Settling into Vancouver

Hello, eh?

This is the Canadian greeting, according to the poster of many languages at our welcome desk at college in the first week! The Canadians apparently tag “eh” on to the end of sentences all the time. We’ll have to be careful; it may be catching, eh?

Well, we’re here in Vancouver at last. It took longer than expected to get here because an engine part had to be flown into Sydney from Canada. It meant a long day at Sydney airport, and a night at the Hilton (where we met Zion, who’d grown up in Rongotea!) before flying into Vancouver on the afternoon of the first day of orientation. Better late than never. We’ve made up for lost time and are right in the thick of things now. We’re anticipating an average of 5 hours reading a week per course and then classes and assignments on top.

Here is a picture to get you acquainted with our basement suite in Kitsilano – the expensive, hippie, artsy area east of the UBC campus. The bottom right window is in our bedroom so we have a “garden view”. This was taken on our first day of snow - there have been a few more since then. It's cold! We’ve settled in over the weeks and it now feels a bit more like home since we’ve had a few people over for coffee and hung some pictures. Bron’s already had to pass on the Edmond’s recipe for shortbread to a new friend. If you'd like to see some pictures of our place click on this link (Something new, we hope it works!) :

http://picasaweb.google.com/n.b.mclellan/OurHouse


Our first week here was busy but fun. We have kitted out our place and attended orientation. As well as absorbing most of the information shared by lecturers, a student panel and the orientation team we have enjoyed meeting lots of new people who are starting with us. We had a yummy communal lunch at college each day and then had a fun dessert evening at someone’s home one night. The dessert even resembled pavlova (with the addition of nuts and chocolate) – what a way to make us feel at home! Nath was feeling a bit run down by the weekend so Bron joined the Downtown group excursion on Saturday by herself. She took the seabus to North Vancouver, wandered the market [pictured] (only buying lunch – student budget now!) and then explored a little of Canada Place and Gastown.

Discussions at orientation convinced us that some course changes were advisable to keep information in sequence so here are our programmes for this term now.

Nathan: New Testament Foundations (a core paper) Wednesday
History of Christianity 2 (sequence not so important) Tues/Thurs
Systematic Theology A Wednesday

Bronwyn: New Testament Foundations (core for me, too) Wednesday
Pastoral Care Tuesday
Books, Children & God Wednesday

We have both signed up for a weekend seminar course on academic writing as a way of making sure we know the Regent way of doing things!

As you can see, our classes centre around the middle of the week so that leaves us time for tutorials, reading and assignments during the rest of our schedule. We also have Chapel and Community Groups (like home groups with a communal meal) on Tuesday so we have a chance to interact with the whole Regent community.