Yea DSL!

Hi everyone

This is Melissa writing. Yes we finally got DSL at our new flat and we are up and running again. Life has been busy for the last couple of weeks and it has been harder to post. Chris is near to a deadline and has been working crazy hours in order to finish it. Hopefully he is almost done.

I can't remember if we told everyone that he is going to be quiting his fish and chips job because he will be teaching guitar to primary school kids during 3 days a week. I hope he likes it, he will be teaching kids in groups of 2-4 kids at a time. He will have to travel around to different schools in York and then pull the kids out of class for a half an hour once a week. He will be starting on Tuesday with 3 schools and then by the next few weeks he will have 7 schools a week. He is employed by the council same as me and his admin team is downstairs from my office. :) We are excited by this opportunity for him as it will immensely help us in paying for his PhD tuition. Please continue to pray that he will get scholarships to help as well. Of course this means that Chris will need a new guitar. He picked one out that he really likes for £189.00 and we are picking it up tomorrow. It will be funny to see him cycling around the city with a guitar strapped to his back...

Not much news from me except that my job has now been made permanent, Yipee! Originally I was only on a 6 month contract that was due to end on 26 May. This is a great relief for us too. I will still be working only three days a week but this combined with Chris' three days will be plenty for us to live off of.

There really isn't much else going on at this time. We went to Leeds at Easter and spent the day with my cousin Mark and my my Aunt Helen and Uncle Dennis. That was a nice relaxing day. We are beginning to get more involved in our church. Chris is starting to play on the worship team. Mostly just his guitar and I will be running sound for the service. I may also be helping out with admin stuff one or two days a week. I am excited about that.

Here are a few pictures. Hope you all are having a great day and check in soon for more pictures.



Chris at Miller's Fish and Chips



























Chris and Abhay in the City










Me and Abhay in the city












Some cool pictures of York

Nederland!

Hello! I Finally have the chance to catch you up with the past few weeks! If you remember, we moved to our very own flat in the beginning of March; but I'll save those pictured for next time, in favour of the more exciting pictures of our first excursion to the continent. We did have to postpone the trip until a week after our original plan, after overlooking some particulars regarding international travel (ok, so we forgot our passports. Are you finished laughing yet?!)



We took an overnight ferry across the North Sea, arriving in Holland the following morning. Above is the sunset over Hull, the port we left from in England.

It was a really big boat! Besides the duty-free and restaurants, there were no less than two cinemas, a childrens' area, and large stage for a band. Unfortunately, the prospect of playing Roulette and listening to bad cover bands while drinking copious amounts of over-priced alcohol doesn't really appeal to us that much; but it was still an experience.



Sunrise over the North Sea!

Holland is a quite unique place. We decided for some reason to go to Rotterdam instead of Amsterdam (the more obvious choice), but there was still plenty for us to see, and we had great weather! The first highlight for us was Delfshaven, a stretch along the river which is the only place not destroyed during the second World War. The historic buildings were nice.




The strangest bit of our sight-seeing (and definitely the most memorable) were the Cube Houses. Built in the 1980's, these residential complexes consist of "trees" with concrete trunks leading to flats which resemble a cube standing on one end, overshadowing areas of shops and businesses. Sound weird? Wait until you see the pictures...



The inside photos were taken from one of the cubes which was turned into a museum.




Last, but not least, we visited the Boijmans van Beuningen museum, which houses a selection of classic and contemporary art, sometimes in strange juxtaposition. These are just a few random selections from the things I found interesting...





I hope the pictures were worth the wait! Stay tuned, there's more to come, and it should come with less delay if-and-when we get internet access at home. The funding for that will be facilitated by the part-time job I've recently acquired, dishing out fish and chips! But that's another story all together...