My New Home..

Well, as most of you know, the border guards let me into Canada. In fact, the border guard I had was so nice, he was going to let me in without checking some of my crucial documents! So now that I have been here for a little over a week, I have to share with you some of the many things I have experienced so far.

Mom has been with me this whole week. That has been such a blessing! She has helped me get my room in order, my office set up, and has worked with several of my right brained students with their math skills. I will miss her so much when she leaves on Tuesday!

My classes are going well. I have great students and the staff are wonderful. It's been slightly difficult coming in 2 weeks late especially since I started teaching right when I got here... no time for a breather. But that's ok. Here are just a few pictures of my new home. The scenery is absolutely breaktaking!

The first picture is the main building on campus. Located inside is the chapel, the cafeteria, administration offices, classrooms, library, and computer lab. The mountains around it are just amazing! The second picture is the view that I have from my place. It sits up on a little ridge and looks down into the valley. All over the property are lots of fruit trees. There are apples, plums (both purple and green--which are so good, I must add), pears, apricots, cherries, grapes, and of course carrots! (They grow organic carrots for market.) It is so nice to have fresh fruit to eat every day!


















I took a trip to the thriving "metropolis" of Lillooet (20 minutes away) last Sunday (population approx. 2700). Along the way, we saw a bald eagle and a black bear! That was so awesome to see!! I couldn't get a picture of the bear because he was shy and ran away before we could get close. But here is the bald eagle.


On the way down, we ran into this thing called the "Slide." Someone had mentioned it, but didn't tell us what it was. Man was I in for a surprise...I came around a bend on the steep mountain road, and the road went from two lane down to one. The one side was straight up, the other straight down to the valley floor. They had some type of land slide some time ago and it completely messed up the road. After much repair, they finally cleared one small lane. Periodically rocks still fall off the cliff onto the road and you can see them all piled up along the edge. (Several staff members here have had rocks fall into their windows from the ledge.) Most of that section of road has concrete barriers (a recent addition, thankfully!) but one spot still opens straight down to the valley floor beneath. What makes it interesting is when you have to pass other vehicles (especially logging trucks) when you are in the slide. So from what I have heard, Highway 12 is the worst in Canada. I don't doubt it!

It doesn't look that bad from this angle, but the sides are almost vertical with the little road along the edge.












Here is the section that has no barriers.







It is all one lane with potholes and fallen rocks along the edge.

From what I understand, many people have died over the slide. But I know I have angels that are looking out for me so I have no need to fear. "The angel of the Lord encamps round about them that fear him and deliveth them." I am so thankful that God delivers--not just from physical harm, but if we let him, he will deliver us from spiritual harm as well by delivering us from sin! Now that's a promise!

Oh, yes, today I had another new experience... something I had never seen before. About 200 feet from my house along the trail I walk down to school, I ran across this "pile" of stuff. Anyway, since I wasn't sure what it was, I had to do a google search to identify it! Can you figure it out? (Hint: I didn't get close enough to it to see if it smelled like pepper, but I didn't see any bells in it! Mom did say it had carrots in it though!)