week 2 3/4

“If you are cold,

Tea will warm you.

If you are too heated,

It will cool you.

If you are depressed,

It will cheer you.

If you are excited,

It will calm you.”

-          Gladstone

I think this should be my motto here at Capernwray because you just can’t seem to escape the tea, not that I would want to of course!  Another week (well more like two now) has flown by here in the UK and I seem to be becoming a dance master now, but this time we did interpretive dance. Ok so not really. I just attended a walk through the bible series. For those of you who don’t know, walk through the bible is a tool you can use to basically remember the story line of the bible; this time around it was the Old Testament, with important phrases and hand signs that correspond with the important events.  So in about five minutes I can sum up the Old Testament, complete with actions.  I am also attending an optional lecture series called “Sacrilization in Pop Culture,” which basically talks about religion in movies and books, and how people make up their own religions based on Pop Culture. For instance we are going to talk about the Lord of The Rings series, Star Wars, and the Matrix (we even started watching it).  I am so excited for these lectures, they are so much fun! Today we also received our outreach groups and I am going to be involved in the Salvation Army group, not the second hand goods part, but the ministry part. In the little town of Carnforth a pastor has opened up an after school drop in for elementary school kids. These kids may or may not be Christian and they come from all kinds of backgrounds. It’s so small that only two students from Capernwray are going at a time to go and hang out with the kids who show up.  Here’s hoping that God has a plan for this because I sure don’t, and as nervous as I am for this I’m also excited.  

The roommates at the Lake District

This big brick castle is starting to feel more like home to me now although it is still strange to think that I’m in England while the rest of my family is across the ocean! Now it is a normal thing for me to walk in the sheep fields in the rain at night, or to expect a biscuit and hot chocolate before bed, and I’m learning new things to thank God for. Such as the cows in the morning, instead of getting upset about the must be constipated cow outside my window, I can thank God that it’s a new sound to wake up to as I frantically realize that I’ll be late for breakfast if it weren’t for that cow.  Haha I have also become the local hero for having Cholula hot sauce (mom you might want to send the Costco size) it seems to be everyone’s favorite even though they brought Tabasco! In other unrelated news this past Friday’s activity was a big bonfire by the lake where we sat around and sang camp songs/ praise songs/ anything songs, to sum it up the comradery here is just amazing! You can just sit and talk to whoever you want to, hang out, and watch movies during our free time, like the other day a group of us went and watched Braveheart. Maybe not the most church appropriate movie but hey we are going to Scotland at the end of the month!  Cheers!

Cara and me at a cafe in Carnforth. I had a banana smoothie yum!

Welcome to Capernwray

Well it has officially been one week at Capernwray! If you have seen any pictures of Capernwray Hall you will notice that it is a big beautiful manor house, sadly I don’t get to stay there, I’m in a smaller building called the Conference Hall which doesn’t look nearly as cool, but does get better Wi-Fi (yay) so I can post updates more often (that is if I ever get around to writing them).  I have 5 roommates, and four of them are from Canada, I just might come home with a Canadian accent rather than an English one! Hahaha, but all together there are about 174 students here, ranging from Canada, USA, Germany, Belgium, Romania, Denmark, South Korea, Japan, Scotland, Ireland, England, and Switzerland. What an international group! And yet we all get along through some of the hilarious culture clash moments, and our lectures without any problems.  My day here at Capernwray consists of breakfast (generally toast. Lots and lots of toast) then I go and clean our bathroom for my daily duty, and then we have two 45 minute lectures. We just finished a great lecture on prayer by one of the staff members named Kim. She highlighted for us the role of the Holy Spirit in prayer, that when we feel like we can’t pray for ourselves or aren’t doing a “good job” the Holy Spirit intervenes and prays for us.  I also learned about the different forms of prayer and while I might just like having conversations with God when I feel like it, prayer also needs to be a discipline, something that I need to work at daily to build my relationship with Christ.  Then after our two lectures we have a coffee break, meaning we get a biscuit and a cup of tea or coffee, and then we have two more lectures and then lunch. The funny thing about lunch here is that it is what we would normally call dinner. Our first lunch here was roast beef, potatoes, gravy, and Yorkshire pudding followed by a desert of apple crumble with custard, Jamie Oliver style (thank goodness they have a fitness course!) basically the equivalent of my Christmas dinner. But then tea, what we would call dinner, is a light meal of leftovers or soup and salads.  Something to get used to.  Let’s see some of the other stuff I’ve done, well we went on a beautiful hike in the Lake District near Ambleside on Saturday which was then followed by a Scottish Ceilidh, which is basically square dancing to upbeat bagpipe music, which was so much fun, and I have been learning how to ballroom dance, courtesy of my roommate and one of the students here. I now know how to waltz, and do the rumba! Oh the things you learn at Bible school!