Wednesday, August 27, 2008

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.

2 comments:

frannie said...

SALT AND VINEGAR CRISPS!! i miss those. have you had any hula hoops yet?

Lindsey Windham said...

"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"

Are you serious?! THAT sounds awesome...! And some narrowly escaped stabbings, too? You are too much. Praying for your future employment.... :)

-linds