Sunday, March 27, 2011

Home is behind, the world ahead

That song has been running through my head all week.

Sitting on the floor of a cold and internet-less Paris airport with a long, long night ahead of me is enough incentive to actually write a blog post. Amazing I know.

Spent a lovely weekend in Hull at Lucy’s. And guess who was born and raised in Hull? Guess whose house has been made into a museum about his life and about slavery and abolition? that’s right, William Wilberforce (i.e. One Of My Favourite People In History, Ever). How awesome is that?

We spent two nights in London which is the one part of this trip that felt/feels familiar and easy...haha, never thought I’d say that especially not last September when the thought of deciphering that transit system struck terror into my heart. Saw Wicked (which was pretty great, creative and clever and deeper than I expected), went to the Imperial War Museum (my third and probably not last time...I love that place) And then spent a long, long nine hours on a coach to Paris. We assumed we could sleep on this journey. Never assume.

..that was how my post last night began, but it never got very far, because a security person came by and told us that the airport closed in an hour, leaving us homeless in Paris. After a few seconds of panic, some hasty prayer, and some help from the guy at the airport tourist office, we managed to find a cheap hotel and a bus that would take us there. The whole bus was full of people whose plans were similarly foiled—a bedraggled collection of Canadians, Americans, French and other Europeans—and we couldn’t do much but laugh. I expect half of that hotel’s business comes from unfortunate budget travellers.

Sky Sailing just came up on my playlist and there are bright clear mountains just beneath us and this combination makes me happy. Hello down there, we are captains of the sky, huzzah. I’d really like to know where we are right now, but those fancy moving-map things are far too deluxe for this airline. Instead the cabin is bright yellow and plastered with advertisements. Yay Ryanair! For £25, I’m not complaining.

And, oh yeah, there was Paris. We were there for a couple days and they were filled with pouring rain, way too many pictures, the typical tourist sights, avoiding everyone who tried to convince us to buy their stuff by yelling and shoving it into our faces, croissants and jam, battling high-tech toilets next to the Eiffel Tower, and gazing into the Seine contemplating Javert’s suicide. haha. If we had had longer and I had planned it before I would have hunted down all the Victor Hugo/Les Mis places, but we didn’t and I didn’t, but just being there was cool enough. (The check-in guy at our hotel was called Marius, but he had a beard and red hair and in general looked nothing like Marius, it was very sad.)

Descending now. Hello Italy!

Friday, March 18, 2011

the breaking of the fellowship

So much has happened since the last time I updated but I had better give a quick abridged rundown before even MORE happens...

Outreach went wellI was on a team of 11 girls who went to Morely, a town near Leeds. It was craziness, but so much fun, and even though I was glad to get home at the end I miss it now. The town is known as “The Centre of the Universe” by those who live there but nobody quite figured out why. The church we worked with has only 15-20 people but they’re involved with a ton of stuff in the community and have all these connections with in schools, etc...which is pretty cool. While we were there we ran a kids’ club and some youth groups, did a Bible exhibition/drama thing in a bunch of primary schools, put on some elderly events, and ran a few church services. We also handed out 4500 calendars and way too many flower bulbs, did spontaneous drastic things to our hair, and made videos filled with ridiculous inside jokes.

Now school ends on Thursday and everyone leaves on either Thursday or Friday. I’ll be back for spring school, but most people won’t, and and the last week has been odd, so odd... Leaving is going to be tragic but I’m more restless than I’ve ever been here. A week from now I’ll be at Lucy’s house in Hull and then Gabby and I are out to conquer the world. Or at least London, then Paris, Italy, and Malta (and Germany for me--visting relatives). woohoo :D

***

Yeah, so, that was a week ago and I'm at Lucy's now. Yesterday dragged on forever...after the cleaning and packing was done everyone sat around waiting and waiting, ready to go but not, and then suddenly the London coaches were here and everything was a blur of hugs and tears and tripping over lost luggage and then everyone waved and yelled "MOVE THAT BUS" and the coaches were gone and most of Capernwray. And Megan left at 5:45 this morning (in pyjamas, having woken up exactly three minutes before, so that was interesting haha)... I hate goodbyes. I don't really know what to write right now and I'm definitely not doing the last few weeks justice but everything is just kind of mixed up and numb and bizarre. Not even going to bother deciphering these emotions. I can't imagine what the tenth of June is going to be like. And I should probably stop listening to all this tragic melancholy music.