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