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.

Durham

The past few days have flown by. I spent about 9 hours in the studio and the darkroom on Wednesday getting my negatives enlarged and printed, then spent another 3 hours finishing up an accompanying research/process book to go with them. But praise Jesus I turned it in! I'm SO glad to be done with it, and I know that everyone else is too. Thursday after class, I hung out with Becky and Ash and my new friend Ellie; we cooked heaps of chili for dinner and made a string telephone out of old aluminum cans and yarn. I'd say it stretched around 50 feet from Becky's flat to ours, and even with our shoddy craftsmanship it surprisingly worked! Of course the sound quality wasn't superb, but it worked nonetheless! It's a shame it only lasted a few hours; sometime during the night a crowd of drunk people walked by and ripped the string in two... but it sure was fun while it lasted. Friday I did some grocery shopping after class, and then went to CU in the evening. Ash and I helped Becky out with the music -- it definitely feels good to help lead worship again! :)

Today we went to Durham, which was about an hour bus ride southeast of Sunderland. It was a pretty cute town, but I can definitely understand why it's been called a "York wannabe." We took a tour of the Durham Castle, which is actually the campus for Durham College. Yes, students actually live in the castle. Yes, I was extremely jealous of them. I mean, who can say that their address is "Durham Castle, Durham"? SO COOL. It was really interesting seeing such a mix of old architecture and new technology; a pool table and Xbox system in the lounge stood out like a sore thumb beside the original 11th-century chapel. I really wanted to see what some of the dorms looked like, but we weren't allowed to (I did attempt to go exploring some of the rooms, but a girl told me that I wasn't supposed to be there unless I was visiting someone... sad day). We also went to the Durham Cathedral, which was built in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. While we were there Ash and I took Holy Communion (with real wine!) with a group of other people, and sat through the daily Evensong service. The Durham Cathedral Choir sang quite a few songs for the service -- I wish I could explain how amazing it was, but the English language just can't do it justice. Sitting in a thousand year-old cathedral and listening to the the sounds of the choir bounce off the high ceilings and surround the entire place gave me goosebumps (if you want an idea of what it sounded like, check out this youtube video). It was definitely an experience I won't forget. After the service we explored the cathedral a little bit more, and found the courtyard where a few scenes in Harry Potter were filmed (way cool!). All in all Durham was a nice day trip: cute city, lots of good photo ops, and an amazing cathedral. Tomorrow we head back to Newcastle, where Ash and I will check out the Hillsong Church there with a couple girls from CU. I'm stoked!

- Back in the days of ye olde England, people would serve pineapples to guests as a sign of wealth and status. Because England was too cold to grow pineapples, they had to be imported from warmer climates, which was extremely pricey.
- There has been a giant rainbow light/projection/laser thing shooting across the sky for the past few days. I've learned it's kicking off the AV Festival, which is a month-long "international festival of art, technology, music and film." It'll officially cut off tomorrow night, but I would love to go see it up close.

Shooting

I went back to Citylife Church on Sunday and was just as impressed with the music as I was last week, but the preaching... not so much. Last week there was a guest speaker so the actual pastor took the stage this week. Let's just say I felt kind of intimidated bu his loud an animated and Pentecostal-esque preaching style. The music is fantastic, but I don't know if I could handle the preacher every week. After church I did laundry and got some homework done in the process (you go Hannah!). Monday I had a lecture in the morning and spent the rest of the day in the studio. Storm joined us for Monday night Bible study, which was basically a recap of a series they had been doing for the past few weeks. And after Bible study we had a flat meeting about the Edinburgh trip we're planning. Because a lot of us have Friday classes, Ash, Lily, Jaja and myself will all be catching a train Friday night and meeting the rest of the group at the hostel in Edinburgh. Then we'll have heaps of Scottish fun and come home Sunday night!

The weather was absolutely fantastic today. Before my morning lecture I had to "top up" my phone (aka pre-pay next month's usages for O2), so I got there as soon as it opened. I brought my camera with me so I could get some shots of the city of Sunderland -- I've been in England over a month now, and yet I have managed to take pictures of everything except the city I live in. I didn't have loads of time to go exploring and snapping, but the photos I did get turned out pretty well. After my morning lecture I walked studio, where I spent the rest of my day/evening. My tutor, Dave, taught me how to use the enlarger (it's what you use to expose/transfer thw film negative to regular photo paper). After about 3 hours of trial-and-error, I managed to get my first final print done! Dave also introduced us to our next assignment: portraits. I am a LOT more excited about this one because it gives you so much room for creativity; you aren't restricted by simply replicating an existing photo. Although I don't have classes tomorrow, I'll be spending the entire day in the studio shooting my last film slide and getting my last 3 prints done. Film photography can be extremely frustrating and time consuming, but the quality of the prints is astounding if you do it right. It has taken me quite a while to get the hang of things, but now that I know how to use all the equipment I won't be so timid about everything.

As long as the weather keeps being awesome like it was today, I'll probably start walking to all my classes. I figured it up on Google maps, and today alone I walked almost 3 miles. If I can keep this up I'll be sure to have excellent legs by the end of the semester!

Frazzled

Thursday was an okay day. I spent the most of my morning and early afternoon in the studio trying to get a negative developed. Long story short, I had a detrimental brain fart and took the lid off my film canister while I was mixing some chemicals, completely blowing out the negative and ruining about 4 hours worth of work. Let's just say I wasn't the happiest of campers. My finance workshop was equally frustrating; we're starting to put together cash flow statements for businesses. This would normally all be fine and dandy because I've already taken an accounting class so I have some background in it, except we're reporting everything by UK standards so I have absolutely no clue what I'm doing. The lecturer isn't the best either, so it looks like I'll be teaching myself a lot about financial reporting this semester. Oh joy!

Yesterday's classes were somewhat better; I really like my management workshop tutor. He's a really sweet old man, and he really wants me to do well in the class and enjoy my stay here. We only meet once a week but it's surprisingly the one class I look forward to. After workshop I spent another 3 hours in the studio getting frustrated with myself (who knew that taking a picture of a rotten apple could be so time-consuming and difficult?), but I managed to shoot some film. I haven't developed it yet because the studio closed early, so we'll see how it turned out on Monday. Taking this film class is really making me start to hate photography -- well, kind of. I think the most aggravating thing is that for our first assignment, we have to replicate two photos by two photographers. Being the perfectionist I am, I'm never pleased with any of the negatives that come out so I keep reshooting and reshooting the exact same setup for days on end. I'll just be glad when this assignment is done and we can move on to other, more creativity-centered projects. Needless to say I was frazzled, and going to CU on Friday night was much-needed. There weren't a lot of people there because most of them were away at a leader's conference, but Ash and I led worship and everything went smoothly. The speaker was really good, and afterwards all of us grabbed dinner at a nearby pub. Then I came home to a lovely Skype date with Steven (our official 5 months, woot woot!). It was a nice way to start the weekend.

My day thus far has been extremely uneventful; I watched about 5 episodes of New Girl on Hulu since I was all caught up on Glee, spent too much time on Pinterest, and jammed out for a while on Becky's guitar. Tomorrow I'll go to Citylife church in the morning, do some laundry, and maybe do a little homework. Some of my friends have started planning a weekend trip to Edinburgh in a few weeks, so I'm getting pumped about that! We'll spend a day in Edinburgh, then another day on a bus tour of some cool places around Scotland -- maybe even spotting Nessie along the way. It's gonna be super fun and I cannot wait for all the photo ops that will come out of it!

Pancakes

I've started posting less and less often because, well, there isn't a whole lot going on now. I think I'm finally getting in the swing of things, so my everyday adventures seem less extraordinary and novel. But that's not to say that I haven't been having a fabulous time!

After my Monday management lecture, I spent a good chunk of my afternoon/evening in the photo studio taking pictures of a rotten apple (oh how awesome Hannah! How can you contain your excitement!). Now that I've gotten a better handle on how to work the 5 x 4 camera, I was able to get around 6 or 7 paper negatives developed, but I was still super uneasy about moving to real film. After spending 4 hours in the studio, I grabbed my Bible from home and went to a Bible study with some girls from CU, then Becky brought her guitar over and we sang Jesus songs until midnight. We had a grand ol' time.

After my two Tuesday classes, I spent another chunk of the evening in the photo studio. This time, I managed to process my first-ever film negative! It was so exciting! It also makes me appreciate digital cameras a LOT more. I had to recruit about 3 different people to re-explain the process of exactly what to do with the negative and how to do it, but I finally had one developed, processed, and dried after about 45 minutes. Whew. Afterwards, I celebrated Fat Tuesday/Pancake Day/Shrove Tuesday with the girls from my Bible study. We got Domino's pizza and made heaps of pancakes with all sorts of delectable toppings: strawberries, nutella, whipped cream, and milk chocolate just to name a few. Sooo good.

Today was supposed to be another get-things-done day, but I had a migraine for the first half of the day so I didn't really get started until 2:00. I've noticed that my migraines are a lot less frequent than they used to be; it's probably due to the fact that I'm less stressed out, but I like to think of it as the healing powers of ye olde English air. I still got quite a bit of shopping done even though I had less time than expected (I am a girl after all, so shopping is supposedly my forte). I got some toiletries & some cleaning supplies from Wilkinson, and all my groceries came from Aldi. I also stumbled upon a row of thrift stores in town, so of course I found some cute clothes and fabulous deals while I was there. A super cute sweater dress marked down to £1.49? Heck yes I'll take it! It might be that the "charity shops" are better quality than all the Goodwills I'm used to hitting up, or it could be that semi-outdated British clothes look fashionable and new to me, but the three stores I visited all seemed to have much better selections than the ones at home. Who needs Top Shop and H&M when you can find vintage and cute clothes for less than 2 pounds? I've been waiting to find the local thrift stores here, and I think it's safe to say they will be frequented in the future.

I cooked spaghetti for dinner, then Ash and I practiced for Friday night's music at CU. The rest of the evening will probably be spent watching American TV shows. All my thanks and love goes to Steven for this one, because he somehow managed to hook me up to the server he built in Boone, and now I can proxy through it and have a US IP address! So now I can get on Pandora and Netflix and Hulu and all sorts of other websites that don't work in the UK! Catching up on Glee has been a much-appreciated and pleasant streaming experience.

- When someone says "dark room" with respects to photography, they really do mean DARK room. You have to walk through two sets of doors to get to the film-loading area, which had a black ceiling, black walls, black floor, and black counter. Loading and unloading film consists of feeling your way around while staring into total darkness. Kinda creepy, but kinda cool.

- Deodorant comes in an aerosol can. Wait... what? (Yeah! They have some roll-on, but it's the kind with an actual ball that rolls. For the most part, it's spray-on. Crazy!)

- The second meal of the day is called "dinner," and the third meal of the day is called "tea."

- A lot of people eat their pancakes topped with sugar and lemon juice -- kinda funky, but kinda good!

- So far my British girl friends have called me: flower, honey, love, sweetie, and my personal favorite: petal. I'm totally bringing some of these sayings back with me.

God is Good

The past couple of days have been positively phenomenal. Yesterday, Shelby, Ash, and myself went on an adventure to find the Penshaw Monument in Sunderland. We had seen some postcards of this Greekish-Parthenon-looking structure at a few shops in town, so we set out to find it. Since we had taken the metro last week to Newcastle, we felt like we were pretty experienced travelers (except for the fact that we missed the first metro by about 7 seconds... but no worries). So we caught the metro to the closest stop, which we later found out was a pretty decent way away. The 3-mile hike to the monument was filled with scenes of your typical English countryside: rolling hills, cute little bridges, and precious cottages & churches. Although the second half of the hike was uphill and extremely tiresome, it made actually reaching the monument that much more appreciated. It was so much bigger than I expected, but it was also not nearly as old as I had thought (constructed in 1844, to be exact). It was still cool though! We caught the bus home, grabbed some dinner in town, and I crashed for the night.

This morning I went to a church that was just a few blocks down the road from my flat. I felt really welcome there, and the worship was really good -- they even did a song that was written by Elevation (the church I go to while I'm at school), so I had a major God moment! There I was, 4000 miles away from anything I've ever known, and yet these people are singing songs that my home church wrote?! God is so good! Afterwards, Ash and I grabbed coffee with Becky, the worship leader from CU, and ended up spending the rest of the afternoon with her. Long story short, because she is going to be out of town next week with the rest of the CU leaders, Ash and I are going to do the music this week at CU! Like, how crazy is that! We've only known this girl for 2 days, but I felt such a strong, Godly connection with her. God is just SO good! (I've been having tons of these God moments for the past few days, and I keep being reminded of how big and awesome and universal He is. This semester is going to be a good one.)

- Australians often shorten a lot of their words like I do. Awks means awkward, and hass means hassle.

- A lot of Harry Potter was filmed right around the Northeast of England, so we'll definitely be going on adventures to find some of the locations!

Jesus

The past few days have been pretty uneventful for the most part. Wednesday was a work day for me, and so I locked myself in my room and did loads of research and homework for some assignments coming up. Yesterday was a not-so-good day though; I suppose it started out decently enough, but I ended up getting really frustrated in the photo studio (I spent 2 hours setting up a shot, calculating exposure, etc... but when I developed my prints they were all wayy too overexposed, and one was completely out of focus. Coming into the class, I knew it would be challenging because I had never touched film before. I guess it'll just take a lot of trial and error until I get it right. The photo assignment is due in two weeks, so I'm pretty sure I'm going to be stressing out quite a bit until then).

Because I was tired of eating frozen dinners and frozen pizza and takeout food, I cooked spaghetti last night. And even though I only used half the sauce and half the noodles and half the meat I bought at the grocery store, I still ended up with heaps of leftovers. I'm definitely not complaining though; I love having leftovers! After dinner, Storm and I went to the Globe Cafe again and hung out with a lot of the same old folks from last week; it's so nice to surround yourself with fellow believers, because you really start to miss it after a while. I had my first cup of British hot tea (sugar added, of course) and it was a lot better than I was expecting!

After class today, I had to return a bunch of overdue library books and pick up the paper negatives I accidentally left in the photo building. **note to self: don't EVER have an overdue book again, because you're going to have to pay a 20 pence fine each day it's overdue... and don't ever forget your photo negs, because it's a pain walking to Ashburne** Earlier tonight, Ash, Storm, and I went to something called the Christian Union, or CU: it's kind of like the uni's on-campus ministry. I really enjoyed it! I surprisingly knew all 4 songs they played and I met a lot of other Jesus-lovin' English students. They were all amazed with our accents (as most Brits have been that we've encountered) and the guest speaker was good. Sunday we'll be going to the church that hosts the Cafe. I'm finally getting plugged in, hooray!

- Just like we put milk in our coffee, they put milk in their hot tea. I thought it was super weird at first, but once I tried it I fell in love. I'm slowly but surely learning all the quirks of daily life in England -- maybe by the end of the trip I can be a halfway convincing Brit!

- A guy in my photo class was wearing an East Carolina Pirates shirt on Thursday. After I completely freaked out at how small this world is, I found out that a lot of his family is actually from Greenville. What are the odds! It was fabulous and it made my day.

- The English folks replace words that end in -ize with -ise (ex: organize becomes organise, and realization becomes realisation). They also often change -or to -our, such as in "colour" and "humour."

- I heard someone in the back of the bus singing Proud To Be An American, the Star Spangled Banner, and Wagon Wheel. Of course it ended up being another guy from App, but it's always nice to be reminded of home.