Events Week

It's been quite a while since I've posted anything, but it's all because I have been swamped with work like no one's business. Last Sunday, Ash and I went to Newcastle for the day, where we found the Angel of The North and went to NCLC (the Hillsong church) with Joanna from CU afterwards. It was raining and snowing most of the day, so my boots got soaked and I walked around in a puddle all day, which was not very nice at all. I really liked the church, but taking the metro to Newcastle every Sunday could get really expensive.

After Newcastle, we all came back to Sunderland to kick of Events Week with CU, which is basically a week to get more people involved with the organization. At each event, there is a speaker who talks about Jesus for just a few minutes. It's designed so that everyone will be interested in coming to the events (coffee/open mic night, curry night, dance night, etc), but they'll be exposed to the Gospel as well. Sunday night, we all hung out at Starbucks and listened to a cute little acoustic band. I came home to a bunch of people partying in my kitchen, being loud and slamming doors. While they were only here for an hour or two, they left a really awful mess in the kitchen and didn't attempt to clean it up in the least. I was not a happy camper. I just didn't understand how someone could be so disrespectful of a space, especially knowing that it was someone else's home. Needless to say, it did get cleaned up eventually (as in a few days), but I'm really hoping it won't happen again.

Monday night was curry night with CU; Ash and I invited our friend Jeff (a guy from App) and he seemed rather interested in what the speaker had to say about who Jesus was, so that was pretty cool! Tuesday I just had classes and homework. In my photo class, the professor showed us how to use the two new cameras we would be working with throughout the portrait project: a Mamiya and a Hassleblad (Google them! They look really legit). Wednesday was spent thrifting with Sheldon (a girl from CU) and doing homework. The moon was really bright and really big and really beautiful that night, so I snapped a couple photos from my window. Thursday was another event with CU: a ceilidh! Pronounced "kay-lee," a ceilidh is a traditional Gaelic dance. There was a really good turnout and we drew a pretty big crowd of spectators. I had SUCH a good time dancing with everyone, even though I didn't know what was going on half the time :) On Friday I went to my management workshop and went to CU, then worked on an assignment that was due Friday night for my management class. We had to perform a strategic analysis of the external and internal environments surrounding a UK textile manufacturer (doesn't that sound like fun!). But thankfully it's done, because STEVEN COMES TOMORROW!!!

- "Curry" is not just an Indian spice like I had originally thought; it's actually an entire dish. For dinner on Monday we had what was properly called "a curry," which was like rice and chicken that had been cooked in a spicy sauce-type thing.

- Also, thrift stores are called charity shops because different charities run the stores. Whereas we only have franchise upon franchise of Goodwills and the occasional Salvation Army, they have heaps of thrift stores under different names of different charities. If you don't know what you're looking for then they can easily be passed by with names like: The British Heart Foundation, Oxfam, The Children's Society, Pawz For Thought, and Barnados.

- What we call dessert (a generic term), English people call pudding. And when we say pudding, English people don't know what we're talking about. Therefore: all pudding is pudding, but not all pudding is pudding.