Life

There is rhythm to life that is starting to develop which I suppose is a good thing.






Mondays are spent doing school work at home.








Tuesdays I am at Burnaby from 11:30-2:20 for a crim theory class.





Wednesdays I am at the Surrey campus(pix here) where I facilitate 3 tutorials for CRIM 315, Restorative Justice.

Thursdays I spend at home doing school.


I leave bright and early on Fridays to go to Burnaby for a methodology class and then afterwards try to get in at least a 30-45 minute group session on statistics. A number of us in class have not had statistics before so we try to stay and help each other limp through the weekly assignment. I then go to the Surrey campus for the 2:30-4:20 Restorative Justice lecture. Yeah..the highlight of my week. Finally, I get to learn about the things I came to BC for!


Saturdays are another study day, but yesterday I didn't get much of that done, Liz Elliott, my thesis advisor(eventually, once I get to that point) invited numerous people over for Thanksgiving dinner including me and Jim.

Colleen is a Criminology Ph.D. student from Manitoba who TAs on the Burnaby campus for the same class I do in Surrey.

Liz, Merlin, and Jim enjoying a wonderful supper.

http://http//www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MJt2vchXvY Dr. Liz Elliott speaking about the over use of incarceration.

Liz and her husband, in the white tshirt, were lovely hosts. They had a house full of people, many like us who have no family in town.Their son is a student at SFU and he brought quite a few of his fellow football players with him and their daughter had a group of her girlfriends as well. So it was quite a large gathering. We had to eat and run since we (Jim, Colleen and I) had tickets to a play.

What makes it possible for people to:

Believe in stereotypes?

Witness hardship and not reach out?

Turn a blind eye, a deaf ear?

Wage war with others? What makes all these and so many other ways that we compromise the planets and humanity's well-being possible? The creation over and over of "the other," the creation of the "them" in "us and them."

The play was quite different with volunteers from the audience as actors(yeah to brave Colleen who made her acting debut!) and no scripts.

Sundays we go to Chilliwak for church and maybe some galavanting if the weather is good and we remember a change of clothes.

Today after church we went to the little cafe in Country Gardens for lunch with Linda, one of the ladies we have met at church. As you can see from the pix there is hardly a cloud in the sky, which was not the case when we left home, otherwise we would have brought a change of clothes and headed out to do some sightseeing.

And there's the week.....