Summer comes to an end...

Summer is now swiftly coming to an end and things are starting to normalise again...


This summer has been really quite good. I thoroughly enjoyed my time at CARE and loved 'working' in London for those 5 weeks. It definitely tickled my taste buds for the future. I've just in fact been looking at possible posts in London for myself next year if I were to do a part-time Masters - I've decided I'm going to apply for a Masters! 


It has also been wonderful seeing friends of mine get married! The Brights and the Sweeneys both got married this summer and to have been part of such wonderful events was lovely. They are wonderful people and I am looking forward to seeing how God uses them as couples in the future! :)

While that has all been wonderful, my highlight for this summer has to be the time I've spent with my family. I haven't spent too much time at home as I was staying in London for a large chunk of the holidays, but what I have spent at home has been wonderful. Now I'm back in Aber I'm really going to miss them! In fact, I only left yesterday and I already really miss them!

It's been exceptionally wonderful spending time with my sisters getting to know them better. As siblings the tendency to fight with each other and argue when we were younger was very strong, but now that we're all growing up we can have civilised conversations! and much more of course! :) I really do love them both greatly and will really miss them!

Here are some photos of us (and my cousins) messing around a few weeks ago...

Les Miserables

Last Wednesday was so much fun!

So, I'd been walking around London on my own after work and stuff in the first week and saw loads of people having fun with their friends and I just really wanted to be with people I knew! Wednesday was a real treat.

A group of people from uni came to London to see Les Mis :)

We went for dinner, then headed to the theatre. It was so much fun! On arriving at the restaurant I didn't stop talking for ages!

Here are some pictures of us at the restaurant:

After enjoying our food we headed off to the tubbeeee....

And to the theatre...

It was a really good production! I hadn't seen it before so it was really exciting! :)

I definitely recommend it to anyone! 

Affirmation and Appreciation

Last week and this week have gone past so fast! I didn't even realise it was already Wednesday - and that's nearly over now!


But to update you on my time in London...


So, I've been doing this work for CARE - researching and writing a paper for them - and it's been really interesting, but I kinda felt like it was something given to me because they needed to find something for me to do. I felt like this because no one else in the office seems to be looking at the same area... but then again, nothing overly major is happening in that area at the moment so I do understand why they're not frantically looking into it.


I was feeling a bit bummed out about it until last Wednesday.


Last Wednesday we had a Public Affairs: London meeting. This involved me, the human trafficking and prostitution officer, a guy that has volunteered with them for the year, the guy in charge of me, and the guy in charge of all mentioned. It was a really interesting meeting in that I got to know a lot more about what everyone had been doing. I managed to suggest something of real use to them too and have managed to implement it too which is really good! :)


The main thing I took from this meeting though was a real sense of appreciation and affirmation. What I have been spending all my time on, is actually really useful to them! That made me feel much much better about everything and gave me much more enthusiasm which is good :)


The rest of the working week panned out as normal really... but the evenings were a bit more interesting!


More about them (and some piccies) in the next post! :D

Commuting hens?

One week down, four to go... and the blisters to prove it! 5 blisters on each foot... that's got to be a record!

So, I'm in London at the moment doing an internship for an organisation called CARE. They are a Christian organisation that work in politics. My task is to do research for topics they may want to talk about/report on. I've really enjoyed looking at areas that I wouldn't normally look into such as same-sex marriage rights and issues around the 'gay-gene'. It has really pushed me out of my comfort zone but has been really exciting all the same and I've learnt a lot already. I have a desk in an room with four other people - the 'public affairs' team - and everybody is really lovely.

The commute however is a little exhausting... and when I say a little, I mean a lot. I leave Sarah's house at 7.00am every morning and get into the office at around 8.45 for a 9 o'clock start. After the day in the office, I then leave at around 5.15 and get back to Sarah's for around 7.00. Definitely not an easy commute. And after this weekend I'm even more tired.

This weekend was Hannah's hen do. It was a really lovely weekend in Suffolk. We were in a beautiful house and right next to the beach. We even went on a speed boat ride! While the speed boat ride was exciting, I'm rather afraid of deep water and I got off the boat feeling a bit unwell. All in all though it was a really good weekend. It was lovely seeing Hannah again. I'm really excited for her and she's moving to Leicester which is great because then I'll probably be able to see her a bit more! : )

I'm really enjoying my time here in London, but I am missing people a lot! I ended up driving for an extra 3-4hours yesterday purely so I could see my mum! I'm also really missing Tom and would love people to be around here. It's really nice walking around a little after 6 and seeing so many people enjoying themselves and the buzz of people in restaurants etc. I just wish I could join with that.

Secret Cinema

Last weekend (12th-13th Feb) I went to London with two wonderful people, Laura and Malcolm, to go to an event called 'Secret Cinema'. "What is Secret Cinema?" I here you ask. Well, I shall tell you in due course.


I shall admit that I slept most of the to way to London; after being the driver for so long it seems that now I get car sick if I'm not driving which is a tad annoying as it means I can't join in the conversations or read but can simply sleep and listen to my iPod.
All the way to London I had a craving for Marks and Spencer's crispy bacon; they have it at service stations and I really really wanted some. Sadly, the best we could find was a Waitrose, so humus and carrots it was! They say I'm high maintence! pah! haha, Laura did mock me for it.
When we arrived in London I had such a strange feeling of being home. I think it was the smell - pollution. It was a smell I was very familiar with growing up in the Philippines, and although it sounds disgusting, it smelt like home. I was instantly comfortable in the busyness. 


So, what is Secret Cinema? Well, the idea is that you have no idea what film you are going to see or where exactly. You are given 'clues' during the weeks before like what to wear and where to meet.


"Secret Cinema attempts to blur the boundaries between theatre and cinema with the audience becoming part of the narrative and interacting with actors on a set just like in the film.

The film is interluded with performance and film fans can even eat and drink that which is in the movie.

Fabien Riggall, founder and creative director, said: “We aspire to bring the colour, the passion and the vibrancy of the films we screen to life and we would like our audience to be part of that creative process. Secret Cinema aims to further the participation of its audience whilst continuing to push the boundaries of how films are seen and experienced.”"quote

Getting ready for Secret Cinema was a lot of fun. We were told to dress up late-1940s, so we looked slightly odd, but I quite liked it! It's strange to see how much fashion changes as the style of fashion was actually quite similar to as it is now. Setting off to Wapping Station (the location we were told to meet at) we looked very very odd, at least I thought we did. Though that changed as soon as we arrived at Wapping Station. There were loads of people dressed similarly strangely as to how we were. While we were waiting there was a policeman dressed as a 1940s policeman and we were handed with newspapers written in the style of 'Unknown Culture Movement'. Suddenly a group of people (actors) were coming towards us chanting 'art for all and all for art', telling us to follow them, "why wait when you can create". 


When we got into the location (Tobacco Dock) we were welcomed into a 1940s experience with actors everywhere to make it 'real'. There was a restaurant, several bars, market stalls with flowers and food, ballet dancers, jazz dancers, and several scenes from the film. There was also several ballet pieces acted out for us throughout the evening.
                                        
The film was The Red Shoes, a 1948 film. It was fun finding bits and pieces of the evening in the film; for example a piece of set was being carried in the queue, at the time we had no idea what it was. It was a good film, and was thankfully not scary (there had been several comments implying it would be a scary film).