Love and Gratitude

One of the many awesome things about our trip to Derby was that we got to see RACH!!! Ahhh, seeing her was SO GOOD. She came down from Leeds for a few days and we got to hear about her PhD and life after NZ - I could have asked about a thousand more questions about everything, so hopefully it won’t be ages before we see her again (*Big fat hint* - Rach we would love to have you in Oxford, or perhaps we can make a trip to Leeds?)

Thanks so much to everyone in Derby who gave us a place to stay and fed us. Sarah - you are so loved by us Gribbons and your banana bread is very delicious! The extended Martin household - thanks for the laughs and conversations. Murray and Maria - thanks for not giving us that nasty virus, and for looking after us so well even while you were sick! We can’t wait to visit Chatsworth once the scaffolding is removed. The Griffiths - your place is like home to us. Thanks for reminding us what it’s like to have his and her bedside lamps. The Scotts - where else could you combine a toy gun shooting competition and great discussion about missional communities? Brilliant.

Now, when I get out the camera in a group context, not everyone is that enthusiastic about it, but David, Siân and Dan are, and often after we have been hanging out I will go through the photos and find surprises taken by other people, which I love. I don’t know who took some of these photos, but there are some great shots! You know who are :)

“Hi, I’m Siân, I’m wearing dungarees…and also, I’m quite adorable”

Whoever thought to combine garlic bread with pizza is a genius.

See, it’s Rach! XXX

georgelulz:

georgelulz:

Oh my God, I’m married! That is crazy. What happened? But seriously, life is short, right? I just think you should do whatever makes you happy. That’s what April and I did.

Parks and Recreation 3x09

Carsington Water

There are some beautiful spots in Derbyshire. Kim, Maria and I spent a day driving around parts of the Peak District and took a walk at Carsington Water. It was pretty and it got us out of the house so Murray could study. I’d be keen to see more of this area at some point! It’s the type of place that you would visit if you had a dog and some kids in tow, or fancied a cup of tea with a wooden snail…

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The BBQ Times

Woah, the weather over our holidays has been fantastic!! We spent this morning in Kidlington giving out Easter eggs and painting faces - but more on that later.

Below are some snaps from our first UK BBQ. I love spending time at the Martin’s house, great place and great people. Thought they had some kind of perception that their BBQ hospitality would be sub-standard to our Kiwi expectations. They were wrong, but we didn’t want to burst their dream of NZ as some kind of BBQ paradise.

Okay - I’m totally riding a vitamin D overload right now. It’s making my much needed essay time difficult to nail down. Just begin Chantelle…now…go!

Eden read us a poem she wrote titled “My brother is an ass” - ha!

Happy Easter!

2 Cool 4 Skool

A couple of weekends ago I (Kim) went out for a skate in the afternoon sun. We live at the top of a large hill but lacking basic protective gear (look, a pot strapped to my head wasn’t going to cut it), I wasn’t bold enough to bomb it. Instead, I walked to the bottom and skated on the flat. It was the first time I’d got out my longboard since packing it into a box in NZ and it felt good.

Feeling invigorated after returning home from my skate I set out with the camera. It was dusk and though the light was fading, it was smooth and even. I wanted to catch the setting sun but couldn’t get a good shot - frustrated by the wide discrepancy between what I saw and what the lens saw. Walking toward the local school I saw an old decrepit building (“The Bomb Shelter”) out the back of the field and decided to investigate. Definitely the place where those ‘2 cool 4 skool’ could hang out and have a smoke. Admiring what they’d done with the place, I took a few shots and climbed one of the walls, stopping to sit for a while. It was peaceful and serene. Ah, the serenity.

Fun in the Sun

This is perhaps my cheesiest title to date, but I really felt everything was a little better because the sun was out, and because we were on holiday and I was able to crack out my jandals for the first time, and finally fit into some of those jeans that I shipped half way across the world. I feel cautious even writing this because I know how easily both those situations can change!

Last Friday we caught the train from Oxford to Derby to join in on a CCD weekend and found everyone welcoming and friendly, and we got to spend time with Sarah and also some guys from St Thomas Philadelphia re: Missional Communites (we might visit them for part of our third term track). The location was pretty fancy and it was the perfect way to kick off our holidays while also lolling around on the grass and soaking up some rays.

Pesach

For our last assignment we did a lot of reading around the Lord’s Supper and I was intrigued by the idea that it’s not simply about historical remembrance, but a re-enactment in which the past and the future rush into the present. Lots of writers, including N. T. Wright use the Jewish festival of the Passover to illustrate this concept. So it was fitting that during our last week of term, some Messianic Jews came in to take us through a Pesach Meal at college, in our lecture room - made to look much prettier by Helen & Co!

It tends to go this way at KBC…(or in life?) that there is never just one thing going at once, and this synthesis can have interesting results. Our assignment was due the morning of the Passover Meal, and for some reason, Kim and I had managed to leave most of our writing up till the night before. It was a long night - made more pleasant by the soothing tones of Sufjan and the internet chats to NZ friends and family who were wondering why we were still up in the middle of their day. So I was pretty sleep deprived for this meal and there were definitely moments that were a revelation (the first rule of exegesis is to understand what it meant to the reader then - tadaa!), but I was also a little wary of the whole Israel ‘now’ thing. But that’s okay. Having this experience has shifted my understanding from head knowledge to a little more experiential which aggh, has to be a good thing.

We rounded off the night with some good old fashioned white-board hangman. Which, when I think about it is quite a disturbing game. The right letters or death.

Symbolism

Artist Gill Sakakini came to college and led us through an exercise in creating our own ink prints based on symbols from the stories from Passion Week.

Step One: Think of an object and turn it into a design.

Step Two: Transfer your design onto a piece of rubber and carve it out. The rubber we used cut like a hot knife through butter compared to the lino we used as kids!!

Step Three: Roll out some ink till it makes that sticky noise.

Step Four: Ink up your rubber and place it firmly onto the card. Twenty four times..

Step Five: Give everyone a copy of your print!

I was so impressed with everyone’s prints, they were all really successful! I’m going to hang them up for Easter when we get back to Oxford so you can see what I mean.