Hopping Fences and Other Adventures

So, its been about 2 weeks since I've posted but it seems like much longer!  So much has happened I don't even know where to start writing. Time just seems to fly by.  I can't believe it is almost November and I've been here for over 2 months!  I guess the old adage time flies when you're having fun is really true.  Well, let's see...
I told you all about Dublin which was a great time!  Our next team adventure took place on the ground of Fore Abbey.  Fore Abbey is an old Christian monastery that was built by St. Feichin in the 600's.  Most of what remains today is from latter, largely the 12th century through the 16th century.  It is absolutely beautiful!  The leaves are starting to change colors here so the grounds are beautiful and the old building is just so amazing.  To stand among something that is over a century old is not something North American's get to do often so I felt very privileged standing among the ruins.  I have to say that our adventure was not all by the books.  We weren't exactly sure where the path to get to the ruins started so we kind of made our own path which may or may not have included hoping a fence or two.  However, we got there and had an adventure along the way so it was totally worth it.  We also hiked up a little hill near the ruins and got a beautiful view of the valley in which the little town of Fore is located.  It was a great little hike although I mostly slid down the hill as it was wet and I was in Tom's, not exactly the best shoes for hiking.  Luckily, I made it down without any bruises, quite an accomplishment for a girl who had a giant bruise 2 weeks ago from walking around my room!  Of course, because I was driving we got lost getting there which turned out to be ok because we stumbled across a cute little lake that we explored for a bit as well.  It was a great afternoon.  Its great to have to many cool places so close to home.

Hopping the Fence

Last week our team supervisors, Mark and Kristen, were here to visit for a week. They come and visit about 3 times a year just to check up on us and see how we're doing.  Last week was their first visit and it was awesome to have them here.  We had so much fun with our supervisors doing all kinds of random things.  One day we carved pumpkins and went bowling which was definitely an adventure.  It was an adventure if for no other reason than because we had to squeeze 7 people into a car that does not comfortably seat 5.  I'm sure we looked similar to a clown car when we all finally piled out of the car because we definitely should not have all fit in that car.  We also finally visited Netti's while our supervisors were here.  Netti's is a diner in town that everyone told us we had to visit while we were here in Delvin but had not had the opportunity to visit yet but we finally went and some of the best milkshakes we've ever had.
Our youth group is going really well.  The name for our night 2 weeks ago was What is Faith? and it is pretty easy to guess what the topic was.  We flew paper airplanes, Marie gave a talk, we broke up into small groups, had a time of prayer and then ended with a funny skit to lighten the mood before sending them home.  The night went really well.  The youth responded very well and seemed to have a lot of fun.  Last week we had a night called Cloud of Witnesses.  This was probably my favorite night yet.  We made a cloud out of Halloween cotton webs and hung it up in our living room.  We then put saint cards in the cloud to represent the great cloud of witnesses mentioned in Hebrews.  The night was focused on the lives of the saints and how their lives are examples of living out faith, building on our theme from the week before.  We broke them up into 4 groups and had them go through 4 different stations which engaged them and taught them about different saints.  One station was a mix of you tube videos and a then question and answers centered on how to become a saint.  We tied in information about St. Pedro Colungsad who was just canonized last Monday who happened to be an 18 year old young man from the Philippines so the youth were really able to relate to his story.  The next station was a matching game with the names of 20 saints up on the wall and 20 clues that they had to match with the names.  We also had a scavenger hunt around our living room that also gave the story of St. Francis' life.  Our fourth station was a prezi (which is a program online that can be used to make really cool presentations).  The youth were able to click through the prezi and learn about 5 saints that made a difference in the church today which included Blessed Pope John Paul II and Blessed Mother Teresa.  The youth seemed to have a lot of fun at all the stations and said they had a lot of fun.  This week we will be having an All Saints Day party.  We are getting the students to dress up like different saints and we'll have pizza and cake and games and just have fun with the youth.  Next week we will be starting a 6 week series on Salvation History and looking at a Bible Timeline.
I believe that is all for now.  As always, thank you so much for your support this year. None of this would be possible without the prayers and support of all you out there reading this blog.  Please continue to pray for me and my team as we will do for you!
God Bless,
Amy

Life in the Village

So life here in Delvin continues.   Some of you may not be shocked to hear that not a whole lot happens in our little town of 400 people but it’s definitely the truth.  Although there are not many big events in this village we keep ourselves entertained and we are not short of random events at our house.  We go on a lot of walks around town discovering new random things in the town.  We found a tire swing the other day that is super fun.  I anticipate us spending a lot of time swinging on the tire swing and playing on the little playground in town.  We may have looked a little like creepers playing on the playground but we weren’t any creepier than the woman who stood at her window watching us while she drank her coffee for 40 minutes so I was ok with it.  Besides walks around our small town we watch a lot of movies to keep ourselves entertained.  Another way we keep ourselves entertained is by watching episodes of the tv show Chuck.  Our team has really bonded over that show and we have a lot of fun watching it together.  We have a lot of inside jokes from that show and random YouTube videos.  We are definitely finding ways to entertain ourselves.

Our youth group is going really well.  We have a solid group of youth attending which is great.  We’ve had a movie night and a trivia night since my last post.  Our movie night was fun although I think the youth found Jurassic Park a little cheesy.  I loved it though because I’ve never seen it and felt like as a child of that generation I should have seen it.  It was rather cheesy, I have to agree with the teenager there, but I still found it wonderful and am glad I’ve now seen the first Jurassic Park movie.  Our trivia night went over quite well.  We made a Jeopardy board on our wall and had all kinds of topics to stump (and not stump) the youth group.  My favorite category was Name That Tune.  I may have been partial as I wrote the questions but whatever!  I wrote lines from songs for them to guess and they only got the really easy ones even though most of them were songs they should have known like Chasing Cars by Snow Patrol and Iris by Goo Goo Dolls.  Although, I have something to get off my chest because I feel this is a serious issue in our culture today.  Only like 2 of the youth in our youth group had ever heard Crazy Train by Ozzy Osbourn!!!!! What is that all about!  How have they never heard of Crazy Train?  It’s like one of the most iconic songs in the world and they had never heard it.  Is this song just an American thing or is this song just going to be lost to the sands of time forgotten forever?  I don’t think I can handle this and am now dedicating my life to ensuring that this song and others like it will not be forgotten!

In other news we went to Dublin on Saturday which was really fun.  We left early(ish) and headed out for our Dublin adventure.  We drove to Dublin and parked at IKEA because I refused to drive in the main part of Dublin.  We caught a bus into the main part of the city and after a stop at McDonalds to pee we headed toward Temple Bar.  We spent a lot of our time in Temple Bar because it was so cool.  We found all kinds of fun things in this urban part of town like a book market and a food market on different streets.  I loved the food market and the book market (big shocker there!).  I mean seriously, my two favorite things, food and books, within a 2 block radius of one another.  The food market was fabulous.  They had different vendors and food stands ranging from Chinese to American style hot dogs to Irish dairy products to a booth called Viva Mexico.  I’ll give one guess at which stand was my favorite.  The Mexican booth seriously made my day!!! I don’t think I can adequately explain how much I have been missing Mexican food so when I saw that booth I almost cried.  I got a burrito that was like a taste of heaven on the streets of Dublin.  After exploring Temple Bar for a few hours we headed to Graffton Street.

On Graffton Street we visited Peterson’s pipe shop, a famous pipe shop in Dublin.  As you can guess that was more for the guys on the team than the girls.  It was cool I guess although it was not my favorite part of the day.  On Grafton Street they also have a lot of street performers which was really cool.  I loved all the different acts we discovered as we walked along the street.  There were different bands and singers and cool dancer and the last act we found was a juggler.   He was quite the character.  He was pretty good and Ben even got to part of the act.  St. Stephen’s Green is also at the end of Graffton street so we walked around the park for a while.  It was a beautiful park in the middle of the city, much like Central Park in New York although St. Stephen’s Green is smaller.  They did have swans though which was cool although I was ok watching them from a distance and not getting up close and personal with them, they are still birds after all! 

After all that we headed back to IKEA where we ate dinner and started finding stuff to furnish our house.  We have been saving our household money the last few weeks so we could start getting stuff for our house like kitchen supplies and hangars and trash cans.  We came away with quite a haul which mostly fit in our small car.  After a long and exhausting day we headed home which was an adventure in itself.

The first part of the drive was fine because it was on the motorway so the road was nice and spacious so although it was dark I had lots of room and didn’t get too freaked out.  Then we turned off the motorway onto what I’m pretty sure is the most terrifying road created by man.  It was this tiny little road that was not exactly straight to put it lightly and it was pitch black and to make it even better there was fog.  Needlessly to say the drive was stressful but my team was great about being encouraging and helping me not freak out!  I never thought I would be so happy to see Delvin.  After missing the road to our house and taking a little tour of Delvin to turn around we arrived home where we all just crashed on the couch for a while before heading to bed.

Well, I believe that is all for now!  Thank you all for reading my blog and supporting me!  I really appreciate it and keep you all in my prayers.  Look for more posts and photos on Facebook.  I just put up a whole bunch of new photos on Facebook so head to my Facebook page and check ‘em out!

God Bless,

Amy

The First Week

So, I've officially been in Delvin for one week and things are going really well.  It is definitely a small town (about 400 people) but everyone here has been incredibly welcoming to us.  We have been well taken care of, we even have an Irish mummy here in Delvin.  There isn't a whole lot to do in Delvin but there are 2 castles and church ruins that date back almost 900 years at the oldest.  The history here in Ireland is absolutely incredible.  There are 900 year old church ruins right next to the post office and convenience store.  It is so cool to see the old and new together in this tiny village.  We toured around Delvin on Wednesday.  We explored the town quite extensively in about 2 hours (yeah, its small in case you haven't gotten that picture yet...but we do have 5 pubs!)  We have a really cute 3 story house that is only a 3 minute walk from the church in town, granted most things in Delvin are only a 3 minute walk but its still really nice.  We have a fireplace which absolutely made my day!!!
We had our first youth group on Thursday and it went really well.  We had pizza and just hung out with the older youth group that was started last year.   We had 9 kids come which we felt really good about for our first night.  We spoke at the masses this weekend which was a lot of fun.  Mass is incredibly short here in Ireland.  Daily mass is usually about 20 minutes and Sunday mass is at most 45 minutes.  The speed at which everything is done at mass is something our team is still getting used to.  We have definitely been made welcome at the parishes here in Delvin.  We attend daily mass at the church about 10 minutes outside Delvin in a place called Killulagh (Kih-luh-lah...it sounds kind of like the alcohol with an extra l).  It is a beautiful little church out in the country dedicated to St. Livinus (I have no idea who he is).  They also have a weekend mass out there that we attended the morning in addition to the 2 masses in Delvin at Our Lady of the Assumption.  Our Lady of the Assumption is currently being renovated but the renovations are almost done and the church is looking really nice (I'll post pictures of both churches when I remember my camera).
My team so far is getting along quite well.   A little about my team.  Marie is 19 and is from Alberta Canada.  She plays piano, loves blue and purple and is always there for a random dance party or to share a chocolate bar.  Becca is also 19 and is also from Alberta Canada.  Becca is usually the quite one on the team but she loves adventures and is always down to go explore the world.  Tim is my co-leader.  Is the third Canadian on the team and is 20 as of Friday.  Tim did NET in Australia last year and was going to go back for this year but God had other ideas and now he's here with us.  He is great with directions which is great because I am consistently getting us lost and Tim is able fix all my car wanderings.  Ben is the other American with me.  He's from Yacuma Washington.  Ben just graduated high school and at the end of this year will be the only teenager left on our team at 18.  (Side Note: It was great when Tim turned 20 because I'm no longer the only one who is not teenager on my team.)  Anyways, Ben is a great photographer and has taken some wonderful pictures of our team so far which is a great gift since I am constently forgetting to bring mine on team excursions.  He is also a great cook which is wonderful!!!

Exploring Delvin looking like tourists!

I think I told you all that my biggest fear about this year came true when they told me I was going to be the only driver for my team this year.  Well, you'll be happy to hear no one has died yet and I have only driven on the wrong side of the road twice (both times were on back country roads and no other cars were on the road, I promise).  I have less heart attacks every time we get into the car so I am encouraged that by the end of the year I will have this driving on the wrong side of the road thing under control...just in time to come home and be utterly confused again.  I'm just glad I already knew how to drive a manual and its a small car and not the van!!!  It is weird shifting with the left hand but I think being on the wrong side of the car is definitely the weirdest part about driving over here.
So, I think you are all now quite caught up on my life now.  I am definitely happy and excited for the year ahead.  I know I am where God wants me but I definitely miss all of you back home reading this.  Know that I love you all and am praying for you everyday.  May God bless you all and keep you safe until I can see you all again.
P.S. I have a new address!!
15 Cois Caislean
Athboy Road
Delvin
Co. Westmeath
Ireland