Wow…it’s been ages…I’m so glad that our computer is fixed and hopefully will work for at least a week, maybe even more!
So this morning while getting ready for school I was trying to get Caiden to finish putting on his uniform. He was looking down at his trousers as he was pulling them up and then told me that he couldn’t find the bug. What? What bug are you looking for? He just kept looking for some bug. Then I saw that he had the trousers backwards and it dawned on me that he wasn’t looking for a bug, he was looking for the FLY to know that he had them on the right way!! It’s funny when you don’t even realize the dual meanings that some words have!
Stacey and I were walking around in Dublin a couple of days ago and we wandered into this really cool food market. We were busy admiring all the fresh veggies and interesting herbs when we came across a small stock of American goodies. They had pancake mix boxes, Aunt Jemima’s pancake syrup, Hershey’s chocolate sauce and a few other items. The funny thing about being in another country and then seeing all these items from home is that we both found ourselves quickly forgetting which items were readily available in Ireland and which ones we were seeing for the first time. At one point I noticed some Pepsi on the shelf and pointed this out to Stacey. She quickly squashed my enthusiasm by telling me that Pepsi is everywhere here and this wasn’t a unique find…oops!
Our big find of the day was in the cereal section. They had a small selection of American cereal that included Lucky Charms and Captain Crunch. However, if you want to get those oversugared products you’ll need to make sure that you really do get a pot of gold at the end of that Lucky Charms rainbow. The Lucky Charms were selling for Euro 8.75 a box!! At the current exchange rate that makes it about $12.75. Ouch!!
I’ve rejoined my old basketball club here in Ireland and the first match went great tonight. Here is the background. I first joined this team by mistake when I arrived in Ireland four years ago. I thought I was just heading to the gym for a open night of basketball and found myself in the middle of a team practice. I got involved with that group which was playing Division 5 basketball in the Dublin Men’s league.
The last couple of years just weren’t conducive to my playing hoops so I haven’t been playing with the lads and it turns out that I missed a couple of very interesting years. During those years the makeup of our team changed from predominately Irish to almost totally Lithuanian. The other drastic change is that we are now playing in Division 2!
I was wondering what it would be like to play in this higher league tonight and quickly realized how the night would go. We ended up thumping the fellas from Eanna by a margin of 89 to 38! I’m not sure if this is an accurate representation of the division yet so hopefully we’ll come just as well prepared for the next matches.
The other interesting bit for me has been getting involved in a team where I don’t speak the main language. As most of you know my Lithuanian is pretty weak so it’s a bit tough at times to really get an idea of what’s being said. There are actually only two of us that speak English as our first language so maybe you could pray that God would give me the gift of tongues rather quickly. (In fact, I’d like to learn Lithuanian for the basketball team and also Polish and Slovak to chat with some of our neighbours! Any tips??)
If you want to follow the progress of our team (emmm, any takers??) then you can check us out on the Dublin Men’s basketball website.
From the Irish Times on Saturday the 1st of Sept. 2007.
Church must find better ways to communicate
Breda O’Brien
Sat, Sep 01, 2007
Archbishop Seán Brady’s remarks at Knock have generated a remarkable amount of attention. Naturally, the media focused on his condemnation of a vast money-spinning, fortune-telling industry. It generated a predictable response. What might be termed the Richard Dawkins school guffawed at the idea of an archbishop condemning superstition, since in their opinion what the archbishop offers is little different.
Others accused him of being intolerant and judgmental of the spiritual practices of others. Then there were those who congratulated him for saying something that needed to be said.
As might be expected, the archbishop’s comments were little more than an aside in a substantial homily that readers of The Irish Times had the opportunity to read in full if they wished. Having had the privilege of meeting the archbishop several times, I found everything that is said about his gentle, self-effacing and saintly personality to be true.
After many days and weeks and months and hours spent wandering around my blogless life, I’ve returned from the hiatus to start writing again. The past few months have included a trip to America and many fun times there, an Annual Conference in Hungary, a computer crash was at least part of the cause of my stopping blogging for a bit, and a move into a new house here in Ireland. Now that we are getting settled back in I hope to be writing a bit more here. The interesting thing for me will be seeing if anyone is actually still checking this blog. So, are you out there? Are you still listening??
What do you get when you have a two year old who can climb out of his crib, has learned how to take off his diaper, and has pooed???
All I can say is…Ewwwwwww!
In fairness, Ethan knew he pooed and tried to change his own diaper. I think it went downhill from there once things started getting messy…..we’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
Am I going to write a nice poetic piece about that great city of my younger years? Am I going to come up with superlatives to describe the greatest sports city in the world? (go Bears!) Nope…thought I’d bring up the weather here in Dublin recently.
I think we’ve had three solid weeks of rain, clouds and nearly gale force winds. Isn’t that just great. (insert voice dripping with dry sarcasm) A couple of nights ago I realized just how windy it was. I had just mopped the floor in the kitchen and stepped outside to dump the bucket of water down the drain next to our house. I poured all the water out onto the footpath that runs next to our house. Now, that funny little law called gravity would normally say that the water I poured out should run downhill and head right for that drain. However, gravity was trumped by the gale force wind blowing past our house in the opposite direction. The water actually had little tiny whitecaps on the waves as it flowed uphill and out under the gate into our driveway! That picture fits nicely into my “You know it’s too windy when…” category.
But don’t worry about the weather here. I checked the forecast and it looks like we should have a bit of sunshine coming up in about 20 or so weeks. Looking forward to that…
So on Tuesday night I got the chance to begin teaching the Old Testament Survey course for YouthWorks here in Dublin. YouthWorks is a one year certificate program for youth workers in Ireland that teaches some of the basics of youth ministry along with a few Bible courses. I was just a bit nervous about teaching my first course like this. I have to say that teaching for three hours during an evening class is totally different than doing a youth talk or preaching a sermon. After one class though I’d have to say that I really enjoyed it. We did a complete overview of the OT during the evening and I think everyone was picking up the main points of the OT and the overall progression so hopefully the mission of the first class was a success.
Just to say though, in preparing to teach this course I realized that I must have slept through the better part of my OT survey class at Moody. So, I guess I should say a big apology to Dr. Benware for not drinking enough coffee during his class to stay awake for the whole thing! On the positive side, it has been really good to do some deeper study of the OT as I’ve prepared to teach. Even if the course doesn’t help the students all that much, it has still been great for me.
The day has finally arrived. I found Root Beer right here in Ireland without someone having to smuggle it through customs in a suitcase! I couldn’t believe my eyes yesterday as I stood near the counter in the Bagel Factory in Lucan. Right there in front of me in their cooler was a pristine bottle of Jones’ Root Beer. Stacey and I both anticipated the drive home and then cracked it open once we walked through the door. All I can say is that I enjoyed every last drop that I could get out of that bottle. In fact, we are heading that way later today so maybe I’ll indulge again…
As long as we are reminiscing over American stuff invading Ireland, I got to visit the new Borders bookstore the other day and it was truly amazing. Didn’t feel at all like I was still in Ireland. Also, I heard an unconfirmed (as of yet) rumour that there is a Papa John’s pizza place open in Tallaght. We’ll definitely have to go and confirm that one for ourselves very soon!