A time to dance!

There has been a lot to celebrate in the past few weeks. First, there was Easter. A wonderful long weekend gave us the chance to recollect amid the hectic-ness of an intense period of field work, and reflect on the steadfast and incredible love of Christ who gave his life for us. I also got to experience some traditions that I'd never come across before. Ruth taught us how to make Ukrainian style Easter eggs. It involves lots of wax and is pretty similar to Batik in technique.

Richard Parker, a Life of Pi inspired Easter egg!

We also had a potluck meal, with everyone contributing a dish. Emily and I got round to attempting to make a traditional Mardi Gras King Cake (a little late I know) as an offering. Christina, one of out dear friends from last term had sent us a cake mix pack with instructions, all the way from Texas! The cake is a traditional part of pre-Lenten celebrations throughout the Gulf Coast region of the U.S. from Florida to Texas. We did our best to follow the instructions but the instruction 'be careful not to break the mixing bag' was promptly disobeyed as the bag split within minutes of us starting to knead the dough. Nevertheless, an extensive and thoroughly British debate about sticks of butter, a lot of confusion about the instruction to 'roll the dough like a jelly roll' and a brief pause for an Easter egg hunt, we were triumphant. It tasted particularly good with some sticky toffee sauce (courtesy of Hannah and her delicious sticky toffee pudding) poured over it!

How to make a King Cake: Step 1) Having broken the mixing bag, transfer all contents to handy metal bowl...

Step 2) Get cold waiting for dough to rise, return wearing a jumper and figure out what a jelly roll is...

Step 3) Place your attempt at a jelly roll doughnut thing onto a usefully shaped pizza baking stone and trust Steph to remember to get it out of the oven...

Pause for the Easter egg hunt (an apron was by far the best attire for this!)

Enjoying our spoils...

Back to the cake: Step 4) Look at the miraculously unburned, oddly bread-like cake.

Step 5) Decorate cake as tastefully as possible with the alarmingly coloured sugar, thank Christina and take it along to the potluck dinner.

Lots and lots of yummy potluck contributions.

Some very satisfied customers!

After Easter we headed to Galiano Island for a few days (blog to follow). Then it was back to work to prepare for the project presentations and tie up loose ends with our work. The day after the presentations was my birthday and also the official day for the community to say goodbye to this term's interns. This involved sharing thoughts about what we've all learned and gotten out of the experience, praising God and trusting Him as we prepare to go our separate ways. The weather was fabulous and in the evening we celebrated the return of warm summery days, the end of term, and my birthday by making pizza in our wonderful cob oven and having an impromptu celidh/ barn dance/ hoedown. What with this and all the birthday wishes and love from family and friends in the UK winging to Canada through the mail and across the internet, it was just a really special day... totally making up for me becoming incredibly old! Thank you one and all!

A birthday breakfast (post early morning bird walk).

All the cool kids, chillin' in the sun...

The cob oven!

Make your own pizza. Look at all those serious faces!

Decisions decisions...

Pre-cob oven pizza...

There goes the pizza...

And success!!

Many happy interns!

The dancing begins... all stand in a circle... so far so good!

It worked well as we practiced walking it through...

Now with the music... some high speed promenading!

The  inevitable descent into chaos, hilarity and lost partners... a lovely end to a special day.