Sour Raspberries

"Take delight in the ordinary."- Unknown

Sometimes I have wonderful epiphanies, which are admittedly less epic when typed out on a blog, that I share with the ever loving cyberspace. Other times I have a set of photographs that I think are quite nice that I want to show off. But then sometimes, like tonight, something ordinary will happen and I will find so much joy in it that I just have to share it.

Tonight at lifegroup, one of my favourite little kidlets, Alia, ate some sour raspberries. Her little face scrunched up and her tiny fists pressed against her eyes as the full horror of sour berries overwhelmed her. I grabbed my camera and attempted to capture her various contorted facial expressions, trying my best to keep the camera steady as we all laughed at her chubby legs kicking at this new taste sensation.

Like good friends and parents, we fed her berry after berry, taking advantage of her childlike faith in those who feed her. Thankful that Alia is so wonderfully gullible, we took great (perhaps too great) delight in her entertaining new flavour journey.

The pictures are somewhat blurry and the story is probably not nearly as amusing as witnessing the actual event, but I hope that this will make you smile at least a little...

Not your average berry...

What is this stuff?

Noooooooo.

Can't...handle...the...taste

What is wrong with these people?

Worst photo. Best face.

An Adventure Anniversary

"Would you like an adventure now, or shall we have tea first?"-Peter Pan

Exactly a year ago today, I spent my first day in Quesnel. Fondly called Q-town by its inhabitants, this strange little place has become quite dear to me.There is so much to say about this strange country, so many adventures to talk about. Perhaps the most entertaining aspects of this journey so far has been accents, cultural differences and various misconceptions about both South Africa and Canada.

During one of my first weeks in Quesnel, I spent a good amount of time with one of the girls I met at church. One night, as we sat talking about all sorts of things, she told me a rather sad story about some one she knew. I listened, interjecting, as any good South African would, at polite intervals with "shame". I was slightly confused by her look of shock each time I did, but I decided that I didn't know her well enough to understand her facial expressions. It was only a few months later that she told me that, because of my accent and the fact that Canadians do not use the word "shame" as a sympathetic sentiment, she thought I had been swearing.

We've shocked many people by informing them that South Africa does, in fact, have a winter. We, in turn, were pleasantly surprised by Summers that reach the 30s. Many of you know Tumi, my beautiful black sort of sister. I told a few girls at dancing that every first born in SA is born black. And they believed me.

One of many conversations with a random stranger went something like this...

"You have a British accent! Where is it from?"
"South Africa."
"Oh! I have a friend in South Africa!"
"Really. Where in South Africa?"
"Ghana."
-_-

The Canadian phrase "I don't care" is the equivalent of the South African "I don't mind". For quite a while I thought people were very apathetic and rude. Saying you will do something "just now" means right now, not in a few minutes, hours or days.
Robots are called traffic lights,crumpets are called pancakes and pancakes, crepes. The milk is gay, the crackers are high and the shower gel is quite a chop.

Homesickness and loneliness pestered me rather consistently in the beginning but I am now quite enjoying this new life. Even though all my plans of studying, working and getting married have all gone out the window, I'm finally able to look at my confusing little life not as a mess but as a grand adventure that is constantly changing. Happy one-year-in-a-foreign-country to me!

"I don' like that guy. He's a real douche.."-Nacho Libre

 -

Yep.

When they said BC had a drug problem, they weren't joking...

Dear Nobody,Letter #4

"I get a little bit bigger, but then I'll admit.I'm just the same as I was.Now don't you understand that I'm never changing who I am."- Imagine Dragons

28 February 2013

Dear Nobody,

I haven't written to you in about six months. I feel like there is so much to tell you, yet nothing comes to mind.The big changes that have taken place would be the obvious subject choice, but are also the least appealing. I've always been told that I am resistant to change even though my life, all life in fact, is ruled by change. I have gone through bigger changes than some over the past few years. Even though I would like to stop for a while, I cannot imagine my life any other way. As much as my life is constantly on the move, I feel as though I am not.

I think it's my biggest flaw, Nobody. My inability to change. Surely I'm not the only one who suffers from this particular downfall. Even people who are unhappy with their lives seem to hang onto who they are. Staying the same for as long as possible seems to be the safest thing to do. If you are suffering, at least the pain is familiar. Stepping out, try to change where you're at, is a big risk to take. Who knows what other dangers lie waiting for you. After all, it could be worse. 

You can easily justify such a character defect. It doesn't seem to be all that bad, as far as defects go. At least you aren't a drug addict. You don't kidnap innocent old ladies. You're not killing anyone, except maybe some part of yourself.  

You can convince yourself that change is simply unnecessary. One day we will cease to exist on this earth. We all become another piece of history. A pile of ashes or a box of bones, whichever you prefer.  Only those decisions that hold eternal weight will matter. Surely change can be restricted to the seasons, aging and, hopefully, our taste in clothes. That sounds good enough. You can be content with being stagnant. For a while.

Then, in spite of yourself, you start to think that maybe change is not such a bad thing. Maybe taking that leap of faith isn't quite as scary as you thought it was. And something inside you shifts ever so slightly. You can breathe a little easier; you feel a little more alive. It makes perfect sense really. As long as you are changing, you are growing. Once you stop growing, you start dying, or at very least, not living your life to the fullest. The idea of zombies becomes a little less ridiculous. Being alive has never been a strictly physical thing. What good is a body surging with life when it is inhabited by a dead soul? 

When we finally do change, I don't think it happens like a display of fireworks or an earthquake where all of a sudden we're this completely different person. I think it's smaller than that. It's the kind of thing no one else would even notice, unless they looked really closely. Which, thank goodness. they never really do.

But you notice the it. Inside you,that small change feels like a world of difference, and you hope that it is. It's better like this and you hope with everything you are that you get to be this person forever. That you'll never have to change again.

So you see, dear Nobody, everything has changed, yet nothing really has. I am essentially still me, although I do hope a better version of myself. I still do not want to change even though I know that I will be grateful after. Hopefully my ramblings will make you think, even for a second, about changing. In the greater scheme of things, it may not even matter. One day the world will go on without us and these little, seemingly insignificant changes won't even matter. But it matters right now. I know there will be people someday who say that we never existed but right now, we are alive. We're alive and growing. And it's because we are changing.

Forever yours (that will not change)

Me

The Day the World Didn't End

"Smile, it's the end of the world."-Matthew Palath

21 December 2012. The day the poor misunderstood  Mayans are accused of predicting to be the world's end. Anyone with half a will to investigate would find out that all they actually predicted the end of an era. They also did not account for the 514  leap years we've had in their calendars, the date their last rock ends on would actually have been some time in June. Or, as many a humorous cartoon relates,they merely ran out of space on their giant oreo cookies and everyone is being overly dramatic. I personally believe that if the Spanish hadn't wiped the Mayans out they would have finished their calendars

Despite all the predictions we did indeed survive the 21st and had Christmas after all. As the 31st approached, another misconception made a few people somewhat nervous. The popular movie 2012 made quite a few people think the end was nigh. What people seem to forget is that the world didn't actually end when the movie did. Everyone just somehow ended up in South Africa, where the Drakensburg and Cape Town somehow came together to create the perfect holiday destination. Really, that is not the end of the world.

Indeed it was not. Here we are on the first of January, alive and well. We survived 2012. I survived my first job, living in a boho cabin a minute from the beach, working as a photographer at a kid's camp 8 hours away from home. I survived living alone in a nice little granny flat. I survived my sister getting married and moving to Australia. I survived moving to Canada. I have almost survived my first winter.
We all survived apocalypse jokes and the sudden influx of zombie related everything. It was a close call, but we did survive the hashtag invasion on Facebook and the disturbingly large amount of fancy filtered photos of everyone's lunches,coffee mugs, feet and faces, thanks to Instagram.

Luckily, life is not all about merely surviving. In 2012 I completed three things off my bucket list. I went on an unpredictable trip, getting on a bus and then a metro train with only a vague idea of where I was going. I ended up getting a job and having, thus far, the very best time of my life living like a hippie in the small town of Zinkwazi in KwaZulu Natal. I was a camp counselor for a short while,then got promoted to photographer. I got paid to walk on the beach and take photos all day. While I was there I completed another item on my list: swimming to back-line. I could barely do anything but doggy paddle but one morning before the sun came up, four of my fellow counselors (three of which were life guards) and I walked down to the beach and plunged into the warm Indian ocean. As the sun came up, we reached back-line and floated in the now calm water. It was the most epic moment of my life.
 In July, I ticked off the third item, Go to Canada, when we moved to Quesnel.
I made a huge amount of unlikely friends.We started a youth group at church. I got my L. I may be a driver yet.
Last night I built a puzzle with my mother and went to bed at 1. Not the most exciting New Year's, but I've never gotten very excited about the new year. it is, after all, just another new day. All the same, Happy New Year cyber space. :)

White Christmas

"I'm dreaming of a white Christmas with every Christmas card I write. May your days be merry and bright and may all your Christmases be white."-Irving Berlin

White Christmases were once a thing that we heard about in songs and saw on Christmas cards and in movies. We often joked about brown Christmases, when all the grass had died from the heat and the flowers had shriveled up in the rockhard flower beds. There were certainly no serene yards and frosted up windows to take photos of. While I will always miss the heat and the feel of home associated with a South African Christmas, my first white Christmas was indeed very picturesque and movie-like. 

Instead of dragging out the old plastic tree, we hunted and chopped down our own pine. (No one told us that decorating a real tree would be such a painful, complicated process.)

Instead of sitting in the garden to cool down, we huddled under blankets and watched Elf. Instead of  watermelon,fruit and cream there was hot steam pudding and custard for dessert. 

Right now words evade me and I am void of any profound Christmas quotes so I will let these pictures (and their captions) speak for themselves. Merry Christmas cyber world!

Christmas lights downtown Quesnel.

Homemade Christmas decoration.

A blurry, green picture of Jesse and our tree.

Pre-Christmas snowfall.

Name card holder.

Frosty mobile.

Bauble.

Zoe popping the cork on our fizzy apple.

Our street at about 4 in the afternoon.

Sparkling snow.

Christmas lights.

Snowy chainlink fence.

Black and white apple tree.

The last of Summer's grass.

Footprints going across the deck.

Our Life Group's last meeting before Christmas.

Beautiful Babies

Our 10 Cents

"Getting an inch of snow is like winning 10 cents in the Lotto."-Bill Watterson

26 October 2012. Approximately  20:07.

I left the noisy group of Rock Band players and went outside for just a moment, to see if any of the snow I'd seen falling earlier had actually landed on the ground. Everything I'd seen before had melted as soon as it came into contact with any earthbound objects.

The air was warmer than it had been earlier that night and there was a sort of eerie silence . And a thin layer of fluffy white covering everything I could see.

It's something I can't quite explain,that brief moment of beauty and intense silence, shattered by the rest of the people bursting through the doorway and my first snowball fight. It was as if I had stepped out of the door into a completely different world. For once I did not have my camera with me and I saw things through my natural eye as opposed to my mechanical lense.

When I woke up the next morning, the fluffy blanket had melted away considerably and patches of grass were showing through. It snowed for a few hours, tiny crystals floating from the solid grey sky, but the weather was too warm for much of it stick. Even though it wasn't nearly as beautiful as the night before, I did take a few blurry shots of our 10 cents worth of winter. Considering the fact that this is still Autumn, this is the first of many snow posts..

Tree in the backyard.

The view from my bedroom.

Snowy pine.

End of Autumn with the beginning of Winter.

Footprint.

Driveway.

Snowy berries in the neighbour's yard.

Blurry attempt at capturing the snow falling.