Last week Elissa (some of you will remember her from across at my Wordpress blog) posted a pic on Facebook of her sister "levitating", and it looked like something that would be cool to try. I haven't been in an experimenting or inspired mood photography-wise lately but, with Elissa's photo to motivate me, I decided to fix all that today.
Zoë arrived at the church unexpectedly, and two kids from across the road were playing out back, so I asked if they would all be my guinea pigs. There was a whole lot of trial and error (error being the operative word) and most of the pics didn't turn out but we sure had fun trying!
Herewith three kids levitating in the kids' play park we're building ...
Not exactly levitating, but it was a start!
Trying to figure out how mermaids levitate at the Mermaid Rock
I love serendipitous shoots - out of the blue, when I'm not prepared for them. A few weeks back, after supper, Elissa suddenly proclaimed that the light looked perfect, and that we should go to shoot at Edgewood Farm up here in Red Bluff.
Winter is very much on its way - the evenings are cooler, mosquitoes are more scarce and the leaves are starting to change colour. Most days, menacing storm clouds seem to gather towards sunset and then, just as they're done helping produce the most stunning sunsets, they leave. This was one of those evenings.
I rushed home to fetch my camera gear and tore out to the farm as quickly as I could to meet Elissa and her sister Kristen (who was to model for us). The light was, as she had said, perfect!
Most of you probably know by now that I have travelled a fair amount, and have lived in several countries over the last decade or two. Of course, my gypsy lifestyle started with my being chosen to go to Belgium as an exchange student after high school. Then came my two years in a mobile unit in the airforce, before working for Outward Bound in South Africa. That saw me working in Hogsback and Sedgefield in the Cape, the Valley of a Thousand Hills in KZN, Qwa Qwa, Groot Marico and Zimbabwe.
"Settled" was not the word I would readily use to discuss my life. But all those experiences were just preparation for my life after becoming a Christian, as I began serving in churches around the world. Mongolia was an eye-opener and a culture shock of note and I discovered that practically no-one understood a word of English. I remember praying before going for a haircut that my grunting and hand signals would suffice, and that I would emerge with hair ... in something resembling a style.
Of course, there were many trips up into the dark belly of Africa, which I learnt to love deeply. Again, language was one of the stumbling blocks to communicating easily with the locals (strange thing that). I remember one particular trip to the Zambezi River basin in Mozambique, where the kids had never seen white people before and took days to become semi-comfortable around us. Mostly they just ran screaming in terror. I became quite adept at my scattering ministry over the years, possibly not something to brag about in the Christian context.Tickling does, however, seem to be a universal language.
Then, of course, I also lived in France and Madagascar, neither of which had English as its first language.
And so, when I discovered that I'd be moving to Canada I thought, "excellent, at least language will not be a problem!" But I was wrong. Apparently what we speak in South Africa does not resemble English. Although there are many people at church who still look at me blankly when I speak, the staff at the much-loved fast food joint Tim Hortons are my biggest nemeses. I've even attempted a southern drawl, Irish, Scottish, and Mexican accents but to no avail.
I tried Timmy's drive-through a few times when I first arrived, but I've definitively given that up. Like drugs, or too much alcohol, it's just not good for my health. And I mean, who can actually hear anything coming out of that tinny little speaker anyway?
Oh, how excited I was at my last attempt - when I put through my order once, and the reply was, "please drive through, and pay at the next window sir."
"Eureka, I've mastered ordering at Tim Hortons! I've finally arrived," I thought to myself, a glow of pride swelling my chest. "Everything will be alright now!"
But my excitement was short-lived.
Basically, all I was trying to order was a chai latte - that is a tea with milk, right?
Nope, apparently not. I ordered in the best twangy accent I could muster. I think I may have even thrown in an "eh" or six. What I got was (wait for it) a coffee latte with a tea bag in it.
Seriously? What were they thinking? What sane person would order coffee with a tea bag? I can just see them snickering to each other: "Some eeejit with an incomprehensible accent wants a coffee with a tea bag, right. What do I do, eh?"
"He's the customer, give it to him, eh," the manager would have answered ...
I was always taught to get straight back onto the horse if it threw you. Well, this is one horse that will not see me in the saddle any time soon.
But it's no better inside either, to be honest. The other day I tried ordering soup. This was my side of the conversation (all interspersed with blank stares).
"Hi, I'd like a small bowl of soup to go, please."
"Soup!" (Pointing to the menu above the server's head.) "A small bowl. Do you have any of the potato and bacon left?"
"Potato and bacon. Soup. It's up there ... Um, do you speak English?"
Soup ... How else can one say soup? I could have tried French, but "un bol de soupe" is practically the same as in English. And so, I threw up the white flag and tried something else.
"Um, okay, I'll have me a bowl of chilli please..." (I said, using my best Texan drawl.)
"Sorry sir, we're all out of chilli but we do have vegetable soup."
"Aw, forgedaboudeeeeet, jus give me a kwafee ..." was all I could muster.
...
Now, whenever people at church don't understand me my stock response is, "Did you once work at Tim Hortons?"
This is a blog that has been waiting to be written for many a week. And what better time than now?
When I arrived here in Quesnel at the beginning of June, Brian and Lisa kindly let me stay with them while I was acclimatising. They had found me a place to stay downtown (which some of you would have read about already), which I was to move into a couple of weeks after arriving. That, obviously, meant that I would need transport ...
One chap soon lent me a bicycle, but I still needed a car. And that was where their son Jesse's Taurus, appropriately nicknamed "Hello Kitty," came in. He was just about to get his drivers' licence, but still sacrificed his ride to save me from possible cardiac arrest, trying to cycle up the hill in my sorry state of fitness every morning. He had received the car as a gift, complete with all the kitty paraphernalia and had just never bothered to change it. I, however, was keen to build on it for its comedic value by getting some of the teens in the church to graffiti more "Hello Kitty" graphics on the outside. Jesse, unfortunately, was having nothing of it.
The "Hello Kitty" car
"Hello Kitty" steering wheel
As much as I loved the car, I felt Jesse's pain at having his driving licence but no vehicle in which to cruise town, left arm propped lazily on the window and music blaring. And so I was constantly on the lookout for a vehicle of my own. That's where the F150 I saw at a yard sale in June came in. Do you remember the one, with the antlers on the hood?
Well, to cut an awfully long story short, it is now mine - thanks to some incredible generosity. While living in Madagascar I owned a much-loved beat-up Yamaha XT350 that I called "The Beast." In honour of the Yamaha, and because the F150 leaks at least as much oil as the old girl had done in Mada, I have named my truck (that's bakkie to you South Africans, or pick-up to others) "The Green Beast." Not very original, I know, but she's mine for now and so I get to name her!
She's missing her right side mirror and is slowly rusting away to nothing but has plenty of grunt in her yet. But that grunt does come at a cost - she's a real gas guzzler. Her paint job too is, um, interesting. She was apparently painted by hand, with a roller, by a hillbilly trapper who lived in the hills outside of town, and who was murdered some time after selling her. I don't think she had anything to do with the killing though ... At least, I hope not. Although I am hoping to get some of the youngsters to add some graffiti to her, for sure. Like, maybe a zombie or two chewing at the back wheel arch.
Aint she beootiful?
Still running after all these years
Bug killer
(I'm almost done. Hang in there.)
Late last week I finally took my British Columbia driving test, which I needed to do within three months of arriving. I was full of confidence and swagger but the testing dude soon had me as nervous as a teenager on a first date. Firstly, it turned out that the car I was doing the test in wasn't insured. But actually it was - the insurance sticker was just missing. We sorted that out and got ready to go for the test. Then there was a problem with the windscreen ...
90% of vehicles here seem to have cracked windscreens so I thought nothing of it. But he made me sign a document saying the car would never be used for a test again - or at least not until the windscreen had been fixed. Finally we set off and then, after only one block, he told me to drive back to the office.
"Say what?!?!" I thought to myself. "I failed after only one block?!?!"
But it turned out that he had dropped my South African licence when checking the road-worthiness of the car, and had to go and look for it. Fortunately he found it, and finally we set off for real. I was sweating, my mouth was dry and my head was bobbing around more than one of those little dogs people put in their rear windows, so busy was I checking my right shoulder, blind-spots and speed. I practically gave myself whiplash.
Despite racing at 60kph across one of the bridges, not stopping dead enough at the majority of stop signs, and driving in a cycle lane at one point, I did get my licence. I guess he had tested plenty of South Africans in his career, and knows that these signs of apparent lawlessness don't necessarily make us bad drivers ... After all, how does one unlearn years of bad habits and avoiding hijackings in a matter of months?
So, beware people of Quesnel, the South African with a BC licence in the Green Beast is loose on your roads...
So, why exactly did I abandon the blog across at Wordpress to come here to Blogger? For several reasons, really... The main one, of course, is that I would like it mainly to be for friends and family - a place I can be real with you about my experiences over here.
For now, let me leave you with more pictures from our church homegroup meeting out at 10-mile lake last night. The weather has changed almost overnight from sweltering to mild - rainy too. This makes for absolutely beautiful evenings (and misty mornings, I am told). With very little time left for lake and river visits, I'm trying to make the most of it.
