It's been two months since Andrew arrived in Manchester and one month since I followed him here. Things are going very well and we are happy to be here.
Because we Americans share a language, and to a great extent, a culture with Great Britain, we very quickly felt comfortable and at ease here. Yet we still stumble across differences at times. I learned quickly, accompanied by a lot of laughter, not to say I have "waterproof pants" which here means you have Depends adult diapers. We learned that "to vacuum" is "to Hoover" and that the burner on your stove is a "hob." We have also learned that "cheers" is a multi-purpose word to cover a variety of meanings, ranging from "thanks" to "no problem" to "have a good day" to "here you go."
In October we attended Nazarene Theological College's graduation ceremony, and enjoyed imagining the moment three years from now when it will be Andrew's turn to walk and receive his award for completing his PhD.
We have enjoyed several trips to explore the Curry Mile, which is a stretch of road crowded with Middle Eastern and South Asian restaurants, stores and businesses. It is a highly multicultural area where you will see women raising the flap on their burqa to fit food into their mouths, men wearing turbans, and women wearing Indian sarees and salawas. People are smoking shisha and eating deep-fried Indian samosas or syrupy sweets.
We have also visited Chinatown in downtown Manchester, where we bought some Chinese grocery ingredients.
And we observed a big Diwali celebration at the town hall. Diwali is a Hindu festival of lights. There was a live-storytelling presentation enacted by life-size, lighted puppets, pyrotechnics and fireworks and a colored light display on the town hall building.
Last night we visited a 400-year-old British tradition of lighting a large bonfire in a park and then setting off fireworks, to celebrate the averted assassination attempt on the life of King James I in the 1600s, by the now infamous Guy Fawkes. The crowd of thousands enjoyed fire dancers as well as carnival rides and carnival treats like soft serve ice cream and cotton candy.
It has been a real pleasure for us to be in a bigger city for a change with all of these opportunities to rub shoulders with people of different cultures and to experience a taste of their homelands in our daily lives.
I (Gina) am starting to feel out my new role as a one-day-per-week volunteer for Nazarene Theological College. I have written two articles for the college which you can find here: http://www.ncnnews.com/nphweb/html/ncn/article.jsp?sid=10000008&id=10014086
http://www.ncnnews.com/nphweb/html/ncn/article.jsp?sid=10000008&id=10014082
I am also quite swamped with stories for Engagemagazine.com, and continuing to publish stories for the Eurasia Region. Our November edition of our newsletter came out this week. You can find it here: http://www.eurasiaregion.org/where-worlds-meet-november-2014-2/
Andrew is happily busy with preparing to lecture twice in the coming weeks and months, studying Latin and Greek, reading for his first big paper due in his PhD process, helping a deaf student in note-taking for one of his classes and now serving as a representative on the Student Council.
There are times when we miss our friends and life in Germitzerland. There are times when we miss our friends and family in the U.S. For me, Thanksgiving is quite foremost on my mind this year. It is my favorite holiday all year and this will be our fifth year in a row to miss out on Thanksgiving with our families in Colorado. It is hitting me harder this year than it has in past years. It looks like we will spend the day with some new friends here, three of whom are American, so I am really looking forward to that. I also plan to cook some familiar favorites for Andrew and I so we can have leftovers throughout that weekend.
This will be our third year away from our families for Christmas. I am also sad about that. We are still trying to determine what we will do for the holiday.
However, we have a trip home to look forward to. We are in the midst of planning our home assignment speaking tour in the U.S. next year. The dates are a bit in flux due to an unforeseen complication with renewing my visa next October. For sure right now we will be in Colorado in August and we are open to other places in the month of September. If you are interested in having us to come and speak at your church, youth group, children's group, Sunday school class or small group, or even a home school group or another setting, email me at gpottenger (at) nazarene.org and we can look at getting out to where you are!
We love hearing from you and sharing our lives with you. Thank you so much for your prayers as we continue to settle in and make friends and especially this year as we are away from our families during the holidays.
Because we Americans share a language, and to a great extent, a culture with Great Britain, we very quickly felt comfortable and at ease here. Yet we still stumble across differences at times. I learned quickly, accompanied by a lot of laughter, not to say I have "waterproof pants" which here means you have Depends adult diapers. We learned that "to vacuum" is "to Hoover" and that the burner on your stove is a "hob." We have also learned that "cheers" is a multi-purpose word to cover a variety of meanings, ranging from "thanks" to "no problem" to "have a good day" to "here you go."
In October we attended Nazarene Theological College's graduation ceremony, and enjoyed imagining the moment three years from now when it will be Andrew's turn to walk and receive his award for completing his PhD.
We have enjoyed several trips to explore the Curry Mile, which is a stretch of road crowded with Middle Eastern and South Asian restaurants, stores and businesses. It is a highly multicultural area where you will see women raising the flap on their burqa to fit food into their mouths, men wearing turbans, and women wearing Indian sarees and salawas. People are smoking shisha and eating deep-fried Indian samosas or syrupy sweets.
We have also visited Chinatown in downtown Manchester, where we bought some Chinese grocery ingredients.And we observed a big Diwali celebration at the town hall. Diwali is a Hindu festival of lights. There was a live-storytelling presentation enacted by life-size, lighted puppets, pyrotechnics and fireworks and a colored light display on the town hall building.
Last night we visited a 400-year-old British tradition of lighting a large bonfire in a park and then setting off fireworks, to celebrate the averted assassination attempt on the life of King James I in the 1600s, by the now infamous Guy Fawkes. The crowd of thousands enjoyed fire dancers as well as carnival rides and carnival treats like soft serve ice cream and cotton candy.
It has been a real pleasure for us to be in a bigger city for a change with all of these opportunities to rub shoulders with people of different cultures and to experience a taste of their homelands in our daily lives.
I (Gina) am starting to feel out my new role as a one-day-per-week volunteer for Nazarene Theological College. I have written two articles for the college which you can find here: http://www.ncnnews.com/nphweb/html/ncn/article.jsp?sid=10000008&id=10014086
http://www.ncnnews.com/nphweb/html/ncn/article.jsp?sid=10000008&id=10014082
I am also quite swamped with stories for Engagemagazine.com, and continuing to publish stories for the Eurasia Region. Our November edition of our newsletter came out this week. You can find it here: http://www.eurasiaregion.org/where-worlds-meet-november-2014-2/
Andrew is happily busy with preparing to lecture twice in the coming weeks and months, studying Latin and Greek, reading for his first big paper due in his PhD process, helping a deaf student in note-taking for one of his classes and now serving as a representative on the Student Council.
There are times when we miss our friends and life in Germitzerland. There are times when we miss our friends and family in the U.S. For me, Thanksgiving is quite foremost on my mind this year. It is my favorite holiday all year and this will be our fifth year in a row to miss out on Thanksgiving with our families in Colorado. It is hitting me harder this year than it has in past years. It looks like we will spend the day with some new friends here, three of whom are American, so I am really looking forward to that. I also plan to cook some familiar favorites for Andrew and I so we can have leftovers throughout that weekend.
This will be our third year away from our families for Christmas. I am also sad about that. We are still trying to determine what we will do for the holiday.
However, we have a trip home to look forward to. We are in the midst of planning our home assignment speaking tour in the U.S. next year. The dates are a bit in flux due to an unforeseen complication with renewing my visa next October. For sure right now we will be in Colorado in August and we are open to other places in the month of September. If you are interested in having us to come and speak at your church, youth group, children's group, Sunday school class or small group, or even a home school group or another setting, email me at gpottenger (at) nazarene.org and we can look at getting out to where you are!
We love hearing from you and sharing our lives with you. Thank you so much for your prayers as we continue to settle in and make friends and especially this year as we are away from our families during the holidays.
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