Artist's longing

A lake sped past my window and I looked up quickly to see the tail end of it disappear from view. I was torn. Finish my book or stare out the window at the gorgeous Newfoundland wilderness racing past the shuttle? I kept my eyes up for a few more minutes reveling in the stubby, wind-shaped evergreens, rocky hillsides and glistening waters painting ever-changing pictures through the glass. But soon my head dropped again to the book I held open in my lap, "Chenxi and the Foreigner" by Sally Rippin. I wasn't thoroughly impressed with the book's premise or language, but wanted to finish it before starting a new one. Just a few pages later, when I came across a passage that fully captivated my attention, I was grateful that I hadn't discarded the book earlier.

In the following paragraphs the main character, Anna, a teenager visiting China for a month, is talking to a fellow artist, Chenxi, from her fine arts college in Shanghai. I've taken out the extra words as much as possible, so just the essence of her longing remains.

"I think an artist's responsibility is to show a different world to the viewer. No, not a different world, the same world, but a different way of looking at it. It's an artist's responsibility, and I'm talking about writers and musicians too, to take the smaller paths that come off the main road. To go down them and to bring back what they find for those people who never dare to go themselves. Or never have the chance."

Anna goes on to voice one of my own deepest desires, although hers is for painting whereas mine is for writing.

"You know, if I painted one painting that changed the life of one person, affecting them deeply enough to make them see something in a completely different way – even if only one person – I feel like I would have achieved something."

I read those words over and over again for the next fifteen minutes and then put my book away to gaze out the window and think them over for the rest of the trip from St. John's to Grand Bank, NL.

Fairmont vacation

On Wednesday, June 23, my family took Bryn to the airport and said farewell to her until the end of next June. She's going to be the new director of a preschool in Heliopolis, Egypt. She decided to leave before the date she had to be there by so that she could get used to her surroundings and get some training before the current director, a girl named Ana who I think is from California, left for home. It was sad sending Bryn off, but I know she'll have a great time in Egypt and have tons of pictures and stories to show and tell when she gets back.

Two days later, my dad, Ty and I set out for our annual vacation in Fairmont Hot Springs, BC, a five-hour drive northeast. My mum stayed behind for a few days to look after my grandma who had to go back into the hospital a week after getting out. (She's been having mysterious pains in her abdomen that the doctors can't figure out.) Fairmont was awesome, as usual, except for missing my mum and Bryn. Since there's no Adventist church for at least an hour in any direction, Dad, Tyler and I spent a quiet Sabbath morning and early afternoon having our own church service and making lunch.  Then in the afternoon we went on a hike up the road to the hot springs, spent some time exploring the old Indian baths, and then hiked down a trail back to our villa. Just as we got back to the resort, we noticed three deer-shaped objects lying in a empty building lot between two houses. Ty discounted them as fake deer, but I wasn't convinced and walked closer. Sure enough, they were three quite real and quite unafraid young deer, who got up when I got near them, but just strolled around nibbling plants once they were on their feet. Dad noticed their antlers were still in velvet. It was a nice Sabbath surprise.

Indian bath house

Ty relaxing in the hot spring-fed bath

View across the valley

Deer in velvet

My dad returned to Kelowna on Sunday night to attend a funeral and brought my mum back to Fairmont after it was over on Monday. Throughout the rest of the week, we went boating in nearby Windermere Lake, visited both Fairmont Hot Springs (developed, requires entrance fee) and Lussier Hot Springs (natural hot spring pools beside a glacier-fed river, free), enjoyed the views of the Purcell and Rocky Mountains from our villa porch and had a relaxing family time.

Admiring the Rockies

When our awesome week of vacationing was over, we headed back home where we enjoyed hanging out with my Auntie Sandy (my mum's sister) and two of her kids, Conner and Alex.  They had arrived a few days before from St. Georges, Manitoba and stayed in the Okanagan Valley long enough to visit my grandparents and our family before continuing their journey to the Fraser Valley to see their other set of grandparents/parents-in-law. My dad offered to take them on a boat ride and so this afternoon, about half an hour after unloading our stuff from the truck, we picked them up and headed out to a local lake for a few hours. We were greeted with some strong winds and lots of waves, but we still had a great time with the relatives and a few daring souls even braved the chilly early-summer water.

Enjoying a protected cove

Eating and talking

Wet cousins on a boat

All in all, we had a very enjoyable week of relaxing and then fellowshipping with relatives!

Top 5

Several summers ago, while driving home from a quick work-related trip to Vernon, a city 40 minutes to the north, my brother Tyler and I started talking about our favourite things. We each tried to narrow our lists into a Top 5 after establishing some ground rules (mainly not being allowed to include things like air, food, water, etc. or ideas like freedom that nearly every human being appreciates). This was solely based on the unessential items we love, not the necessary ones.

This weekend my siblings and I went camping with three of our friends. Yesterday, while we were sitting around the campsite talking, Ty and I brought up our Top 5's. I'm pretty sure our original lists had at least a couple favourite food items on them, but not anymore. Here's Tyler's current list. And here's mine:

1. Wind
2. Bodies of water (large enough to swim in: rivers, lakes, oceans)
3. Mountains
4. Books
5. Aurora Borealis/Lightning (too close to just pick one)

So, what's your Top 5?

Six-word memoirs

Last night, my mum was getting her Sabbath School program ready (at our church we meet in the sanctuary and have a twenty-minute program together before breaking up into Sabbath School study classes) and asked me for ideas. I had just found an article online written in February for the Adventist Review by one of my Southern professors, Andy Nash, and suggested that she talk about that for part of the time. She conscripted my help. So this morning, I read the article to my church. It starts like this:

"If you could sum up a formative period in your life in six words, what words would you choose? I recently posited that question to two different groups of people - Adventist college students and Adventist retirees.  I got the idea from the chunky little book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Famous and Obscure Writers.  The book's editors got the idea from Ernest Hemingway, who once wrote: 'For sale: baby shoes. Never worn.'"

Following, Dr. Nash gave a small sample of the six-word memoirs from the book and then, some from the Adventist college students and retirees. (I strongly encourage you to read the whole article.  It's not too long and very good.)

After reading the article to my fellow church members, I told how Dr. Nash began my Publication Editing class last school year by explaining six-word memoirs and then had us students write our own and share them with the class instead of just the same old name-major-hometown information.  I remember my six-word memoir: For international students, I-20 means everything. (I had just come back into the States after Christmas break and had had a problem with my I-20 student visa, so this was on my mind during that first class period.) Then I shared another six-word memoir that I had written last night: Filled out SM application.  Still waiting... This was a nice segue into the next part of my mum's Sabbath School program, where she asked Bryn to tell a little about her upcoming year as an SM to Egypt.

This afternoon my grandparents invited my family, along with my mum's sister and her daughter and granddaughter who are visiting from Alberta for the long weekend, over for Sabbath lunch. Later on, we had a worship together and my grandma asked each person to participate by coming up with one part of the worship. When my turn came, I handed each person a piece of paper and a pen and asked them to write their own six-word memoirs. Here they are (and yes, we had a French immersion student in our midst):

Anticipating the future, missing the past.
École le violon domente le piano.
Sweet dog. Lived, loved, and died.
Fell hard. Broke wrist. Much pain.
Traveled far. Arrived safely. Visited family.
The eastern USA is really terrible.
Work, work, work, eat, sleep, repeat.
Nearer to 90 than 19 years-old.
Wind, wind, rain, rain, bang, bang.
Transferring to Southern opened new opportunities
Family, friends, flowers, fun, free, photos.
Life gets better day by day.

I love trying out new writing ideas and seeing the variety of each person's tastes and experiences.  So, now it's your turn.  Why don't you try writing a six-word memoir? I'd love to read them!

Blog decision

School has finished, graduation has been marched, a cross-country trip has been driven, Jonathan has flown back to Maine, and now my long summer has begun.

I have finally come to a decision about what to do with this blog. It was made specifically for Creative Writing class and used for Adv. Creative Writing as well. It has been a wonderful forum to document my final year of university. But I have too many blogs to keep them all perfectly up-to-date. So here it is, my final verdict. Since this blog was created for the purpose of creative writing, I will continue to post on here whenever something creative flits into my brain. I hope that will be often, but sadly I confess that my creativeness has been waning since school ended. But, my diligent readers, never fear. I WILL post on here throughout the summer.

Since I won't be posting every day, I will give you the links to my other blogs (and also post them on the sidebar of this blog for easier referencing). That way you can look at my other blogs and decide which you might find interesting to keep up with. So here they are. Happy blog browsing.

Everything from EH to ZED - This is my first blog which, as the title suggests, covers just about anything. If you want to know what interests me or if you want keep updated with what's going on in my life this summer, this is the best blog to read.
Writing to Serve - This is a blog I made recently to document my upcoming year as a student missionary in Tanzania. I will occasionally post on here during the summer as I learn more about my position and get ready to leave but, once September rolls around, I will almost solely be using this blog.
Writer's Notebook - This is a blog I started last Christmas break when I was trying out different blogs to find a good one for my mum's photography. I decided to use it as a place to store future writing ideas (all my little scraps of paper were getting kind of confusing and unorderly).
Looking Back - This is another blog I started during Christmas break. I use it to record stories from my childhood whenever a memory pops into my head.
Enjambments - And finally, this is a blog started by a friend and Creative Writing classmate. She has graciously allowed me and several others to jointly post book reviews and reviews of writing in general. If you love books and/or writing, Enjambment posts are always an interesting read.

Outlet stores

We woke up lazily this morning, had showers, packed up, and left the hotel.  After driving up and down International Blvd. we remembered where IHOP was and stopped in for breakfast.  I tried out one of their new types of lemonade, watermelon lemonade, which was interesting, but I still think I like regular better.  While we ate it started to rain, definitely not an uncommon occurrence for Seattle.  We had been thinking about going to the Woodlands Zoo, but the rain convinced us to forgo that adventure, at least for this trip.

After breakfast, we set out for home, but stopped at the Tulalip outlet mall just after Everett.  Bryn separated from my mum and me after a few stores and shopped on her own.  I had a grand time helping my mum buy some chocolate-covered fruit from Harry & David's, a few adorable baby outfits from NauticaKids (for future baby presents, cause who knows when someone might just all of a sudden decide to have a baby), new shoes for Tyler, and an awesome pink and blue Burberry tie for my cousin Nathan's birthday present.  When I saw the baby clothes I absolutely wished they came in my size and, when I found Nathan's tie, I kind of wished I was a guy so I could wear it.  (Sidenote: We found Burberry baby clothes in that store too and wow, they're darlingly cute, but who would pay $200 U.S. for something that a baby will only fit in for a few weeks??  But, I gotta say, the babies who wear Burberry are totally styling.  I'll bet Nathan's kids will sport those clothes.  Funny thing though, as ridiculous as I thought the price tags were, I secretly wanted to buy one of those baby outfits.)

After all those purchases, my mum and I were ready to leave and get back home, but Bryn was still shopping.  So I went into a few stores with her and ended up getting an couple things.  Finally Bryn was done too and we drove home without any mishaps, getting home around 11 p.m.  And now I'm sitting here typing this and missing Jonathan.  And he's only been gone a day...

Exploring Seattle

Today was a long day. My mum, Bryn, Jonathan, and I got up early, around 6 a.m., and left about an hour later to take Jonathan to Seattle to catch his flight. The six-hour drive down was fine and, surprisingly, the border official barely asked us anything. Just wanted to know where we were going and why and then had a few other simple questions. We stopped about 20 minutes later in Bellingham, WA for an Olive Garden lunch and then kept going and finally made it to downtown Seattle around 2 p.m. We spent some time at the Space Needle and Jonathan and my mum took about a thousand pictures (Hyperbole?? Probably not.) of the Seattle sights and the harbour, oops, harbor. I spent a good bit of time watching some float planes take off and land in a lake right near the heart of downtown. When we came back down, Bryn stayed in the gift shop to look around and Jonathan, my mum, and I walked to a park right in front of the Seattle Science Center to take, you guess it, more pictures. After that we met back at the truck and consulted the GPS for another place to explore.

Statues are fun!

We decided on seeing the piers at the edge of the Pudget Sound and walked around those for awhile before heading to Pike's Place Market, which was just starting to shut down for the day. It smelled terrible and, after hugging a bronze pig, I was glad to leave. Somehow Jonathan and I got separated from Bryn and my mum so we waited by the side of a road until finally getting a text that they were back at the truck. We quickly made our way back there and then Jonathan found a park at the end of the lake that I was watching the float planes from the Space Needle and we decided to spend our last few hours of free time there.

Across the lake from downtown Seattle

It was an awesome park. If you're ever in Seattle, check out Gas Works Park. It's pretty cool. We watched float planes, walked around, and took more pictures. Finally it was time to go.

Twirling at Gas Works Park

We made our way to International Blvd. and found a hotel for the night. Then we brought our stuff in and got settled for the night before Jonathan and I left for the airport. His flight was at 11:30 p.m. so we left the hotel around 9:45 and took the shuttle to SEA-TAC. I showed Jonathan where to go and he got his ticket really quickly. Then we walked to security and said good-bye, after which I had to stand there watching him get into line, go through the metal detector and finally wave a final good-bye and walk towards the S gate. It wasn't the best part of the day. But, observing a young gay couple who were bawling right before one of them went through security helped me feel a little better about the situation since I had refrained from bawling unlike them. Once Jonathan was out of sight, I went back to the shuttle waiting area and called the hotel clerk who said the shuttle was already on its way to pick up another passenger. I made it back to the hotel without any mishap and tried to be quiet as I got ready to sleep since my mum and Bryn were already in bed.

Cabin on Crooked Lake

It was great being back in my home church today.  It's a small church so everyone knows everyone and I got a lot of hugs and "welcome backs."  My grandma told the elder in charge this month that we would be back for church this week and then told us that we should plan to have a song ready for special music.  So, last night we practiced a version of "Jesus Paid it All" that Jonathan had sung at his church during Spring Break with Bryn playing the piano.  This time he also had the parts for two cellos, so Ty played the one cello part and I played the other on violin.  I think it went pretty well and afterward lots of people told us it sounded great.

When church was over we went home for Sabbath lunch and relaxed for a little bit watching a few kids videos on Tyler's request.  After watching a couple of the half-hour videos, we put on quading clothes and my parents, Bryn, Jonathan, and I drove up to my uncle's cabin for some outdoor fun.  My mum took pictures and then decided to stay in the truck and read while the rest of us drove to a dam at the end of the lake.  When we got back to the cabin, we weren't quite done wanting to quad so we set out again in the opposite direction and went on a trail leading up to a lookout.  We got as high as we could before the trail disappeared and then made our way back again.  Then Jonathan wanted to try out my dad's motorbike again so he took it out on the logging roads while my parents, Bryn, and I carried our canoe down to the lake.

First my parents and I took the canoe out for a ride, but it wasn't too enjoyable because of the large quantity of mosquitoes hovering nearby.  I kept hitting my mum on the back to kill the ones that landed on her.  When we got back to shore Jonathan was back from his drive and so I went back out with him after I covered myself with bug spray.

Then Bryn joined us and we proceeded to try to get stuck in some waterlogged logs and trees in one corner of the lake.  It's a favourite pastime of mine and Bryn's when we go canoeing at the cabin.  It's really a very challenging sport to get stuck and then try to find a way out of the mostly-underwater maze.  By the time we made it back to the dock, it was getting dark so we pulled the canoe back up to the trailer, loaded everything up and headed back down the mountain.