Fall has officially come to London; the weather is cooling, the leaves are changing, and pumpkin-spiced everything flows from Starbucks. With the advent of daylight savings time, it now gets dark around 4:30 in the afternoon. "Dark" meaning pitch black, like it should be only at 2 am. At 4:30 pm. Do you know how depressing it is to spend multitudes of your day without the sun? I probably shouldn't complain; I know that my friends in Belfast and Glasgow have it way worse, being further north. Still, it's going to take a lot of adjustment.
Speaking of adjusting, I get asked a lot if I'm "used to [living/working in] London." I never really know what to say. Yes. And no. I'm twelve weeks into my GAP year, so I'm certainly not fresh off the plane any more. I can get around/navigate easily AND make a proper cup of tea.
When I first arrived back in August, several people told me that the "honeymoon phase" would wear off after about eight weeks, and that November would be a difficult month. I loved it here immediately, and never would have imagined that they would be right. But they were. The first six weeks or so went pretty well, but the last few have been hard. The main goal of my work with Koinonia students is to get to know them and foster good relationships to build the Christian community that Koi stands for ("Koinonia" literally means "community" in Greek). But there are challenges in that. A lot of people here take a while to warm up to you, meaning that getting people to actually go out for a coffee or grab lunch can be quite difficult. I don't know whether it's the culture here or being in a big city or a combination of different factors.
The more stressed I get whilst trying to do my job and the harder all this stuff seems, the
better I feel spiritually. As I get
overwhelmed, I pray more, because I don’t know what else to do (or in some
situations there’s nothing else I CAN do). With all this prayer comes an outpouring of God's grace, and I feel peace. I've taken to calling it the "Paradox of Joy." I really shouldn't be this calm, be this "okay," but I am. Every time I think about it, I marvel at God's grace and faithfulness.
With all that as
background, this past weekend I went to the second part of the SWOT Conference series run by Kairos (Student Worker
Outreach Training). Back in September, I
wrote about the first installment, which was in Belfast, Northern Ireland. This time we headed to Leuven, Belgium! Since I had such an adventure getting to the
first SWOT, I was really hoping to have a smooth journey this time around. “Smooth,” turned out to be just the right
word. I took one train to Brussels and
then another one to Leuven. Train is my
new favourite mode of transport! Nice/moderately spacious seats, leg room, and a smooth ride (no turbulence!), without all the fuss
of worrying about what’s allowed in a carry-on.
Plus, I napped on the way there, and would occasionally wake up to views of the
rolling French countryside : )
I travelled with a few
people from Koinonia, and we arrived in Leuven a few hours before things
started. We went to a “college-themed”
coffee shop to kill some time. I was in
the middle of the best hot chocolate I've ever had when I noticed this:
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| University of Michigan for the win! |
SWOT by the numbers:
Days: 3
Total hours of sleep: 13
Participants: ~ 50
Speakers: 4
Countries represented: 7
(America, Canada, Ireland, the UK, Germany, Poland, Belgium)
Peeps from London: 10
SWOT is for people who
either work/volunteer for a Kairos University Outreach or older
students who are committed to said outreaches.
The focus this time was on team: working together, knowing each other,
being able to handle conflict, etc. Most
of the staff and volunteers that make up the London team were able to go, and I
think we as a body really got a lot out of it. My favourite session was on communication: did you know that about 70% of communication is visual? The people in charge at SWOT did! We were given this task: take a rope and create an
8m x 8m square, and then make another, 2m x 2m square inside of the bigger
one. With blindfolds on. It was actually really fun, and made for some
interesting pictures:
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| Team Belfast |
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| Team Glublin (Glasgow/Dublin) |
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| Team London! |
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| Anchoring one of the corners |
And of course, I had a
fantastic time outside of the sessions.
There were lots of people that I knew and wanted to catch up with, as
well as a bunch of new faces to meet! I
especially enjoyed getting to see the American gappers who are serving
elsewhere in the UK. As per usual, we
went to the pub after the Lord’s Day on Saturday night.
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| with Katie from Glasgow |
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| with Lucy, a Koi student who came with us! |
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| with Gavin, from Belfast. He did a GAP year with my sister Sarah in Costa Rica, so we go way back : ) |
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| [l-r] John, Niamh, and Peter |
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| the London gang: John, Sawsan, Niamh, Pete, Peter, PM, and Lucy |
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| trouble-makers at the Lord's Day... |
Over the course of the
weekend, I was able to sample several different types of Belgian beer. I’m not normally a beer person, but I guess
I’ve just never had the good stuff before! (sorry America).
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| yum |
SWOT officially ended Sunday afternoon, but I elected to stay another night and come back Monday. I spent the morning wandering around Leuven; it was wonderful : ) Normally, I have an aversion to taking tourist-y pictures, but Belgium is so beautiful I couldn't resist:
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| You see all those chairs? Those are pubs. All of them! |
I wrote most of this post yesterday on the train back from Brussels. After the customs officer finished going through my passport, he gave it back to me with a "Cheers, thanks very much," and I felt home. I had to take the tube all the way across the city during rush hour, but I was happy to do it. Despite all of the stress and ups and downs, London truly does feel like home, and I am so glad to be here. The same people who told me that November would be hard also said that come January, things would get better. I look forward to it, but I also relish the present challenges. If it wasn't difficult, then I wouldn't need God and I wouldn't be growing in Him.
Random thoughts:
1. Whenever you plug something in, you also have to turn the outlet ON. It really sucks when you forget.
2. The average car on the central line of the tube has a maximum capacity of about 290 people (but more squish in during rush hour). That's a lot of people in a relatively small space. Still, no one talks, and eye contact is very rare. It doesn't matter if you are literally four inches from someone else's face. The silence can be quite eerie.
3. Two of the girls I live with speak Arabic. Arabic sometimes doesn't have a word that they'll need, so they say it in English. This is the result: ...... ketchup ........... Belfast ............ Internet
Thanks for sticking with me, I know this was a long one! If you want to see more pictures (there are about 140 from this weekend!) check out my album on Facebook.
<3 Molly
"Yes, my soul, find rest in God; my hope comes from him. Truly he is my rock and my salvation; he is my fortress, I will not be shaken. My salvation and my honour depend on God; he is my mighty rock, my refuge. Trust in him at all times, you people; pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge." ~ Psalm 62:5-8
