This is for you, Aunt Jan! =]

In case you didn't know, I have been back in England for about a month and a half. I'm now with SWYM, which is Southwest Youth Ministries.

Back in April, after I returned from Capernwray, I worked at Phantom Lake YMCA Camp for the summer, and enjoyed the lovely process of getting a student visa.

I got it, however, several days before my flight was booked to leave, and I left on August 27th. Dad came along with me, and we did a bit of sight-seeing and got my things moved into my host's house. I live and work in Longwell Green, which is on the south-eastern corner of Bristol, down towards Bath.

The view from my window.

My room.

Below are some of the pictures from the travels I did with Dad. The top is from an area in the Cotswolds we went to, and the bottom, is (surprise!) Stonehenge.

My Dad left for his trip in Poland on Monday the 31st, and on Tuesday I headed down to Dartmoor for SWYM Induction. The first day was just internationals, about twelve of us, and later in the evening, twenty English first-years joined us. After four days of induction, we went to Hill House for conference, where all the other SWYM trainees joined us.

Conference is where we have our lectures and seminars and get our assignments for the term. We have a week long conference every six weeks, and the next time I'll be back is November.

Until then, I'm working as the Youth Worker at the Mustard Tree Community church and in the Longwell Green community. That includes doing youth clubs, primary school assemblies, home groups, etc.

I realize this blog post was quite dry and informative. Sorry. I'll have something interesting to say soon and I'll start updating more regularly. I'll try, at least.

Anyway, Aunt Jan, I owe you some pictures. I know you wanted one of these, but I couldn't remember which one. So I'll post both, and you can click on the one you want for the full version.




Thanks for reading. Sorry it's been so long. I have to prepare for home group at my house tonight. More later. =]
Erin.

Last Sunday at Capernwray

Karena and I are out on the ornamental garden with our laptops today, enjoying the sun and the birds. Spring in England is gorgeous. It is my last Sunday here though, and I feel like rain would be a bit more fitting. I'm not complaining though! I'm already getting tan lines... Yes!

We working through two women's conferences, and are preparing for Connect to start tomorrow. Connect is a weeklong holiday for kids 11-14. I'll be working in the Beehive (coffee/ice cream/ sweets shop) and on Housekeeping. I actually only have two days left of work though, because I'm off on Wednesday, and I leave at 5 AM on Thursday.

Thursday isn't going to be fun, to say the least. I'll have all my luggage, and starting at 5 AM, I have two taxi rides and four different trains and a ferry to catch. Once I'm in Dublin though, I don't have to deal with that again til the 18th, when I fly to back to Chicago!

The Lake District

If you are ever looking for a cottage in the Lake District, I highly recommend Holly Cottage. I went for three nights, along with 7 of my friends from Capernwray. We stayed in a fully furnished cottage right in the middle of Bowness.

On Friday, we settled in and explored some public footpaths by the lake. Lake Windermere is the largest lake in the Lake District, and its absolutely beautiful.


On Saturday, we climbed a lookout hill, and then braved our way up a mountain. The views from the top were spectacular. Unfortunately my camera didn't do it justice.

On Saturday night we had a Fish & Chips night and stayed in and watched movies. I don't know how many of us actually stayed awake for the movie though... mountain climbing is just a bit tiring.


On Sunday morning, we walked to Russell's (one of our Capernwray lecturers) church in Windermere, and made it with only one or two wrong turns. The afternoon was spent relaxing and walking around Bowness, and we had a barbecue down by the lake in the evening, followed by staying up late playing Circumstances and Psychiatrist.


It was an amazing weekend, and a really good way to say goodbye to a lot of my Capernwray friends.

I'm back at Capernwray now, working on Housekeeping staff. In the morning, I clean rooms and empty rubbish bins, and in the evenings, I work in the Beehive, which is Capernwray's coffee shop/cafe. It's fun being at Capernwray in a whole different context. Karena is still here, so I get to spend time with her as well.

On April 9th, I'm taking the ferry to Dublin to meet my mom and travel around that area, followed by flying to Madrid and traveling in Spain. I'll be done and back home in Wisconsin on April 18th. It's all gone so fast!

I've uploaded many many more albums of pictures from the whole of my time at England on facebook. If you'd like to see my pictures from Capernwray or the Lake District, etc. check out my albums on facebook. There's probably ten of them. =]

Outreach has been so crazy busy. We were in school lessons all day today and will be on Thursday and Friday as well. The school we're at is what is known as a "low acheivement" school, so its really been a challenge teaching lessons in there. We've been doing drop-ins and youth clubs at St. Edyth's as well as Shirehampton Baptist. Wednesday through Friday night we have drop-ins and Sunday morning we have a youth lesson. Unfortunately, I have a full schedule, so I'll have to save the details for later.

Wed Feb 25

We’ve been hanging out and attending classes like the regular SWYM students and we’ve been having a great time. Today, I sat in on some post-grad theology lectures with the students getting their Masters degree in Missional Leadership. They were really intense and inspiring.

Yesterday I had an interview with some of the admin about attending SWYM. My application process is all complete now, but I don’t know when I’ll find out more specifics about placement or anything. If I did decide to come here, it would be for the four year Bachelors Degree program, which would put me in the UK for four more years.

I go really back and forth about whether or not I want to come here though. I also applied for an internship project in Texas, and I’ve been looking at various YWAM programs in Thailand and Australia. Who knows? Hey, there’s always UW- Waukesha…

My team has one more day here in Exeter before we go to Bristol for the field work part of the trip. I’m really looking forward to the inner-city youth club that Daniel and I will be leading. The schools work makes me a bit nervous though, mostly because I know nothing about English schools.

Capernwray’s Kenya team is in the air right now, on their way down to Nairobi. I think they have a layover in Amsterdam first, but they’ll be there sometime today. They’re going to have an amazing two weeks leading soccer camps and other things.

Mon Feb 23

We left Capernwray at 8 this morning in a mini-bus driven by two SWYM students. Six hours and two rest stops later, our van full of 13 arrived at the conference center in Exeter. (Isn’t it amazing that we can drive all the way from the top of the country to the Southwest corner in 6 hours?) We brought in our luggage and went to a lecture about schools work right away. There are four different levels of lectures going on at the conference, for the BTh students and the Foundation program. I met lots of international students at dinner, from Germany, the UK, Solomon Islands, South Africa, Egypt, etc. I love being in a multicultural environment. It sounds cheesy, but I learn so much, and it’s really fun.

Tomorrow morning we have breakfast at 7:30, a meeting with Paul about the schedule and everything, and then a day of lectures. I met some of the admin from SWYM, and will be getting the chance to talk more about my application and the degree program this week. The rooms are so much nicer than Capernwray; I’m sharing a room with Nicolette, right next to the bathroom. (The bathrooms are a lot nicer than Capernwray too.) Then again, this campus is a lot newer than Capernwray. It’s not quite a castle. It is gorgeous though, up on a hill, overlooking the water.

Today made me realize how much I want to live and work in another country or culture. I love England, and the English people, but what I really love is being in an international environment. We’ll see where next year takes me. =]

So much for frequent updates...

My promise to write regularly didn't work out so well... but here I am!

My outreach team leaves on Monday morning at 9, which means I need to work out all of my travel arrangements beforehand. I'll be staying at the cottage with my friends until the 23rd of March, but a glitch leaves my plan-less until April 9th, when I'm going to Dublin to meet my mom. I'd like to stay in England, mostly for convenience, but I don't want to travel around by myself. I got invited to come along with some friends to Barcelona and leave my luggage at their house in Manchester, but I'm going to be in Madrid with my mom a week later. I also got invited to go to Sweden with another friend, but that's really expensive. I don't know, we'll see. Anyway, I leave on Monday, which means I'll be gone from Capernwray for 15 days, which means limited internet communication.

I've been doing lots of hiking and exploring with my friends lately, so here are some of the pictures from our adventures:

Karena, Kate, Jonny and I on top of "the hill"

Public footpaths are awesome!

At the bay in Silverdale

The old piano that Karena and I found on our walk.

Hiking to the sea on a sunny day

I enjoyed a quiet weekend this last weekend. All of the teams except ours and Kenya were on pre-outreach preparation trips. There were twenty-some of us still at school. I watched Iron Man with some friends and just spent the weekend relaxing.

London had a record-breaking snowfall this week, with the most snow they’ve had in twenty years. It was enough to “cripple England” and prevent 6 million from attending work on Monday. How much was it?

Six centimeters.

I’m definitely not in Wisconsin anymore. It was fun to have a bit of snow here, though. Some of the students from Africa and South America had never seen snow before.

Capernwray has been busy lately. Our last big paper of the term was due last week, and we have a project due today. In between working on those, Karena and I have been preparing a Ben Folds song for the talent show. The talent show theme is “things that start with ‘D’,” so we’re calling it a duet.

On Saturday we’re going to Silverdale for hiking. It’s an ocean-side hike that ends up a tea shop. This is our third attempt at going, hopefully the weather actually holds up this time.

I’ve been working on finalizing spring break plans. As of now, I’m spending a week in the Lake District with some friends, working at Capernwray for a week, and then traveling to Ireland and Spain with my mom. It’s all tentative, except the Lake District. Seven of us are renting a cottage on Lake Windermere. It’s right outside of Windermere, and is right at the hub of lots of hiking trails through the “mountains.” One of my friends also wants to go to the Beatrix Potter museum, and Keswick, home of the world’s largest pencil, is also nearby. Those two don’t sound all that thrilling to me, but I’ve been looking at trail maps and I can’t wait to get into the National Park area.

The Crew

This is the Under-The-Stairs-Crew. =]

Outreach!

So, we just got our ten day outreach locations assigned. I’m on a team of 14 going down to Exeter, to work with Southwest Youth Ministry. We go down five days earlier for training and then we get split up into two teams. So really, we’re going on a fifteen day outreach. Exeter is pretty far south, so we’re taking the train down. I’ll have to look up more about the area.

Our areas of work will be schools and youth groups.

Tomorrow night we’re having our first team meeting. My team leaders are Bex and Gloria, and the other members are Stephen, Faye, Kiki, Bishwa, Kristine, Danny, Nicolette, Samuel, Angelique, Elsa, and Clark. One of my good friends, Sam, is on the team, and I’m really looking forward to getting to know the rest of them. I don’t know who my small team will be, but I’m going to be living with those six people for two weeks, so I’m guessing we’ll get pretty close. I already know most of them, but there are about four people on my team that I’ve never had a real conversation with.

Apparently Exeter is on the ocean. At least it sounds scenic…

My new room has almost doubled in size from the last one. I’ve gone from four people to seven, but almost doubling sounds a bit more dramatic. I’m no longer living in the castle, unfortunately. I’m now in the Conference Hall, which has advantages (wireless internet in our bedrooms) and disadvantages (lack of hot water). My new roommates come from Canada, America, Mexico, Slovakia, and Peru. It’s a nice mix, but a large one. It’s hard to set any room guidelines with so many people living together. Karena is in the same building as me, which is convenient. She’s actually in the room on the other side of my wall, but you have to walk outside and around to get to it. We’ve been discussing plans of burrowing through the wall. Maybe we’ll do it Narnia style and go through the wardrobe.

I’m currently working on a book report on John Ortberg’s book, If You Want to Walk on Water You’ve Got to Get out Of the Boat. I think the title is half of the book. Actually, I wish it were half the book because the title is all I’ve read so far. I should be reading it today, but instead I’m going to Lancaster with Jacquelyn. She needs some things in town, and I’m going to buy some more chocolate to send home to my little brother. I don’t mind supplying him sugar as long as I’m not home to deal with the aftereffects.

I’ve also been trying to figure out where to travel when school gets out. While I’m here, it would be silly not to take advantage of it and go see things. I’m torn between mainland Europe and staying in Great Britain though. I’ve never been to continental Europe, but there are a lot of places to see on the island too. Wales, for example, is somewhere I’d really like to go. It depends a lot on traveling partners and budget as well as my traveling partners’ budgets. I wouldn’t even mind returning to Scotland, maybe seeing some sites outside of Edinburgh. If you have any recommendations, let me know. =]