Adventures in Belfast

Greetings!

Happy September, Labor Day, back to school, etc.  I hope the start of the football season has everyone excited!  I know I'm going to find it difficult to keep up with everything in a land where 'football' actually means 'soccer,' but I am up to the challenge!  And if you're not a football fan, well... here's a kitten:

meow

Last week I journeyed to Belfast, Northern Ireland for a Kairos training conference called Student Worker Outreach Training (SWOT).  There's lots to tell, but first... getting there.  Lindsey, Joe, and I flew from the London Gatwick airport, which is an hour from where the bus picks up.  From there, the flight to Belfast is just over an hour, plus twenty minutes from the airport to the conference location via bus and a bit of walking.  All in all, the trip should take a few hours.  Should...  Unfortunately, we had a lot of trouble finding the bus stop once we got off the tube.  We eventually figured it out, but just as we were approaching the stop, the 6:45 bus was pulling away (we originally planned to catch the one at 6:30), and the driver didn't stop.  The buses are supposed to come about every 10 minutes, but due to an accident on the highway, the next bus didn't get there until 7:20.  We made it to the airport by 8:40, but our flight was at 8:50.  Needless to say, we didn't make it.  Thankfully, there was another flight available that day... 6 hours later.

It wasn't all bad though!  The airport had a chapel that we decided to visit since we had so much time to kill.  We chatted with the Chaplain for awhile about why we were headed to Belfast, he did a short homily for us, and we prayed with him as well.  The whole thing was really great, and a testament to how the Lord can bring good out of a bad situation : )  Plus, I got to experience the joys of sprinting through an airport.

Fast forward many hours, a bus, and more confused walking around later, and we finally made it to our destination.  SWOT is a conference put on by Kairos to educate and equip student missionaries.  The theme this time was "vision," focusing on what the goals are for our university outreaches, and why they are important.  There were about thirty people in total from outreaches in London (England), Dublin (Republic of Ireland), Belfast (Northern Ireland), Glasgow (Scotland), Leuven (Belgium), and Munich (Germany).

  

I could describe in vivid detail everything that we talked about, but then you'd be here all day.  So, in the interest of time, I shall just say that it was ABSOLUTELY FANTASTIC!  Seriously.  I got to hang out with awesome people and learn a ton about the way things work on this side of the pond.  Quite different from what I'm used to, I must say.  The outreaches here are smaller, younger, and face different challenges than the ones in the States.  For example: most students get finish university in three years, which means that there is a much higher turnaround rate for students.  I remember my fourth year at UofM as a time where I really delved into UCO, so I can see how only having three years per student would be difficult.  But I rejoice in the differences, in the challenges that these outreaches face in such a secular culture; it's why I'm here.

Unfortunately, there wasn't really time to sight see in Belfast, but I did get to see bits of the city here and there.  We were staying nears Queens University, which is beautiful.  And I did get to go to a proper pub, which was awesome.

Queen's University

Getting back to London on Monday was no problem at all, except that I was running on about 3 hours of sleep (everyone was hanging out on our last night together and no one wanted to go to bed, so we didn't...). On Tuesday, Ralph, an affiliate of the Servants of the Word, took Lindsey, myself, and another guy called Bobby sightseeing.  This time we went to Greenwich, a district in the south east part of London that's famous for the Prime Meridian running through it.  The world's clock is based around Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).  To the folks in the US eastern time zone, you are at GMT -5, meaning that you're 5 hours behind me.  GMT is used as the standard for measuring time around the world.  So basically, we went to the center of time ; )

In addition to the meridian, there are a lot of museums and things to see in Greenwich.  We went to the Maritime Museum, and explored the campus of the Old Royal Naval College.  They also have a planetarium up on a hill, which gives an excellent view of the southern part of London.

View of Canary Wharf from across the Thames

Lindsey and I in the Greenwich Welcome Center.  I'm wearing an admiral's cap, if you were wondering.

Old Royal Naval College

View of London from the planetarium

Yesterday we went to the Union for the University of London, which houses Koinonia's office (which we call "the Kube").  All the furniture had been pushed to one side of the room for cleaning, so we spent a few hours getting everything set back up for the coming school year.  The Kube serves as an office space for the Koinonia staff, as well as a place for students to hang out or each lunch on campus.  The University of London (UCL) is on the northern side of the city, right next to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

All in all, it's been a good week.  Every day I'm surprised by something new or odd.  For instance, there are some very interesting potato chip flavors here (well, technically they're called "crisps," but I've always been a bit of a rebel).  In addition to your staples, there's also "smoky bacon," "steak," "roast chicken," "prawn cocktail," "pickled onion," "tomato ketchup," and "Worcester sauce."  I'll admit that I haven't been brave enough to try some of these... yet.

Thanks for reading, and as always, feel free to contact me or post a comment with questions, comments, concerns, puns, etc.  I'm always in the market for a good joke; the cheesier, the better!

<3 Molly

"We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves.  If we live, we live for the Lord; and if we die, we die for the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's."  ~ Romans 14:7-8