Dear Friends and Family,
Thank you to all of you who have sent updates since our last correspondence. It is amazing to hear all of the changes ranging from job shifts to new babies. It sounds like it has been a busy fall for all of you. For those of you in North America, we need to wish either a happy but belated Canadian Thanksgiving or an early American one, depending on which side of the 49th parallel you are currently living.
Life is going well here at the moment. We’ve been hearing from several of you about the torrential rain in California in the last few weeks and although we haven’t had terrible rain here, it is definitely getting cold. Apparently it is also going to stay cold as this is supposed to be the worst winter temperature-wise the UK has had in 100 years. Hopefully, that means they are preparing the snow equipment now, as last year (and apparently every year) there is an absolute shambles every time it snows. (The quandary is it does snow for a few days every year so you’d think it would be possible to prepare efficiently for it).
Despite the rain, Brian is still generally cycling to work. He is really enjoying this opportunity. It’s much like his early days at Azusa Pacific but slightly more rigorous (the trip is about 8 miles round trip each day). Just like at APU, there is a huge occurrence of bicycle theft in the city, so he has to be very careful about where he secures his bike and for that matter how he secures it, as he was show the other day how to break into some of the locks used in the city using nothing but a Bic pen. Work at OCC itself is going well. They are sending him to Birmingham in a few weeks for a meeting there.
Rachel proudly submitted her dissertation at the end of September. She is now awaiting comment from the 3 readers grading her work to find out if she has passed or not. She should get word on this sometime in mid November. Feeling a bit kooky (or delirious) by the time she had the paper bound, she ended up selecting a cover that was bright purple. Perhaps not the most serious of colours for a treatise on European Union asylum policy, but it certainly will stand out on the shelf in the library.
Rachel is also wrapping up her final week as an Oxford tour guide. The company for which she is working decided to close for the winter months at the end of October. As a result, instead of spending a leisurely 3 months working part-time and researching part-time, she has spent most of the last weeks on top of an open, double-decker bus (yes she is truly learning the meaning of “layers” for warmth). In November she will resume research on the journal article mentioned last time and a steady stream of job applications.
Brian has been playing a very interesting game for the last few weeks. It is called an alternate reality game and is basically played by people over the internet. In this case, the game is a lead up to the release of Halo 2, an Xbox (game console) game Brian has been looking forward to for a long time. The players are given a background scenario on a website and then have tasks to do in real life to unlock the next part of the story. So what has Brian done to participate? Travelled to London to answer a payphone in an underground station; taken photos of phone booths and red balloons in Oxford; and written a long essay about race as a social construct in the 21st century, to name a few. It’s been a lot of fun to see both what happens next in the story as well as what all the players will have to do to unlock the next clue.
We’ve just celebrated Rachel’s 25th birthday. She is the last of her close friend group to have her birthday, so she can no longer gloat over being a year younger nor look forward to any new “perks” by turning a year older other than being able to get rental cars more cheaply. For all of those of you who called, emailed and sent cards to help celebrate, thanks so much. In particular we both had a great chuckle at the funny phone message Nathan, Kevin and George left us and hearing about the magnitude of the “swing” Uncle Hugh has made for Rachel’s second cousins (the wood for the frame is recycled telephone poles and the tire for the tire swing came off of a backhoe). Because she does not work Monday through Friday, Rachel did get to have the whole day off on her birthday (and Myca you are absolutely right, this is a great thing to do). Festivities included some time with an Oxford friend or two, yummy Thai food, and chocolate fondue.
Blessings to you all in the coming months! We hope to correspond again just before we depart for the USA for Christmas.
