't emotionally require it." Beth Moore

Another kind of fear that I struggle with a great deal more than the inner silly-girl and is definitely not exclusive to females is the fear of doing wrong or messing up and disappointed myself, other people and God. It's a fear that stems from my forgetting grace and think that by doing lots of stuff for God, I can earn His favour, or stop myself from losing it. All nonsense I know. And yet it crops up from time to time. Perhaps what I need to remember is this and not only that but this.
For the last week I've had this kids song in my head, dunno who it's by, and I can't seem to find it on google... think it sums up the concept of grace pretty well though:

There's nothing, nothing I can do or say
to make God love me more.
He cares for me in such a way
that lasts forever more.
The Bible says that it's called grace.
I see it there in Jesus' face.
There's nothing, nothing I can do or say
to make God love me more
to make God love me more.

There's nothing, nothing I can do or say
to make God love me less.
I need forgiveness every day
and Jesus' righteousness
But when I turn to Him and pray,
He gives his mercies right away
There's nothing, nothing I can do or say
to make God love me less
to make God love me less.

What a wonderful Saviour!

The reason why I dropped english lit...

... is because so many writers of literature and even more often, people interpreting literature think this...

"The purpose of writing is to inflate weak ideas, obscure pure reasoning, and inhibit clarity. With a little practice, writing can be an intimidating and impenetrable fog!"

Ah the wonders and wisdom of Calvin & Hobbes :)

You've got 6 days left to watch this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b008vsxw.shtml

quotidien

I like that word...

Realised I hadn't blogged about the everyday in a while...

- Like the fact that it's been raining constantly for the last couple of weeks but for the first time in 4 years I have waterproof trainers to keep me dry!

-Handed in the last of my run of deadlines so was able to just hang out with folk with a guilt-free conscience, yaaay! :)

- I spent a quality Saturday night/Sunday-day in Edinburgh. Had the best dinner for a wonderful friend's 21st... breadcrumbed brie with yummily dressed salad for starters, steak with pepper sauce and tomatoes and mushrooms and sauteed potatoes for main and profiteroles for desert, all washed down with water, a glass of red wine and a lovely cup o tea, and then a night of dancing and catching up with ol school friends... wonderful... Got to hang out with the family and folk at Bellevue West too on Sunday which was more than an added bonus!

- And there was an evening last week when Jenni and I got a little carried away with Salvaar Kameez

God is good

... tis one of those facts that at least I, as a christian, take for granted!
-> The very idea of a God who cares and has forgives and loves with endless abounding love and grace with mercies that never fail and are new every day sounds positively insane in this messed-up human world. It just sounds almost "too good to be true".

When I look at human constructed gods; the gods who in many religions and cultures are selfish and flawed and unsurpisingly human or the gods who are "infallible" but require laborious effort and often tremendous sacrifice to approach, even the more abstract gods of materialism or sex are in themselves, selfish. When I contrast these gods with Yahweh, I realise that this is exactly what we humans so often think. We think that the existence of a God of grace, a God who is truly good and unselfish and far beyond and above human is nigh impossible. And so we have constructed our own gods or box the living God to fit into what we think is legistical. When, for example, we can't get our heads round this idea of "grace", we become legalistic and laws, sometimes even laws which are trivial and man-made, become the be all and end all. We miss the point and we hurt ourselves and others in the process.

The reality is that we have a God who has sacrificed all for us, who loves us extremely and has a heart for the downtrodden in society, who desires, more than anything else, that we act justly, love mercy and walk with him every day. We only have to look at Jesus to see all this en actualité.

Mind-blowing! And because He is good, there is hope for this aching world...

I guess what I'm re-realising here, is how important it is that we get to know the true and living God. Knowing Him, what He is like, His character does and will change our perceptions/mindsets/hearts in everything.

The very fact He can change anything, to me means hope.

the joys of january

And it's fast becoming a late night in the GU Library writing up the spoon-fed project we did, testing whether Dweck's Entity Theory can be applied to our level 3 psychology class... It's due in tomorrow. I also have 3 hours of exams on Monday and a french essay and translation to hand in on Wednesday...

meh

Films of 2007

Reading and hearing other peoples thoughts on what their favourite films of the year 2007 have been has spurred me on to create my own list... the only thing is a couple of these I saw last year weren't actually released last year. (The joys of french release dates)

In no particular order

Films that I enjoyed the most in 2007

Most moving and thought-provoking
- The Kite Runner (and they stuck very closely to the book :) though they missed out some of the most gruesome bits)
- Life of Others

Funniest
- Little Miss Sunshine easily one of my favourite films of all time! (saw that in france this year although it was released the year before)
- Run Fat Boy Run - Miles better than I thought it would be! Touching and funny!
- Ratatouille - wonderful treatment of stereotypical france, though (a mon avis) tarnished by the inconsistency in and appallingly bad french accents!

Most exciting, kept me at the edge of my seat (also most attractive actors heehee)
- Bourne Ultimatum
- The Departed (ditto with the France thing)

Film that made me most want to sing and dance like a madwoman
- Hairspray (yes I know!)

Weirdest Film I saw this year
- The Golden Door - one of those films that "doesn't do what it says on the packet"

Films that were released last year and I wanted to see but didn't
Once, The Counterfeiters, La Mome, Simpsons Movie, La Science des Reves

Bitterly disappointed by -
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, The Golden Compass (though both were ok films, they just didn't compare to the books), Spiderman 3 (just plain mince)

Bring on Prince Caspian!

seasons cleanings

Tried and failed miserably at "spring cleaning" the blog roll. The only blogs I could bring myself to remove were those that had been removed by the author... that is except The Creasinator's... I'm still holding out that you'll recommence blogging Creasy! :(
I was thinking of reorganising the weblinks into subcategories of

- Has not blogged in over a year
- Has not blogged in 3 months
- Sporadic blogger
- Regular blogger

What do folks reckon?

Eternal optimist that I am, I'm still hoping that the authors of the blog-turned-skeletons will suddenly decide to resurrect them. Do a "michie" so to speak. Saying that Mich, that wasn't much of a resurrection!

Anyhooo... I'm supposed to be studying right now...

I'm excited!

Yes I know... I'm quite often excited! :) But this year I have every reason to be...

2007 was mainly characterised by:

... my last 5 eventful educational months en France, a 3 month long summer of activity, a messy break-up, good times with my family (highlights being this christmas hol, spending a whole summer at home and still appreciating them at the end of it, and getting to be towel-bearer for my little sister's baptism), a very joyful return to Glasgow, much banter spent with old friends and new friends, studying (woopwoop! still enjoying it... well most of it) and getting to know coursemates better, being back with what had developed into a full-fledged band while I was away, international students galore... siiigh... I love Glasgow... repeatedly messing up and repeatedly being forgiven, learning some difficult but valuable lessons about God and about myself (the latter being the less pleasant part).

What I am looking forward to in 2008:

All the newness; learning new things, taking on new challenges, doing new things such as going somewhere a bit further away in the summer (hopefully maybe). Spring in Glasgow (leaves growing on trees etc. etc.), getting to know some people better and meeting new folk that I will undoubtedly meet, my last full academic year of university (eeeep), getting to know God more and growing closer to him, using my new camera and taking pretty pictures (if it ever comes back into stock in Argos)

Oh and I still want to be a tree

why does warm+fuzzy=christmasy?

We do like to dress Christmas up in fairy lights don't we! Let's all feel "Christmasy", jingle some bells, remember a night when all was "calm and bright", hang up our stockings, sniff the cloves and cinnamon, let it snow let it snow let it snow.
Don't get me wrong, I love our ridiculous traditions and the once a year chance to get together with the extended family but in all these wrappings I've started to see the birth of Christ through those warm fuzzy spectacles. Songs like “Silent night” where “all is calm and all is bright” don’t really help things either. Yes, Jesus birth was a miracle. But he was born in the humblest of circumstances, in a messy birth in a dirty smelly stable! Can you imagine giving birth in a stable?! Yeeeeuch… There was no tinsel, no fairy lights. It may not have been an ordinary birth. Angels announced it, and then shepherds turned up to gape, some wise men brought their gifts a little later, leaving his parents somewhat awed and bewildered.
But there’s a distinction between what is “christmasy” or magical and what is miraculous.

Got to bring Sufjan in here... another thing I love about those albums is the fact that interpersed amongst the bells and banjo carols is the occasional song that reminds me that the whole world doesn't just become glowing and "christmasy" at Christmas time. That people still hurt, families don't suddenly become unbroken, fighting doesn't always stop, wars don't just end, people don't suddenly escape poverty or become happy at, or just during the christmas period.

Jesus coming was a way of healing the broken-hearted but think about what it took him to do that... He came to live among us, he came to live as one of us, experiencing weakness as we do, he humbled himself, in life, taking on the very nature of a servant, not just his death on the cross. He taught, healed, reached out...

The miracle is that God came as the light of the world, to bring us peace and joy! It's awe-inspiring and well worth celebrating! But in order to bring us that peace and joy, he had to experience the ordinary and weakness and suffering, whether that was being laid as a newborn in a feeding trough or being crucified alongside common criminals. I wouldn't call that magic.

So I've been trying to remember that Christmas celebrates the fact that Jesus came down in human frailty. He was fully God, just and righteous and love, and yet he became fully human; lived life, experienced weakness, hunger, brokenness, hurt and pain. And so He understands our weakness... Amaaaazing!

Christmas was a miracle! Christ is a miracle! But miracles don't necessarily mean "magic". And somehow I don't think there was any "magic" on that first Christmas.

This is my first year sans advent calender :"(

I roughly estimate that I spent the run up to Christmas doing

countless hours of studying
almost as many hours of celloing
several hours of singing carols at the top of my voice
8 hours of cleaning the flat
7 hours of 12 hour cheesy pop, (of which 2 hours were spent watching It's a Wonderful Life, 3 hours were spent boogying on at the headphone disco (quality concept!) and 2 hours spent chatting to randoms and not so randoms at the stall)
6 beanscene visits (most of which were to "chat about the critical review")
5 hours of mince pies and mulled-wine consumption
4 christmas carol services (to date)
3 and a half ceilidhs
2 exams
and 1 critical review

And after all that and some more that I couldn't fit into 12 verses, I am back in Edinburgh again for a proper break! It's roasting inside (having Sri Lankan parents means the heating is on ALL day!) and baltic outside (frost, unlike anything we ever get in glasgow, woopwoop!) Actually getting a proper break, except from celloing... in exchange for being fed I am playing in 3 church carol services avec les parents. A cellist's work is never done.

Apologies for misinformation in my last blog entry. Turns out we're not being broadcasted till Friday at 7.15pm on the "highland cafe show"
Though for the next week or so it should be possible to stream and listen to the show on the above link
Right, I'm off to bed

blatant procrastination

I had been determined to avoid procrastination blogging until the end of this week (end of deadlines/exams). I just cracked.

But there is soooooo much to blog about!

1. The wonders of carols! In the last few days I have been to a carolling party (lots of musical people jamming and singing carols together all evening), 2 different carol service rehearsals, sang non-stop on the half an hour walk to church with my old flatmate. You'd think I'd be sick of the music, but no. Yesterday I made the purchase of Sufjan Steven's 5 CD christmas wonder! To be honest I would have bought it for the beeeeeyoootiful version of Joy to the World on CD 4 (one of my fav carols) but getting 5 wonderful CDs was more than an added bonus! Siiiigh...

2. Last week, I discovered that - prancing around in a ball dress + quality time with coursemates (i.e not talking about or even thinking about looming deadlines) + silly dancing and good food = remarkably therapeutic stress-free evening

3. The wonders of TEA!! (in response to this post)

Builder's tea... meh... I've lost my liking for the stuff. In the tea corner of our kitchen however, I currently own, an assortment of loose teas with random names like "arctic fire", green tea, white tea, camomile, honey and vanilla tea, lemon and ginger tea, lady grey. Despite the fact that yesterday Potter managed to bleed over a few tea bags and boxes (now hopefully all disinfected away) they still haven't quite lost their appeal. Tea consumption in the flat is an excitement... i.e "hmmm what do I feel like today?" What kind of choice can be had with the likes of coffee?! What I'm saying Quinn is, for the sake of your stomach, why don't you try branching out? ;)

4. This Wednesday lunchtime (methinks about 1pm) ze band is going to be live on BBC radio Scotland! Woop woop! Shame we have to get up at 6am and train it up to Inverness for like 3 hours just for the pleasure!

Reminder to self

Lessons from my time in France to be re-remembered/afin de les reapprendre

- Treat people as equals (even if they struggle with my language)
- A smile is not enough. What they want is my time and friendship not just my friendliness.
- Kindness and genuine friendship go a long long way. I am still strongly affected by the impact of kindness a few french (and non-french) people demonstrated towards me last year when I was a foreigner, relatively powerless and pretty lonely.

En bref - I should be taking my lead from Him

trop vite!

Life's moving too fast right now! I keep starting blog entries and not finishing them and suddenly they're out of date or no longer applicable! Although I missed my hectic lifestyle when I was in France, I can't help but envy the french sometimes and their laid-back attitude to time. Yesterday a few of us from the CU ran ceilidh dancing classes for internationals, (I ended up having to call the dances and be the "backing music" to Auld Lang Syne, which was amusing to say the least!) Anyhoo a french friend turned up an hour and a half late, whilst we were in midst Orcadian StriptheWillow. He was really surprised when I told him this was the last dance. In his own words he thought it would run until at least half 10 or 11, and that he "ad to eat at 8 (as every frenchman does), and euuh it takes 'alf an 'our for me to prepare the food you know euh..." Bear in mind that the class started at half 7.

Aaah I do love the french :)

In other news:
- my camera is dying hence my lack of camerage.
- After 2 weeks of reading ridiculous amounts and getting more and more confused, I have finally decided on a direction for my 4000 word "critical review" in psychology... phew!

Life just keeps on going and the Christmas season is calling! woop woop!

a little hyperbole

Just back from the cinema to see Stardust. I loved it... my pragmatic flatmate (of the emerald isle variety) on the other hand wasn't so convinced by the romanticglowingstarloveconqueringall nonsense. "Too much hyperbole" were her exact words. Personally I like a little hyperbole from time to time, though I'm glad real life isn't like that. Those witches were scary!
We did however enter into the spirit of adventure, rushing down the tallest cinema in the world to catch the last underground and then rushing back up again, rooting under chairs to the soundtrack of the cancan in search of pragmatist's gloves, until we realised that she hadn't actually brought them with her in the first place. So we legged it back down again and made it in time (just) to catch the last underground... Ah we do know how to spice up the mundane antics of normal life! And who needs to put the heating on in the flat when a little exercise is all one needs to keep warm!

stress

A very dear friend gave me a bit o paper in ze uni library today with this written on it:

- "I ask him to satisfy my longings and fill my hollow places with his unfailing lavish love, this frees me from craving the approval of others or requiring them to fill my 'cup'. Then if someone does demonstrate love to me that's overflow! I am free to appreciate and enjoy it, but I didn't emotionally require it." Beth Moore

words of clarity on a frenchopsychologised/psychofrenchified/francopsycho day

I don't know what reading that makes you think of but I found myself drawn to the concept of how being filled with God's utterly satisfying love doesn't just stop there with us and Him. We are left free to appreciate and enjoy other people and the rest of his creation in all its fullness. It is for freedom that Christ set us free.
This period on the university calender should be labelled with a health warning "This is the time of the year when you will start feeling innudated and may well succomb to stress". What with all the essays, exams, lab reports, presentations, generally keeping mein head above the workload. I don't seem to overly stress about these things. When I stress it's more likely to be about my motives behind what I do, whether other people are taking a precedence over my love for God, about what's happening in my mind because I feel as though I can't control it half the time to name a few... But it was for freedom that Christ set us free! Why should I stress about these things? He leads me by still waters, He restores my soul, He fills my cup.
He acted, I accept what He has done and continues to do, I overflow.
Maaaan I wish the formula would be tha simple when trying to put it into reality! And it's not Him that is lacking, it's my unwillingness to accept that's the problem. What is it that can possibly hold me back from handing over the controls of my life to God, towhom nothing is impossible, who knows what's best and truly cares?! Think I might take the advice of Beth Moore there.

I'm just grateful that we have Jesus constantly interceding (overuling our stupidity) and that He fully understands :)

to foveate or not to foveate?

"Humans do not stare at scenes. They foveate. Their eyes dart about the scene at locations of interest during the analysis of the scene. Except for special cases, humans tend to focus on corners and edges of important objects of the scene." Jason Kinser, Institute for BioScience, Bionformatics, Biotechnology

We don't process everything we see. And that's not surprising really since we wouldn't get anywhere or do anything if we were constantly processing everything that's round about us. However that can sometimes result in confusion and/or misinterpretation. I did a presentation on how this kind of misintepretation manifests itself in language illusions on Friday. Let me demonstrate.

How many did each kind of animal did Moses put on the ark?
.........................

Did you get it? Did you say two? Or did you see the anomaly? If so, nice work because most people don't and this is known as the Moses Illusion and it's an example of "shallow processing" (what linguists call foveation). So why am I waffling about this other than to fulfil my geeky inclinations? Well today I was thinking about how much of a conscious foveator I am. How I so often only critically evaluate what I find relatively easy to understand because I am scared of the stuff I find more difficult to understand. How I so often see what I want to see and not what I'd prefer not to see. And that applies to everything, from bits of the bible I can't get my head around and would prefer to avoid, to things going on in another part of the world or even part of my city I prefer to remain blissfully unware of. But I specifically want to talk about the way in which I read the bible.
In order to avoid misinterpretation surely we need the full picture. So many mistakes have been made in the past, and we are still unclear on things because we are unware of the full context of a statement within the bible and in the era it was written in. Shouldn't we need to at least be aware of all these things so that we might understand the bible more fully?

But where does the balance lie between, one the one hand, questioning things, finding reason and understanding behind what we believe and on the other hand, knowing that God is God, that His wisdom is far above and beyond us and that we won't have all the answers in this lifetime? It's one of those "to what extent" questions that seem to crop all the time. I think it's easy to lean either too much to one side or the other. I definitely lean in the foveating direction i.e "I don't have all the answers so why bother too much about it?" but it isn't enough. Especially when I get interrogatively questioned about my faith.
I've leaned the other way in the past too; trying to process too much at once and as a result getting tied up and confused with trivial issues. To the point where it has gotten in the way of my ability to see and do and think straight in other areas of life. I think experiences like that may have scared me off deeply questioning things... but then maybe I've been questioning in the wrong way before.
I've been reading this passage over and over again the last few days, and something is starting to click in my head. We have God's Spirit in us, He gives us understanding, He gives us knowledge and the Spirit is key to that. But what kind of knowledge is that? I do know He enables to know Jesus and that He enables to understand God's plan for salvation so we can accept it and communicate it to others. I do know that He helps us grapple with the kind of knowledge that results in us having everything we need for life and godliness and that knowledge for the sake of knowledge is futile. But is that knowledge and understanding of the more difficult concepts, having a grip on prophecies that scholars have studied for years? Or is it just a grasp on concepts such as grace (not that those are especially simple)? Does the Spirit help us gain academic knowledge; the kind of apologetics that go way over my head or knowledge as in knowing God as a father, lord and friend? Should we as Christians know the bible inside out from cover to cover, or is it ok to skim the bits that we "may never understand" like certain prophecies or parts of Revelation?

That's a lot of questions and this probably makes for muddy reading. But if you do get through this I would appreciate any thoughts you might have on the matter. I'm kinda unsure...

Apologies for lack of bullet points in this post

Bon degustation

There are times when I get odd urges to do something random, whether be running down a hill with my arms pretending to be a plane or hugging a friend for no apparent reason. Last Saturday morning (or rather afternoon. Staying up late the night before was for a valid and valuable cause!) I woke up and decided I wanted to make some kind of chocolate mess.

Well I expected it to come out as chocolate mess. Actually it turned out to be a beautifully delicious and perfectly formed chocolate pudding :) This made me and my flatmates and all others that entered our flat walls this weekend very happy

We do know how to do "bon degustation" in our flat that's for sure

I am a french magnet

They've just installed some computers on level 8 of the library... I'm right beside the window and the sun's out. I don't why people say that Glasgow is ugly, from where I'm sitting that's not the view I'm getting...
So it's been 5 months almost to the day since I left France. 5 months. Man alive, that's a long time! The first 3 months I spent in the burgh felt far removed from my sun-lit dossy french lifestyle. However since coming back to Glasgow I find myself frequently hearkening back to those days. This is partly due to the constant presence of chocolate, cheese and wine in our flat. But the main reason is definitely due to my ohsofrequent croisements with french people in and around the university.
They are becoming so frequent that I think I may have become some kind of french magnet. I hope I don't smell of blue cheese and I'm sure I don't give off any Ilovespeakingfrench aura. At least not the kind of aura that can be seen from a distance.
Yet since freshers week, I have consistently and continuously bumped into french people. My magnetic field seems to be at it's most powerful between the hours of 1 and 3am on a Saturday when I have been known to stand outside the QM union and give out tea and coffee with some other equally daft Christians punters. There is one regular who brings his copains to chat to "la fille qui parle super bien francais" (For a Scot that is, though that doesn't stop me grinning from ear to ear each time he says it). But this weekend was almost absurd. There were the regulars, then a girl I recognised from one of my classes, one lanky dude who had only arrived in the country the week before, there were 6 Grenoblois students enjoying a reunion. They had the same favourite pub as me.
Perhaps it is just that a high percentage of frenchies smoke and so are more likely to be loitering outside the QM that in it? Someone told me there are 50000 french people in Glasgow, though I find that somewhat hard to believe.
All I know is, my desire to speak french and franglais on a regular occasion is being well and truly satisfied, I'm starting to make friends with the randoms and I'm starting to realise that God may be engineering all this.
Tis a little bizarre but I like it :)

almost better than snow

I love autumn and I love Kelvingrove Park. En bref I love Kelvingrove Park in the autumn

- the trees

- the colours

- the leaf-fights

- and just general silliness

Diversity of personality

I had one of those lightbulb in the head moments this morning at church... I was listening to my dad saying something at church. My dad: intellectual, logical, rational, scientist-mind, doesn't small-talk on the phone, isn't especially affectionate, except with his family and also a christian; with a strong belief in and commitment to Jesus Christ. I realised, thinking of the person that he is, that he isn't exactly your "stereotypical christian".
But then how many stereotypical christians did I actually know?

I started thinking about the other christians I know and building a little map of them in my head. Intellectuals and touchy feely types, socialists and tories, scientists and artists, old and young, the irrepressible jokers and the sincerely serious, the quiet and the outgoing, the academic and the less academic, trendies and self-confessed geeks, techy geniuses and computerphobes, dreamers and pragmatists... I could go on and on...

I don't think I'd ever before noticed the diversity of personalities Jesus has attracted.
We always seem to emphasise the diversity of the church in terms of things like nationality or family background and I don't want to undermine that because it is an amazing truth. But the crazy of mix of God's family isn't just reflected in "every tribe, tongue and nation" but every mind-set, level of intellect, talent, nature et ainsi de suite...

Then again, should it be that surprising? Essentially He did made grace available to us all.

My urge to blog has increased tenfold in the last week and I do believe this may be directly correlatable with the fact that my workload has also increased tenfold in the last week. But what to blog about...

- I could tell you about the exciting bits of homework I have to do for next week.
- Watch 3 french films made in the 1920s
- Translate 2 texts from english to french and french to english
- Read 3 research papers on psycholinguistics and be able to summarise them in tutorial
- Catchup on lectures notes (caused by lecture clashes)
- Read 4 chapters of a french novel l'usage du monde by Nicolas Bouvier
Ah the joys of studying for an odd combination of a degree.

- I could also tell you about my lovely new flatmates and the banter and copious amounts of chocolate that have been consumed in this last month, though I think I might leave that till I have some incriminating photos...

- I could tell you about the trouble I have with saying no to things. I want to be a part of everything, and not saying no to doing things was something that kept me busy in France but here I just get swamped to the point of silliness if I don't!

- I think for now I'll stick to talking about the weather... Rain, dristle, changeableness, the fact that one day it's really warm and the next it's baltic! What's that all about?!

- I miss french cheese... :(

the joys of academia

Today was my first day of academia and what did I learn...

- That to do a joint honours in a subject one has to be exceedingly organised (timetables are handed out and one has to fiddle and sort out clashes and make sense of them on one's own.
- That sorting out timetable clashes is more stressful than studying

So when do I get to start learning real stuff!?

I want to be a tree

I want to be a tree

Trunk broad, boughs long

the epitomy of life whatever falls

Rooted in good soil, reaching for tall

I want to be

a tree by still waters

that just grows, grows, grows

Yet is patient to wait

till the season for fruit

till I deepen my roots.

Patient to wait through the winter, bare.

Won't panic when leaves fall

Thrills when the buds form

No hurry, never ever, at all...

I couldn't pretend to be something I'm not.

I'd be happy in purpose

in bloom and in want.

I'd be happy just being.

These Magic Changes

Yesterday I made a scrapbook of my year in France... It was both satisfying and disconcerting to reduce what was a year of my life into 20 pages of random bits and pieces of junk I've hoarded... kinda sad really. Still... I'm back in Glasgow indefinitely and excited by the prospect of starting back at uni, though looking at the course details for my joint honours coursem am feeling eversoslightly scared... what have I let myself in for?! A dissertation and a maxi project!?

As for the summer. Well that finished with a bit of a bang... The day after I finished at good ol H of H, I was jetted off for 3 days of glorious surreality in Lewis with the Potential Strangers... thankyou BBC! Here are some of my photographic highlights...

Sound-checking in the studio...

This pic (that Dol Eoin's 7 year old sister drew for the occasion) reminds me of this lovely welsh band that I fell in love with, not only for there ace music and genius lyrics (those that I could understand anyway) and the fact that the 4 of them sing in harmony at various points of each song but the fact that are genuinely nice boys :)

It's not an exaggeration... Harris though a little cold and windy, at least when we were there, really is stunningly beautiful.

Trop trop trop

I've been watching far too many films lately, in the same way that I used to consume books in my younger geekier days, I have relished escaping but I think I might be taking it to extremes.
Over the last few weeks I have watched
- Billy Elliot - several times. Best facial expressions of any film I've ever seen.
- I bought the sister High School Musical and Bugsy Malone - now that was a mistake.
- That gem of a musical West Side Story twice.
- Along came Polly - why?!
- fractions of Princess Mononoke. Think I might need to watch all of it before I understand it.
- A bbc production of Woman in White with my dear mother
- Amelie - for the first time in about a year believe it or not!
Been to see
- The Bourne Ultimatum - now that was good :)
- Hairspray. Twice I'm not ashamed to say. Second time was even better!
- Shrek 3, Harry Potter 5 - disappointments
- A random french-canadian film at the Edinburgh international film festival - Dans les villes - the blurb promised light-heartedness, the film delivered the opposite. Though I must admit the enlightening chat with director/producer afterwards improved it.
Oh and I saw one festival show quite possibly better than any of the films I've seen of late... I blame the changeyourmoodinablink atmosphere and amhaaazing soundtrack!

ticktockticktock just over a week to Glasvegas and return to a TV-less flat... wooo! :)

saying that, it never stopped us from watching copious amounts of Dawsons Creek

Un éclat

I like this photo because of the memory I have of the moment when I took it. It had been raining for days and when it rains in Grenoble it snows on the mountains (up until about April that is) so you can't see them for the thick white clouds that obscure them. The mountains are a constant and familiar presence in Grenoble. You can see them looming behind all manner of buildings in almost every direction. So it's a kinda eerie feeling, not being able to see them. I was waiting at the bus-stop to go to school and then spotted that tiny gap in the clouds and that stunning turquoise blue patch of sky against fresh snow-covered mountains made me catch my breath! I just had to snap it! It was just so beautiful to see and even more so because it felt as though I was seeing blue sky and mountains for the first time! I felt as though I had forgotten what they looked like.

I had another one of those gap in the clouds experiences just recently though it didn't involve mountains or clouds.

My hope had been leaking for a while... I didn't notice at first, and then after a while I started noticing a pit-hole kinda empty feeling when I was alone, something which I hadn't experienced in a long time and it didn't feel like something I could stop. I suddenly had so many questions that made my head hurt. It was kinda like having my vision obscured by impenetrable clouds.

See I had forgotten what God is like. Somewhere along the line I had lost perspective and so lost heart. It seemed to me that He was letting people slip through His fingers that shouldn't be slipping through, people that I really cared about or who had grown to care about. I had the initial gap in the cloud experience because of a few words that made me realise God wasn't letting things slip through his fingers at all. That He truly cares. And once realising that I found my eyes opening to other situations and people that God was working in and through. This week I'm helping out with kids and youth work with my home church. This week is "launch-week" of a church-plant in a small town Kirkliston, the next nearest town to where I grew up. The very fact that God has put so many passionate inspired gifted people in the area and is enabling this to happen is evidence of the fact that He doesn't let seemingly hopeless areas, people, situations just slip through His fingers even if everyone else seems to have given up hope.

I'm not going to give up on Him, Christ Jesus our Hope.

A beeeeyooootiful morceau de franglais :D

a leeetle bit of context...

The 2 frenchmen each having found an RAF man in completely separate situations have been told to go find their officer in the baths... they've been told they'll recognise him easily due to his beeeeg moustache by humming the code song, which is "Tea for two". I think that's all you need to know
Enjoy :D

Excuses for not blogging

First there was my cousin's wedding



and that whole seeing the crazy extended family from the four corners of the earth together for the first time in several years (actually twas the first time in 17 years that my dad and his 5 siblings were in the same country at once!) Birthdays were celebrated, a memorial service held, lots and lots of music has been played, and heated discussions had on everything from, what culture is, to how a video should be converted to dvd...

And there was SU music camp... Lots of musicmusicmusic, mind-blowing singing, seeing parables with fresh eyes, good chat, silly chat, late nights, early mornings, tiredness, awesome food, challenges, competitiveness, birthdays, balloons in my bed, surprises, sleeplessness, insane laughter, emotional 12 year old girls, illness, headaches, bollywood dancing, realising God doesn't work quite the way I expect Him to...

Voila some of us younger members of the team after we let loose the campers on their day out

you need that level of sanity to hack that kinda week with that kinda company I can tell you :D

Oh and there was Harry Potter... a surprisingly satisfying read I must say!

and those are a few of the many reasons why I haven't blogged in about a month! :)

?!?!?!?!?!

And now the sun is shining

blahweatherblahblahweatherblah

We Scots spend far too much time talking about the weather... I don't know how I didn't notice it before. The people I meet at the bus-stop, the bus driver, every customer that comes in, shop assistants, my friends and family... no one seems to stop talking about it! Having been away from the country for 9 months really has shed new light and in this case irritation, onto things. Yet despite having ranted to several people recently about how annoying I find it, I'm going to go back on what I said. Because sometimes the weather merits being talked about. Like today, at this very moment, in the centre of Edinburgh, at the end of June, it's hailing...

Surprises

Today was a relatively eventful day... as I stood by a roadside waiting to risk my life to cross the scariest-ever road to catch my bus I was hit by a lorry-fueled tidal-wave leaving me running around with smelly wet socks at work for the rest of the day. Still recovering from the shock of this (and mildly distracted by the excitement of the severalth reading of the third Harry Potter book) I managed to leave my purse on the bus. (which I discovered at lunch). This resulted in my having to trek across to Linlithgow to the bus station to pick it up (thankfully it had been found and handed in) instad of heading home this evening, spending a total of 2 hours and 45 minutes travelling. (It seems in spite of Linlithgow and Queensferry being so geographically close, when it comes down to public transport, they are really badly connected) I did not expect my day to turn out that way. I did not expect to spend 4 hours in travelling when I went to bed last night. I may have had even more trouble getting up in the morning if I had known that that would be the case.

I do like those little surprises though. Working at H of H is full of them... What with those surprise customers that require many runs up and down the stairs, lack of tea spillages on my part (that is an event I assure you) and the moment when the Quinnster says no to the biscuit (ok perhaps that one's more of a hypothetical surprise). And then every now and again, we receive a call which requires bellowing down the phone and though these can quite often be expected when one works in a place which services those who have hearing difficulties, they are a surpise nonetheless.
And then there are the events unconnected to the workplace... unexpected phonecalls on the bus, a frenchman preaching at Findlay on Sunday morning, the rain stopping...
what can I say... I like surprises :)

Cloud appreciation

In response to this tag I'm gonna cheat... Instead of listing 5 "non-books", I'm going to share 5 pictures of one of a non-book that I never tire of reading on almost a daily basis.

The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of his hands.

Day after day they pour forth speech;

Night after night they display knowledge.

There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

Their voice goes out into all the earth,

their words to the ends of the world.

Tu te souviens quand c'etait difficile?

Was inspired by this, to think about active listening... When I first started going to church in France I used to understand and take in something between 5 and 40% of the sermon. (I could probably understand more of it if I tried, but at the end of an hour and a half long service my brain would normally be a little fried linguistically speaking) Yet I could and would still get a lot out of the few phrases that stuck in my mind. More often than not there would be just one that I heard and made my mind wander. It really required me to do my own head work afterwards though, I couldn't just sit and be a consumer, having everything explained to me. No bad thing really. Being back in Scotland I am finding this all the more harder. I understand every word of the sermon. I don't have to think as much when I listen... but it's going to be so easy to become complacent. Listening to a sermon in english I'm realising should take just as much head and heart work as in french...
I guess this applies to my whole year... first semester especially was tough and maan did I need God. I didn't have much else to rely on... but being back in this beautiful country where I have my family and sooo many friends, where I have no real language barriers and don't get confused in group banter or struggle to understand sermons, I'm fighting against complacency.
So I'm going back to an old lesson, and I'm going to actively remember

Home again; the "first" days

Literally. I feel like I've just moved from one home to the next to the next...


About an hour before I left on Wednesday I suddenly realised I couldn't shut my suitcase. After some panicked packing and repacking I arrived at the station wearing 4 tops, a pair of shorts and jeans, with 2 jumpers round my waist, 1 summer jacket, 1 winter jacket and a scarf. I did have a fleecy flowery full-length dressing gown to add to the menagerie but fortunately had that taken off my hands by the lovely christian lady who gave me a lift and saw me off at the station. The journey was uneventful, there were a couple of babies to entertain, an excited phonecall, one over-limit baggage charge (since apparently french scales are kinder than british ones), a touch of reverse culture shock (I could not help but eavesdrop every conversation I heard and read every sign I saw in english) and in spite of everything there was buckets of God-given peace. I was welcomed home by one excited family, a wonderful curry and a snap taken underneath the UK arrivals sign!
And then the next day after the mandatory shopping trip with the mother (which is bound to be the case if I wear clothes till they fall apart or until she bullies me into buying something new). I headed through to Glasgow for 2 and a half days of wonderful madness... labradors and picnics and flowers and tea and birthdays and nice meals and a million hugs and great chat and dancing and museum trips and swords and chippies and bowls and deckchairs.





Things I'd never noticed before/forgotten about Glasgow


- Very very friendly people. I got raced up the escalators by a good-humoured random middle-aged weegie after I hurriedly cut in front of him.
- Accents... min I cannot stop imitating the Northern Irish accent. It has been approximately 5 months since I last heard it!
- The seats in the underground are surprisingly comfy!
- It is a common occurence to walk past someone reeking of drink
- Lots of people are about on the streets at night
- When it rains it doesn't necessarily mean a thunderstorm
- That most buskers in the westend are really good!
- That one does not have to walk far to find some free live music
- That one does not have to walk far before bumping into someone one knows or recognises
- My friends are positively banterously wonderful :)

God is ridiculously good to me

The last days

there were concerts, a baby and goodbyes

some walks and icecream too

there's a pedalo and there's silly shining there too