Mariñon

Mariñon
Originally uploaded by chapita11.

This is where a cashew comes from. When I try to describe a Mariñon to friends from North America they have no idea what it is. I am glad I found a picture. In El Savlador, we make juice from this fruit.

In Two Days

Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

In two days Lisa and I will be in El Salvador!

We are crasy packing and getting ready to go. In the middle of the rush I have picked up a book that I am having a hard time putting down. It is called Still Love in Strange Places by Beth Kephart. It is a book about the relationship of a US caucasian woman who marries a Salvadoran man. She tries to enter his world in El Salvador, and she does a good job of painting a picture of his family and the country. I especially love her description of the land and the aliveness of the land.

Here is one quote I liked:

But listening is something else. Listening is trying to forget who you are and what you think you need to know so that you can be, really be, inside the church of another’s memories. When I listen to Bill tell the many stories of his grandfather, I am tantalized by the possibility of possession, transference. I am puresuaded into imagining my own inclusion in his past, into imagining that I can hand these stones of history to our son.

El Salvador

We leave for El Salvador on Friday.
We got lots to do.
We move our of our place tomorrow and Monday.
We have to pack for El Salvador.
Lots to do!

It has been five years since I have been back.
I wish I had lots of $ to visit often.
Sometimes it feels like my extended family is not surreal because I stop in for a couple weeks every now and then.
I love going down. I wish I had more time to be there to get to know what Salvadoran life is like.
I only get a little taste.
Going down there with a mission team will give me a different perspective outside my family.

About 8 years ago, I refused to join a mission team to El Savlador as a translator because the church did not have a long term relationship with El Salvador. It was hard to turn down a free trip down there, but I am glad I did because I did not agree with the in and out short term trips. That is why I am excited with our church here in Canada. This is the sixth year the mission team leader had taken teams down there from British Columbia. We are very fortunate also to be associated with Immanuel Baptist Church in San Salvador because they are doing some amazing work down there.

Can’t wait to be down there.

Wood Working at the Johnston Home

It was a great day. Lisa and I went over to Craig and Dana’s home for the afternoon. They live in Surrey.
Craig loves wood and has lots of tools for woodworking. He even makes guitars!
Lisa and I have been collecting corks to make a bulletin board out of wine bottle cork.
He has a beautiful purple heart wood that we sliced up and made a frame for our cork board.
Then we had a big BBQ feast.
It was great.
We had lots of food and it was great to make something.
We have about one fifth of the board covered in cork.
Now we need friends to collect their wine bottle corks so we can finish up the board.

DVD Eggs

Did you ever hear about eggs hidden on DVDs?
Well if you have never heard about you can do a google search on the eggs.
Tonight I watched some on the Incredibles DVD. You can check out MovieWeb’s list of Eggs. This is where I got some.
Have fun finding more.
Let me know if you find any good sites too.

Good Movies

If you have never lived in Canada, you don’t know about Toonie Tuesday.
Toonie = $2 coin
So certain things drop in prices on Tuesdays. We love Tuesday, especially when I am not in school.
The last two weeks we have been renting some videos.
Last week we saw Garden State. It was a great movie. In my opinion, it is a movie that captures today’s ethos. I especially liked the conversation with the Dad that was deleted. Actually the convesation with the grandmothers about “Talking to the Hand” was an excellent scene. I can’t believe I had not seen it before and it had been out for so long.

Last night we saw Hotel Rwanda. What a movie! I have been told that Roméo Dallaire was the UN General played by Nick Nolte. Roméo Dallaire’s book Shake Hands With the Devil has been a Canadian best seller for along time. Two weeks ago, I went to a local bookstore and it was #1 still. After seening this movie I want to read the book and see what he has to say. Paul Rusesabagina is an inspirational guy.

There is a blip in the system

Power Grid failure in Ontario! No one knows why.

In fact, the situation was much more tenuous. The power blip involved an extremely rare, still unexplained failure of two protection systems, according to internal documents of the utility, reports to oversight agencies and eight engineers.

And you wonder why Flickr is moving to California?

Here is what Flickr says:

Flickr is moving to a much bigger and better data center to maintain its crazy growth. As part of our acquisition by Yahoo, we get the full run of a crazy elite facility staffed 24/7/365 by real professional sysadmins and ops people. This will really help with site performance and reliability.

Our current facility is in Canada and our new one is in the US

Yesterday, Lisa, Tara and I went to Best Falafel on Commercial Drive. We enjoy going there to catch up on the latest in Middle Eastern Politics. Lisa gets to practice her Arabic which is a major plus.

After a few minutes on politics, an Iranian guy and I were talking about economics. This was his interest. I don’t know a thing about economics. He said to me, soon all the econmy will be owned by USA in Canada. Right now the best companies that are in Canada are US. If they grow they will be bought by US. I didn’t believe it. Then I read this thing about Flickr moving down to US. things that make you go Hmm.

Granville Market, Vancouver, B.C.

Granville Market, Vancouver, B.C.
Originally uploaded by VirgoMerry.

Yesterday we biked to Granville Island and then to Tara and Caleb’s home. We had our digital camera stolen, so now we have to rely on other people’s pictures to photo blog. So sad 😦

But despite missing our camera, we had a wonderful time at Granville. We missed our father’s dearly. We talked to them on the phone, but it is not the same than being there in person.

Regent Folks in Skaggy

Regent Folks in Skaggy
Originally uploaded by phritz.

(L-R) Jen, Elliot, Alex and Ian
The guys are driving tour buses in Alaska for the summer and Jen went to visit them. They are working hard. Can’t wait to see the crew back when classes start. Things are pretty quite during the summer, but it is nice to have a different pace than the school year.

Tara, Caleb, Lisa and I had dinner yesterday together. T & C made some delicious alfredo sauce with artichoke and peppers. It was great.

Cool Web Site

So I thought Craig’s List was the only web site that lists free stuff from people in local communities. However, here is a good site to find people giving away stuff in your community: Free Cycle.

In Free Enterprise By Duncan Walker he writes

It is just one of a number of websites which could play a valuable part in reducing the amount of rubbish sent to landfill sites by encouraging one of the most efficient forms of recycling – simply giving things to people who want them.