Trawling Across England

Hello there! Ooh it's been a while hey? Naughty little Lou Lou :P

So where am I, you may be wondering? Well, it starts with Northern and ends in Ireland. I'll give you three guesses...

Last time I wrote, I was in Glasgow and about to move onto Liverpool. Well I got to Liverpool in one piece, not knowing exactly how long I would be there. I was staying with my friend Rich who I had met in the States a few years ago, working on the same summer camp. Anyhoo, he was kind enough to let me sleep on his couch for as long as I wanted and he actually lined me up with a possible job through a guy he knows who runs a nice little bar/restaurant place a walkable distance from his place. I was thinking of working there up until Christmas basically, but things didn't eventuate and so I made other plans! I was in Liverpool for about three weeks, and while I was there, I found a cool church called Hope City. There are are a few of them around the UK, one in Ghana and one about to begin in Germany. The people there were really friendly and it was nice to be able to go to the same church 3 weeks in a row, rather than flying through a different one each week (if at all!). I was invited along to one of the small groups on a Wednesday night and met some cool people. At the time, I thought I was going to be in Liverpool for several more weeks, but because the job didn't work out, there wasn't much point hanging around there when I had friends in other places that I could visit before Christmas. It's kind of a shame cause I was just starting to settle in there a bit.

While in Liverpool, Rich's sister Charlotte (who I had previously met in Melbourne) came to visit and we went to Knowley's Safari Park which was lots of fun! It's basically a drive through park with various animals hanging about, including a very cool pride of lions. We spent quite a while watching the big cats do their thing. After by-passing the baboon enclosure on the "car friendly" route, we decided to take our chances (well, Charlotte's chances, it was her car!) and take a ride through the enclosure and experience being in a vehicle covered in crazy monkeys!

I also went with Rich to check out a new apartment that he wanted to move into with his good mate Rob who had recently moved to Liverpool. The three of us were living in Rich's 1 bedroom apartment for a week and a half - very squishy! At least they won't have too much stuff to move to their new place and it's literally 2 minutes down the road.

While in the Beatles' hometown, I decided to do a Magical Mystery Tour which takes you around all the childhood homes of the fab four, as well as places like Penny Lane and Strawberry Fields. It was very educational! I met an Australian girl on the tour, so when it ended near the cavern club, we took the opportunity to go inside and have a cider and listen to some great Beatles covers in a world-famous live music venue. Very cool indeed. 


*Apologies for lack of photos of aforementioned events, those pics are all on my computer which is with my friend elsewhere at the moment - you will just have to use your imaginations...or go on Facebook*

My time in Liverpool came to a close and I was off once again - this time to Stoke, where Rich is originally from and where Charlotte and the Marsden family still live. I had visited a few years ago, so it was nice to be back at their beautiful country-style home overlooking rollling green hills. Rich drove me down cause he wanted to visit a friend who recently had a baby, so I was saved the trouble of dragging all my luggage to the train station and doing it the hard way (for once!)

Only had a couple of days at the Marsden's place but it was nice to spend some more time with Charlotte. We watched the annual plum pudding run fun they hold in the local area (all participants get a plum pudding at the end!) but it was sooooo cold and we were happy to head back to the house once the first 20 or so runners crossed the finish line. I also went to Charlotte's dance class one night and tried my best to follow along with the others. A bit rusty, but I tried my best and the girls were very gracious! We also baked a delicious carrot cake and hung around the house a bit while Charlotte was still recovering from a throat infection and general unwellness (is that a word?).

In the Marsden family home

Charlotte and Bobby

Rich &I in the Marsden kitchen

 From Stoke I took the train across to Nottingham where I have two friends, Zoe and Ciara, who I both met while volunteering in Uganda. Zoe was a fellow volunteer at Jenga and Ciara was on placement as a medical student at the Mbale Regional Hospital. We had really clicked when we met and I had her phone number, but when she returned to the UK, I realised I had her Ugandan number and I didn't know anything more about her than her first name and he fact she lived in Nottingham. I was really kicking myself for "losing" her, but lo and behold, 6 weeks after meeting her, I feel a tap on my shoulder in the Jenga office and I turn around to see Ciara standing there! She had randomly returned to get some more work experience rather than hanging around at home doing nothing (or something like that, I'm not 100% of the details!) We made sure we got each others details the second time around!


So I arrived in Nottingham on a Saturday evening and was met at the station by the lovely Zoe and we wandered into the city centre to get some dinner before hanging out a bit at her friends' house to watch X-Factor (UK) and then went to Zoe's dorm at her university. It was quite funny being almost 30 and sleeping on the floor of a college dorm alongside half a dozen 18 year olds who only just left home to begin their studies! Lucky I look young for my age and I think I got away with it ;) Also went to Zoe's church which was really cool and had some of Zoe's friends guess my age. One said 21 and another said 19. Awesome. I should be on an ad for Oil of Olay or something. After a fun weekend with Zozo, I was on to Ciara's place which was thankfully within walking distance of the city cause she had to work all day! Went to Nottingham castle, browsed some museums and shops, strolled through the Christmas markets and finally saw Twilight: Breaking Dawn with Zoe (I won't mention it was her 3rd viewing). Unfortunately, it was a teachers strike that day, so every kid and his BFF was at the cinemas and it took over 40 minutes to get to the front of the ticket queue!

So many fun red things to play with!

Me & Ciara at the Nottingham Christmas market

While in Nottingham, I also met Ciara's small group leader Cyrilin (she's Welsh) and her white Zimbambwean husband who have four little kids and run a charity called Operation Orphan that works in several countries in their "spare time", when they're not helping to run a large church and everything else! It turns out that they have a project in Uganda, and guess what town they work in? Yep, Mbale! Coincidence much? On top of that, the day I went over to hang out while Ciara was at work, another girl from their church, Sarah, had already arranged to drop in to speak to Cyrilin about her future move to Mbale with their project as a nurse and we got talking and I found out she doesn't know anyone in Mbale apart from this one local guy that manages the project on the ground, so I was able to pass along some contacts of people from Jenga and other Brits living over there that I think she will fit in with nicely.Talk about perfect timing!

My week in Nottingham soon came to a close and it was another case of just starting to get to know people then having to move on! Such is the life of a traveller I guess. I was soooo fortunate that week though to meet so many new people, be looked after amazingly well, have meals cooked for me and free gym passes handed my way! 

Nottingham Castle

Statue of Robin Hood

So back on the train and off to the east coast I went towards Grimsby, where the lovely Sarah Roddich picked me up at the station. Sarah is a friend from Melbourne who I've known for about 10 years through church, but she has since moved to NSW to do missions training, met her Irish Mr Right (Scott), got married to him in Australia, then moved to England to continue her training (and begin his!) with New Tribes Mission (NTM) after the campus in NSW couldn't offer the courses they needed. So I spent a week with all the NTM people on campus which was a great experience. I stayed in the house of a couple who work on the admin side of things there, but basically spent breakfast til late evening with Sarah & Scott on campus, going to classes with them (Bible studies with Scott and Linguistics with Sarah), cooking a little bit, getting to know some of the other students who are mainly from Germany, Holland and Norway, and basically tagging along with whatever was happening that day!

Sarah in class at NTM

Looking out over Louth from the church tower

Scott with one of his classmates, Jonny

It was really great to sit in on classes and delve into the Bible on a deeper level in terms of both intellect and personal experience. I have to admit that I don't read my Bible all that often, and when I do, I often find it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. I was really encouraged to read it more and not just to read it, but to actually study it! There's so many layers and richness to the stories and writings in both the Old & NewTestament and I was really inspired to search these layers and understand what's really going on anad what God is saying through it, rather than just skimming over it for the sake of reading it cause it's something you're "supposed to do". I only went to one Linguistics class with Sarah and it was very interesting but very over the top of my head! They're basically learning how to take a foreign language that has no written form, and create a written form for it from scratch. Not an easy task! There's a really cool sense of community on campus and although people are people and of course they're not all holding hands and singing songs with unicorns and rainbows, there is a sense that they're all kinda heading in the same direction and people really enjoy being a part of each others lives.


The week that I was there was the final week of class before a 3 week break for Christmas, so once class was out on Friday, people began to take off in their cars or trains or ferries or buses, bound for their respective homes. On Saturday morning, we had an early rise and we set off by 6:30am for the lower east coast of Scotland in order to catch our 2:30pm ferry to Northern Ireland. One of the guys who works in the NTM kitchen, Andrew, is also from near Belfast, so he had organised with Scott and Sarah to travel with them. So the four of us set out in the pitch black with the moon high above us on a very frosty early morning that left the roads a bit icy. Thankfully both Scott and Sarah were very capable on the roads and we reached our destination safely and in plenty of time. At one point as we were driving through some fields around sunrise, I was prodded awake from my nap to discover we had suddenly entered a winter wonderland! There was snow everywhere! Sarah and I were very excited but to Scott and Andrew, it wasn't such a big deal! We drove out of it though and were back to green fields again. I just hope the snow arrives in time for a white Christmas!

Winter wonderland!

Here comes the sun...

So we got on the ferry and I was quite blown away by the fancy-ness of it all! I was literally expecting some old boat with hard plastic chairs on top with dirty glass windows to peer out of during the 2.5 hour trip, but thankfully my expectations had no effect on reality! The ferry was huge and brand-new looking inside: lots of comfy seats and benches to sit on, an amusment arcade, nice shops, a free mini-cinema, free interactive games (we played the dance one and I totally want an Xbox 360 now!), a day spa, cafe'sm restaurants, ipads you can play around on and lots of other cool stuff. I was actually kinda bummed that our journey wasn't longer so we could make full use of everything! There was also this cool video projection on the floor of a tropical underwater scene, and when you put your foot on it, the "water" would ripple - who comes up with this stuff?!

Sarah, Scott & Andrew on the ferry

The cool fish floor!

So now I'm in Nothern Ireland, staying this week at Scott's grandma's house and it's very cosy and lovely. It's sooooo bitterly cold here at the moment and even though it hasn't been cold enough to snow, it feels like -10 degrees! I think it's the dampness of the air or something, it just goes straight through you and I always have freezing cold feet. So next time you complain cause it gets above 35 degrees over there, just spare a thought for those of us shivering on the other side of the world! ;)

Well it's only a couple of weeks until Christmas and Sarah &I are very much hoping for some snowfall on the big day! We haven't done anything really touristy yet, but we've got a couple of weeks to get around and to be honest, I'd rather be warm inside than out exploring in this weather!! I will write again when I have some nice bits of Northern Ireland to show you! Over and out,

Lou :)