Days 10-1

10 days: Learning new traditions

One of the great things about volunteering abroad is learning the culture and the traditions.  A lot of traditions were simply a slight change in food, such as lamb for Easter instead of ham or turkey for Christmas.  Pancake Day was different because I really didn't have a tradition for Fat Tuesday, and it's definitely a tradition I want to bring home.  Also, stockings are placed at the end of your bed in England instead of in front of the fireplace.

9 days: Prepping for camping

In two days time, we are taking 31 youth to the Soul Survivor Youth Gathering.  It means we'll be camping for five days, so we had to bring out all the camping and cooking equipment to check off our packing list and clean everything after a year of storage.  It's time to get excited to finally experience this event that I've heard about since my first day at Saint James.  Overall, I'm excited, and a tad bit nervous, to be going to a youth gathering as a youth leader for the first time.

8 days: Reading the banns

I've been a part of a lot of different life events here at Saint James.  I've helped with funeral teas, baptisms, and confirmations.  Marriage is one I haven't been a part of, but I have learned that there are two different ways to be married in England.  Either by license, or by reading the banns.  I had read about banns being read in old classic novels, but I never realized it's still a practice.  From my understanding (British friends, feel free to correct me!) is in order to be married by banns, they must be read a certain amount of times during a church service before the wedding takes place, so if there's a reason the wedding shouldn't happen, the reason can be made known before the wedding.  Think of it as the beginning of a wedding "We are gathered here today... If any of you know why these two should not be joined speak now or forever hold your peace", except weeks in advance, instead of minutes.

7 days: Roadside views

Today we left for Soul Survivor in Somerset. It's a two and a half hour drive, but our route took us past Stonehenge, which made our journey longer, because the traffic slows way down as people try to elongate their view of Stonehenge.  I have to admit.  I wasn't something I was planning on seeing, but I'm glad we drove past it.  It was a part of England you hear about your entire life, and your whole life seeing it as the background on computers.  Seeing it gave me a better realization of Stonehenge and the efforts it took to build it.  The most surprising bit was I spent my entire life thinking it was a site in the middle of nowhere, but a fairly major road goes right by it.  There's also a pig farm next to it as well, which definitely wasn't a part of my imagination.

6 days: Living in luxury

Camping at Soul Survivor was been more glamorous than I remember it being.  However, when you have to cook for 37 people and aren't allowed open flames, you need to have camping stoves, and events tents to protect you from the English rain.  Not everything was luxurious as a couple of chairs broke, so your options are either get to meal times quickly, sit on the floor, or stand for meals.  Also, having volunteers come cook for youth events is amazing, since it frees up the youth workers to be fully present with the youth instead of worrying about cooking.

5 days: The scariest difference in food

One of the scariest differences was going to the grocery store and seeing eggs on the shelf, not the refrigerated.  Again, it's a difference of doing things, and, in this case, it's a different approach to sanitizing eggs for salmonella. The American way requires constant refrigeration, and British way means the eggs don't have to be refrigerated.  However I believe refrigeration extends the shelf life. The benefit is while camping, eggs are one thing you don't have to worry about keeping cool, which really helps us this week for breakfast.

4 days: Midday meeting

Part of Soul Survivor was having a meeting twice a day.  These meetings lasted around two hours each, with about 45 minutes to an hour of musical worship, a 30ish minute talk, and an extended time for prayer ministry, using centered around a theme, such as healing.  These meetings were led by the pastors of the church that organizes the event, whom you can see on the big scene.  The interesting bit was this was my first time going to a charismatic service, and it helped dispel some of the images I had from extreme charismatic churches that use snakes bites and very dramatic prayers of healing.  Like many religions, cultures, and denominations, you have the extreme 1% which gets all the attention and tend to represent the entire group, and then you have the other 99% which is a lot more reasonable, understandable, and representative as a whole.  This week gave me a better idea of the 99%.

3 days: A small break from the rain

It has been raining for all of Soul Survivor, which means the ground is now a giant mud pit and I am incredibly thankful for the pair of wellies (rain boots) I'm borrowing.  I'm impressed at the responses from the whole youth group because day after day of rain can really squash your spirits, especially when everything is wet and leaking, including the Big Top where you are for four hours of the day.  Thankfully, we had a small break from the rain today to eat breakfast outside the tents and toss about a Nerf ball.  The lack of rain also meant we were able to enjoy this gorgeous rainbow and take off our waterproofs for a bit.

2 days: One last root beer between friends

Today we came back from Soul Survivor.  It was an amazing week, and it only makes leaving harder.  There were jokes, pranks, and prayers.  I could not have had a better week to end on, but I'm partially glad it's done because I am knackered. Thankfully after a long bus ride, a lot of goodbyes, and putting up four tents to dry, I was ready for a long nap.  Kat, however, surprised me with the perfect way to relax and re-energize: a nice, cold root beer that didn't taste like licorice.

1 day: Final Farewells

How in the world are we already at one day left?  It still feels like we should be in February preparing for the relationship talks.  All I have to say is that I'm glad the farewells were difficult because it means this year has meant a lot, especially the people I worked with and met.  It's been a hard year with lots of new experiences, but the people at my placement have made it amazing.  I'll be coming home with new skills and stories, and I definitely have two homes now.  One in the United States, and one in England.