Hi!

I haven't been keeping very good notes on what has been going on so I have forgotten many of the day to day details that I normally write about. I have included what I do remember or info from the days I did journal or jot down what I did.

Wednesday Oct. 6
I was planning on checking out the rowing club in Newburn again since the forecast looked favorable. However, when I woke up it was pouring rain! I decided the trip wouldn’t be worth it to spend 45 minutes on an erg and then head back home so I went back to bed. When I got up an hour and a half later it was sunny and looked beautiful outside! Frustrating! I don’t understand weather at all.

Friday Oct. 8
We had prayer and breakfast as usual with the sisters and did random things until it was time for bike repairs at KK. We had decided to go to Hadrian’s Wall on Saturday so after dinner we looked up information about getting there and things to do. Basically in the process we figured out that it was way to last minute to figure it all out. So then we thought maybe it would be easier to go to Alnwick Castle instead. Figuring out how to get there wasn’t easy either. So then we decided it would be a Newcastle weekend. We were all bummer but definitely learned our lesson about trying to plan something last minute!

Saturday Oct. 9
On Friday I got a notice saying I had a package to pick up at the post office but it was too late to get it on Friday by the time I got it. Since the post office was open until 10:15 am on Saturday I decided to go there and get my package. When I got there I was shocked to see about 15 people ahead of me in line! I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it to the counter because I got there about 15 minutes before it was closing. I ended up making it in time only to find out that it apparently takes 48 hours for the packages to be brought to the post office! Crazy. Oh well.

Melissa and I decided to go to the Center for Life science museum for the afternoon. Since a year pass was about the price of going to the museum twice we both got year passes. From the website and the outside it looks like a very large museum so we were both a bit surprised when we were walking through to find out that it was much smaller than we expected. I was expecting something the size of the science museum in Minneapolis and it probably wasn’t even half as big. They have a big Doctor Who exhibit right now. Doctor Who is a big TV show over here but Melissa and I haven’t watched it but apparently it is very popular! Later in the year it is going to be a Wallace and Gromit exhibit which I am excited for! They do have a planetarium and theater with a variety of shows/videos about topics from astronauts to ice. Although it is not as big as I was expecting, I’m excited to go to the different exhibits and shows throughout the year. They also have a big skating rink during the winter and although it costs extra, I’m excited about that too!

Sunday Oct. 10

I went to the Tynemouth rowing again today because they were planning on having a mini regetta....sadly it was too choppy for rowing. So instead we had many relay races and competitions (including a sand castle building contest). It was fun and a work out! After all the competitions we had a barbeque. It was quite the site watching as they attempted to light the charcoal for the grill in the windy weather. Eventually the charcoal was lite and lunch was served.

There was a large group of people with camo cameras all crowded on the sidewalk by towards the priory. We learned that there was a small bird that some how got off course from Siberia or somewhere far away hanging out in a tree on the hill and lots of bird watchers came to see it.

Wednesday Oct. 12
I got up early to head to rowing since it was going to be a nice day. It was a nice day and walking over the bridge to the rowing club I noticed that the water was perfect! Flat as glass! A great day to learn sculling! However, when I got to the rowing club I was told that the coach quit and there was no one to teach me! I was bummed! Then I remembered that there was another rowing club across the river that had a learn to row course starting in half an hour. This club never got back to me when I was contacting the 3 clubs nearest to me but I figured I should check it out anyway since I was already there. I’m glad I went because there were 2 other women there learning and a coach so we took a quad out! Sculling was a bit more complicated than the sweep rowing I’m used to but by the end I was getting the hang of it. I will be purchasing a pair of Wellies in the near future though because we walk into the water and it is cold and muddy! I was really glad I got to row although nothing compares to rowing on beautiful Lake Sag!

After Kids Kabin Melissa and I went to a talk “Where will Science be in the next 10 years” at the Center for Life. There were 4 people talking about their prediction for what science will do in the next 10 years. It was interesting but different than I was expecting. It was good to have a bit of brain stimulation!

I watched some of the Chilean miners rescues online and was very happy for the miners and their families!

Thursday Oct. 13
After the normal KK sessions, another worker and I went to visit many of the kids who attend KK to invite them on some of the half term trips that are coming up in a week and a half. We were invited into many of the houses when talking to the parents and dropping off forms . It was really interesting to see where many of them live. I was surprised by how nice many of their houses are. This brings up a point I have been meaning to write about for awhile. We have been told time and again about how poor of a neighborhood we are in is and yet I look around me and see a lower-middle class neighborhood…nothing like what I would expect to see in a poor neighborhood in the US. During our orientation week a local man who has lived and worked in the area for several years talked to us about the area, poverty and some problems the area is facing. During this time he showed us an interesting map online and it ranked each about 100 house area by income. According to this map (which I want to find again), we are in a very poor area of England. The welfare system seems to be much better in England than in the US. Even though there is a lot of unemployment (many men trained to do specific jobs and then those industries moved out of the area) everyone has a house and gets money for food. Last night (Saturday Oct. 16) we were over at the Pendower Good Neighbor Project where the other Newcastle AMA volunteers are located and we were talking about this topic with them and three guys who are Geordies (1 current volunteer, 1 past volunteer and 1 friend of the current volunteer). Homelessness is not a big deal here at all. There are no homeless shelters or soup kitchens that I know of, I just don’t think they exist here. There are homeless people but it seems like it is pretty hard to lose the government housing you are given. Healthcare is also free which seems to work pretty well here and this means the poor have the same access to healthcare as the rich. It is taking me awhile to get used to this new view of “poverty” and I’m having a bit of a hard time doing this. Well, I’m not sure I did a good job explaining my thoughts on this idea but time to move on.

Saturday Oct. 16
We took the bus to York for the day. Abby was an RA for two years in college and one of her RDs was in York on a trip with grad students studying student development so they were on a trip visiting universities in England and Scotland to compare them to universities in the US. Melissa studied abroad in York and we all wanted to go there at some point so we took this opportunity to go to York. Abby had lunch with her RD and Melissa went to the York Minster to get in free by going to noon prayer. Unfortunately there was some special service going on and then a wedding. You could still pay the £8 pounds to get in but we really just wanted to get in for free so we settled for seeing what we could see from the entrance and the outside. I have seen several big churches from study abroad, family trips and one while I’ve been here. I know I will see more big churches so I don’t feel like I missed out on too much by not paying to go into “the Minster” as they call it. We spent the day pretty much just wandering around the town. We walked over to Cliford’s Tower but didn’t go in because there really isn’t much to see inside according to Melissa. It is pretty small and doesn’t look like there would be much to see inside. I really liked the Shambles street! York is a medieval city and this is an area where the streets are especially narrow and it is said that people would pass things to each other across the road through open upper story windows! There were lots of old cool looking buildings! It was a fun town to wander though! There were lots of fun shops to go into and browse around! There were some stores that I really liked although I did resist the urge to buy lots of things and only bought two small items which might end up as gifts for others. It is pretty small and I feel like I walked down many streets multiple times but I didn’t get bored! There is also a wall that surrounds the city and we walked on two different parts of it. The wall is about 3 miles which is totally doable but we didn’t feel like it was necessary to walk the whole wall. We also stopped in an art museum and there was a neat exhibit on hats. We had good weather for the most part but it did rain 3 times but they were sun showers/sprinkles and didn’t really cause any problems.

When we got back to Newcastle we went over to Pendower to visit the other AMA volunteers there. It has probably been a month since we have seen them! They are really nice and we all want to get to know them better! Sadly one of them leaves in January! It was a fun night with lots of laughs and cultural comparisons since there were 4 Americans, 3 from England, 1 from the Philippians and 1 from the Czech Republic.

I hope you are all enjoying the fall colors in MN!!

Laura