at christ church office

It certainly is much easier to go from a state of no activity to a state of lots of activity than vice versa. This week has been relaxing: quiet, even, without the holiday club to dictate the majority of hours in my day. I've been writing (¡qué sorpresa!), visiting kids I met during mission week, and getting things in order for my independent study. Even so, I have felt quite aimless, which was bound to happen, I guess. Plugging into established groups is never easy, but I will not be deterred!

This weekend, an open-air theatre on the South Bank is putting on a new intepretation of Federico Garcia Lorca's "Blood Wedding" that I plan to attend. It will be strange, having only read/watched on video another of his plays - "Yerma - but I am looking forward to it. Now, to figure out my bus route...

Actually, the buses aren't nearly as intimidating as they were a few years ago. Maybe it's because I've had to rely on them more; maybe it's because I've given up my pride in the area of not asking the bus driver for help - either way, I've made it to the west end and back a few times, and up to Angel (with unfortuntely no sighting of Banksy) with relatively few problems.

This past Monday was a 'Bank Holiday,' and so most people had the day off. After talking about how we loved walking around and seeing the sights on foot, Joanne suggested that we take a walk in the country on Monday, and so we did. We've been having fun calling it a 'pilgrimage' in the spirit of Chaucer because its eventual (and eventual it was!) destination was Canterbury. We took an 8:30 train to the tiny, absolutely picturesque English village of Chilham, and got our bearings from there. Oh, but Chilham was charming! If the little pub had been open, I would have been very tempted to enjoy the town for its beautiful tudor and georgian buildings, one main street (named, and I kid you not, The Street), and lovely setting. But alas, we had bigger goals, and the biggest was the 11 miles or so of our route to Canterbury.

We managed to get lost only slightly, but made it to Canterbury in perfect time for a cup of tea in this little Bohemian cafe and an Evensong at the Cathedral. We caught the train home from Canterbury west station and had a rather luxurious dinner spread of bread, cheese, dried apricots, pretzels, etc. It was a lovely day, despite our sore feet. There were five of us who went: Rod, Joanne, myself, and Dan and Sara, another couple from the States. It was so strange to be around Americans! I'd gotten quite unused to the accent from people besides myself...

If anyone reading this does end up coming to visit, make sure you prepare yourself for a scalding hot curry. I returned to the curry restaurant that Lisa-Raine had taken me to on my first day here, and boy! was it ridiculous. Good, but wow. Very hot. Hotter than any Mexican or Peruvian or Colombian food I've ever had, and I've had my fair share for this point in life, I think!

Sunday afternoon, Jen and I went out to shop the Spitalfields market and I must say, there's really nothing like a market day here. There were people heckling, everyone selling and buying, good and bad quality, warm food and cold food, stylish and just strange fashion, and no end of tourists. I was reminded of Neil Gaiman's 'Neverwhere' description of the Floating Market in Knightsbridge where one of the stands has a man calling out, "Lost property! None of your found goods here! Everything guaranteed properly lost!" At any rate, I found an interesting little dress and some brown leggings to experiment with this style, and we'll see if I'm still feeling good about them by the end of their trial run today.

I guess I'll conclude for now. My best to you all :)