THE HILLS: August 2007

Ok so our last post caught you up with our adventures in Dublin this one will give you an overview of what happened from then until we left Albania. As we covered some of the stuff in Kosovo and Albania there will be less time on these topics as far as words go but I just wanted to give you some more pictures from that part of our trip. The next post will be from Cheryl and she will tell you about more reccent travels that is the past 2 weeks in Rome.

When we left Dublin we caught a bus north to Northern Ireland. We arrived in Belfast and went on a city tour. I had been there before but Cheryl hadn't and so it was interesting for her to see first hand the locations of what the Northern Irish call "the troubles". By this ofcourse they mean the 20-30 years of conflict between the IRA and the Brittish government. While most of the region was free of military conflict the city center and certain neighborhoods in Belfast were a constant war zone. This doesn't mean that there was constant fighting but rather that they were under constant strict military supervision to prevent fighting.

Things we take for granted were not posssible there. While driving around it was amazing to see all the beautiful new ways people were using glass in their construction. Prior to the past few years no one dared use glass facades on a building because it would be an obvious target for a car bombing. That means all of downtown Vancouver would be out of the question.

Political Murals - A tradition from the time of the Troubles in Northern Ireland

While in Northern Ireland we stayed with a good friend I made there a few years ago and who we just happened to bump into in Vancouver before leaving on this journey. That is actually why we routed ourselves through the region. We figured while we were in Ireland why not?!

We just stayed a few days before flying to Scotland in order to visit a good friend of Kevin's and his former room-mate from Regent College. This friend and his wife have a lovely new baby boy. While we definately did our day of sightseeing in Edinburgh we were really there to see a good friend of Kevin's. And so just like Dublin was a nice backdrop while we as a couple got to visit with good friends of Cheryl's so was Edinburgh just a nice backdrop while visiting these friends of Kevin's. It has been wonderful for us as a couple to get to visit with each other's friends and to see how we are becoming something new and different from who we were in those friendships alone. I am not sure if that is entirely clear but it is true for us. That doesn't mean we think who we were before was less than or bad it just means it is amazing to see how we are undergoing a metamorphesis as people. We have become a new thing for a new time yet we are not entirely inconsistant with who we were before, just new.

After Scotland we hit the road yet again for Croatia that picks us up to the part of the journey which we have blogged more about and so from here on it will mostly be pictures.

The next several shots are from our travels in Croatia

These next shots are from around Albania and Kosovo

is a statue of the Albanian national hero, Skanderbeg.

He was an Albanian who led a revolt against the

Turkish Empire and freed Albania for several decades.

This is a mural on the national Museum

This is the oldest Mosk in Albania

The Albanian countryside

The beginnings of the infamous Road through Kukas

The later sections of the Road through Kukas.

To be fair while it is very bad in some places

this is the worst due to recent construction.

This on a street in Kosovo. It is still very normal to see

such blending of the old world with the new.

This is the University Library in Prishtina Kosovo. The Architecture

is designed to communicate that the Albanian mind has never truly

been free to express itself due to the oppression of outside peoples.

Game and Ministry time with the children in one of the

villages where we showed the Jesus Film.

Because Bill Clinton was the President who pressed for intervention in the

Kosovo Crisis it is common to find things all over Kosovo dedicated to him.

A wedding in Prishtina, Kosovo.

Dancing in the streets to celebrate a wedding is very common. Dancing in circles holding hands at many occasions is loved by Albanians - in Albania and Kosovo!