My apologies

I feel the need to apologize to the few of you who actually read my blog. My posts just kinda stopped with no explanation whatsoever. I originally created this blog with the intention of keeping family and friends informed of our goings-on in the UK. However now that we have returned to oh-so-sunny California, I no longer have the need to do that. So I'm very sad to say that this is the official end of the blog that is "Life with the Oldfields." Of course, if you feel the need to reminisce on our UK life, the blog will always be here with the old posts ready and waiting to be enjoyed again and again. :-) For those friends in the UK that managed to hack your way into my blog and happen to miss the random mutterings of this crazy person, then you can still harass me on MySpace at http://www.myspace.com/meiganoldfield

Love you all!!!

Awww London ::sigh::

There are some things that you can only do in London... like see Julia Stiles or Ewan McGregor or, as of today, Orlando Bloom in a play. I was able to get a discounted ticket to see a preview of "In Celebration" by David Storey starring Mr. Bloom himself. It was his West End (London's equivalent to Broadway) debut, and I have to say that I was pretty impressed. I had seen Julia Stiles in Oleanna and Ewan McGregor in Guys and Dolls, and I wasn't blown away by their performances to be honest... so I was actually pleasantly surprised with Orlando's acting skills. He did struggle a bit with the Yorkshire accent... it was just too difficult to keep his posh accent from coming through a bit I think. :-) Now I'm not one to really fancy these hollywood hunks or anything, but I have to admit that I've had a bit of a crush on Orlando ever since The Fellowship of the Ring. So I was absolutely ecstatic at the thought of seeing him in a play and getting to see him at the stage door at the end of the show. Of course it was absolute madness when he came out with all the crazy, abnoxious American girls about. I was getting quite discouraged when it became apparent that there was no chance I could get close enough to have him sign my program; however, being the nice chap that he is, Orlando spotted me and reached over some heads to grab my program and sign it... good on him for thinking of those of us who are less fortunate and crammed behind the masses of crazy girls. :-) Here's a picture to prove just how chaotic it was... good luck picking out the gorgeous man I'm attempting to take a picture of.

Living the London life again

We managed to get everything packed, the mini fixed, and lead the music for two church services on Sunday. Saying we were a bit busy is putting it mildly. Luckily, Jeff convinced our mini guy to drive 40 minutes to St Andrews to have a look at the mini in the afternoon. Turned out it was some corroded wire from the starter to the alternator or vice versa or something of that nature that only took him 15 minutes to fix! He even refused payment and a bottle of whisky for his troubles! Boy, things could not have taken a better turn... let me tell you. Ruth assures me that the mini is running superbly now. :-) We had a very emotional time at the church services in the morning and evening. In the morning, the church had a really nice send-off which certainly brought out the tears... unfortunately I was then expected to lead a song... now anyone who sings knows that it is just not good to sing when you are all choked up... I managed through though. We followed the evening service with a group trip down to the Old Course Hotel to enjoy some jazz music and crepes. It was a lot of fun; although, once we left I was forced to actually say some goodbyes. :-(

Monday morning we were off. We took the train down to London, where we are staying with our friends Libby and Howard in Surrey. They are the wonderful people who housed us for nearly a year when we lived down here. The week has been full of visiting friends from Bloomsbury, the church we went to here, and from Fairley House, the school I worked at, as well as taking in the old surroundings and food. It's been great, and we still have 3 more days to continue doing the same. :-)

Leaving St Andrews

This has been one crazy week let me tell you. Friday was my last day at school and boy did it go out with a bang. Remember the 10-year-old source of my daily stress from my Sock Puppets post? Well he managed to make it into UK news by having the brilliant idea of bringing a knife into school on Tuesday. Other pupils told teachers that he was carrying a blade around school, and the police came in and charged him with possession of a deadly weapon. You can imagine how shocked I was the next morning driving into work when I heard on a LONDON radio station that one of the day's top stories was that a 10-year-old boy brought a knife into a school in Dundee. Madness! So the boy must be getting expelled, right? Nope he was just suspended for one day and was allowed back in school the last two days with the condition that he wasn't to be around other children... so who got stuck with him?... yep, you guessed it. My last couple of days at work were spent alternating between watching this boy and "babysitting" and entertaining hyper 11-year-olds who were super excited about going into secondary school next year. And yet when Friday came around, I was still sad to leave... go figure. :-)

Friday evening we had a going-away dinner party at Pizza Express with all our friends from church. It was great fun!

Today we drove the mini out to the minimart to get an oil change and replace some wheel arches that I had either lost or damaged with all my crazy driving. :-) We then came back to St Andrews and went to a little goodbye get-together at St Mary's. It was really nice to say goodbye to everyone but of course really sad as well. We then left to go sell the mini to Ruth, our friend from church. It was of course also sad to say goodbye to Mini; however, what followed made me quickly forget my sadness. We got a text from Ruth saying that the mini completely died on her as she was driving it home to Dundee. We got a ride out to her and sure enough the car was completely dead. You could imagine our frustration as we'd only just finished telling her how reliable the car has been these past two years! We then spent the next hour sitting on the side of the road in pouring rain (in June!) waiting for breakdown assistance. For those who might be interested... ie. Rick... we'd tried jumper cables but the car's immobilizer wouldn't turn off because apparently it doesn't work when the car battery gets too low. The breakdown guy finally came and said that he "thinks" it might be the alternator. Well, we somehow managed to disable the immobilzer long enough to get the car started with jumper cables, but it just wasn't charging AT ALL on the drive back to St Andrews. So now the car is sitting outside a machanic's waiting to get checked out next week. Jeff and I feel sooooooooooooo terrible for Ruth. Things would've been soo much better had this happened last week. I mean, what are the chances? The day we sell it? We of course are going to pay for any repairs.

Anyway, needless to say, we are feeling soooooooooooooo drained at the moment and can't wait to RELAX. It'll be nice to get down to London on Monday and chill out. :-)

More fun pictures for your amusement

So I've just discovered that our friend Kathleen has been hiding some very fun pictures from the St Mary's ball. I got her to email them to me and I will now share them with all of you... simply because some of them are just brilliant. :-)

Below is Narges, Jeff, and Kathleen... one of the more "normal" pictures.


Next is the girls: Mariam, Melanie, me, Kathleen, Meg, and Allison (the drama queen). :-)


Followed, very tastefully, by a picture of me not wanting to waste any of the wine... it was dang expensive!


Next is my personal favourite. One of the only pictures in which Jeff is truly honestly smiling... not just pretend smiling for the camara, but geniunely happy with himself. Why so happy? Because he caused that reaction in Allison by demanding, very loudly, that she stop grabbing his butt... brilliant!


And finally, the weirdest picture of the evening. I'm not quite sure what made me so angry at the back of Jeff's head or why someone felt the need to poke Aaron in the backside... hmmm, truly a picture to ponder. :-)

Three times in one day

I wonder what might be going through your mind right now as you read the title of this post. Of course, I'm referring to going to three church services last Sunday, what else? :-) Our Sunday started off with a bang as Jeff and I helped lead the music at the Baptist church's morning service. It really was a great time of worship with a full band...piano, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bass guitar, vocals... During communion, I got to sing a fantastic song called "The power of the cross" written by Keith Getty and Stuart Townend. When I was last home my mom bought me the CD of Keith Getty's songs and it has a beautiful version of "The Power of the cross" sung by his wife, Kristyn. Mom do you remember me playing it over and over again on our way up north? Anyway, it is a fantastic song that really defines the amazing power of the cross. The words are brilliant:

OH, TO SEE THE DAWN
Of the darkest day:
Christ on the road to Calvary.
Tried by sinful men,
Torn and beaten, then
Nailed to a cross of wood.

This, the power of the cross:
Christ became sin for us.
Took the blame, bore the wrath -
We stand forgiven at the cross.

Oh, to see the pain
Written on Your face,
Bearing the awesome weight of sin.
Every bitter thought,
Every evil deed
Crowning Your bloodstained brow.

Now the daylight flees,
Now the ground beneath
Quakes as its Maker bows His head.
Curtain torn in two,
Dead are raised to life;
‘Finished!’ the victory cry.

Oh, to see my name
Written in the wounds,
For through Your suffering I am free.
Death is crushed to death,
Life is mine to live,
Won through Your selfless love.

(Final chorus)
This, the power of the cross:
Son of God - slain for us.
What a love! What a cost!
We stand forgiven at the cross.

Keith Getty & Stuart Townend
Copyright © 2005 Thankyou Music

I could probably write a whole post about how powerful the cross of Christ is, but I might just convince Jeff to do that on his theology blog... he needs something to write about... he's been pretty blog-lazy. So moving on, in the evening we then attended the ecumenical service at Saint Salvator's chapel before heading over to Pizza Express for dinner. Jeff then decided that sleep was the only option left for him; I however was keen to go to the late service at Holy Trinity to see our friends lead the music. So off to bed Jeff went and off to Holy Trinity I went... actually Pizza Express is right next to Holy Trinity so I didn't have to go far. I do believe that last Sunday was my first and only experience of attending three different church services in one day, and I've got to say that a day full of worship with other believers is awesome!

Times, they are a-changin'

The past few weeks have just been complete madness; hence the lack of blogging. :-) Where do I begin? Well, I guess it makes sense to start on Friday, almost two weeks ago. This was the night that we began packing... actually packing isn't really the right word... it was more like sorting through all the crap that we've accumulated over the past 5 years. We had boxes of things that hadn't even made it out of the box since we moved up from London over two years ago! Anyway, the sorting wasn't even the most difficult part. Think about it... I'm a woman, right? Well women need their clothes, yes? So how on earth am I supposed to be expected to decide what clothes I can live without for the next 6 weeks?!? It's madness really... expecting a woman to make such decisions! Well, remarkably it was a little bit easier than I'd anticipated. Actually the more I thought about it, the more I realized that it was really the clothes that I had available to wear on the other end, in CA, that I was most concerned about. I decided this must be because in CA I'll be likely to run into people who I haven't seen for probably years and therefore would like to look good when I run into them. Makes sense really... so I packed all the summer type clothing that I felt would look really cute when I wore it in CA this summer. That made the clothes packing much smoother. Saying this, it was only once all of our belongings had been packed up and taken away by the moving compay that Jeff decided to inform me that we wouldn't be receiving any of the things we shipped home until mid to late August! Well that ruined the whole plan! Now I won't only look the opposite of cute when I run into all these friends of long ago, but I will be roasting in Scotland attire! Out of control! Jeff calmed me down a bit by explaining that the reason it would take so long is because, for customs reasons, they can't actually bring any of our items into the US until we ourselves are in the US, so our belongings will arrive on the east coast shortly after we fly home and then we will have to wait while they are all trecked across the country to CA... good times.

Ok enough complaining about clothing. So after all of our things left us that Monday, we continued to live in our very empty flat until Thursday when our lease was up and moved into our neighbors spare room. I am quite proud to say though that I literally only have the one suitcase to live out of which is making our currently transient-like life here, and not to mention the trip down to London and back to CA in July, much easier.

This whole time of transition has been an interesting one so far, I have to say. I'm very much focused on preparing a life for us when we return to CA. I am daily checking and applying for jobs. Yet there is still the part of me that can't believe our life here in the UK is coming to an end. I feel I've been forced to think about it a bit earlier than I would have liked with all of the packing and moving. I'm pretty sure that had we been able to continue living in our flat and waited to ship off all of our belongings until just before we left, I probably would have lived in a bit of denial for a while. Don't get me wrong, I am absolutely ecstatic to be moving back home near family and friends, but at the same time it all seems soo strange. We even had our last Bible study on Tuesday and it felt soooo weird to realize that never again would I have those group of women to look forward to seeing every Tuesday. I guess we just get soo used to our daily routines and comforts that it's only once we no longer have them that we can truly appreciate just how much they really mean.