London

Well, now I'm in London. Have been for about two weeks. I am staying with my mum's cousin Catherine and her son (my second cousin) Jonathan, along with various other people who come and go... a couple of move permanent fixtures are Will Fisher, Jonnie's friend who is working as an architect at a nearby architecture firm, and who is in between his 1st and 2nd year or University, and then I think his name is Dave, an older guy who is lodging here on a permanent basis, but I don't see much of him at all. Through the last 2 weeks we've had a number of Jonnie's friends and relatives come and go.

Anyway, I've been walking around a lot, getting to know this area. It's Islington, north of the Thames, and very central in London. There are a million restaurants and pubs nearby, which is sweet. That's one thing we've been doing a lot of, is going to the pub. There may have been 2 days that I have NOT gone to the pub.... which is why I recently bought some running shoes.

First weekend I was here we went to Camden a couple of times, which is an incredibly trendy area of town fairly close to here just sort of north west. I really enjoyed it, and met some Australian girls, although two of them went back to Australia the next day, and the other refused to return text messages. Oh well.

On Sunday I went to Catherine's local church. I had planned to go to a new church plant in Camden, but the pastor did not get back to me in time for that to happen, so I went this past week instead. I liked the emphasis that Catherine's church put on the unity of the church, although I don't know that the gospel was that clearly presented. I really enjoyed the Camden church last Sunday though, the leader, Peter Harris, made a very useful defense of why the Church should take social action by helping those in need, which although I have obviously heard some of before, he made some new points, such as the fact that people learn by doing, not only by hearing, so in serving others we more acutely learn of Christ's love and service to us.

Not too much of else of note has happened. Notable experiences include: going to the british museum, having a really bad headache and going on a hunt for painkillers at 4:30am, going to watch a midsummer night's dream at the globe theatre and then having a couple of pints with the guy who played Oberon afterwards, taking a 3 hour bus ride to go to somewhere that should have taken 30 minutes (due to some misdirection by Henry's friends. Henry is a friend of Jonnie's.)

Also, lots of job applications, and no responses, applying for an NI number (National Insurance number, like a Social Security number, needed to work.) Eating lots of salt and vinegar crisps.

Oh, went to the Carnival on Monday of this week, that was crazy and awesome. It is apparently the 2nd biggest street party in the world, biggest in Europe. There are like a million stands with people selling jerk chicken, rice, corn, etc.. along with some massive DJ stations with incredible sound systems. Favorite quote: "BEER! ICE COLD! GET IT HERE! (and hasheesh)", along with "SKY JUICE!!! (with rum.)" There I met (not on accident) Nadia my first cousin on my mum's side and her boyfriend, which was really cool. I haven't seen her for at least 4 years! We got out of there pretty quick though when it started to get dark because apparently thats when the stabbings start happening. And its a good thing we did, there was a small scale war between the police and some 'youths' who were throwing bricks and stuff later that night.

I also met up with a lacrosse team last Wednesday (and will again tonight) to practice a little. They are a premier club team here in London, so hopefully I'll be playing with them come October when the season starts. The level of play was perhaps slightly lower than at A&M, and they were very glad to have me out there, which was nice. They practice on Clapham common, a huge park in South London. I think they commonly come in 4th or 5th out of 8 to 10 clubs in the area.

Right, well there probably isn't too much else to note. A day to day exposition of what I have done would be over the top, but you got the highlights.

Spain

spain was awesome, although we didnt have enough time and we spent way too much money.  we spent most of the time in valencia.  scott lived with a family there actually from columbia.  he lived maybe 30 minutes walk from the center of town, which was busy most of the time.  people tend to eat late, and generally do everything late.   we spent a lot of time walking actually... but it was still fun.  when i got there on thursday i was extremely tired, having been awake for like 40 hours or something... but scott wanted to go out anyway, so we did.  we went to check out the center of town and some of the plazas there.  bars usually stay open til 2am, and then the discotecas open after that, til like 5am or later sometimes.   we stayed out until like 3 but then i was just way too tired, so we went home and slept.  we woke up at like 10 and then went to the center and checked out some of the shops and stuff.

scott had been dating this slovakian girl there for the last 3 weeks, interestingly.  so we ended up hanging out with her and her friends/relatives quite a lot ( a group of like 7 or 8 slovaks living in a single flat with one bathroom!  they're crazy but fun. ).  scott tends to leave stuff everywhere, and he left a cd that he bought from a shop earlier in the day at a cafe, and so we spent much of the late afternoon on friday looking for that....  then we went out again in the evening with the slovakians again.  they spoke good english and really good spanish, so we got a long pretty well.

one of the central squares that most of the cafes are around and that is sort of the center of the night life was really cool.  people go there to skateboard and roller blade and blow fire, and juggle, and sing etc.. late into the night.  so we'd sit for hours outside a cafe and just watch people and talk, which was really nice.  

i think on saturday lucia, scott's girl, went to london, so we didnt see her any more, but all the rest of the slovakians were staying in madrid and working for another month or so.  anyway, saturday afternoon we went to the beach and sat under a big umbrella for like 6 hours.  so i didn't get sunburned or really even tanned at all, which was good.  the sun says up really late there, so we left the beach at like 8pm still before sunset.  then we went out agaaiin.

our plan was go to church on sunday, and then catch a train at 2:20 to madrid, where we would stay until tuesday when we were leaving.  

so we got up at like 9, packed up, and went to the catholic cathedral down in the center (scott had been going there for his time there) for mass at like 11.  the service was in spanish, so i didn't catch any of it, but it was fairly short and seemed quite traditionally catholic.  then we went to the train station at like 12:30 i guess.  thennn we misread the sign that had train times, and saw MADRID 14:53 blinking, and both assumed that it meant our train was delayed until then.  so we went off to sit in a cafe for a while since the train station was like 7000 kelvin (as were most indoor places).  and then at like 2:15 we decided to walk back to the station to be in good time for our train.  well as we walked into the station, we saw one of the trains with a sign labeled MADRID 14:20 blinking.  and so we were like CRAP and ran up and then the train started pulling away and the guy standing there was like "bye bye".  arg so we missed our train on sunday.  that was the last train of the day.  sooo we could either take a bus at 1am, or take a train the next day at like 11:25.  fortunately we were able to transfer our tickets to the next day for only 8 euros, so we did that.  annd then we didnt want to go back to where we were staying because it cost 20 euros a night, and we were already going to have to pay for the hotel we'd arranged in madrid (which was expensive because all the cheaper places were booked up), so we called up the slovakians and they had some space on their couch for us to stay, so we spent another night in valencia. 

then the next day we made our train to madrid, and got in around 3pm i guess, and got to our hotel fine.  my friend daniela who lived in spain for like 6 months was nice enough to email a huge list of stuff that must be done in madrid, so we tried to knock out a lot of it, but unfortunately we weren't very good at navigating, although we did manage to eat at this really good calimari sandwich place in one of the plazas.  madrid was more touristy than valencia, and we couldn't figure out where everyone went after like 1am.  daniela had told us about this one club that apparently has 7 floors with different music on each floor, but we couldn't find it despite walking around for like 3 hours.

anyway, then the next day we woke up at 9 and went to the airport where we parted ways to head home.  the rest of the trip was very uneventful, and i got back here fine.