Archive for category Travel
Back from Greece
Posted by Kenneth in Ken, Travel, Wedding News on November 5th, 2007
Grace and I landed safely at Edmonton International Airport later in the evening last Friday (the 2nd of November), ending off our ten-day honeymoon in Greece tired and more than a little glad to be back in North America, but still in awe of what was, for the most part, an enjoyable adventure abroad. Although it started out feeling more like a trip than a honeymoon, we slowed our pace down a bit and just enjoyed each others’ company for a few days…and it was great. I am truly blessed to have such a wonderful wife as she.
It was nice to just get away from all the hectic tedium of the wedding and post-wedding frenzy, and to be equally sure it was nice to just get away from the apartment for a day or ten. I had only moved my things over to Grace’s a couple of days prior to the wedding itself, and hadn’t had time to unpack much. Add that to a considerable load of gifts* and it makes for one very messy, box-filled apartment indeed.
And really, I don’t think we could have picked a better place to escape to than the town on Crete that we ended up in. Hania is not exactly a “small town”, with a population somewhere between 57,000 and 70,000 depending on which source you consult, but the architecture has strong Venetian influences, and in the “off season” it has a slow, relaxed pace to it that we just drank in for all the days we were there.
I’ll have more detailed write-ups of the wedding and the honeymoon to post in…well, maybe a few days, maybe a bit longer than that, complete with pictures. For the time being, let me just say that it’s great to finally be married to a girl whom I have loved so much for so many years now. I’m grateful that we had a blast in Greece and that we were able to travel in safety…but that gratitude cannot compare to the joy and praise that I feel in my heart at finally being able to see here there on the next pillow when I wake up in the morning.
* the generosity of our friends and families has been more than overwhelming, and we find ourselves so grateful for all of it. Thank you, everyone.
Off to Greece!
Posted by Kenneth in Travel, Wedding News on October 23rd, 2007
Grace and I will be flying off to Greece this afternoon for our honeymoon. It’ll be a long flight, but well worth it — we’re booked in to a nice hotel in Athens for our first night after we land, and our next stop will likely be the island of Santorini. From there…well, we’ll make it up as we go. It’s not a huge country (compared to Canada), but there’s plenty to see and do.
We’ll see you all in November!
Honeymoon plans
Posted by Kenneth in Travel, Wedding News on September 7th, 2007
Well, it’s official — Grace and I have booked our tickets for the honeymoon. We’ll be flying out to Athens on October 23rd, on Air Canada (with a connection in Frankfurt that will be handled by Lufthansa). We’re both looking forward to it very, very much (though not quite as much as we are the wedding, mind…)
Back from the Jamboree
And what an experience it was!
By some miracle, I managed to keep meticulous notes about each and every day of the experience, and so in the coming few days I’ll be converting my scribbled notes into full articles and posting them here, at Ubi, and at the wedding website. For the moment, it will have to suffice when I say that on the whole, this was one of the most amazing experiences, and one of the most incredible journeys, I have ever had or undertaken.
And I’ve got 1726 photos to show for it. Now, admittedly, I won’t be keeping all of those…but still, that number ought to give the reader a decent idea as to the magnitude of the Jamboree. Failing that, there are a few statistics attached to the Jamboree’s Wikipedia entry that may prove enlightening.
I also made many good friends, and I would even venture to say that in working with the people of ICCS — the International Catholic Conference of Scouting — defined for me at long last just what my Scouting career means to me, and demonstrated just how I want to conduct myself as a Scout, and what I want to work toward as a member of that world-wide organization.
I made a number of new friends, met some incredible people, tasted great English bitters and IPAs, attended Mass and Taize prayer with what was, for me, a heightened frequency, and worked with between 50 and 100 kids a day doing little things to help them learn (or learn more) about the Catholic faith. And in the off hours, I had some memorable times with some or all of the members of the 59th Rover Crew that were in attendance at the Jamboree.
I have to say, though, that the best part of the Jamboree was coming through the doors out of the customs area at the Edmonton International Airport and seeing Grace there. I had missed her so much during the trip, and seeing her smiling face across the arrivals area was the first breath of fresh air for this man when he finally made it home again.
Home. It’s strange, but over the course of the last three weeks, the very meaning of that word seems to have changed so much for me. Home is not, for me, the place where I’m currently living, the place I rest my head at the end of the day, or the place where my family is. Seeing Grace again, I knew at once that the sneaking suspicion of a feeling I’d been having all Jamboree was true: home is where she is. Home is with her.
And so, O Reader, on that note I will leave, and will tell you only that you ought to keep checking back — in the weeks to come, those 1726 photos (or as many of them as I decide to keep) will make their way onto the site, as will the day-by-day articles describing this incredible trip abroad.
Off to England!
Well, I’m off to England, as of about 8:00 this evening (the flight’s scheduled departure time is 7:55 PM, but it’s also Air Canada, so we’ll see how close they come to hitting that mark). I leave England on August 11th, and I have honestly got no idea when and if I will be able to get near the internet long enough during that time to post anything to the site, or even to check my email.
Which means I’m going to have one very full inbox when I get back.
Anyhow, for the next three weeks or so, I’ll be spending most of my time in Hylands Park, which is north-east of London, participating in the 21st World Scout Jamboree — which, incidentally, also marks and commemorates the centenary of Scouting. I’ll be attending the camp as an IST, an ‘offer of service’ — basically, I’m going there to help run one of the events.
Currently, as far as I have heard, I am going to be working with the Faith and Beliefs component of the camp, and while I haven’t the first clue what that entails, I imagine that it will basically involve me spending a lot of my day talking with kids about Catholicism. Which should be a lot of fun, I expect. I will, of course, have the camera in tow, so hopefully I will be able to bring back lots of pictures for everyone to enjoy…although admittedly, most of them will probably be of the Jamboree, since I don’t expect there will be much time for sightseeing while I am there.
Now, with all that preamble out of the way, here’s the important stuff to be said.
You’ve been the most special, wonderful person in my life since the day I met you, and I look forward to seeing you again when I land in Canada. Your smiling face and your dancing eyes can always lift my spirits, and I already want to hear your soft voice again.
Say a prayer for my safe travel, love, and I will figure out what the best way is to get in touch with you as soon as I land. I can’t wait for August (or, come to think of it, October)!
Mom, Dad, Megan, Katie, Carmen, and Simon, I miss all of you, and all I can ask is for your prayers for a safe trip. I look forward to seeing everyone when I get back (including you, Meg, if you do happen to visit in mid-to-late August).
Family and friends: I miss all of you as well, and I ask for your prayers for a safe trip as well. I look forward to seeing you all again when I get back as well.
And to everyone, I look forward to sharing stories and pictures when I return, and I hope that you all have a great middle-of-summer.
Camping in Camrose
This site is not just going to be the hub for the planning of our wedding; it’s been built from the ground up to be an ongoing portal through which we can share bits and pieces of our lives (and life together) with friends and family. Personally, I think this is given its most poignant example in the presence of our gallery. Given that we’re both no slouch with a camera, and given that we both enjoy photography to a certain degree (myself to an abnormally large degree), there are a lot of great pictures that we already have to share with the world, and more to come.
But enough of my blathering on about unrelated details. The title suggests that some camping took place, and so it did.
We unloaded the sleeping bags into the tent, and were officially ‘finished’ with the setup at about 8:50 PM. That still left us the better part of 40 minutes to get to Michel’s game, so we drove in to Camrose and stopped at the Safeway before heading on to Michel’s first game, which was being played at 9:30 PM that evening. If you think that’s late, well…yeah, it probably is. But then, this tournament had some of the teams in it playing until almost 3 AM, so…
Michel’s team (Vermilion) won the first game handily, scoring a 2-0 shutout over Stettler. The team played really well overall. Grace had asked if I wouldn’t mind taking some pictures (like anyone has to ask that!), and that proved to be a bit of a challenge, especially as the sun finished setting and things got progressively darker).
After the game, Grace and I hung out with Michel for a few minutes, and Grace presented her sister with a bag full of (healthy!) snacks and drinks. That would be the girl I love in a nutshell — she really cares about people, and goes out of her way for them.
We made our way back to the campsite, stopping for a late-night snack of our own along the way, and then attempted to sleep. I say ‘attempted’ because, due to things like two or three hours of rain pounding down, a slight slope in the ground on which the tent was situated (useful in light of the fact of rain, but not the easiest thing to sleep on), and some twit with a diesel engine and a massive trailer trying to fit himself into the campground at 1 AM, we only managed a couple of hours of sleep.
That’s not a complaint, mind you, although we were certainly both a little bleary-eyed the next morning.
Although we did hit up the 7-11 for coffee before that point. Which means there’s a new group I can join on Facebook, apparently.
Unfortunately, Vermilion didn’t win the second game, against Rocky Mountain House. Rocky seemed like a pretty good team, and though this seemed to take Vermilion by surprise, Michel’s team quickly rallied and soon the two teams were, basically, playing at the same level. It was, toward the end, a pretty even match…except for the referee. In addition to calling one particularly stunning save a goal (the Vermilion goalie was just inside the goal line, but the ball — when she deflected it — was not), he ended the game about seven minutes early…blowing the whistle not two seconds after Vermilion won the kickoff after the aforementioned ‘goal’.
It wouldn’t have been quite as bad if the referee had made the call on the goal right away, but he didn’t — he made the call a couple minutes later, after one girl on the Rocky team complained to him. Now, I don’t remember much from my days as an umpire, but the general rule that I was taught was that if I didn’t see it, it didn’t happen…and I should be more watchful the next time I see a similar situation emerging. It was just a bad call on this referee’s part, plain and simple.
That and his timepiece was evidently malfunctioning.
Still, despite the poor officiating, Vermilion did play a solid game, and the whole team went out to Boston Pizza afterward to share lunch. Grace and I went along, spending a last couple of hours with Michel before we had to head back to Edmonton. We had both taken a number of pictures at the second game, and some video as well, and would have liked to stick around for the finals later that evening. But alas, Grace had a night shift, and I also had made plans, so we had to leave Camrose on Saturday afternoon.
Overall, it was a good trip (despite the lack of sleep), and we both had a lot of fun. It’s nice sometimes to just get out and camp, especially for people like us who don’t get many opportunities to do so given the busy tempo of our lives these days.
