Sunday September 12

We took the bus into town and went to mass at St. Andrew’s in the morning. The music was livelier and we decided we liked it better than St. Anthony’s across the street but we have a couple more churches to try before deciding where we will go on a regular basis.

After church we walked over to St. Nicholas’s church and got tickets for the 1:45 tower tour. We were all hungry so we walked around looking for a lunch place that would have options and be fairly cheap. We ended up in the Eldon shopping center at a sandwich place called O’Brien’s.

The tower tour was cool! First we climbed up to the bell ringing area and some of the bell ringers were there and played a piece for us. It was very cool. The group was too large to go farther up all at once so we went in shifts. Abby, Melissa and I stayed back and waited. While we were waiting one of the bell ringers opened a door and it opened out onto the roof of the main part of the church and they said we could go out on the roof if we wanted to. Of course we did! We got a nice view and it passed the time while we were waiting. There were a lot of stairs to climb to the top! But it was cool! We got a nice view of town and of Castle Keep which was our next stop.

Melissa and Abby on the roof of St. Nicholas's church

Castle Keep and the Tower Tour were free because it was Tyne and Wear Heritage Open Days. There were a lot of free events from Thursday-Sunday. The castle itself is small, or I should say what is left of it. There was a model showing what the castle looked like before and there was a lot more but it was partially destroyed at some point. It was fun seeing the castle that Newcastle-Upon-Tyne was named after! There were free posters at Castle Keep so I took one to hang in my room! When we were on top of Castle Keep we saw the Millennium bridge rotated to let a boat pass under. :)

After the two tours we went shopping. We compared phone plans and decided to go with T-Mobile and we got pay as you go phones. I have no idea how much I will use my cell phone but it is nice to have one anyway. We wandered around town a bit more and stopped in a few stores for various items or just to look at what they had. By the time we went home we were all very tired!

Monday September 13

We are still figuring out our morning schedules so we didn’t really have anything going on in the morning. To make good use of our time we decided to go register with the doctor across from Kids Kabin. We got information and the forms to fill out but are not actually able to sign up until we get our bank cards in the mail in a few days because we need proof of address and don’t have anything from the acceptable list. Hopefully by early next week we will be all signed up.

I went over to Kids Kabin at 1:30 for a meeting with Will to talk about hours, expectations, how things are going so far, etc. (He wants us to come in around 1:00 pm. Although on days that I volunteer at Common Ground I will not get there until later since the hours at Common Ground will be 10am-2pm. I want to volunteer there 2 days a week. We will stay until about 6:00 pm two days a week and 8:00 pm two days a week. If we are staying until 8:00 pm that means we are helping with the street session which means we go with a couple other staff and volunteers to different neighborhoods and do activities. The activities are brought via trailers that attach to bikes and could be cooking, pottery, bike repairs or possibly other activities. Fridays will vary depending on the week but there are only bike repairs on Friday afternoons and no street sessions. ). After that I helped the other staff members with various projects until the kids came for the afternoon session. I was in cooking again and helped the kids make pasta and pasta sauce. They had some good ideas and each of the 4 groups made different pasta sauces that all tasted great!

At the end of Kids Kabin today Br. Ralph came up to me and asked if Abby, Melissa and I had any plans for the coming weekend. I said I didn't think so. He then offered to bring the three of us to Durham on Saturday! And if next weekend didn't work, he said that "the castle has been there for centuries so if this weekend doesn't work it will still be around in a fortnight". Haha! So it looks like we will be going to Durham on Saturday with Br. Ralph! Exciting! Durham is really close but it will be an adventure anyway. The Great North Run is on Sunday and starts or ends (or both??) in Newcaslte so we plan on watching part of it. Abby likes to run and is particularly excited about seeing it.

Hope your Monday is going great!

Laura