Cats and Dogs

Hello again.

I finally have some time to update my blog. Over the last few months, I've met some new people and made some new friends. One of those friends is a very lovely person called Sjanna who has four gorgeous kids and a lovely family. I was at her house last week and their cat had just given birth to 4 kittens a couple of days earlier, so I got to hold them for a few seconds. It was really cool. I'd never seen new born kittens before and I had no idea how tiny they would be. They are so small. They still had their eyes shut that day. I'll be going round to her house again tomorrow, so I don't know if they will have opened their eyes or not by then.

The four kittens

Look how small that kitten is and my hands are really small.

Sjanna and I

Another gorgeous Nova Scotian view

I will really miss the pretty scenery of Nova Scotia when I go back to England. I've booked my flight for early July. I will be going back to London, and at the moment, it looks like it will be for good, as I still don't have a valid work permit to allow me to stay and teach here. So that is kind of sad, but it will be nice to see my family and friends in England again.

Anja and Gina have a friend at school called Morgan, and Morgan has this cute Shitzou dog called Zoe. I'm not a fan of small yappy dogs, but I have to say that Zoe is just so cute! So I had to have a photo taken with her just to show you. (Elaine - I wish you could see her in real life - she really is sooo cute).

Today, I went to the Yarmouth Museum with Anja and Gina on their school trip. I really did enjoy the tour and it did make me feel like, 'I wish I could get a job and stay here', so I'm still hoping that a miracle will happen before September and I'll be able to come back here.

Speaking of Anja and Gina and school activities, they had a Medieval theme and they made these lanterns at school, and I think they are so cool ... k

Also, they had a project where they had to make a musical instrument, so I enlisted the help of my good friends John and Wendy one weekend. Wendy helped Gina make this glass wind chime. Gina had to cut and grind pieces of coloured glass and Wendy helped her to hang them with thin fishing wire. It looks really cool, and makes a lovely sound, although the wires can get tangled quite easily.

Anja was very adventerous and decided she wanted to make a harp. So John helped her to cut some wood and nail it together to make it look vaguely like a harp. I tied the strings (again we used thin fishing wire). Anja sanded it down and painted it. It looks really cool, and it does makes a faint sound. I'm really proud of them both and really thankful to have such good friends as John and Wendy, who were willing so kindly, to help us out with this project.

So, as you can see, I've been busy with the girls and with making new friends. I also started attending a Bible Study group for Young Adults that is run by Hebron Baptist Church (which is where I met Sjanna - as in I met her at the church, not at the group). The Bible Study Group is quite informal and we meet fortnightly, and I am really enjoying it. And their church is going to be organising a Kid's club for one week in June, and I have signed up to help out with that, so I am really really excited about that and looking forward to it.

This Friday, Rachel and I are taking the girls to a church in Mahone Bay (which is like a 2 hour drive from here) and we're really excited and looking forward to that too.

In other news, my sister has signed me up for a 5K run in Regents Park (in London) on the 22nd of July, so I'm going to have to start training soon and do some running. It's to raise money for 'Cancer Research'.

I did a 5K run with her a couple of years ago in Hyde Park (that time I ran to raise money for a charity called 'Action Aid' that works to Make Poverty History). I enjoyed it, but I hadn't trained until 3 weeks before the run, and it took me 45 minutes to run it. Hopefully, this time, I'll get a lot more training in before the run.

That was us before the run - it was a very hot day!

After completing the run

Relaxing :)

Well I guess that is enough news for one post. For those of you, who have been waiting for my newsletter. I was going to write one and e-mail it to you over the Easter holiday, but then I got ill for a couple of weeks, then I got better but as usual have been quite busy. (Oh yeah, I've also been stacking some more wood recently - all good stuff for building up my non-existent arm muscles. I've also really enjoyed the gorgeous weather we've been having this week too). Hopefully, I'll manage to write a newsletter and e-mail it to you soon and give you a more personal update.