Last Post from Newcastle Upon Tyne

Hello everyone!

Sorry I have been so horrible at writing entries!!! The last few weeks of Kids Kabin and Common Ground were really really busy. The last day of sessions at Kids Kabin, July 14th, we had a BBQ in the courtyard instead of activities. I made a bean bag toss, Abby did spin art, Melissa did balloon animals and there was a ping pong table set up along with all the picnic food. At the end Will said that we were leaving and lot of the kids came up and gave us hugs and said they would miss us which was really cute :) One of the cutest girls even gave us all a box of chocolates and an nice card! Right after the Kids Kabin BBQ ended Melissa and I went across the street for the Common Ground Summer Party - more food, conversation and laughs! While we were there several of the Kids Kabin staff went in town and we met them there for a drink after the Common Ground party was over. The Kids Kabin staff gave each of us a cute notebook that the kids had all written notes in, some chocolate, euros for our travels and a Geordie Dictionary!!! They are so nice!! It was a nice last night out but didn't last too long since everyone wanted to get their specific buses or metro home and most stop running around 11:30pm. On Friday Melissa and I took the smoothie bike to St. Vincent's for their school fair. We got to see a few of the Kids Kabin kids one last time including the one who had given us the card and chocolate.

Then I joined Melissa and 3 of her friends from college on a trip to Brussels and Barcelona. The weather in Brussels wasn't the best with rain most of the days we were there but it was a nice leg of the journey. The weather in Barcelona was AMAZING!! We only spent one morning on the beach but I could have spent all 4 days there! It was perfect! The sights were great there as well with favorites including the Sagrada Familia and Parc Guell.

I have been back since Saturday and on Sunday I participated in the Great Tyne Row. It was the first time it has happened and it was not a race but a fun row from Newburn (a ward of Newcastle were the Tyne Rowing Club) is located to Tynemouth - about 25 km. It was a lovely sunny day for it and I rowed for about 2/3 of the journey and was cox for the other 1/3. On Saturday and Sunday an painter painted my room and Melissa's room because when the windows were replaced and replastered around them the plaster was a different color than the walls. The rooms look really nice and fresh but it is strange not having all the pink and purple flowers on the walls in my room - it looks so bare!!

The past 2 days have been a frantic sorting, packing and cleaning ordeal! I also made it down to Tyne Rowing Club for one last row on the Tyne and had to go to Tynemouth to pick up the shirts I had accidently left there after the Great Tyne Row. This evening the sisters had us over for a pizza dinner and we ended up staying 3.5 hours because we were just talking and talking and talking! I have lots of things left to do in the morning when I get up and sadly several of the "for fun" things I wanted to do in the past month didn't happen :( The time just escaped me in the last month and lots of little things I wanted to do to further explore the area got pushed to the side! Such is life I guess!

As some of you know, I am not returning home just yet- instead I am traveling to Valensole, France to work on a small farm through the WWOOF program - world wide opportunities on organic farms. In exchange for working about 35 hrs a week I get a place to stay and food...so essentially voluntary work again. The family is a young couple with a 2 year old girl and they have vegetables, wheat, goats, other animals, fruit trees, etc. They make bread and cheese and sell that along with the vegetables at local markets. I will be there about a month and am excited to see what it will be like!

Sorry there aren't many pictures and I didn't expand much on the many things in this entry! I am in denail that I leave Newcastle in 16 hours!

Last Friday Aimee and Lubo came over for dinner and a movie which was really fun! We watched “Yes Man” and another movie that I can’t remember the name of at the moment. We had planned on going to the Hoppings which is a fair that comes to Newcastle every year but the forecast had said about 80% chance of rain so we changed our plan to dinner and a movie instead of the fair. As it turns out it didn’t rain but we had a really nice evening anyway.

On Saturday Aimee came with Melissa, Abby and I on a walking retreat. It was in County Durham so not far away at all. Unfortunately the forecast was correct for Saturday and it poured during a good portion of the walking retreat. We soon learned that our backpacks were not waterproof at all and that the contents were pretty soggy! When we stopped for lunch it cleared up a little bit and from then on it just sprinkled or was windy which was actually nice because we dried out a lot by the time we got back to the retreat center where we were given tea and scones :) The day started and ended with a reflection. The theme was about being open to new ideas, new adventures, etc. which I think is a great theme and ties into our year in England very well although the rain made it harder for me to reflect during the walk and I ended up thinking about my wet feet instead- oops. One line of the song we listened to was “open to Yes” which made us all giggle inside because we had just watched “Yes Man” the night before and in the movie the main character is told to say yes to everything.

On Sunday Brother Ralph took us to Causey Arch which is just outside Gateshead. It is the oldest surviving railway bridge and was used to transport coal to the Tyne River. There is also the Tanfield Railway right by the bridge which is a heritage railway that runs for 3 miles from Sunniside to Tanfield. We didn’t take a ride on the train but saw it go by several times. We took a walk in the woods near the arch and railway and saw the River Burn that runs under Causey Arch. It was a fun afternoon out with Ralph!

This past week flew! We had extra school groups come in on Monday and Friday which helped the time go faster! I have really enjoyed working with the various school groups throughout the year and this coming week will be the last week we have any school groups in. Since I applied for and got a grant to buy ingredients for the cookery sessions I’ve been running with the school groups I am in the process of filling out an evaluation for. I asked the teachers to send me some feedback from their students and their opinion of how the sessions went, etc. I got some back this past week and it was fun to read the comments the kids wrote and all their creative spellings for words like spaghetti (spogety, spegety), sausage(sosuge, sosed, sosaged), pizza (pezer, pizzer) and even my name (Lorer, Lora)!

Yesterday I decided to go to Tynemouth one last time (might get another chance to go but I’m not sure). The sky was looking a little iffy but I put my rain jacket in my bag and went. The weather was beautiful when I got there- upper 60s with a warm breeze! There were tons of people out and about and I’m not surprised because it was finally feeling like summer! Melissa had found out from a friend that lives in Whitley Bay that there are some cool caves in Cullercoats that we had not seen so I made it my goal to walk up to Cullercoats and see some caves. I’m not sure what I was expecting but they were a lot smaller than I imagined but they were fun to see anyway. I sat on the beach and read for a little while and kept an eye on the darkening clouds coming my direction. Luckily the clouds never produced any rain and I headed back when my stomach started grumbling. There were several groups BBQ-ing on the beach and it smelled amazing! We decided that fish and chips sounded like a good dinner and went to Mr. Gee’s just down the road and got fish and chips for £2.20, yum yum!!! I think I’ll have to do that one more time before leaving since it is really tasty and not very expensive.

Today we went to mass at 11 am at the Chaplaincy and then all went in different directions. I wandered around town before going to the Great North Museum which opened at 2 pm. I walked through Eldon Square and wandered into a few stores before stopping at Tesco for a pasta salad to eat for lunch and decided to go down to the Quayside to eat it. Each Sunday there is a market down on the Quayside so it was pretty busy but a much better place to have lunch than the middle of a busy shopping street. There was a zip line across the Tyne today as well so it was fun watching that take place and people screaming as they went down the zip line. I’m pretty sure you had to sign up in advance to do it and even if you didn’t a skirt probably wouldn’t have been the best thing to wear while flying across the Tyne!

I have 3 weeks left of working at Kids Kabin and Common Ground and they are going to fly by! Yikes! I am also going to participate in the Great Tyne Row on July 24th so I will either be traveling with Melissa or Abby (both have friends coming over to travel for 2 weeks before going home) between finishing working or hanging around the area and taking day trips to places nearby that I didn’t get a chance to visit. I am working on setting up something to do in France (WWOOF or workway) for a few weeks after the Great Tyne Row and will let you all know when I have it figured out….I am way behind on this and stressing out about it since it has not been as easy to organize as I had hoped and there is a chance it will not happen and if that is the case I will be home the end of July instead of the end of August.

I hope you are having a great summer! I look forward to catching up with everyone when I return!

The Sun Dried Tomato Pesto Mix Up

On Wednesday after Kids Kabin I went to the grocery store as I normally do on Wednesday evenings. When I got back Melissa and Abby had already eaten (we make our own dinner on Wednesdays - every other day of the week one of us cooks dinner for all three) and told me there was some pasta left on the stove and Sun Dried Tomato Pesto in the fridge. I was super excited because I was starving and it sounded really tasty! So I took a jar of "Sun Dried Tomato Pesto" out of the fridge, put some pasta in a bowl and put two nice big scoops of "pesto" on it and heated it up. I got myself a cup of water and sat down in the living room to enjoy some tv with my dinner. I took a nice big bite of the pasta and to my surprise found my mouth was on fire! I was shocked! How could Sun Dried Tomato Pesto be hot?!? As I quickly drank all my water I realized that the last time Melissa got some of Bruce's Hot Sauce it was in a Sun Dried Tomato Pesto jar (as you can see from the picture the two jars look pretty darn similar and even the colors of their contents look very very similar)! And he said this was the hottest batch he had made (Bruce works at Kids Kabin with us)! Yikes! After eating a banana to cool the fire in my mouth I told Abby and Melissa what I had just done and they practically fell off their chairs they were laughing so hard! I have to admit, it was pretty funny! Even though I do not like wasting food there was no way I was going to eat that bowl of pasta and I made myself a new bowl of pasta - this time I actually put Sun Dried Tomato Pesto on it and it was very tasty!

Melissa and I have been struggling the last few weeks since the sun rises at 4:30 am and our really nice new windows do not have any blinds! We were going to buy some blinds and put them up but Sr. Sylvia said they would buy them for us but would have to get approval from the London office that handles the money for home repairs, etc. However, the lady was on holiday and then Sylvia was going on holiday for two weeks so it would take awhile to get the approval. After a few weeks of waking up way way too early only to toss and turn until my alarm went off I came up with the idea of cutting cardboard to fit into my window frame. So Monday night I had a half hour battle with two big pieces of cardboard and transformed my room into the "Laura Cave" as Abby now calls it. The great thing is I can take the cardboard out in the morning and put it back when I go to bed so that it is still light in my room during the day. I had tried taping things over the windows before but it didn't work well and then I wouldn't take it down and have a darker room all day or it would fall down half way through the night and I would have to use more tape to put it back. It is amazing how much of a difference the cardboard makes and honestly the cardboard is probably better than any blinds we would find! Now I can sleep past 5:30 am with not problems at all! In fact, it is pretty much completely dark even at 8:30 am when I normally get up :)

http://community.newcastle.gov.uk/libraries/2011/06/09/a-snapshot-of-the-geordie-language/

In September I had no idea what alreet, scran, why-aye, toon, tatties or divvent meant but I'm glad to report that I have come a long way in understanding Geordie! I still hear words each week that I don't know and an article that Newcastle Library put together proves that I still don't know a lot of Geordie words! According to the article:

"The top 20 Geordie words as nominated by people from across the region were:

1 Gannin (Going)
2 Canny (Well, fine, very)
3 Clarts (Mud)
4 Hinny (Honey, sweetheart, friend)
5 Divvent (Do not)
6 Clarty (Muddy)
7 Hoy (Throw)
8 Nettie (Toilet)
9 Doon (Down)
10 Lass (Woman, girl, wife)
11 Hacky (Dirty)
12 Hadaway (Go away)
13 Hyem (Home)
14 Plodge (Wade)
15 Toon (Town)
16 Why-aye (Yes, I agree)
17 Alreet (Alright)
18 Claggy (Sticky)
19 Knaa (Know, no)
20 Marra (Workmate, a match/equal) "

It was interesting for me to read the list because some words that I hear all the time and think are great (ta, tah rah, scran, pet, cuppa, etc.) are not on the list but others I've never heard before are on the list. Then again, some of the words I like are probably just be ordinary British words and not specifically Geordie. I'm sure I will miss the Geordie accent a bit when I go home and it will be interesting to see if any words automatically come out when I get home resulting in funny looks for people having to ask me what I'm mean.

This weekend I was busy busy busy cleaning my room. I spent 4+ hours on Saturday cleaning my carpet. First I used the normal vacuum and then the special heavy duty carpet vacuum we borrowed from Brother Ralph. Since there was so much soot stuck in my carpet it took ages to clean and even after 4+ hours spent vacuuming my small room the water was still black! It was hard to tell if it was working sometimes but the end result confirmed that it was working! My carpet does look a lot nicer although I know it could still use some work. Today was spent washing my walls since there was still a lot of soot on them. Again that took ages but it is really nice now that it is done! It feels really nice to finally have everything cleaned from the soot disaster! I rearranged my room when I put all the furniture back but I’m not sure it will stay in this arrangement or not. I’ve wanted to rearrange my room for awhile but it may take another rearrangement or two to get the best configuration.

Below are picture of before and after pictures as well as a picture of the water from the vacuum (sorry the "after" picture turned on its own and I can't figure out how to rotate it in blogger). As you can tell from the after picture it isn't totally clean but it is a lot better. I think I might vacuum again with the carpet/steam cleaner next weekend to get it even better.



The weather this weekend has been pretty crummy-rainy all weekend! However most of the country is experiencing a drought so I know it is definitely needed!

Saturday was a leaving mass and celebration for the priest at the Chaplaincy where we go to church whenever possible. It was a nice mass followed by lots of yummy food! Sunday was the leavers’ mass for the Chaplaincy and we were considered leavers’ even though we are not students. All the leavers’ were given the book “How to Survive the Rest of Your Life” which sounds useful and it was written by a priest in the Hexham and Newcastle diocese which is cool. The mass was followed by a BBQ and as they say “all you have to do is plan a BBQ in England and you are guaranteed rain”! Despite the rain it was still a nice BBQ and a nice way to wind down the weekend. The Chaplaincy has been a very nice place to go since the population there is about our age, we could relate to the messages in the homilies so much more than at St. Anthony’s and everyone is super friendly! Luckily there will still be Sunday morning mass at the Chaplaincy until the Sunday after we leave! We were worried for a moment that it was the last mass but it wasn’t!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Hello Everyone,

Sorry it has been sooooo long since I wrote a blog post. I actually have several half finished blog entries in word documents that may or may not eventually end up here. The past 2 months have been very busy – including lots of traveling! Here is what I’ve been up to:

I never mentioned the great soot/dust disaster of 2011 so I suppose it should be mentioned as it caused a lot of frustration and extra work for me. It happened on Tuesday April 12th. We were told about an hour ahead of time that people were coming to replace the windows in my room, Melissa’s room and the window in the upstairs closet. My windows were leaky so they did need to be replaced and they had been looked at but had not been told when they would be replaced. It was tricky because the flat we live in is owned by the sisters’ but the flat below us in Council Housing so there is some rule about the Council actually owning the frame on the house and therefore responsible for the roof/windows in the roof so we had to wait for the Council to send people to fix them instead of hiring a private contractor to do the job. When we found out they were coming I was on my way out the door to go to Common Ground but decided I would take everything off my desk and dresser so it wouldn’t get dusty and boy am I glad I did! I was expecting a mess when I got back that evening but nothing close to how extremely dirty it was! It was so disgusting! Every surface was covered in a think black dust/soot type powder!! There was even dust and plaster chucks between my bed sheets! Everything under my bed was covered as well and some dust also made it into my closet! There were apparently tarps over my bed and other parts of my room but I have a hard time believing that! I spent hours that evening cleaning my room (with Abby’s help) and even though it wasn’t close to being clean we decided to stop for the day. I spent the next few days sleeping in the living room while the dust finished settling and it could be cleaned enough that my feet didn’t turn black when I walk in my room. I have yet to use a deep cleaning vacuum to get the carpets really clean and the walls need to be washed.

The Easter Holidays were 2 full weeks plus a Bank Holiday Monday so Melissa, Abby and I took advantage of this time off to do some traveling. I went and visited a good friend, Michelle, in France before meeting up with the others in Rome for Easter. From there I went to visit another friend, Emeline, in Pienza while the others went to Naples. I met back up with them in Florence and from there we went to Venice. It was a fantastic trip filled with lots of great food, wonderful sights and lots of laughs! I plan on writing a separate entry about this trip.

Once we got back to Newcastle I had a very busy week and a half before Mom, Dad and Patrick arrived to travel around the UK for just over 2 weeks. I met them at the airport in Edinburgh where we visited for a few days before heading down to Newcastle. It was great to be able to show them around the area as well as Kids Kabin and Common Ground – now when I talk about these places they will know what I’m talking about which is great! We also went to Durham, Tynemouth, Bath, London and Canterbury. It was great to get to spend 2 weeks with my family! Again, this really deserves a separate entry.
This past week was another half term so the kids had school off and Kids Kabin ran some camping trips. I went on one of the camping trips and we went up to Rupert’s Wood (I went to Rupert’s Wood once before in February to help with some projects). We took a group of the young volunteers (kids over 12 who come to training once a week and then can help run sessions at Kids Kabin) and for the most part it went well. The girls were more problematic than the boys but that was definitely expected! They couldn’t seem to keep their rubbish in their bags or put it in the rubbish bag and didn’t want to help with the community project we were doing at Rupert’s Wood. Even though there attitudes could have been better they did really enjoy running around the woods, playing in the pond catching tadpoles and just being kids. The boys were very focused the entire time because they were making a fort to sleep in and were in heaven being outdoors. Their fort turned out very nice and they actually slept in it overnight! When we were getting ready to leave the next morning they all begged to stay another night so I know they enjoyed themselves which is good! It was a pretty quick trip as we left around noon on Tuesday and got back at 1 pm on Wednesday but I think it is better to have it a little shorter and have them wanted it to be longer instead of it being too long and getting bored at the campsite which would lead to them causing problems and fighting with each other.

Thursday was a particularly quiet day at Common Ground and my guess is that everyone was out enjoying the beautiful weather! Many people come to Common Ground on days when they don’t need any help with their case just to socialize and have somewhere to go but being such a nice day I’m guessing they took advantage of it spent the day outside.

Today was a staff training day at Kids Kabin. We started out with almost 3 hours of spring cleaning (even though it is June) which was really good to do and then had about 4 hours of a meeting to discuss various topics.

I can’t believe how extremely fast the time is going! I have 6 weeks left and there is still so much I want to do! I need to come up with some goals for the time I have left and just make sure I get the most out of my remaining time here.

Happy April!!

Last Sunday I read a reading at Mass which was a first for me! I walked to the chaplaincy because it was a very nice day and I had been inside all day so the hour long walk was very nice! I left extra time to get there since I didn’t want to be late and ended up getting there earlier than normal. Apparently Father Downey asks people to do readings, bring the gifts to the altar, etc before mass starts so whoever gets there first gets asked. Luckily the atmosphere is relaxed and there are only about 40-50 people there which was perfect for me.

Not much new happened this week except for starting street sessions. Everyone has 2 evenings a week that they do street sessions, mine are Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday we brought the mobile cooker and bike repairs out to “monument” which is a small monument in a neighborhood not far from Kids Kabin. We made lots of pancakes and fixed some bikes. About 30 kids showed up and took part in the activities over the hour and a half we were there. On Thursday we brought the smoothie bike (a bike powered blender) and sports equipment. We were on Hexham Ave which is just a block and a half away from Kids Kabin and not as busy of an area so we only had about 15 kids show up. I really enjoyed both evenings and think that the street sessions will be highlights of my week in the next few weeks! It is so fun being outside and engaging with new kids (and some who regularly come to Kids Kabin as well)! I will try to remember my camera next week so that I can get some pictures.

Melissa and I have been helping two of staff/apprentices at Kids Kabin with their college work (we each do one day a week for one hour). In the UK college does not mean you will earn a undergraduate degree like it does in the US. There are several different options and I know they will receive a certificate when they are done but most of the work is done at home (they don’t attend classes) and an advisor comes to see how they are doing every two weeks or so. Neither enjoyed school much and did not do further education after high school. For one of guys, it is like pulling teeth to get him to even work on it for half an hour. The other has a better attention span and easier time coming up with idea but since he is in his upper 30s and doesn’t own a computer, it takes him ages to type it all up (uses hunt and peck typing). It has been an eye opening experience working with them on their school work. They are both really good at the hands on stuff they do at Kids Kabin on a daily basis but put them in a school setting and they struggle.

This past week during art sessions, lots of Mother’s Day cards and gifts were made because Mother’s Day is today, Sunday March 3rd, in the UK (or Mothering Sunday as my calendar says)! I had seen Mother’s Day gifts and cards in stores several weeks ago and I was really surprised that everything was out already until I realized UK Mother’s Day is a month before the US Mother’s Day. Happy UK Mother’s Day!!

I started volunteering at a community centre called “The Meadows” three weeks ago. I am helping in their environmental project called “Terra Nostra”. They have a rain water recovery system, wind turbine, solar panels and geothermal energy. The first week I helped look for more funding that could be used to get another more powerful wind turbine. Last week I helped with a school group that came in to work in the garden and learn about the other projects going on. On Friday I calculated water flow rates from the different water tanks and used that info to set up a timing system for the leaky hose they are going to put in the garden beds and figured out the spacing and length of the hose needed in each set of beds. I am only able to go once a week for 4-5 hours but so far it has been interesting.

I’ve been wanting to get a haircut for awhile now but kept forgetting to make an appointment at a place about a 10 minute walk from our flat that Abby went to a few months ago because she said they did a good job and it was a good price. Since I had no plans today I decided to go into town and get a haircut at a place I had seen in Eldon Square that advertised haircuts for a little cheaper that the one down the street. I went and got in pretty quit which was nice. The service was ok and the stylist wasn’t the most pleasant I’ve had but I figured for £13.95 it was ok. However when I was told the price it was £19.95 not £13.95 like I was expecting! I was shocked! Apparently they charge by length of hair and mine was pretty long so it was “level 4”! Since that bit of important information was not listed on the website or anywhere in the shop that I saw, I wrote a nice customer complaint on their website! At least the haircut itself is pretty much what I wanted and I got a nice walk into town and back from town…I even took off my jacket on the walk home because I was too warm…so nice! I am really enjoying this 50s weather and being able to walk to more places instead of always taking the bus. Below is a picture of the haircut...not a great picture but the best I could do taking it myself (see last post to compair length).

This morning I ate a “muffin” with peanut butter for breakfast….this “muffin” is what we would normally call an “English muffin”. I couldn’t help but chuckle inside when I bought them at the grocery store yesterday. I feel like there have been a couple other such occurrences but I can’t think of them right now. Two things continually annoy me about England or at least the North East of England since I'm not sure if it is true for other parts of the country or not. One is the amount people smoke! Not at Kids Kabin because none of the staff smoke but at Common Ground and The Meadows it seems like people are constantly going out for a “tab”. Also, just walking around Byker or in town you will walk through at least a couple clouds of cigarette smoke. Yuck!!! Another really annoying socially acceptable behavior is littering. There is way more trash on the ground than there should be and it is not uncommon to see someone throw a bottle or wrapper on the ground when they have finished eating or drinking the contents. Unbelievable!

I hope you are having a lovely weekend!

Happy Spring!!!

I cannot believe that another week has flown by!

Last Friday I helped plant trees at a tree planting event. The first part was boring-a lot of watching and not much doing as important people, like the Mayor, took pictures while “planting” the first few trees with the various groups that attended to help out. I say “planting” because the holes were already dug and the tree was put in the hole for them…all that was left to do was to throw some dirt on it and smile. I went with a group called SCAN (through Newcastle University -the group I went with to Rupert’s Wood) and by the end of the day we were basically the only people left planting trees. Once all the promotion type stuff got out of the way and we could actually dig holes and do some work it was a nice day! I think 31 trees were planted in total and more were going to be planted on Saturday.

On Saturday Melissa, Abby and I went up to Holy Island (where we went in September for a retreat) to help do a big spring cleaning on the camp that is used over some of the school holidays and during the summer for Catholic summer camps. Sr. Josepha, who is the head teacher at one of the local primary schools (the one Abby works at), was in charge and she is amazing! Always full of energy and so caring! Luckily she is so nice and never seems to be in a bad mood because she had to rescue the mini bus we were riding in twice because we ran out of petrol! Since there were a bunch of people coming to help out they rented a 15 person mini bus and one of the guys drove it. He has driven before for Sr. Josepha so it wasn’t just a random person. Anyway, we were probably 20-30 minutes away from Holy Island when we ran out the first time and Sr. Josepha, who was already on Holy Island, came to the rescue! We had a lovely day for being there and in typical English fashion we had many tea/coffee breaks throughout the day so even though we were there working/cleaning for about 7 hours it didn’t seem like that much at all! Also, one of the girls who also goes to mass each week at the chaplaincy, where we go, came along to help out and it was really nice getting to know her better. It was a lovely day out of Walker and more than one person asked the driver when we were getting in the mini bus to go back if he was sure we had enough petrol…he responded confidently “yes”. However, just past Morpeth (about 14 miles away) we ran out of petrol again! I didn’t have anywhere to go and found it pretty funny but at the same time completely ridiculous! The driver just really wasn’t using common sense at all! If £15 of petrol didn’t get us to Holy Island, why would you think £15 of petrol would get us back to Newcastle?

The weather this week has been fabulous! In the 50s with sun most day :) I could get used to this type of weather! Luckily it doesn’t look like we will be having any more random snowstorms/snow days like in MN (although I was a bit sad that it really only snow for one week here)! The weather was great again for rowing yesterday. I went out in a single and although I didn’t think I was doing that great the coach said I was doing well so I guess that is good. I was happy that I got the jacket I ordered :)

The kids at Kids Kabin all seemed pretty chill and happier than normal this week and I’m thinking the weather had something to do with it! I can only hope that the weather stays nice! There are lots of flowers sprouting all over the place which I find nice! We got a new logo for Kids Kabin this year and today we got some signs to attach to all the trailers we will take with us for the street sessions starting next week. We are also getting hoodies so there are going to be Kids Kabin logos galore!

In other interesting news we are getting our shower redone next week and it is currently out of commission. After spending the day at Holy Island and cleaning for several hours, we all took showers on Saturday evening only for our downstairs neighbors to tell us that they had water coming into their bathroom from our bathroom and that it had actually been happening all week but it was really bad tonight! Uh oh! The plumber came and looked at it and found some problems with the way the shower was installed-he thinks it must have been a do it yourself installation that wasn't done correctly. Luckily we have a bathtub to use otherwise it would have been a long week and a half without a shower!

That is about all I have for this week! Sorry I didn't have many pictures for this post. Have a great weekend!
Laura

Thursday March 17th, 2011

So 2 months later I have definitely dropped the ball on blogging! Sorry everyone! I guess I was just caught up in life here and honestly the time has been flying by so I didn’t realize it had been soooooo long since I had written. With only 4 months until I am done, I just don’t know where the time as gone!

Today is St. Patrick’s day and it does not appear to be a big deal at all here in England. Hardly anyone was wearing green today (besides Melissa, Abby and I that is)! None of the kids mentioned it during sessions either which is a big clue to me that is really isn’t celebrated here. I did see one guy where a big green St. Patrick’s Day hat but that was it. I made green cupcakes to celebrate and Abby ate two already so I take that as a good sign!

Let’s see, what has happened in the last 2 months? Probably a lot but most of it just seems like day to day stuff. Here are some things I have done/thoughts on the last few months:

-We went on a trip to Paris and Athens. This requires another post so look for that in a few days.

-I have been continuing to row once a week and the weather has cooperated so we have been able to go on the water the last few weeks which has been great! I have been in a single (it was a training single so it had extra stabilizers and would have been hard to tip), a quad and next week if the weather is nice I will be going out in a double. I still feel like I am all over the place but slowly improving.

-Common Ground continues to be interesting and a constant reminder of how incredibly lucky I am!! Today a lady got a message from her son via facebook for the first time since leaving her country I believe and was in tears because she was so happy to finally get news that he was ok. The donations have definitely slowed down and the food donations are few and far between. The asylum seekers who are destitute- meaning they get no housing and no money from the government -are given £10 a week and a bag of food depending on what we have. When I got here in September all the food drawers were commonly about half full and at times overflowing (the food is kept in 4 big filing cabinets). Now most of them are empty…last week all there was to give out was a bag of rice and a tin of tomatoes….normally there is tea bags, oil, sugar, pasta, rice, vegetables, soup, tomatoes, bean, fruit, tinned meat and toiletries. It is really hard to tell them there really isn’t much we can give them. Most say “it is ok” and are appreciative for what they do get. To me it doesn’t really seem ok because I know they don’t have much money to buy other food! I have noticed that the prices have gone up since we have gotten here. Some things have really gone up in price while other things have gone up by only a few cents. I’m not sure what has caused the prices to increase but they have!

-At Kids Kabin we are gearing up to start street sessions in a week and a half. I think it will still be a little chilly out but we will see! Yesterday Abby and I learned all about using the portable kitchen/stove by wheeling it around the Kids Kabin courtyard, unloading and reloading it onto the trailer, and making some bacon! Next week involves prepping for other activities and getting supplies and checklists together so we can easily get out for street sessions soon after the junior sessions end. Should be fun! There have been quite a few new kids coming to Kids Kabin over the past few weeks and it has been fun having new kids around who are super excited about everything. We continue to do sessions with local primary schools and they are generally really good! In comparison to the after school junior sessions, the school sessions have about twice as many kids in each activity and they go better. This is probably because they kids think of it as “school” and there is a teacher there as well. I run the cooking sessions when they come in and it never ceases to surprise me when they are all more than willing to do the dishes and clean up! That is something that rarely happens during the normal junior sessions.

-One thing that I think is really good about the schools here is that there are a lot more primary (elementary) schools and most of the kids walk to school either with parents, friends or siblings. Most of the schools have only one or two classes of each grade but I like that they are more local and the kids are able to walk or bike to school daily….no need for school buses and long bus rides! The kids who come to Kids Kabin go to mainly 5 primary schools that are all easily accessible by foot or bike from Kids Kabin. There are fewer high schools than primary schools so I have seen a fair amount of high school students taking the bus or metro to school but since there are already good public transport systems it works out well.

-Ash Wednesday was last week and I think it was the first time I have had people ask me what the “dirt” or “black spot” on my forehead was for. Two of the other staff/volunteers at Kids Kabin asked why Melissa, Abby and I all had “black spots” on our foreheads and Melissa got asked a lot when working at Common Ground and one person actually asked her if she could wipe it off (she didn’t of course!). It was interesting feeling like a bit of a “minority” for the day as I didn’t see many other people with crosses on their foreheads. Many of the kids at Kids Kabin knew about it because some of the go to two of the local Catholic primary schools but some of them had questions as well.

-Tomorrow, March 18, is red nose day. Basically it is a day of fundraisers for various charities in the UK and Africa. The fundraisers are supposed to be fun/funny and there are special TV programs the BBC as well. (www.rednoseday.com/about)

That's about it for now. I will do my best to get a post about my trip up soon and post on a more regular basis as well!

Laura

Welcome to Kids Kabin!

Hi everyone,

I finally got around to taking pictures of Kids Kabin...since I spend so much time there I figured you might want to see what it looks like.


Here is Kids Kabin from the outside. It was closed when I took the picture...the big blue shutter is where the doors are.





This is the art room. The red and white thing you see in the picture is a puppet theater trailer. This is the kitchen. I help run cookery sessions a couple times a week. Today I worked with Sr. Jill and we made some gluten free recipes since Sr. Jill has celiac disease/gulten allergy.

This is one of the hallways...got to love the bright yellow doors!

The computer room-not used for much right now but we are working on getting an animation type activity up and running soon.

The pottery room-Abby spends a lot of time in here and runs pottery sessions a couple times a week. Since she was an art major she actually has experience with pottery and using the wheel!

This is the woodwork room.This is the sewing room. It is kind of a mess right now since it isn't used very often. All the staff/volunteers were given rooms last week to organize and I have the sewing room so it will look a lot nicer in a week or so!This is looking out from right in front of Kids Kabin. At the bottom of the big apartment building is Common Ground.

This is the Churchwalk Shopping Centre (to the left as you walk out of Kids Kabin)-a post office, grocery store, betting shop, drug store/pharmacy, 2 convenience stores and Greggs.

Above are some pictures I took today at the Tyne Rowing Club (the building, the Tyne River and a old boat planter box on the path to the club) where I have been rowing off and on since early November. On Wednesday mornings there is a learn to row course and that is what I have been going to. In November and December there were some other people who came but lately it has been just me and the coach. It has been great for learning (I can't complain about a 2 hour lesson for £2) but I hope other people start coming again because part of the reason I started rowing here was to meet more people. The other reasons were to learn more about rowing because I started last year at CSB/SJU and wanted to do it again and just to stay active. I haven't been on the water since before Christmas but let me tell you, it was tricky changing from rowing with one oar to rowing with two oars! They start everyone off here rowing with two oars where as at CSB/SJU everyone starts rowing with one oar. Hopefully it will be nice enough next Wednesday to actually go out and row instead of just having land practice on the ergs.

There is another rowing club in Tynemouth that I went to twice but the times at this one seem to work better for me. Also, they row on the sea and really only get to row during the summer months. I hope to row there some when in the summer/spring! They have evening practices and once it is spring time hopefully the water will be calmer and it will be light late enough as well! Tynemouth is a cool little city and it would be awesome to row on the sea.

It was Abby's Birthday on Monday so we had a little celebration at Kids Kabin and then had a nice dinner at home. I forgot to put toothpicks in the cake before putting tin foil over it so the letters got messed up a little bit :( Abby decided she wanted steak and potatoes for dinner so Melissa and I made steak, cheddar bacon mashed potatoes, grilled peppers and onions, spinach and a mushroom sauce. It was so good!! Of course, you can't have a cooking adventure with out the fire alarm going off. When we were cooking the steak/searing it on the stove the fire alarm went off but according to the websites Melissa and I read to learn about cooking steak it was pretty much gaurenteed it would happen. After some fanning and cross ventilation (opening the back door and front window), we were good to go and didn't have anymore fire alarm problems. Melissa's birthday isn't until May so they are nice and spread out over our 11 months here.

"When will my reflection show who I am inside"

Hi everyone,

I've been meaning to take pictures of Kids Kabin for awhile now and I keep forgetting to bring my camera with me! It is my goal for this coming week to remember my camera and take pictures since I realized I haven't done that. Here is one picture of Melissa, Abby and I outside Kids Kabin that was taken in November.

Kids Kabin is such a great resource! There are lots of rooms with endless possibilities and I love the little projects we do! Here is an example I made for a project this past week. I found the idea in one of the many craft idea books in the art room. I think it is pretty cute!

Woodwork is the activity where the most practical items are made. For example, lot of tables, chairs and bird boxes are made each week by the kids. When it snowed a lot before Christmas, sledges (aka sleds) were being made everyday. I thought that was pretty cool! They all just came and asked to make sledges! Last week I finished the spice rack I had been working on for a while and although it isn't perfect, I like it and can't wait to hang it on the wall and use it! I have found that woodwork is a lot more fun than I thought it would be and I hope to learn more about it and get better at it.

Melissa, Abby and I watched Mulan last night (we got a VCR and I found some cheap VHSs last week - about $.15 each)! We had a great time singing alone to "I'll Make a Man Out of You" and other favorites. The song "Reflection" stood out to me even though it isn't one of the songs I normally like as much as others in Mulan. In this song, one of the lines is "When will my reflection show who I am inside" and I felt like this was perfect for me right now and says how I am feeling. For a while now I have felt that I am often not the person I truly want to be even though I'm not sure exactly who that person is. It is hard to explain and probably why the line in the song hit home for me because it says what I want to say. I want others to see the person I know I am inside, or want to be (even though I'm still figuring out exactly who that is), and I know that that doesn't happen all the time. Not that I should care much about how other people see me but that I want to act truly myself and not hold back at all. So I know that it will take a lot of thinking and searching to figure out how to make some changes and make sure that "my reflections show who I am inside" but it is now a goal I have for this year.

I also think it ties in really well with an experience I had at Common Ground on Tuesday. I was helping someone apply for a crisis loan. The process for doing this consisted of waiting on hold while listening to the same 1 minute clip of Vivaldi’s Spring for about 30 minutes on repeat and the message "Thank you for your patience, we will take your call as soon as we can but all our lines are currently busy. You may want to call back later" or something like that, finally getting through only to get cut off, calling back and waiting just as long if not longer to get through and finally going through all the application questions and getting the loan. The client I was working with is smart (has a college degree in his our country) and we chatted while on hold. He was clearly very frustrated with the system and annoyed with all the hoops you have to jump through to get a crisis loan in order to buy food and hygiene supplies. The loan gives him money that is supposed to last for a week and if he needs more money next week he will have to do the same thing all over again. During our chatting he begged me to never let my family become refugees because it is awful. He wants a job and wants to be off the system as much as possible. Somethings he said where along the lines of how people look at him differently when he uses his food card at the stores or when out and about in general because he is not white and speaks with an accent. “When will my reflection show who I am inside” really fits for him as well. He is tired of having skills, knowledge and ideas yet being treated differently and not being able to provide for himself the way he knows he should be able to.

Well, that is about if for today. We are having a lazy weekend which has become a trend here and I am ok with that! January is flying by and I can't believe it is already half over!

Prague

Prague trip: December 19-23

Prague, or Praha, is the first place we visited where English is not an official language. It wasn’t really a problem because like in other tourist cities many people spoke English and most restaurants had English menus as an option. It was nice but also made me feel bad just waltzing into the country with no knowledge of their language and expecting to be accommodated. I am spoiled being an English speaker and being able to go all over without having to learn other languages. I know if we went to smaller cities, we would run into situations where the language difference was a problem but so far all the places we plan to go are big enough tourist cities that people will speak English.

(Sunday) Our trip to Prague was uneventful and we found our hostel easily. We had booked a 3 person room since it was pretty much the same price as a room with more beds a different hostel we were looking at. Turns out we were given a 4 person bedroom with a kitchen! Fabulous! We didn’t cook any meals since we wanted to try the food the Czech Republic has to offer but we did use the fridge for breakfast and sandwich ingredients. By the time we got to our hostel it was about 5 pm and we were all hungry! So we dropped our stuff in our room and went in search of dinner.

We found a nice place to eat and all ordered from the traditional Czech section on the menu. I got schnitzel style pork and potato salad, Abby had beef goulash with dumplings and Melissa had a roast duck with potatoes. They were all yummy and we left feeling satisfied. The potato salad I had was not the American style potato salad; instead it had a vinegar type dressing which I thought was better! We went to Tesco after dinner to get breakfast food and lunch food for the next day. Only during the breakfast the next day did we realize that the “milk” we bought wasn’t normal milk. I can’t remember the translation we found online but it definitely wasn’t what you would want to put on your cereal in the morning. I think that was our only language problem of the trip and the next day we made sure to buy the right kind of milk. Before heading back to the hostel we wandered over to the Charles Bridge and walked over it and back taking in the bridge and the castle lit up at night.
(Monday) On our second day, as seems to be our norm these days, we went on a Sandeman’s tour on Prague. We met in the Old Town Square and we got there early and looked around the Christmas market. So many fun things and yummy food! The tour of Prague was very informative and interesting…and cold! It is one thing to be walking around a city when it is cold and another to walk and stop for long periods of time for about 3 hours. The lunch stop in the middle was much needed and although we all brought sandwiches with us, we opted to buy something warm to eat and the soup bagel combo at Bohemia Bagel was exactly what we needed! Warm and yummy! One interesting thing we learned on this tour was about a poor man who walked into the Church of St. James and saw jewels around the neck of a statue of Mary, he decided to take them. Surprisingly the statue grabbed hold of his arm and would not let go! When he was found the next day by a monk or priest and he could not get the man’s hand free, he cut it off and hung it in the entrance of the church to warn all other thieves. It has been hanging there for 400+ years!
After the tour we walked up to Prague Castle. It isn’t a castle we would normally picture but more a collection of buildings that surround St. Vitus Cathedral. I really liked St. Vitus Cathedral! It is so pretty! The stained glass windows were amazing as well. We didn’t go all the way into the St. Vitus, just as far as you could go without a ticket. You had to buy a ticket for the Castle in order to go all the way into St. Vitus and we weren’t interested in the rest of the Castle so it would have been a pretty steep price to pay to maybe spend half an hour walking through the rest of the church. What we did see was great! We wandered around the castle grounds (which are free), watched the changing of the guard (they are much less serious looking than the guards at Buckingham Palace!) and went back to our hostel for a few minutes before dinner. We found a restaurant pretty close to our hostel. It has cool lamps hanging from the ceiling made out of old bottles. Abby and I had pizza and Melissa had gnocchi which I had never heard of before. I tried a bite and it was pretty yummy. My pizza was good and I decided I would eat all of it instead of bringing leftovers to our hostel because I don’t think pizza is nearly as good when it is reheated (Abby took some of hers to the hostel). I eat slow normally and Melissa and Abby eat fast….so needless to say it took me probably 45 minutes longer to finish my meal than they did! I was just chugging along and enjoying my meal but also couldn’t help but laugh a little bit at the situation. Since it is winter, it gets dark early!! There really isn’t a lot to do when it is dark and cold so we went back to the hostel to read or maybe play a card game. We weren’t in the hostel too long when the power went out for some reason or another…it was only out for about 1.5 hours so it wasn’t a big deal but not much reading or card playing happened. Oh well, more sleep is always good!

(Tuesday) Our tour guide on the Sandeman tour suggested that we get tickets to a performance or show while in Prague if we had some time. Our first order of business was to find a show to go to either that evening or the next day. We were really excited when we found out the Nutcracker was sold out but understandably so since it was showing that night and the next night. We ended up getting tickets for the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra Christmas Concert for the following night.

Then we wandered around Wenceslas Square and its Christmas market. Next we went to the Pinkas Synagogue and the cemetery. It is a memorial to all those from the Bohemia region lost during the holocaust. One of the exhibits has drawing that children did while in Terezin, a transit camp. The cemetery next to the Synagogue is incredible. I’ve never seen so many headstones in my life! And it is several layers deep since it was a ghetto area and they didn’t have anywhere to go but up. After this we walked up Petrin hill and saw the Petrin Tower, a miniature version of the Eiffel Tower built two years after the real on was built in Paris. We got some nice views of the city on our hike up the hill. After we climbed the hill we headed out in search of Strahov Monastic Brewery. Melissa had read about it and it sounded like an interesting place to have dinner. It was a bit off the beaten track and Abby doubted we were going to right direction for most of the walk to the Brewery but we did find it! One of the previous AMAs visited Prague and said that rabbit is a traditional food so I decided to try rabbit for my meal and it was pretty tasty. Along with some dumplings and a beer, I felt like it was a very Czech meal.
(Wednesday) The next morning/early afternoon was spent at the zoo. It was a big zoo but sadly most of the animals were in their winter indoor housing. We still got to see all the animals (except we never found the giraffe) and probably closer than if they were outside but it would have been nice if they were outside. The polar bears and the elephants were pretty funny. One of the polar bears kept banging on the door to their enclosure…we think s/he was hungry and that it was probably the door used to give them food. The elephants kept bobbing their heads like they were dancing to some silent music. One of our other favorite animals was a house cat that followed us around for awhile...can you tell we all miss our pets? When we finished up at the zoo we got lunch at Wenceslas Square Christmas market and headed on a wild goose chase for the Jewish quarter. The pass we had got us entry to many different places and was valid for two days but we didn’t have much time and we got turned around, oh well. We spent the evening doing some shopping in the Christmas Markets before having dinner and going to the concert. It was a nice concert and although it was a Christmas concert they didn’t play anything Christmasy.
(Thursday) We got up early on our last day to see the sunrise from the Charles Bridge, sadly it was completely overcast and we didn’t see anything. Melissa and I then went on a crazy hunt for a post office to buy a few stamps and mail some postcards. We had a map from the hostel and the post offices were marked on the map…sounded easy enough. The post office must have moved because we looked exactly where the map said it should be but didn’t find one. We asked a new paper stand where to find a post office but and we didn’t find that one either. We ended up finding a convenience store that sold stamps. By the time we got back to the hostel it was time to pack up and head to the airport. The flight ended up being delayed about an hour and a half but that was ok since we weren’t in a hurry to get anywhere.

A few random things:

We couldn't leave with out trying Trdlo...a yummy treat that was being made at several stands in all the Christmas markets:

"The Dancing House"

Above: People buying carp to eat for Christmas dinner.

Below: a building I thought looked like bubble wrap.