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Anders and I were married on August 4th, 2007 at Emmanuel Baptist Church in Saskatoon. We now live off Broadway in a cozy apartment for two. Besides being thrilled to be married, Anders splits his time between working as a Financial Services Representative at CIBC and as a DJ for Solid Sound. As for me, I am presently interning with the Marion Graham Outdoor School Program and have no free time to split! It's like I woke up one morning and *BAM* I was married, working, and feeling way more like an adult than ever. Still, Anders and I make sure we retain some of our youth by making shows, movies, and super nintendo priorities in our lives. :)

On Easter Sunday at about 4 pm down by the Saskatchewan River, Anders Bergstrom asked me to marry him. I said YES!

Location: Levili , Samoa

Samutia is a married 29 year old lady with 2 kids. She runs a food stall business, primarily selling pancakes, home made cakes, fried sausages, chickens and fish. Samutia has been in business for 5 years now, and is very happy with the success of her business. She’s a very energetic mother who wakes up at 4.30am in the morning to put in order her food stall for opening at 6am; this is her routine from Monday to Saturday every week. Samutia has become really dedicated to her business. She aims to save money so that by time her children are ready to go to school, she can provide them with the best education.

Activity: Food Production and Sales
Loan Amount: $875.00
Loan Use: To buy ingredients for making pancakes: flour, eggs, milk, sugar, flavourings, shortening and to purchase a new stove
Repayment Term: 12 - 16 months
Status: Raising Funds
Partner Rep: Mayvian Koti Popese
Partner: South Pacific Business Development

my parents come home tomorrow!!!

oh... and i still don't have a summer job. if you have any ideas...

for the present i will focus on finishing this school year. only 10 days till the freedom of finals.

I’d give you a thorough critique of this book but the preface sums it up well:

“Saramago’s Blindness is the best novel I’ve read since Gabriel Garcia Marquez’ Love in the Time of Cholera. It is a novel of enormous skill and authority. … Like all great books it is simultaneously contemporary and timeless, and ambitiously confronts the human condition without a false note struck anywhere. Saramago is one of the great writers of our time, and Blindness, ironically is the product of his extraordinary vision” -David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars.

The book is presented without paragraph spacings or quotation marks. The words flow together in one long continuous line, absorbing the reader in an intended state of confusion. Visual descriptions are rare and the reader begins to experience the blindness of the book’s characters. Ironically, the sight needed to read the words on the page is what leaves the reader with this loss of vision. One needs to see to know what it is like not to see.

Read this book. It is brilliant despite its’ disturbing and dark subject matter. Is morality contingent on sight, on being seen? Is power and order possible in a world without eyes? If no one saw you take the cookie from the cookie jar, is it still wrong? If you can’t get caught, what would you do?

Another graphic novel. A genre/medium I used to look down on. But I can respect it now. There can be substance in image form. And image does not have to be separated from words. All is symbol anyway. All is representation. An attempt to express what is inside. To externalize. To create artefact. So that it can be shared with others. We create, speak, produce to connect with others. Even private journaling is an attempt to connect with our future selves or to get in touch with our past selves. We are human. We crave/need contact. With others, with our selves.

I liked this book. It was real. Realistic. An insightful commentary on Christian youth culture. A description of how someone might lose their faith. The hypocrisy of “faith.” A coming-of-age novel. I’d say use it in high school English but the Christian theme would make it unfit in secular schools and the sex would bar it from a Christian school. The book exists in that strange in-between space where it isn’t acceptable anywhere and yet it is more honest than either poles.

I often feel in-between. In-between Asia and North America. In-between childhood and adulthood (but I probably shouldn’t bring up this topic – I’ve already been mercilessly mocked for my “demi-adult” theory.) In-between academia and the church. I want to have a “thinking-faith,” full of reflection, doubt, resonance. Truthful and critical. Pragmatic. The one paper I really felt mattered last year was my Orwell paper. I wrote about the empirical faith of George Bowling in Coming Up For Air. Not surprisingly, it was also my highest mark.

There is a place for learning form, writing up to standard, understanding conventions. But, that all only goes so far. For writing to be truly exceptional, it must matter to the writer. In junior high, I was asked to write creatively, to journal, to vent what was on my mind. Then in high school and university, I was asked to write more with my mind than my heart. Finally the circle was completed in grad school. Once I learned proper mechanics, I was free once again to tap my passions. Alfred North Whitehead writes that education should be a cycle of Romance-Precision-Generalization and then back to Romance. Wow, a theory I completely agree with. But, though I believe in this type of writing and learning, I get lazy and choose not to invest myself. I write “good enough.” I avoid the emotional trauma of acknowledging my passions, of expressing them in a recognizable format, of using symbols to express what is impossible to articulate.

Back to the book. I liked it. It made me think. It entertained. But, it was too quick. Not that it was short – over 500 pages. But quick. Images don’t require me to spend as much time with them as words do. I can absorb information almost instantly from image. Words take deciphering. They require more time and, therefore, offer more opportunity for reflection, internalization, synthesizing – making something foreign to your body part of your being. I could blame the medium. Or I could blame myself. Like how I don’t know how to read image and how I don’t afford it enough time. So I will keep reading, self-training myself in this “new” medium.

i haven't posted a picture since may 21st. people have begun to believe i live my life in text only. so it is time for pictures. it is time to show i am more a comic book than a novel. there is image in my life.
TORONTO!hanging out with JasonNiagra Falls!

off to the west coast.
christen and joanne. friends from capernwray.
cool camera tricks.
visiting anders in victoria.victoria: saskatoon's second home.
FAMILY! (for a short time.)
camp
the wooden man at goodsoil.
aw. i love saskatch.
stylish... as always.
halloween and commies.
carved zuchinni's.
all in all, it's been a good last few months. i am now done 1/4 of my BEd. just three terms left. but for now, a real Christmas break!
p.s. party tonight! come on over.

leah informs me that it wasn't an original joke and that i told it wrong anyway. it's supposed to be "what comes before part b?" "PAR-TAY!" ok, whatever.

well the weather outside is frightful!

but it would be delightful if it wasn't for the final i must write today. 2nd last of 6. christmas is SO close... :) happy happy happy.

leah just made a joke: "par-tay comes before part b."

wow... that is seriously all i have for you today. and after such a long break from blogging. perhaps after my exams my brain will be reactivated.

oh, and i love christmas. i even love the blizzard outside. the blizzard that will lead to shoveling and car crashes. but it is ever so beautiful...