Remembering the Dominican

Here are some pictures of our time in the Dominican Republic on our honeymoon. We were supposed to go to Cuba, but had to cancel last minute because of a hurricane there. Our travel agent advised us to go to the DR instead, so we did -- and were hit with a tropical storm on our third day there! Things went downhill as soon as the storm hit -- no power, no air conditioning, flooded restaurants and hotel rooms, fallen trees, pools filled with debris, no activities and lots of rain!! Add to that a leaky ceiling in our bathroom directly over the toilet, and getting sick from the super-greasy food, and we couldn't wait to go home! Our first two days frolicking in the ocean were fun, but we still have trouble looking back on the rest of it and laughing. Hopefully we'll be at that point some day!
At least we got some good pictures -- and this one is one of my favourites of Joe. He managed to keep his cool and tried to keep a smile on his face throughout the ordeal, even though I was terribly ticked off! His amazing patience shone through even then -- and it was his first taste of how difficult I can be sometimes. He definitely passed with flying colours. That's one positive thing that came out of the trip -- we learned a lot about each other and became much closer because of it.
Until next time,
A.

Some photos to tide you over...

Here we are at a friend's wedding in September -- the same weekend we got married, actually (but one year later).

One little problem...

OK. So I can't figure out how to publish the C.S. Lewis essay to the blog! I'm out of ideas. I will have to enlist the services of my brother to figure out how to do it. Until then, you will just have to wait to read the essay Joe is referring to. Stay tuned!
A.

Joe speaks!

Good day all…now that I’m done my classes for this semester I thought I’d use a little of my free time to add something to our blog. The article below is a very appropriate piece of writing, obviously because of the time of year, and also because Amy and I and some of our close friends have decided to boycott the commercial side of Christmas this year.

This is an essay of sorts by C.S. Lewis (who, incidentally I have been a huge fan of for years – not just since the Hollywood popularization of Narnia). Herodotus was a fifth century BC historian; much of what he wrote are accounts of different cultures he encountered while traveling.

I think – barring Nike asking us for advertising space on our blog – that it’s legal for me to put this here. Just in case though, please don’t tell anyone at W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. that their copyrighted material is on our blog. :)

Wishing you all a stress-free holiday season.

-Joe