Burberry, Busking, and British Ale

Saturday night took Karsten and I to Carnforth train station, just to realize that there were no trains to Manchester until the next morning. Neither of us had much experience in train travel, so we were unaware as to the system, but we decided to risk it and head to a bigger city called Preston. As hoped, we found a train five minutes after our arrival to Preston that would call at Manchester Piccadilly. Perfect.

Sunday was spent with Karsten and my cousins Kristin and Carmen, walking along the canal and owning downtown Manchester. Check out Kristin's great travel blog here for her take on our time in Manchester!

Top fashion - black umbrellas for only 125 pounds

I now have a sharp black umbrella... But unfortunately not Burberry.

  

Taxi please

Old Wellington Inn - One of Manchester's oldest buildings. Home to some of the finest fish and chips, and a daily varying selection of local ales.

Rory Charles. Best busker I've heard, with a great CD for sale.

Public Foothpath

The other day a few of us capers went on a walk up a hill. It looks pretty small in the pic, but it had an amazing view of the ocean and rolling hills.
For pedestrians to be able to get to "points of interest" in England, there are often 'public footpaths' set up for them to follow. The strange thing is, these often go through people's property. The path to get to the top of this hill literally took us right up a rancher's driveway and in between their house and garage. The owners of the house were actually outside at the time, and they just smiled and told us where to go. We literally had to jump the fence into their field of horses and cows and hike through there.

Myself, Alyssa and Kaitlyn with castle in the background

Walking towards the hill from the Capernwray loop

Ruins of some sort at the top of the hill

 

Nice and green, eh? 

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The Manor

I have finally gotten access to a strong enough Wi-Fi connection that I can upload some pics for you! These pics are from our initial arrival at the manor house and grounds.

Carla and I leaving

The Manor side view

The courtyard

The front of the Manor

The runners loop

I live in one of the rooms overlooking the courtyard (the pic with the clock tower and picnic tables), as do the rest of the guys. The ladies rooms are in the rest of the castle/manor house and under the conference hall (which I don't have a picture of).

Groin

You are privileged to know, that I am writing this as I ice my groin.


Have you ever heard of P90X? It's a hardcore 90 day workout video series. My fave is 'Ab-ripperX', it's super intense. A couple people have different selections of it on their laptops, so I've been joining up with them every once in a while to get sexy. yesterday however, I'm pretty sure we were doing one called 'Groin-ripperX'; because somehow I pulled the muscles in my crotchial region like you wouldn't believe.


This of course makes it painful to walk.. or sit.. or dance. But even worse than that, I couldn't get my pants on. As my roommates watched in amusement, I kept struggling and cringing (making numerous attempts) before I finally let out a Tarzan yell and jumped into the pants.


It's funny, last night a few of us guys were discussing James chapter one together, and one of the verses we talked about for the majority of it was verse 2. It says "My brothers, count it all joy when you fall into various trials...". I don't know what the point of this trial is, but now every time I move, the pain reminds me to "have joy", so I smile.. a pain-filled, cringy smile.

Westend Impact

Okay, so I have about six blog posts that I've already written but just have not had the internet power to be able to load them yet.. I still don't have the power to upload any of the ones that include pictures, so those still have to wait. I am going to try and get into town tomorrow, though, so hopefully I can get those posted asap.


Just a quick bit about one of the exciting things I get to be involved in here:


We are all split up into teams that do various types of outreach through the nearby towns, and I am in a group of three students that will be working at a homeless shelter throughout the semester.


The lectures and seminars here at the castle are fantastic, but I'm still very excited to be getting OUT in the world and doing some more hands on (both practical and evangelistic) work. Our first go at it was on Thursday, and we will be going to the same place until March I believe. So it'll be awesome to be able to go consistently and hopefully we will have opportunities to share love with the guests at the shelter in its deepest form, as we slowly build up trust with them.


The shelter reminded me a lot of the Bridge on 20th in Saskatoon, so it wasn't too uncomfortable. We have already had the chance to meet some amazing people there, and I can't wait to continue getting to know them, hearing their stories, praying for them, and in all of it just being a witness. What an awesome privilege.