he finally writes

Well i'll be honest, it was never among my aspirations to be a blogger, but alas marriage leads us to places we can never imagine, so here goes peters firs blog entry...

well somehow i have become a 'visiting research scholar'. you just get adjusted to one far-to-grown-up-sounding title (like husband or postgraduate student) and then 'they' give you another one.

so yes i am visiting, we are not going to stay although we have felt so welcome here among the mennonites, and the rent is cheaper and the weather better and the mexican food nicer etc. regardless, we will be leaving here in about 5 weeks, which has, predictably enough, really snuck up on us.

i am doing research, which for me looks like trying to arrange interviews with members of local churches, interviewing said members, and trying to read anything in the library that looks like it could have anything to do with mennonites and communion. i have really really enjoyed interviewing folks about their experience of communion, it has been a real privilege and insight into lives i would never had encountered otherwise. that is especially true with the older folks who i have interviewed hearing about how it was back in the 1940's or 50's, its amazing how a lifetime can span so much change. what will i be reminiscing about to some young thing, who's parents have not even been born yet, in 2062. will that world make any sense to me, anyway i am being distracted, so yes interviews are good, i would recommend them to a friend.

scholar, well that makes me uncomfortable, i dont think i am a scholar any more than i have been since i began this institutional educational journey back in byron court primary school back in the days of thatcher, big glasses and the first gulf war.
some things to share. nat will have mentioned that we are staying at a mennonite seminary, so this is where they train pastors and theologians and leaders and stuff but what i love is the relaxed atmosphere, folk laugh with and live with and know each other, there are lots of social space in the main buildings to sit and chat, there are plants that a local guy comes to water every tuesday, and this:

this is an institution that has embraced and funded theological toilet humor, that is special (see  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realized_eschatology and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scatology if the humourous aspect remains elusive) 

i like that because its silly and i think a capacity for the silly is an important marker of maturity. Father save us from the serious ones who have lost the love of laughter, amen.
well i think that is enough of that for now.

in other matters, i have become proficient at hula hooping with my neck, 

at enjoying 'fall' colours, (the building in this pic is out apartment block)

 at recognising stereotypical mid-west scenes,

and i am getting the hang of quilting.