I’ve enjoyed becoming better acquainted with bloggers as I’ve read their responses to the “meme” asking them to list 7 things about themselves that their readers probably don’t know.  Larry Ferlazzo has tagged me with this meme, so here goes with 7 things you probably don’t know about me…

1) Although born in Southern Ontario, I grew up in India from the age of 6 until I was 17.  Our family home was in Calcutta (Kolkata), but I attended Woodstock School, a boarding school 1000 miles away in the Himalayan foothill town of Mussoorie.

Woodstock School Campus (Photo from Wikipedia)

2) In 1981, I returned to Woodstock as a teacher.  I was on staff there until 1990.  For five years, I taught grade 3 in the same classroom where I had been a third grader in 1959!

3)  In 1972, I pedaled a bicycle from France to India–via Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.  My friend Jon Jantzen and I took 6 months to cover the 10,000 kilometres.  My favourite part of the trip was the month that we spent in Afghanistan.

4)  I have been married to an amazing girl named Lynn for the past 31 years.  We have two children–Aaron and Anjali (made in India), and two grandchildren–Isaac and Annika.

5)  My faith is the cornerstone of my life.  When I’m truly faithful, it is my faith that informs the day to day choices that I make.  In the late 90′s, I served for 3 years as the part-time pastor of a small Mennonite congregation.

6)  I believe that naturopathic medicine is grossly under rated!  It offers a holistic and pro-active approach to health care.  This is in contrast with the reactive symptom-management approach of conventional allopathic medicine.

7)  I’ve recently read and appreciated The Language of God by scientist, and former head of the Human Genome Project, Francis S. Collins.  Collins makes a compelling case for faith from the perspective of a scientist.

I invite any blogger who reads this to write a post letting your readers know seven things about yourself that we otherwise wouldn’t know.