There are so many reasons for this, but let me touch on just a few. First off, today I ran a "fun run" that was 3.5 miles. Let me be very clear about this: There was absolutley nothing fun about this run. OK, there was one thing that was good, but I'll come to that later. First let me explain to you what the run consisted of. We ran up a hill just over a quarter mile long, not fun, then we ran through some woods that were bloody muddy. OK, so not a big deal, but then we ran up another monster hill that was bloody bigger and muddier than the last. OK, then we run down a muddy hill, almost eat dirt but manage to stay up. Then you run on some pavement, then you come to a bloody hill again. What is going on???? At this point I am not happy and walking, feeling stupid and humiliated because at this point I have had a 70 year old man pass me, an 8 year old girl, a number of young teenagers, and 2 bloody dogs. So just before I was ready to throw in the towel, I see the drink station coming up. Well I got entered into this race by my friend Paul, and Paul entered me into the race as a beer drinker, meaning at the 2 mile marker I got a pint of ale!!! I was thinking about this pint prior to coming to this point in the race, and I decided that it would be best for me not to drink the beer half way through a run from hell. But when I came up to the drink stand, I saw a group of bloaks (guys) standing around chatting over a nice frosty beer. I thougt to myself, "I could use a rest, and how better to do that then have a cold one on the house", and so the "fun run" finally became tolerable, not fun. So I did manage to accomplish the 3.5 mile trek in about 40 minutes, keep in mind that I pulled over for a pint of ale and chated with a local for about 5 minutes too!!
Also, I don't know if you are familiar with vegimite or marmite, but they are both loaded with vitamins, but can make your stomach turn like no other. So Liz and I gave them a go, and wow, they are not so good. Actually the veggiemite I could stomach, I had like 3 bites. But the Brits eat it for kicks???? (although its loaded with good stuff)
Well, I am sure that I will wake up with some soar legs, but in about 5 hours I will be getting up to start on my journey to Scotland!!! I hear it is nearly impossible to understand the Scots, but I understood most of Braveheart if not all of it. I am sure I will manage, after all, "if William Wallace were here, he'd conxume the English with fireballs from his eyes, and bolts of lightning from his arrss."
I shall continue from Scotland.
Farewell!!
(if you want to know more weird things about the English please ask when you see me next)
We are gettin ready for bed right now, and Christmas dinner was different this year, but none the less good. We had some turkey, it was served a little different, some sausages rapped in bacon, delicious, some pudding, which is nothing like pudding in the states. It was a bread thingy that was toasted and you put gravy on it. We also had some potatoes, but they were fried and much bigger than fries, almost potatoe chunks. They were also good. We also had some stuffing, it was different too. Then an English tradition is to eat brussell sprouts, but somehow Liz and I escaped those. So all in all dinner was good. Then the English have dessert almost immediatly after dinner, it is minced meat pie, which contains no meat, and brandy pudding (again nothing like our pudding). Then about 2 hours later there was another spread of food on the table that had new stuff and some old stuff. Turkey, 3 kinds of cheeses, crackers, biscuits (bisquits are really cookies here), cake, more cake, olives, salad, and other things. It was a good night!
Tommorrow is a different kind of day. Here in the UK it is boxing day. Boxing day comes from when all the servants used to have to work on Christmas to serve their masters family. Then on the day after Christmas they would recieve their boxes with gifts in them and get the day with their own families. It is kind of an old tradition, but none the less it is another paid holiday. All the banks are closed and stuff, but the sales are going like crazy.
So you may ask yourself, Josh what are you going to do with yourself on boxing day? Well I am going to runa 3.5 mile boxing day fun run. Well you might wonder what a fun run is, it is a run where at the 2 mile mark you stop to drink a pint of ale!!! No joke! If that isn't British for you then I don't know what is. So it may take me an hour to run 3.5 miles but I will at least got a pint of ale along the way.
Happy Christmas to all and Happy Boxing day!!!
If I am honest, I must say that I don't fancy being away from home for Christmas. Tonight feels nothing like Christmas to me. No church, no family, no parties, no Christmas music. I just had them put on National Lampoons Christmas Vacation because I have to have something that brings me back to Christmas time. Surprisingly here in London is not very Christmassy. One thing I have noticed is that the Christmas trees in London look very skimpy and weak. For the first time today I heard people telling each other: "Have a happy Christmas" - Here in London it is proper to say, Have a happy Christmas and Have a Merry New Year.
So I must say that I will be weary before planning a trip over Christmas.
Don't get me wrong, I am having a great time here in jolly ol' England, but I must say that tonight is a little rough. But Clark Griswald will help me to get through the night.
Now my guess is that New Years in Dublin will be different!!!!
Merry Christmas to all, Enjoy your families.
Today, Saturday Dec. 22, was another good day in the UK. We were in London the whole day, and the weather was quite pleasant. We went to the London Castle. This place is incredible! If you ever need some ideas on how to build a castle, I don't know the best way, but the Brits sure built a doozy. This particular Castle looks really cool from the outside, I mean it looks like a real castle. But you can't fully be prepared to see what you see when you go inside the castle. This castle was so grand in size, there was a literally a community inside of the castle walls. I think they even built a mote around the castle, but today it is a lawn. Inside the castle they displayed a whole bunch of old artifacts that will blow your mind. The king's crowns, all the artillary, the swords, the armor, and all kinds of other thingys.
Tommorrow we are going back to London for the 3rd time. We don't really have our own transportation, the friends that we are staying with have been so awesome to take us all over the place. So we are going to take the train in tommorrow and catch the Underground around the city.
We ate lunch at a real English Pub, which was the first time that I have done that. I had a sandwich and a brew, it was magnificant.
This place is very nice, we are considering moving here, but that is as far as we will ever get to actually moving here. I do really love the culture here in the UK, not so much right in London, only because it is alot like New York City, but I really like the English culture. So far the food has been good too. I had fish n chips a few days ago, because you have to get fish n chips while in England.
Here we come London! (again)
My sleeping schedule is anything but a schedule right now. The first night I went to sleep around 12:30am then I woke up at 2:30am and couldn't fall back asleep. I read, surfed the web, and read some more until about 6:30am then I slept for 2 hours. Then two nights ago we wen to bed around 2:30am, Liz forgot to change her cell phone time to London time, so we woke up 2 hours later then we were supposed too. It was "quite nice" to get some extra sleep though after my first night. Then yesterday I fell asleep 3 times on 3 different occasions in the car. And now here I am in my bed at 1am sitting next to my wife who is journaling. We both fell asleep at 9pm, then I woke up to her typing away at 12:30am. What the heck???? So I am now blogging and wandering what the heck we are going to do about sleep. Another thing is our eating schedule or lack of. We are eating at the weirdest times and skipping meals. We ate at 1am on Thursday night.
Anyways, London is still AWESOME!! We went into London on Thursday and were super tourist that day. We saw alot of the tourist stuff but it was incredible. Big Ben is something to behold. A bit of information: Did you know that Big Ben is not the clock, but Big Ben is the name of the bell that rings. It is part of the house of parliment, which is an absolutly incredible building. It is this building that is centuries old that is as long as a few football fields that has so much detail in it. We also saw the tower bridge which was incredilble. We have some really good pictures. We saw too much to go into detail about. WE did go on a double decker tour bus, that was sweet!! We rode that thing around for a couple of hours taking in all the sites. Buckingham palace was sweet too. We got to see a few of the guards at different places, they are serious. These guys don't move, or crack a smile or anything, and they can't be any older than 19 or 20. Liz got a picture right next to one, and she swears that he was going in and out of sleep. Another one had snaut running down his nose but I don't think he is allowed to touch it. That was funny too.
Today, (Friday) we went and saw Stonehenge. WOW!! I must say that it was quite cold out. Seriously, it was freezing, I think I am still thawing out after that. I fell asleep on the way there and on the way to Windsor. Windsor is one of the places that the Queen lives. She was actually at the Windsor Castle when we were there, but we didn't see her, I imagine that is pretty tough.
The Windsor Castle is a real Castle. You have to see this thing, it is so big! There was a Scottish guard there that had an awesome accent. Speaking of accents, the funniest thing that has happened and is sure to happen more is my wife. She all of the sudden has a Brittish accent. Some lad was walking in a store that we were in, and she was in his way, she very calmly looked up at him and said, "sorry", but in a full on Brittish accent. She wasn't messing around or anything, but has taken to the identity of a Brit. She did it a few times after that too, and called me darling. We are creating a monster over here, a Puerto Rican that lives in Arizona with a Brittish accent.
Sorry that we don't have pictures to put up, but we will be getting some up in the next 48 hours. Tommorrow we go back to London and check out some more cool stuff. The history here is amazing, we have nothing like it in the states.
Cherrio till next time
to wake up tommorrow morning. I cycled tonight for an hour, but not just pushed on petals, I mean I cycled. I took a class and they don't mess around. So between that and the lat pulldowns I should be nice and sore tommorrow. Hopefully it won't hender me as we make our way into London. We are about 25 miles outside of London, but the traffic will make it at least a 2 hour drive.
Tonight we ate some "different" chinese food, it wasn't bad it was just different. We also tried a little Nepalese sweet bread, that was good stuff. We went to a wine bar type pub, it was alright. The legal drinking age here is 16, so we had some youngsters around us drinking it up, that was different. We only hung out there for about 15 minutes or so.
Tommorrow should be a good day, we are going to see all that London has to offer. Also, we knew that the chances of us not forgetting anything were slim, but it is a bummer that what we forgot is the cord that connects our camara to our computer. So for now we will not have any photos available, but we are going to try and fix that.
Farewell
This is not the thing you want to hear coming from your flight attendants mouth when your 30,000 ft. above the Atlantic Ocean. Luckily we went through some rough turbulence and made it through alright. I was very excited to set foot on British ground for the first time, that is until I saw the customs line, WOW!!!!
More importantly, we made it, we are here in the land of my ancestors. That's right, I have some English in me. I will be here to search out my relatives and a good pint of beer. I was skeptical of this whole jet lag idea, but I have to tell you that Liz and I were both super tired. I just woke up from a nap, it is about 4:30pm here, but my body thinks it is morning. We are going to go to the gym and get a workout in, I know sounds weird for vacation, but we are going with our new friends in the UK.
So far, we have learned some new words. #1-Queue, it is a line, we have heard it a few times, but when there are lines all over the place, you are in a queue, or your queing.
Also, the whole car thing is going to be hard to get used to. First time I got in on the passenger side I pushed to hit the brake, but it wasn't there. Then every time we go around a bend (turn) I see another car coming right up to us on the wrong side of the road! I have to admit that on several occasions I got a little scared when I looked in other cars on the street and saw that there was no driver only a passenger.
But, to finish off my first entry from the homeland, I shall tell you that as soon as we pulled out of the airport what is the very first thing I see? MCDONALDS , you travel for 18 hours to discover a McDonalds!
Well I shall add more later along with pictures, but for now I must go and cycle away!
Last night I had the privilege of going to hear Rob Bell speak. Bell is a pastor from Michigan and an author of two very good books.
Bell has a unique approach to presenting ideas and thoughts. Last night he spoke about the idea of where religion came from and how it can have an ugly side to it. It really got me thinking about what we make religion about and how we view the gods as angry. We live in this world of constantly trying to please people. We make things gods and our lives begin this viscous cycle of always trying to offer more and more so we can keep people happy. I am so guilty of this in my life. I forget so easy that it is all already taken care of. Jesus came down as one of us, lived as one of us, suffered as one of us, and died for us. He made the sacrifice so that I can stop trying to please the gods. I no longer have to work, but now I can live in the Peace that God has given me.
I was moved by the message. I hope that I can stop putting stuff on the alter, and realize that my offering has already been given for me. I would like to please my God, but not with sacrifices such as animals, but sacrifices of my life. I hope that I can bring hope to others that they too can stop trying to please the gods, but can live in the peace that God offers in His Son!!
Shalom
So I was reading a myspace page of a young lady that I do not know, all I know about her is that she is friends with one of my youth group students. I know that she is a freshman at a local high school and I know that I am sad for her. While reading her profile I came across her favorite tv shows. There is a new "reality" show on mtv called A shot at Love with Tila Tequila. It is ridiculous!!! You have a girl who got big off of myspace, mostly for showing every last inch of skin on her body, and she is bisexual. She is having 16 boys, and 16 girls try to fall in love with her. The show pulls out all the stops. Girls making out, guys fighting, 16 people sharing 1 bed, all games require the participants to wear as lilttle clothing as possible. All of this is on regular basic cable, for any teen to watch.
The real sadness is that girls look up to this Tila girl. Now in all fairness, when Tila talks she seems like a nice person. But seriously, we have 14 year old girls who look up to her, who want to be like her. The message is clear:
SHOW OFF YOUR BODY TO GET ATTENTION, AND IF YOU LOOK GOOD ENOUGH GUYS AND GIRLS WILL NOTICE YOU AND GIVE YOU THE ATTENTION THAT YOU ARE LOOKING FOR. AFTER ALL, YOUR WORTH COMES FROM HOW PRETTY YOU ARE, HOW MANY BOYS WANT TO GET YOU IN THE SACK, AND HOW YOU CAN USE YOUR SEXUALITY TO MANIPULATE SITUATIONS.
This is the message that is being sent, whether or not MTV would agree with that it is. If these are the role models for teenagers today, then we are in big trouble. This makes the job of any adult who cares about our youth today that much harder. We must send them a message that their value does not come from the outward appearance, that they can have my attention without wearing close to nothing, that they are important without having to "put out".
My heart is sad.
I just got back from Highland High School, we had a time of prayer for all the students of the school. Once a year students from around the nation get together around the flag pole at their schools to pray for their schools and fellow students. I must admit that today was a very encouraging time for me. I went out with some skepticism, not sure of how an organized prayer time at a public high school would look like. When I got there, there was only about 3 students there, and it looked bleek. Then out of nowhere here comes a bundle of students, by the end we must have had around 60 or so. It was so cool to see so many students come and pray for their school.
This new generation of young people face challenges that I myself didn't have to face, and I am only 8 years removed from high school. I have found that they face new challenges that were not even thinkable 10 years ago. With all the conflicting messages of this current time, and all the major corporations placing targets on these young kids. All this going on, and these kids come out and pray for their classmates, friends, and teachers.
This was a good morning!!
