Charity Shop

Today I spent most of the afternoon in a "charity shop" which one of the other young ladies from my home group manages. It was a nice afternoon in the fairly small, one-room shop.

I think this must be what Goodwill stores were like originally, but I'm not sure. Thrift stores in the States are very different than charity shops in the UK. This one is owned by a network of local churches who give out the proceeds from the shop as well as additional funds they steward to local charities. They provide a service to the low-income residents of the neighboring community by offering low cost clothing and household items.

The shop has one part-time manager and is otherwise run by volunteers. Most of them are ladies who volunteer once or several times a week.

This is definitely a part of the British culture. There are small charity shops all over. I find it interesting.

Lovely Walk

Today I took a walk in the late afternoon through some of my favorite places in this area. Here are some pictures from my journey.

I began my walk in the "Heaton Allotments" which are little individual gardens which I believe people rent and use. It is a beautiful area with paths and hedges on the top of "Heaton Woods" which are beautiful -- more to come.

I thought this fallen tree was really interesting looking.

The view from the top of Heaton woods. You can see several nearby towns.

Apparently this part of England is known for these special stone fences which were painstakingly built. Here, you can see only part of it is left standing.

Walking back through the Allotments.

Then I walked down through Lister Park. There are so many beautiful parts of it!

I think this best captures the mood of the day:-).

Quiet Snowfall

Today, Kagi and I woke up to snowfall, which was especially surprising because a few days ago I was thinking about putting my heaviest coat away and moving toward my lighter waterproof jacket for spring.

The day ended up being a pretty quiet one with day-to-day kinds of things -- laundry, work, cleaning, cooking. Probably the most exciting thing for me was making a curry for dinner. I loosely followed this recipe, and both Kagi and I really enjoyed the result.

We have been pretty busy this past week.We had an evening activity every night except Tuesday, including two sets of dinner guests and leading Global Cafe. We have loved having friends over and really enjoyed the week. Today was one of those days which seemed to have its pace set by the clouds and snow. We mostly stayed in, did work and chilled out. It was good to be quiet after a lot of hustle and bustle.

I think it's good to have days like this every once in a while (although I'm hoping for bright springtime to come soon)!

Oops...

I woke up this morning and I realized with some shock that I forgot to blog yesterday!

It was a really nice Saturday. In the morning, the we had a church ladies breakfast which five of us came to, which was very nice. I love times of sharing with women -- there is so much to learn. We had a nice time reading the Bible, sharing, and praying.

I came home and hung out with Kagi for a while. Then we had some great Skype conversations with good friends -- I especially loved speaking with Bumo and Hle who live in Toronto.

After the Skype conversations, though, I realized that it was later than I had planned to start preparing for our dinner guests, Tim and Bethan. We were just having spaghetti  but especially after my Friday baking catastrophe I was uncharacteristically nervous to prepare the meal.

Ultimately, we had a great meal and a great time with these amazing friends. They are such a tremendous blessing to us, and we have a lot to learn from both of them.

We headed to bed pretty shortly after they left. Today has been a pretty perfect Sunday so far -- church for us is in the afternoon (soon, actually), so we slept in and then had a nice relaxing morning talking to each other. This afternoon I cleaned the kitchen and made bread:-).

Happy Sunday!

St. Patrick & A Baking Incident

I had the honor of leading Global Cafe tonight. We celebrated St. Patrick's Day with green cookies and Jeopardy. It was very fun.

In spent most of the day preparing for the evening. I found a Jeopardy template for PowerPoint and did the research. Earlier in the week I had decided to use the Veggie Tales rendition of the story of St. Patrick, which is both cute and gets the point across nicely. I recommend it (http://youtu.be/fg5ejLGEnZk). Oval it went well, and it was fun to learn about a man living the message of reconciliation by taking the message of salvation back to a land and people who had enslaved him for much of his life.

I made Grammy's sugar cookies earlier in the day. I kept feeling like I did something wrong and so when the cookies came out of the oven I tasted one. It was not pleasant and I immediately knew what was wrong. The answer is in the name of the cookies-- sugar. I totally had forgotten it.

I think I realized a new low in my baking!

My Trip

I must have been weighed down as I considered what to write about earlier and decided my walk up the hill would be a worth-while blog. I actually wrote most of another blog but decided it needed too much work to iron out before publishing tonight. So we're back to the original idea...

Since Kagi and I don't have a car we do our main grocery shopping online and have it delivered. We did our big shop last week. Today I needed to get a few things we've run low on, particularly because I'm leading Global Cafe's St. Patrick's Day celebration tomorrow night.

While at the store there was an attempted robbery. It actually was kind of funny, a guy walked in and filled a big bag full of groceries. The man behind the counter had his eye on him via the security cameras, and while I was at the counter the guy walked out. The grocer ran after him and brought the overflowing bag back in. Overall, and interesting thing to watch. It kind of seemed like it happens all the time.

So I walked down the hill (it's only a 1.33 mile round-trip which makes the fact that I decided to document my struggle rather comical) and visited the local grocery shop. I got what I needed and then knelt on the store floor to pack it all into the backpack which I had (thankfully) thought ahead enough to bring with me. Then I began my journey back up hill:

It was a nice day and I enjoyed a (very) slight diversion through the side of the park. I liked seeing pigeons, ducks, geese, and possibly a swan all in one glance in the pond!

About at this point I was feeling the burn. My house can almost be seen on the left just past the white building.  The hill's slope is pretty painful at this point... and it's clear that it's going to get worse.

The hill is worse and sadly you can't see the house anymore. But it really is getting closer.

So here's what all of the fuss is about. This is the backpack I was using. Doesn't look that bad, does it?

I felt a little better about my internal moaning when I saw all of this again -- now in my kitchen. This counted as my weight-lifting for the day! (Note: each of those bags of flour is 1.5 kg).

Life without a car is certainly different!

Hurdles

I always thought running hurdles would be more fun, interesting, and exciting than just running straight through a race. Similarly, I think I'd enjoy a warrior dash much more than a straight-forward long run. One of the things I struggle with the most while running is the mental battle to stay interested and engaged when my objective is just to keep going, one step after another.

I guess that is true for much of how I live my life. I like having shorter-term objectives to keep me focused and interested while working toward the prize. I like hurdles.

That's probably one of the reasons I like living internationally. There are lots of interesting things that happen, lots of surprises and diversions. Life is very rarely boring. It can be both challenging and rewarding.

Some days, it feels like you are flying through life, leaping over barriers as they come. Other days, you're reminded that there are far more opportunities to fall on your face or break your leg.

Either way, it's an adventure.