It's about time too...

From the long land of no updates

2008-04-07T06:57:00.000-07:00

8 months between blog posts. I am a seriously awful blogger.

OTC has been going fairly well--I am on the last two modules of the first segment (leading to the Certificate of Higher Education), Old Testament 2 and the final module: Making Sense of Reflective Practice which has, in truth, been interesting.

Next year I am off to the UK to study at a 'real' university, namely Newman University College to study Theology for Education. It's gonna be fun, I think, Theology and Educational placements in schools... what more could I ask for? :)

I originally applied to do Primary Education as a teacher trainee but was unsuccessful. First thing to note for EU students considering studying Primary Education in the UK--get experience in a UK government school. That's what they're looking for and why I was unsuccessful at three different places.

God, who is, after all, totally awesome in a remarkably huge number of ways had a better plan. Having spent time these past few months working at American Academy Junior school and thoroughly enjoying doing so, working with kids and young people has become one of the things I really enjoy. But Theology remains a passion and an abiding interest in my life. So rather than getting to do Theology full time, or Education full time, God managed to wangle a way to get me to do both. Really, really cool.

I'm getting in contact with the University as there's a chance I can apply in as a second year student. Tough decision whether or not I actually go in as a second year student or whether I go in as a first year. I'm leaning towards going in as a first at the moment, particularly as my other news is awesome.

I spoke to the Birmingham local Authority today and they told me I count as a British student, and as such... I'm definitely eligible for funding as a British Student! Which should mean I'm eligible for a complete maintenance grant.

Anne Ellis, the director of the Bournville Young Singers the choir I sang with in my younger years and one of the things I missed incredibly much when moving to Cyprus, contacted me recently asking if I'm available to help them out as a pianist for next year, having mentioned that I was available as an emergency pianist, I might be helping them out weekly, which would be awesome.

Everything is slotting into place incredibly, now all we need is to book our flights back to the UK in early July...

University for British people living in Europe

2007-09-29T02:38:00.000-07:00

I've not posted here in a while, but I thought I'd put some information up here that I discovered on my recent trip to the UK that I couldn't find anywhere else in the UK.

I visited Birmingham University's open day for the primary reason for trying to find out about what funding is available for British students who live abroad (and also to see if I wanted to transfer into their Theology course) as we live in the limit where we're eligible for a grant if I count as a British Student. Everyone who I had contacted prior to that had said they thought I probably counted as a European Student.

The Birmingham University people were unsure and put me in contact with a group--I'll put contact details up for them when I find them. These are the people responsible for all european students in the UK, I believe.

What they told me was because I was born in the UK and then spent at least a couple of years there, there is no legal reason for an LEA (Local Education Authority) to refuse funding to me. Every LEA acts slightly differently and they were unsure, but this is the end result: I /should/ be eligible for a grant. Yay!

The Gospel according to St. John?

2007-04-23T12:13:00.000-07:00

One of my favourite bloggers, Bigbulkyanglican writes recently:

"I have a growing love and admiration for John's Gospel - and regret that it only makes star appearances in the Anglican lectionary alongside the Synoptic Gospels of Matthew Luke and Mark.
We should really have had a four year lectionary with an additional year founded on John - then the full glory and diversity of the Gospel would have been revealed week by week."

I can't help but agree with him. My recent course: "Making Sense of the New Testament" which is looking primarily at the gospels has reminded me just how much I prefer John's gospel--from the opening which is possibly one of my favourite pieces of Scripture on the incarnation, through to the accounts of death and ressurection--to the Synoptics, and I cannot help but agree with his idea of a four-year lectionary which focuses more heavily on John.

David Wenham and Steve Walton in their book: "Introducing the New Testament, Volume 1: The Gospels and Acts" say the following about John:

"John's Gospel contains some of the most beautiful and powerful stories we know about Jesus, some of his best known sayings, and some of the most profound and mystical teaching that we find in the Christian Scriptures... Matthew, Mark, and Luke see Jesus in one way, whereas John is different."

I am thoroughly enjoying getting more familiar with John's Gospel about the post-resurrection over the past two weeks of our lectionary cycle, even though I think I (if I ever do get into the pulpit) would probably have preached on the Acts lesson (which we had the full extended version for) last Sunday rather than the Gospel as it would've made a more dramatic sermon...

Anglican matters...

2007-02-15T23:15:00.000-08:00

The url for my blog is 'cyprus anglican' so I thought I'd write some stuff about my position in the church here. I'm the Organist and choir director, and this sunday we have not one, but TWO special services coming up. In the Morning we are running a special service known as 'Music Sunday' in which we are celebrating the wide diversity of music which God has given us to praise Him with. We're ranging from the Old Hundreth ('All people that on earth do dwell') through modern classical choral (A unison setting of Rutter's 'Look at the World'--my choir isn't exactly up to complicated parts yet,) Graham Kendrick ('We believe in God the Father', makes a good creed!) A Broadway show tune ('Any Dream Will Do') and lots more besides. :) It's going to be good fun.

The evening service is going to be full-on Victorian Choral Evensong. We weren't able to get the Magnificat chanted, so we are going to do 'Tell Out My Soul'. We are going to chant the Nunc Dimmitis and the versicles, however. Unfortunately we don't have any choir robes, so we cannot be robed. The organ also is unlikely to handle the strain well, so I'm hoping to drive home the point that we need a new instrument. This sunday we are starting what is going to be our lenten appeal--replacing our organ. At 25 years old, it's getting really rather nasty.

Look at me...

2007-02-09T05:25:00.000-08:00

I've just finished the first three modules. Talk about last minute--I was up til 11:30 last night getting one essay done, then this morning fixing all the last bits that needed doing. Now I'm exhausted and have a long afternoon ahead of me. I was bouncy and excited for about 5 minutes and now am just feeling really tired and old.

What have I learned from this course so far?
Firstly--I'm not a serious academic. I enjoy academia and theology, but I would get driven stir-crazy if I tried to do this long term. I need to find a job which involves people. Teaching is an ever-present option.
Secondly--I need to start writing assignments way in advance, and take massive copious notes of all the quotes I like. What took longest for my assignments was finding all the quotes I needed and footnoting. Fortunately I read VERY fast.
Thirdly--music helps. I listen to music almost constantly when I'm working. I LOVE my iPod as no matter what I'm doing, I can have music on. :)
Fourthly--Chocolate also helps. I come from bourneville, I'm a chocoholic. :)

Sometimes I wonder...

2006-12-06T02:28:00.000-08:00

I know, two updates in under 24 hours, what is the world coming to? Well I'm starting to wonder if I'm smart enough for parts of this course. The current module that I'm working for an essay on is called: Making sense of the modern world. It's about modernism and postmodernism, how the enlightenment ushered in first modernism and postmodernism, and how christian mission and culture should reflect secular culture and how it should be evangelised. All important fascinating stuff, but very confusing! Four books open at the same time trying to make sense of it. Fortunately when I get puzzled I just go to wikipedia as that has some great stuff in the language of the lay-man rather than deep philosophical science.

Another blog entry at long last...

2006-12-05T07:28:00.000-08:00

I never seem to remember to blog. Not very good at this whole thing really.

OTC chaos struck again this weekend, partly my fault, partly theirs. Mostly mine, in fact. I've been getting very confused about what order I'm supposed to be doing all this work in (turns out all at the same time and I'm getting a touch muddled) and managed to miss one of my assignment deadlines, which I didn't know about. Fortunately I managed to write somewhere in the realm of 1600 words on the subject over the weekend and got it in safely on Monday. I've got one more to finish (and it's already around the 1500 word mark, I've just got a wee bit of touching up to do) and then I have no more til late January/early Febuary. I can actually work rather than constantly trying to get essays done. The bit that was their fault was the course tutor didn't recieve my emails at first, some reason it seems to work now, so that's good news. :)

Can't think of anything else to update, only one request--if anyone's got some stunningly good links on Modernism/Post-modernism, I'd love to give 'em a read. That's what the current webCT is on and I'm having a blast although occasionally getting somewhat confused. :)

Back home.

2006-11-25T05:59:00.000-08:00

For those who've read my mum's blog which is linked on the side, you'll know I've been in Singapore, now back home. Free places with wireless internet (McDonalds and Coffee Bean in Singapore) were bearable, but half-way decent internet is wonderful. Doing WebCT and other bits while there, but not my full schedule--Monday it's back to the grindstone. Need to install the new wireless router we brought while there so that I get internet in my room.

Tim

Well...

2006-11-14T03:11:00.000-08:00

I've finally got login access to the Web Classroom--good thing too, as it started yesterday. Rather fun really--although being around a lot of people older than me is a little frightening! It's really a glorified forum, and written in Java, which is decidedly not my prefered way of working, Java not being tabbable or anything, but hey, it works. At least mostly--having a few login probs at present, but nothing serious.

Well, finally a positve.

2006-11-01T00:48:00.000-08:00

I am loving this course, now I'm started. It's absolutely brilliant. Well written, erudite, and incredibly sound, making points that to me in many places coming from a thinking christian family are a bit obvious, but I can see how vital some of those points are just by talking to some of my friends. So far we're just looking at the Old Testament, and they're nailing home such things as context of who things are written to, how we differentiate different books and how they have different affects on our lives. The course I did previously (the ACE-based NCSC for those interested) was in many places distinctly unsound, Calvinist and painted with very broad strokes of the brush negative things about everyone who disagreed with them, which really didn't go down well with me, but the OT section of it did at least get me reading the Old Testament--even if I disagreed with their interpretations--and thus I have quite a solid foundation for dealing with this course in. Intruigingly the only thing I've actually learnt so far is about Tanakh as opposed to the ACE model of splitting up the Old Testament. Fascinating stuff really.

I guess I'll give a bit of a step-by-step review, the first Unit had a whole load of stuff I am incapable of doing without by student number, getting used to the WebCT, etcetera, but had a lot of general distance learning stuff. I had read the required book on distance learning anyhow (The Distance Learner from St. John's, Nottingham) which is very good, so I skimmed through unit one, intending on coming back to it. Unit Two is a bit of an overview of the Old Testament and the different types of literature. Having read the OT about 3 times so far now, it hasn't given anything new or fascinatingly different to me, but for those who have just been pew-sitting Christians up til they start this course it might be quite a startle to discover just how disparate the OT is. The third unit (the one I'm starting today) is all about the background and history to the Old Testament. Again, some of it I'm familiar with, history being one of those subjects that I'm actually quite good at and enjoy doing, so I tend to read up on historical background. One of the points I am very glad they're making is that to truly understand a text you need to understand the people, language and culture to which it was written. So many people-in-the-pews and even worse preachers-in-the-pulpits (and still worse best-selling authors like Rick Warren) seem to ignore this, and just preach as if the Bible was written in 21st Century English to a 21st Century Congregation, and frequently end up producing sermons/ideas that probably makes Paul, Moses, Peter and all that lot look down from heaven, shake their heads and say 'that really wasn't what I said...'

It really is about time too...

2006-10-30T00:11:00.000-08:00

Today my dad went in to collect a parcel that the Post Office said had been sent to the Office's PO Box. Turns out (Thank you Lord!) that it was my coursework, that had completely the wrong number on it, but the lady at the post office said, "Well, the guy who's box this is is a lawyer, and I didn't think it was him doing a Theological degree, so I thought I'd check since it was your last name and if not send it back." Cypriots tend to do this sort of thing a lot, they're terribly inefficient at times, but at least they know everyone and tend to get some things right. Anyway, here's what the contents of the three parcels looks like:

So today, at any rate, I can start my course. Hopefully. Friday I finished off a few little niggling bits of my last course that had been hanging around, so maybe it's all to the good that it's taken this long. Anyway, I thought today before I start, I'd show you the layout of my desk. Important things: Apple iBook (vital), Apple Bluetooth keyboard (Absolutely wonderful, do you get the impression I like Apple stuff yet? ;)) My Dad's old hifi which plugs into a CD player and also into my notebook (and when we're back from Singapore, hopefully it'll plug into a new iPod Nano...) and books. Gobs of theological books, Bibles, Books of Common Prayer... only thing that's missing is a copy of CW which I really must get at some stage. Anyway, here it is, my workspace:

I think that's everything for now, time to actually get started...

Any maybe...

2006-10-28T12:11:00.000-07:00

Well yesterday I rang OTC but forgot to blog about it. They said on the 17th they put the complete modules aside for posting and they should've been posted. Postage from Gloucestershire seems to take an extraordinarily longer amount of time than sending from anywhere else in the UK--nearly 2 weeks ago now, when things normally take 4 days.

Hopefully they'll be here before we travel. :)

Hmmm...

2006-10-26T11:21:00.000-07:00

Not much to report, but really feel that I ought to get into the flow of this daily blogging thing, at least til we leave for Singapore.

Did discover in Singapore that possibly the best place for me to go for Internet access will be McDonald's, as they generally have free wifi. Good news in my book--I'm more'n happy to buy an orange juice or something like that while I browse the web... definitely taking my lovely Maccabees (my iBook) with me. :)

2006-10-25T10:27:00.000-07:00

Finally. My grandma is staying with us and took us out to eat this evening, and I got a chance to check the PO Box. The book 'Teach Yourself the Old Testament' by Gordon McConville has arrived. In the next two days I can, at least start this course. :)

Other news, one of the forums I currently do the technical admin for (Wayfarer's Arena, primarily a Anne McCaffrey's Pern Roleplaying site) is trying to split the vbulletin forum into two seperate boards, a phpBB and a vBulletin, and it's been taking forever to copy all the data across from one database to the other. Why there couldn't be an easy automated way to do this is beyond me.

Really starting...

2006-10-24T05:02:00.000-07:00

I'm really starting to get into this daily blogging stuff a bit. Quite a novel sensation really.

Update re course, last night we went to the Post Office, hoping against hope that the book that should have been posted 2 weeks ago had arrived. It hadn't. I'll prolly go tomorrow morning to have a look and see if it's arrived.

In other news, I've got a wedding to play for on Thursday, which is my first official job as the newly instated Parish Organist... and I won't know the music til tomorrow. Rather short notice, really. Really hope they don't want Parry's Jerusalem, which we seem to get an inordinate number of times a year both for weddings and Funerals. Aparently expatriates tend to want to hear it as it makes them feel home sick. It makes me feel sick alright, but definitely not home-sick.... Not only are the words lousy, but the music is worse. And a right pain to accompany too, what's more.

Am drather glad that I don't have to have an 'induction ceremony' for the job of Parish Organist like vicars do. You know, installing them in the chair, or in this case would that be the organist's bench?

At least a partial...

2006-10-23T01:53:00.000-07:00

At least a partial 'thank you Lord' today, the printer has arrived, and is now nicely set up, printing in Economode for me, so I can print out the first few bits of my OTC course work. In fact, I 'ave Unit 1: 'Getting Started' sitting on the arm of my chair as we speak. Definitely well worth it, I hit print, 20 seconds later, I'm holding a sheaf of 10 pages. LOVE LOVE LOVE the speed of this printer. Does anyone get the impression that I'm rather impatient as of yet? Dad, who's fairly up in the printing side of things, is rather impressed... supposedly the new printer does PostScript, so we're going to have to plug it into one of the iBooks to see if we can persuade it to print PostScript--evidently Windows is so inferior as it only does PCL for this printer. Ah, well, if the Windows machine can share it well enough for me to print wirelessly, I'm pretty happy. :)

Did ring the OTC hotline this morning. The book which wasn't mentioned anywhere until I recieved the word document versions of the course modules has been sent, and they're kindly sending it with their compliments rather than cashing the cheque that we sent for it. Very nice of them, but I still have no blessed Student ID number. By the end of the week, aparently, although my current experiences suggest that that means within the end of the next six months, as I was told within 1-2 weeks... uhm... about a month ago. Would really like to get online to this WebCT business... am a little mystified that they cannot set up all of the students who are currently ID-less with testing accounts which can be merged into our new ones when we get 'em. Some how feel that I'm probably more technically aware than them (I mean, using Word files for sending around and out is sooooooo dated. And insecure. And unstable. And unfriendly with the rest of the known non-Windows universe.... ah well) but I suspect they must have someone vaguely technically competent around. Sincerely hope so. I am a tech-guru in my spare time (occasionally even earning a wee bit of money while doing so) so find these things very frustrating.

Cypriots are...

2006-10-22T05:15:00.000-07:00

Cypriots are among the most inefficient people I've ever met. I guess it's the mediterranean attitude. Thursday we went into the computer shop to order a high-speed decent laserjet printer--our current one is dying by inches, was out of toner, and since I was paying half, the remaining half was about the cost of a new cartridge. The company that we were buying from said their stockist 'absolutely guaranteed it' by 'Friday evening at the latest'. Cynic that I am, I thought that Saturday afternoon it would be in. Desperately wanted to print out the stuff for OTC, so Saturday would be okay.

WRONG. Monday. Maybe. Perhaps. There's a chance. Honestly, I get to the point where I wonder why on earth the company manages to survive. In the UK (I'm originally a B'ummie) if such a thing happened every single darn time something was ordered, the company would be out of business in short order. But no, the Cypriots just shrug. Part of me wants to scream at them that they can keep their stuff, I'm not going to pay, particularly when the fact that we're buying locally adds a significant premium to buying in the UK (Even if you add shipping via UPS, buying some bits would still be cheaper in the UK) but part of me just says 'gotta get used to it'. Ah, well, life goes on. Even if I do want to go to Nicosia and punch the head of the company that imports HP printers to the island.

Getting a little tired of this...

2006-10-18T00:45:00.000-07:00

Some back history for the start of my blog. At the beginning of this year, I was looking into further education past by NCSC level 2 certificate (AS level equivalents). The Open Theological College, from the University of Gloucestershire appeared ideal. Internet/email based curriculum, etc, etc. So I sent off for an application form, thinking all would be well and this would be fairly easy. I'm told that they're revamping it, and they'll send it in August.

I shrug, pretty much complete my NCSC level 2, and then wait. By the second week of August, I email to ask if they've sent it off yet, they say yes, but request my information so they can send off a second on. Ironically, they both arrive within a day of each other, or possibly on the same day, one dated 1st August, the other dated the 22nd of Auguust, in the beginning of September. Can't blame them for the inefficiencies of the Cyprus and British postal services, so I try very hard not to.

I complete the form, send off passport photos, and wait. We ordered all the books that the bookshop they recommended said I needed. And wait some more. Finally I get in contact with them about my Student ID number--it is moderately important so that I can logon, pay them money for this, etc, etc. Not impressed that it still hasn't arrived. In fact, I've been emailed by three of my tutors now, all of whom say that I've not been sent one yet. The've promised by phone that I will have it 'soon' or 'within 1-2 weeks' and now I just want to start it.

However, two weeks ago, they did send me the beginnings of most of the modules, and to my complete and utter unimpressedness, they had two books that they hadn't listed anywhere else. One of which is still in print, and arrived today, so (thank you Lord!) I can start the beginnings of this today. The other is out of print and has to be special-ordered from them. Not impressed with this either. Please Lord, just let me get this started....