Christoper

Hey everyone,

I have officially moved in at camp now. We're currently internet-less, so I may not be posting as much. Although I'm posting fairly infrequently now anyway...

I'm in the same room and the same bed as last summer, and it's funny how "same" it feels. I realized all of the same things I realized my first night last summer... Oh yeah, this room is really hot all the time. Oh yeah, there's tons of mosquitoes to be killed every night before I sleep. Oh yeah, this bed is lopsided... I'll have to stuff a blanket under there. But really, it's a good room.

Last week, we had a visit from three people who work at KBK, one of our sister Baptist camps in Fort Qu'Appelle, in Southern SK. We had a great time swapping ideas for games, songs, and staff training. We even decided to swap some senior staff for a week this summer! Seriously. We're going to switch 7 cabin leaders. I think it's going to be awesome.

We decided to take them out for ice cream on Thursday night. We drove to the tiny town of Christopher Lake and tried one place with a huge sign spray-painted "open", and it apparently wasn't open. It's actually quite interesting how many businesses in Christopher Lake have permanently painted the word "open" on their buildings... we were out of ice cream options. So we did what any good bunch of Baptist ministry leaders would do... we took them drinking and dancing at the Silver Bullet bar. I can't believe I haven't checked out that bar until now. The people there are so kind, way past what we deserved for the small number of drinks we bought. They set up the karaoke machine for us (and once we started singing, they probably wished they hadn't!), they let us play pool for free, and they let us play with their cat. We talked about social justice and evangelism and music and politics.

The only minor crisis of the week was the call from our T-shirt company saying "we're almost done printing your Quest shirts, but we realized that we've been missing a letter in the text and printing 'the Quest at ChristoPER Lake' instead of 'the Quest at ChristoPHER Lake'..." It was actually kind of my fault because I approved the final design for the shirts and I missed the mistake! But no worries, they fixed them all.

What else has happened since I last wrote?... Well, I went to Borden, which is another small town in Saskatchewan, and I attended their grade 12 graduation ceremony, although I knew none of the grads. I was driving Robyn there, and then she wanted me to stay. But actually, we couldn't get in because there wasn't enough seating, so we just walked around Borden (in fact, I think we saw the whole town), and it was deserted, because everyone was at the grad! So that was different. I also went birdwatching and photographing with Rose and Abbey near Delisle, another small town (apparently this is the theme of this blog post). We saw some great birds... coots, grebes, a couple American avocets, some yellow-headed blackbirds... and we even saw a few muskrats! It was a lot of fun. Here's a picture Abbey took of me, taking a picture of a bird.


Well, today I get to drive 8 seniors up to camp! This is our first camp, so please pray for us. The non-stop week-after-week craziness of the summer begins today, but it starts off at a slow-ish, "senior" pace... plenty of crokinole and puzzles. Here's hoping my crokinole skills have improved since last year...

Oh man! I almost forgot to tell you the exciting news! Christine, my best of all Saskatonian friends, and her boyfriend Dan are... engaged! The wedding will probably be in mid-December, so I might have to move exams around to be part of it. Hopefully "my best friend's wedding" is a good enough excuse!

My Vancouver friends begin their road trip to Saskatoon a week from today... I'm counting down!

Don't inhale

Well, I guess I'm on blogging vacation right now. It's funny that I seem to blog less now that I don't have any homework... I think there might be a connection there.

Today was a really perfect day. It was hot outside. I went from 2 extra blankets two nights ago to only a sheet last night. This morning I helped out with an inner city clean-up that my church was volunteering at - picking up garbage in back alleys. My team was having an unofficial contest for weirdest piece of garbage found. I found a whole fish, all dried up. My dad found a chess piece - the king. Another person found dentures. I think she unofficially won the unofficial contest. I think the best find of the day was a vacant lot that would be absolutely perfect for an urban garden. There's even perennials growing there already. It used to be a garden. There's no gate, and a path runs through it. Maybe I could inspire a Jacob's Well-ian urban gardening movement here... too bad my church isn't in the inner city... Later in the day, I spent a lot of time reading, I went for ice cream with my parents, and I took some pictures of flowers. I think the only bad part of the day was two minutes ago, when I accidentally inhaled some toothpaste, straight down my throat. I don't recommend this - it got me coughing and coughing and I think I wrecked my windpipe.

Which is bad, because I have to do an announcement about camp at church tomorrow morning. I haven't really figured out what to say. I'm going to go to church with my dad 2 hours early. He will finish his sermon and I will prepare my announcement. Really what I want to say is "You all had better sign up for camp, because camp is only a third full, and it's going to suck if we don't have any people." But I think that's a little harsh. I need Rachel's help. She's tactful. (But seriously, pray for the camp if you think of it... we really are praying for more campers.)

Let's see... what else... well, I suppose I promised I'd write about the wedding and sleeping in a tent. The wedding was great. My favorite part was when both candlelighters arrived at their candles and simultaneously, their candles went out, and they looked anxiously at each other, then ran back up the aisle! I love little moments that lighten the mood at weddings. And I didn't sleep in a tent! Because of the rain, us "singles" decided to sleep in the "living area" of the hunting lodge where the "couples" of the group were staying. Unfortunately, this is also the area where 6 deer heads were affixed to the wall. I believe that explains my strange animals-coming-alive-and-killing-people dreams while I was there... Here's a picture of Rachel doing her best deer head imitation.


All in all, though, it was a good trip. We got to hang out with the newest batch of puppies, and we met the first member of the third generation at Homowebmape: 6-month-old Caleb. I took a lot of cute pictures. Oh yeah - another great story - we're driving to Brownfield as a family, and we're in Alberta when dad realizes he forgot his debit card at Tim Horton's. This wouldn't normally be a big deal, but him and my mom were planning on leaving from Brownfield to go to Calgary and fly to San Francisco for a week for his convocation. And my mom left her debit card at home for us. So they were money-less. The best part was the initial conversation in the car.


Dad: "Kids, how much money do you have on your debit cards?"
Rachel: "8 dollars".
Dad: "Um... Daniel?"
Daniel: "100 dollars."
Dad: "Beth?"
Beth: "I don't know.... maybe 400 dollars?"
Dad: "Is that the best we can do, kids?"

They took my debit card, but I don't think they even used it. They're so frugal. Frugal even though my dad is now a doctor. Haha. A doctor of ministry.


Well, I have a couple weeks left of work before I move up to camp for the summer. Mostly I'm looking forward to June 25th, when 3-4 of my good friends from Vancouver are taking a road trip to come visit me! Having Saskatoon as a destination for a road trip is pretty much unheard of in Vancouver. That's how much they love me. We're going to hang out in Saskatoon and then up at camp. I really can't wait...

Transitions.

So it’s been forever. I know. The end got quite busy.

Let’s start with the present and move on from there. I am in my bed in Saskatoon. I’ve slipped back into my other very familiar stream of my life. Everything is almost the same. Except there’s a new bench at the side entrance of my house. The Ford Escort had been totaled and replaced with… a Ford Escort, but a newer model, more sporty. Dad has a couple more grey hairs in his beard. Oh, and there is now a neighbor kid two doors down who practices his bagpipes on his driveway every day after school.

Saskatoon is what Saskatoon is once the snow is almost all gone… brown expanses of dead grass, bare brown trunks of trees, and matted piles of brown leaves from last fall that didn’t get raked because the snow came by surprise. Gravel all over the roads, sprayed there over the winter to make them less slippery. Unlike the ice, gravel doesn’t melt – it has to wait to be washed away. It blows around in the wind, creating desert-like sandstorms and making my eyes dry. Nevertheless, everyone is thrilled, because according to many, it is warm enough to wear shorts and T-shirts. I try not to think about the magnolias and the cherry trees and the daffodils and the drastic reduction of my outdoor color palette, and I comfort myself with the thought that I’ll get to experience spring all over again. Saskatoon really does become beautiful. It may actually be beautiful right now, and I just can’t see it because I have yet to remove my Vancouver glasses.

Don and I were talking today about whether it feels like I’m two different people, and whether I like myself better here or there. I like to see it more as a question of roles. I play much different roles here than there, roles with more history. Which can be good or bad - sometimes history is wonderfully rich, and sometimes it is more limiting. I get to be the proud and loving big sister, and that’s one of my favorite roles. I get to sit on the stairs and listen to Daniel practice singing and playing his sax and remember how crazy talented he is. I get to welcome Rachel home from her backpacking trip in Europe, and jump back into our playful banter and we get to laugh at each other as if the months hadn’t passed. I get to be a daughter and feel my parents’ love more directly. I get to throw wood on the friendships that have been slowly burning over the last four months, through e-mails and phone conversations, the ones that remember me and wait for my return.

But I won’t pretend it wasn’t hard to leave this time. Vancouver and its associated relationships are gripping me more tightly than they have before, and the pain of leaving has made me somewhat melancholy over the past couple of days. I have found a real place at Kits Church in Vancouver, and I don’t want to miss out on what happens there over the summer. I have enjoyed being Gospel Choir member and daily beach visitor and transit supporter. Mostly, I have become attached to my roommates. I remember leaving last year and awkwardly hugging Danice, but this time, I was a blubbering mess, crying halfway to the airport. I have no clue how I ended up with such great roommates, especially having witnessed the much more difficult roommate relationships some of my friends have had. And they really love me too, so much that a couple of them are making a road trip to Saskatoon (an unheard-of road trip destination) to visit me later on this summer! I can’t wait.

I guess I could catch you up on what I haven’t written about in the last month, and tell you about singing in the amazing final Gospel Choir concert, seeing Danice play in a Balinese Gamelon, going to Galiano Island with my Christian Imagination class, and touring around Vancouver with my mom, but I’m trying to live in the moment right now, and this is where I’m at. I’m excited to be here, I’m enjoying taking up some good roles in people’s lives, and I’m happy to get caught up with everyone again, but at the same time, I feel like I’ve left a big piece of myself behind in Vancouver, and I’m still trying to sort through the resulting confusion and ache.