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!