Steph's Adventures

Those of you with particularly good memories might remember that way back in November I wrote a poem inspired by the "I am statements...

In sharp contrast to our two years in France, where we welcomed many visitors and visited many friends, our social contact this year has l...

The Philippines is made up of more than 7000 islands, and we have no intention of ticking them all off during our time here, but a couple of...

After a fortnight without updating my blog, the longest gap since arriving in the Philippines 200 days ago, I have plenty to catch up on, be...

Today is Holy Saturday and God is dead. It is a time of sadness, grieving and desolation. This week is the biggest week of the church ye...

As promised, another poem for Good Friday. The footprint on the accompanying picture, incidentally, has nothing to do with yesterday's ...

This week has been marked by the sad demise of my sandals, and after seven and a half years it is time to take them off for the last time. ...

My plan was to put this poem up next Friday but I have now almost finished writing another poem, also on a Good Friday related theme, and t...

One of the many activities which make up the TVED programme is the "Youth Encounter" a three day retreat (encountering themselves...

You may remember that a while back I posted numerous quotes from the brochures for TVED which the senior students wrote for their English gr...

It is now summer in Cebu. I'm not sure why the Philippines has its summer in March and April, but it does. TVED are still hard at work, ...

I am a great lover of literacy and literacy teaching, so designing a literacy curriculum from scratch ought to be my dream job: and I am en...

We seem to be, at least briefly, in a period of relative routine at the moment, meaning our lives are dominated by planning, teaching and ma...

It is Ash Wednesday, and as this is a time for repenting sins rather than committing them, I won't lie and say I have written this poem ...

Recently, we set our students a group project in English, to produce a brochure and TV advert for TVED. Here in their own words (but with a...

I would probably have returned to this theme sooner, but a lot has happened and there has been a lot to reflect on in the last couple of mon...

Another week, another experience ... Shortly before lunchtime on Monday, Negros island, the next island to the west of us here in Cebu, ...

You will be pleased to hear that I think this may be the final part of my current series of reflections! All of this thinking about Dav...

As well as the sin of sleeping with Bathsheba, David compounds matters by the state-sponsored murder of Uriah. So why the change, from the ...

The story continues though (if you are wondering from what, please read part 1 first!), and somehow, it all seems to go very badly wrong. T...

At daily mass recently the readings have been following the books of Samuel and the story of David, shepherd boy, anointed by a prophet of ...

Today, 31st January, the church celebrates the feast of St John Bosco. We, on the other hand, have already been celebrating this feast for n...