Countdown to Christmas

So, I'm at home today, trying to get over a sore throat. Hopefully it won't get any worse come this weekend when we fly home to England.

The past week or so have been pretty crazy, two mondays ago the remnants of our fall soccer team, Barcapool, met for one last hurrah at Redmond's, to watch the Bears trash the Rams. Left to right, in the first photo, you have Stephanie, Holly, Me, Pam and Seth:




Thanks to Steph for the pics. Do y'see the sweater? It's been my number one piece of clothing since I discovered it in our closet, it says 'Lee's Construction' on it and was evidently designed to withstand the elements. I don't know why but I've enjoyed being overtly 'blue collar'.

Thursday we had our housegroup's christmas dinner, a few gifts exchanged, some settlers of course, and a big white bow not pictured here for my sake:


Saturday we went to two different christmas parties, one was a massive children-infested (in a good way) cookie contest at the Fullers and then we moved onto the Cadys for to bop the next few hours away. Sadly there are no pics as we forgot the camera.

Sunday, Erika and I skipped church in the morning and went to a different service to which our friend invited us in the afternoon, a Christmas special. The highlight must have been the 50-strong choir singing the Hallelujah chorus.

During the weekend, Erika's cousin gave birth to a baby girl, Congratulations to Elizabeth and Zach, and welcome to Isabel:



Finally, my father-in-law makes the best Santa you could imagine:

End of another quarter

So, tomorrow afternoon I'm sitting down with my partner TA to grade the last exam of the Molecular Biology class for sophomores (3rd years) at Northwestern. Finally, that along with my penultimate class (in which my group got the best grade for their projects by 0.04 points! *self-congratulatory slap on back*) means the next quarter I can just worry about research....I hope....

Quiet White and the Christmas Light(s)

Well, its been a while since I blogged something. Thought I'd write again before Janna makes a point of it. The November weather was unseasonal, as it should have snowed on thanksgiving according to Mrs. Parsons but it didn't, in fact it was an extra 20 degrees almost for the next week. Then the snow came. A heavy white blanket settled over NE Illinois overnight, and we all woke up to winter and to find our cars missing.

Well, we didn't get ours towed this year, but we'd learned our painful lesson years ago, nothing worse than standing in the snow in early morning sub-zero temperatures and looking at an empty 'my-car-used-to-be-there' spot.

Last weekend, Erika and I went to the annual church dinner and dance at a golf club in Glenview, it was a nice evening, a buffet dinner with plenty of food and, surprisingly, a few kilograms of Baklava. We had ourselves a friendly table with some girls from housegroup and also and got to know a few more people from church. Erika, Janna & Emily are the three wide grins below:


The very next day, we enjoyed a spontaneous breakfast at IHOP with Janna, Emily, and Robin. It was nice to see the latter, an interpreter for me at church and also at some of my meetings at Northwestern. It always gets a little strange knowing that you're friends and yet have a professional relationship at certain times of the day. Speaking of which, I was accused of a different interpreter of becoming an American Deaf person the other day simply because I was attempting to have a conversation with her in the middle of a lecture. Apparently, a lot of deaf people do that with their interpreters and it took me a long time to warm up. I know that the professor noticed, but honestly, what could he say? :-)

After breakfast, Erika and I went to get a christmas tree, we'd spotted a temporary open air lot that had opened up on sheridan road, complete with a little caravan and a grizzled war-vet type lashing the tree to the car for us and reminding us to keep the water topped up. We got the thing decorated in one day, so along with the winter Quiet White, we got the Christmas Lights.




Peace, for tis the season.

The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world. John 1:9