Orientation, new blog, you name it

Things are going well but very busily here in Toronto. They've kept us busy being pumped full of information since we started, and during our rare downtime I'm usually to tired to post. Today, however, after we finished a more or less useless session (about what blogging is, and how to do it) we finished a bit early, so I thought I'd drop in and let the rellies know what's what.

The orientation hasn't really been a lot of new information, but has been good to talk about. As I suspected, a lot of stuff about encountering new cultures (hint: let them speak for themselves!). We've done some great field trips: one day we went to a Jewish Temple in the morning and a mosque in the afternoon. The temple was a bit awkward - some people in the orientation are going to Palestine to work as what are called "ecumenical accompieners". This is a group from different churchs (the program is run by the World Council of Churches)who basically live with Palestinians and observe how the Israili soldiers treat them. They will tell you that they are there for both Israilis and Palestinians, but I question that - to hear them talk, they are not in favour of Israel at all. Anyway, we went to the Temple, and of course one of the loudmouth EAs told the fellow giving us the tour what they were doing - and the temple had a Israel flag up at the front! He got quite shirty about it- the Temple strongly supports Israel. It was interesting to see his reaction, but I felt bad about us coming into his space and telling him how much we disapproved of what he holds dear.

The next day we went to the Six Nations. This is a reserve near Scarbourough - it's the group that has been blocking roads in Caledonia. It was a great day - we went through a museum, heard their side of the land claims (the government gave them the land for helping the British during the American Revolution) and toured three churches. At one of the churches (Her Majesty's Royal Chapel to the Mohawk), we had a great presentation and history by a native woman who was every inch an Anglican. She was the very stereotype of a sweet old Anglican church lady. At the end of the day her and her friends (each more Anglican than the last)gave us a nice potluck supper. I got to sit next to Leona, the woman who gave us the talk at supper, and she is as interesting in person as she is in public! She told me all about the time her and her husband were invited on the British HMS Chieftan, and the parties they went to - apparently the noncommisioned officers party was better than the captain`s party!

On Sunday we went to church in the morning, and that was an adventure. Alice, who runs the orientation, had given us a list of Anglican churches to choose from - ones with multicultural congregations. Well, Robert, Kerri (the other two interns) and I chose one downtown, and headed there. It was supposed to start at 10, and we were a bit late, thanks to transit, and got there about 10:20. We snuck in to find that they were in the middle of a sermon, and the sermon was being given by this young guy in jeans and a sweater! This is very unusual for the Anglican church, but we were willing to go with it. Then after the sermon another guy stood up, said "ok, It's time for communion". Then he casually told the story of the last supper, and invited us to come up "as we felt led". This is NOT the way we do communion in the Anglican church, and the three of us had a collective heart attack. The service ended shortly thereafter, and we were talking to the preacher- who told us they were a nondenominational church ("The Free Church") who rent the building. The Anglican service didn't start till 11!

We stayed for that service, and it was much closer to what we were used to. There was an old woman from the West Indies sitting behind us who sang with lots of gusto very badly, which was nice for me- I felt that no matter how loud or bad I was, I could never compete with her!

I spent the afternoon wandering around Toronto, and that evening went to an ordination at one of the Anglican seminaries here. It was a woman being ordained to work in my diocese, but who is going to school here. It was a lovely service, and my bishop and his wife were there, and we met lots of other bishops (to the almost uncontainable exciemtent of us three interns). We met the former head of the Anglican Church of Canada, Michael Peers, as well as the National Indiginous Bishop, Mark MacDonald.

There has been lots more going on, but I'll stop for now. The last thing to mention is that I have a new blog - loneandlevel.blogspot.com. I'll try and change the link on the side. This is specifically for my trip (it was confirmed this week that I'm going to Sri Lanka).

Toronto!

I'm in the center of the world for the next two weeks doing a course that is orientation for the trip I'm taking this summer to (probably) Sri Lanka with the Anglican Church. I say 'possibly' because the Canadian Anglican Church hasn't confirmed with the Sri Lankan Anglican Church yet- but it's looking positive! Anyway, here I am, and I arrived without too much fuss. The flight left Edmonton at 8:30, which made for an early morning, and then when I got my seat assignment, it turned out I was in the middle of a row. However, it was exit row, so not as bad as it could have been. And there were seat back TVs, which help pass the time.

I landed around 2:30, and when I was walking out of the gate I heard my name called. I turned around, and there was my Bishop, who was connecting with a flight to Montreal for some church business. Kind of random, but nice to see him.

After I collected my luggage I had to wait for one other person on this course, so we could share a cab. His flight landed an hour after mine, but then he waited an extra hour and a half for his luggage, before realzing that it probably wasn't coming. Aside from that little snafu, things went well, and we got to the center where the course is.

It's being held at a retreat center on the Scarborough Bluffs, which are apparently right beside lake Ontario (I haven't spent much time outside). The course will be pretty good - standard stuff about culture, but very useful for me, I think.

This is for Steph

Anne and Jude have made it safely to Rocky, and brought with them a directive from Steph that I post more on the blog. I made it here last week, after a pretty straightforward paper/ exam period. Two long papers that both went quite well (well, the one I've heard about went well, and I'm pretty sure about the other) and one Hebrew exam that was more difficult than it should have been. Part of the problem was that we weren't taught all that well. It was a very basic introduction in six weeks, and the instructor had trouble fitting it all in, which led to him going very quickly over how to parse verbs in the last class. His hurry meant that I and a friend had to teach ourselves how to parse the verbs, and then I got up the morning of the exam and taught more of my classmates. The upside was that I really understood it all quite well, since I always learn better by teaching. The downside was that, well, my classmates had to learn from me, a dodgy proposition at best.

But it came and went, and it was ok. Not a piece of cake, by any means, but manageable. With a little luck that will be the last Hebrew I have to do.

And now I'm home until the 4th, when I'm going to Toronto for two weeks. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I'm going overseas with the church for three months next summer. I don't know where yet, but I will be working with an Anglican church in a non-western country. I'll be seeing how they do things and getting a sense of how the church works in the world wide context. The two weeks in Toronto are training and orientations, mostly of the "how not to be a stupid white person" genre. Normally the two weeks of the course would not mean that I miss any school, since VST usually has a two week interterm. However, this year, because of the Olympics, the interterm is cancelled, and we have a two week reading break (during the Olymics). So, I'm going to miss the first two weeks of all my classes. I've arranged for notes, and bought the books and started pre-reading, so if I keep this pace up I'll be actually more prepared than usual!