A piece of cake

Yesterday was spent getting ready for our camping trip to Dorset, finishing with packing the car. I usually am somewhat ambivalent about packing the car. One the one hand it gives me an exhilarating feeling realising we are about to go on holiday, on the other hand it is a lot of hard work, carrying stuff and trying to fit everything in.

This year was different; it was not quite as exhilarating, as we already are on holiday, but it certainly was much easier than usual, even though we have a smaller car than we have driven for the last many years. It didn't take very long and it certainly wasn't hard work. I realised there were two main reasons for the change: We did not have to carry all our stuff from the 5th floor, as in Riga, but just 5 meters through our front garden and secondly there was only three of us going. Neither Andreas nor Maria will be going with us (realising this brought back the exhilarating feeling - just joking, of course it didn't!), actually we won't see any of them during our holidays. This made me realise that faithful readers of this blog haven't “seen” them for a long time, so here is a little update:

After her graduation Maria took some time to relax and enjoy herself a bit. A week of summer school with The Salvation Army (where she of course was joined by Lukas) followed up with 10 days in Malaga together with 3 of her friends form the International School in Latvia. When she came back the easy life was over though, at least for a while. Maria hopes to travel to Canada and USA next year and for that she needs money. Before leaving for Malaga she had already got a temp job in a kindergarten run by The Salvation Army, and as soon as she landed, she started writing applications for other, more permanent jobs. So far she has worked for 3 weeks in the kindergarten, has just been offered 2 more weeks and she is.....coping with it. Talking to her on Skype after the first day her reaction was: I am never going to work with children! That of course is quite helpful, as she still has not decided what will happen next year concerning studying and future work. Now she can tick of Pedagogue, leaving only about 4698 other jobs and careers to go through!

Andreas did things the other way round. After returning from Seattle, where he had been to see Katharine, he moved to cheaper accommodation in Oxford and went job hunting. He ended up with 2 jobs and spent the next weeks working almost every day. Having done that for a couple of weeks he set of for Latvia to spend a month together with his friends from The International School. The plan was to spend 2 weeks in a summer house in the country, which would be spent with writing new songs for their band, and then moving into Riga to record the same songs. He is now in Riga, staying in a room in Riga corps with his friends and will be recording their new CD this weekend. Chatting to him on MSN the other day he told how it was strange to be back at Bruninieku (the Army's central property in Riga, where we used to live and also home of Riga I corps); in one way it was like he never had been away and yet he was not part of it anymore – a feeling most officers can relate to! He will be back in Oxford soon to start his new course in Sound Technology and Digital Music (which we have renamed to Sound of Music). He is looking forward to the change from Marketing Management (who can blame him!), but even more he is looking forward to Katharine moving from Canada to London to continue her studies. This also means Katharine's parents are coming over to London, so we are set to meet them in September, when we all have been invited to celebrate Katharine's birthday – of this I am sure you will hear more in the future.

Well, packing was a piece of cake. We enjoyed that, but will miss having Maria and Andreas with us (not really, but I had to write that as they might read this). Today is Saturday morning, and in an hours time we are heading south, hoping it won't rain while we have to set up our tent. As we yet have to install wireless in our otherwise very well equipped tent, you will have to wait another week before any news appears here.