All Summer Long

So... the last time I updated this blog was in May... I had a lot of free time in May. The rest of the summer was pretty busy. Keith took 7 credits and I took 5. Honest, I'll try to do better! Some of the highlights:

• Keith enjoyed his youth ministry class very much.
• We had visits from Kyle and Melissa, Colin, and Keith's parents.
  
• Keith also memorized and performed more of the Gospel of John for "Word by Heart" class.
• I (gasp) PREACHED at our church on Romans 7... oddly enough, on our anniversary...
• We visited Keith's family and friends in the midwest. We visited Keith's grandparents (and I met them for the first time), saw Sarah and Nate's new house, and attended a wedding.
• I played my viola da gamba at the Viola da Gamba Society of America Conclave in Northfield, MN. I met lots of cool people and played lots of cool music. Meanwhile, Keith hung out with his family in Fort Dodge, IA.
  
• I attended another workshop in Seattle, where I played cello and viola da gamba for 17th century opera scenes. While I did this, Keith made a bedside table with my dad!
• Oh by the way, while I was attending the conference, I was hard at work in my free time writing a paper on the use of instrumental music in worship. While it really cut into the time I would have liked to spend with the people at the workshop, I am really proud of it! If you're interested, let me know and I'll email it to you!

And some pictures...

It's time for a party! We had a Brazilian Barbeque. Our friend, Carla showed us what to do.


Cathy and I helped with the dessert. Mmmm... chocolate!


It was Carla's first time making Brazilian Barbeque. In Brazil the boys do it, but in Canada, we are liberated women!


We finished up the evening with some amazing coffee!


Keith dug a big, big hole that is going to be our patio!


Colin graduated from the UW, but didn't go to graduation, so we dressed him appropriately and marched him around the house to appropriate music.


We hung out in Seattle with Kyle and Melissa.


We made Colin shave off his beard (for the second time) to receive our donation towards his trip to China... here he is with half a beard and half a mustache!


I attended a world cup game at a Brazilian restaurant. We all had to watch outside on the sidewalk because there wasn't room inside... it was a crazy party!!


We spent our anniversary in Van Dusen Gardens, where we admired some ducks and got attacked by bees...


... and Keith made pizza for dinner!


We visited Keith's grandparents, George and Bernice.


Keith and Nate and I had fun at "Storybook Land," the big attraction of Aberdeen, SD.


Here I am performing a piece by Orlando Gibbons at the Conclave. It was my first time performing on treble viol!


I made pie with blackberries from our yard!

So domestic...

Last week, Keith was in class, and I was not. I spent a lot of time at home doing domestic things, such as cooking, organizing, and working on some art projects. As a result, I finished the top of Keith's graduation quilt (made partially from his old jeans, and was supposed to be done in December but wasn't), made about 6 liters of spaghetti sauce with Julie's wonderful recipe, knit several inches on a baby sweater for Janelle's baby, practiced my cello, and decorated a bunch of picture frames with the help of the children upstairs. Oh, I also found some people to play viola da gamba consort music with! Very fun.

Mmmm... a pot of beautiful spaghetti sauce...


Dayna, one of my family's neighbors, gave me some advice on choosing dishes when we were doing our bridal registry last spring. She suggested that I visualize our dishes with spaghetti on them. I think our dishes pass the spaghetti test...


Now that Keith is done with his class (all the classes during the summer are 1 or 2 weeks), he is enjoying the lovely weather (ha ha) and digging the hole which will contain our patio/seasonal dining room. He's looking forward to removing the retaining wall with a sledge hammer. We are very excited!

Soup and BBQ

Now that our apartment is a hospitable place, we can have people over! There are still things to be done (papers to sort, family pictures to hang, and the never ending cleaning chores), but since hanging the pictures, we've had people over for dinner twice!

The first was a pea soup party at the end of April. (Thanks to Jeff and Tara for the inspiration!) The weather cooperated: it poured all day, so people were in the mood to eat nice, hearty soup. We had leftover (frozen) ham from Easter, so that provided for about 15 quarts of soup!! We had 6 quarts leftover to freeze and eat later... we'll be eating pea soup all summer!




On Sunday we had a spur of the moment shish-kebab barbeque. This time it was sunny, so we got to enjoy the use of our seasonal dining room (the yard). Keith and I were meant to be together: I make a killer marinade, and he does a killer job with the grilling!

Finally it looks like home...

Yes, that's right! We now have pictures on the walls! There's a real bed in the bedroom! Our apartment actually looks pretty nice! So, here is a virtual tour...

The living room, which contains the piano and little else. We managed to fit the couch. The door leads to the office, and when Keith plays the piano, he sort of sits halfway in the kitchen!

The office, where Keith's computer, my instruments, and the harpsichord live

The kitchen. I was mopping at the time. Keith said "duck." I didn't duck far enough. Oops.

Hallway and storage area

Bedroom, with a real bed, and a nice rockery with native plants out the window (so pretty!)

A sample of my poetry/photography project

Here's one of my poems from my project and the photograph that went with it. None of the black and white pictures have been scanned yet, so perhaps a few more poems and photographs will show up later. The title art is by my friend, Jane. Just so you know, yes, we did have 27 consecutive days of rain right after we moved here...

Wet shoes, wet socks, wet hair, wet raincoat,
wet pants, wet books, wet bag, wet laptop…
(You’d think I didn’t grow up in Seattle.)
It’s raining again.

For some reason,
the people here
(and I am no different)
have been taught
that umbrellas are for wimps.

I’ve decided,
after weeks of incessant nagging drizzle,
with soggy garments and accessories,
not to mention cold drips down my back,
that I am a wimp.

Therefore I will do
what I have been taught was wrong…
I will carry an umbrella and laugh
from my (relatively) dry comfort
at all those poor, wet machos.

Wet umbrella, dry Celia.

Done!

We survived! Every last assignment is turned in, every final is finished, and now all we have to do is CATCH UP FROM EVERYTHING WE PUT OFF. This means putting up pictures, organizing shelves, eating, practicing, reading anything that's not for school, paying bills, etc. We also got our bed, finally. It's not like we were sleeping on the floor... we had a mattress, but an actual bed with a beautifully curved headboard is so nice... Seriously, we did nothing but study for the last month.

We went to Galiano Island last weekend to present projects for our Christian Imagination class. Well, that wasn't the only reason. It was a good excuse to go on a retreat. It was also particularly nice to be able to eat really good home cooked food (such as spaghetti with homemade noodles) that someone else (Mary and friends) made. I enjoyed being sort of pampered all weekend, sitting in the sun, admiring the gorgeous scenery. It was like reliving my childhood trips to the San Juan Islands, which are just south of where we were this weekend.



My project was poetry and photography. I therefore had an excuse to play in my darkroom, which I hadn't done since high school. It was very fun. I also took the time to write poems and polish them up a bit. Then I put the whole thing together in an aesthetically pleasing way--pictures and poems in nice mats. My friend, Jane helped me out with beautiful calligraphy for the titles. People seemed to like what I did. That's encouraging. When I was done reading, I displayed my work on the windowsills.



For Keith's project, he recited large portion of the Gospel of John from memory in a story-telling style. He was awesome. I know I couldn't do that... His presentation took place outside on the deck overlooking the water.

Study break

So, it's almost finals. I realized that I have not put anything on the blog for quite some time (yes, we're still alive, Ilene), so here's a little update. Can you tell I'm procrastinating? Keith and I have 2 finals, one on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. It kind of stinks that we are spending Easter weekend studying. Oh well, at least we are studying about Jesus. So...

We went to North Dakota for Megan and Jeremy's wedding on St. Patrick's day (it was very Irish), and we got to spend lots of time with Keith's family. We had fun in the snow. There is no snow here in Vancouver. It is spring already; there are daffodils and whatnot.



I finished another knitting project! This is one is for Martha. My friends keep having baby girls! It's crazy!




It was my birthday... I officially became old... I am now able to rent a car without pay $20 extra per day. I spent my birthday weekend in Seattle with Keith and my parents. There was a birthday party with parents, grandparents, and neighbors.



Keith and I spent my actual birthday being sopping wet. We rode our bikes around at the Skagit Valley Tulip Festival, where it was raining heavily. We discovered that the tulip fields were a lot further away than we thought, so we wimped out and took the car...




I played/sang a concert! It was the final project for my History of Music in Ministy class, a demonstration concert with 3000 years of music as used in worship. We had lots of really interesting selections, many of which were composed by the class: Gospel, Chinese worship music, hymns, a reconstruction of temple worship in ancient Israel, a trio sonata by Corelli, and a piece written by a Canadian nun in the Baroque period. I contributed a Kyrie in the style of Palestrina. We had a great time, and it turned out pretty well, especially considering that we only had a month to plan it.




Now, we are cramming for finals with our study group... wish us luck!

Another project complete...

I completed another knitting project! It took a very long time, since the technique for sewing the pieces together was quite difficult. I also had to learn how to crochet for the edge. There's a matching hat, too. It was a gift for Andrea and Edgar and their new baby, Leila!

Whistler

We went to Whistler for reading week with my parents! That means spring break, but apparently it's supposed to be spent reading, not vacationing. We went on vacation anyway. It was so nice to spend some time outside... doing something other than studying. Yes, the academic load at Regent is quite rigorous. We also ate a lot of good food, so any benefits we may have gained from the exercise were immediately lost. There haven't been too many pictures on the blog lately. That's partly because I've been (gasp) shooting film with my other camera. I'm doing a project for one of my classes which will involve both photography and poetry. Bits of the project may show up here in April sometime.

This is me skiing.

Here we are riding on the gondola.

This is Keith--he's improving rapidly!

Lecture and Concert

Last Tuesday I had the opportunity to give a lecture in one of my classes, The Christian Imagination. This class discusses issues relating to Christian artists. We had not had any discussion of music-related issues (the professor is an actor), so it was good to be able to fill a need. I talked for almost 3 hours about music in the middle ages and the renaissance (thank God for Mass and Motet in the Renaissance class). This was my first time giving a lecture without the text written out word for word, and also my first time to use power point! I brought my viols so people could see, hear, and even try out a renaissance instrument. It went pretty well, and I received a lot of very positive feedback from the class. People seemed very interested in particular in the instruments and in hearing about some of my personal struggles as a Christian musician. This is encouraging, as I may be interested in teaching at a university in the future.

On another note (ha ha), Regent will be getting another dose of early music this Tuesday, when I will be playing a short lunchtime concert as part of the "Offering of the Arts" festivities. I'm playing both my viols (pieces by Hume and Ortiz) and my cello (Bach first suite). I'm hoping that perhaps we can have lunchtime concerts more often than just over 2 weeks in March. There's a lot of really great musicians here, and everyone loves to hear them.