Columbus Day Monday to Durham Day Sunday

Sunday night after my Newcastle excursion with Mini I was online and got talking to Simon (a guy about my age who works at Unicycle.com) and he invited me to go to the beach with him on Monday. Roger was very generous and let me off work (Monday is the busiest day of the week, nonetheless) so I had a nice lie-in (sleep-in) and then headed off to the beach. It was a wonderful day, probably one of the more relaxing ones since I’ve been here. I started working right after I came and while I enjoy work (and thoroughly missed it by Tuesday) I hadn’t had a lot of time that didn’t involve work, conventions, laundry, or doing online stuff, so it was nice to have a day out that was relaxing at the same time. We went down the beach, climbed over rocks, and then walked down to the end of the jetty and dangled our feet quite high over the water. It was nice to just relax, and Simon is definitely the closest person to my age I’ve had a chance to hang out with. After that we wandered around for a bit, did some grocery shopping, then went back to his house and hung out. Nice to have a friend.

Beach pictures: http://minimansell.com//hope/

That night I got a ride down to my church to meet Sarah to go to a women’s group from the Church. It was an amazing night with some incredible ladies and some good out-of-church quality time to get to know be with people. They are incredible women who juggle jobs, children, husbands, and still manage to be real, loving, Godly people. It was nice and refreshing to have something in common with someone, to belong and to be able to identify with people, regardless or country. The language/cultural barrier hardly exists there. I mean, it exists between churches, but not between Christians. All the aspiration and identity is the same, turns out God works in people’s lives the same way all over the world. Spiff.

Thursday night was pretty crazy. I had scheduled with Leigh to spend the night at her student housing, so after Stockton club we headed down there, grabbed some food, and settled down for a night of “student life.” I met her four flat mates, watched some tv, ate chocolate fondue and brownies, and laughed at her hilarious friends. It was nice, pretty similar to American student life, just the accents and some of the words were different. Early the next morning Leigh put me on the bus to work and life after that got a little crazier. See, Saturday morning we had to go to Durham convention, and because it was our “home” club (kind of) we had to be around to set up and stuff. So, since we had loads of unicycle stuff to haul off, Roger took Leigh up in the morning in his camper van, and I stayed over at the Tall’s (who Miark stays with) and headed off with him in Roger’s other car the next morning. I had a lovely night at the Tall’s, Miark and I got some shopping done for the weekend and then let ourselves get a little bit of sleep before heading off at 9 or 10am. First we put up signs to direct people to the convention, then we went to Patrick’s house (a really neat Durham juggler whose house was right near the convention) and moved all the stuff we had stored for the convention from there to the convention grounds.

After that, Miark, Tall Claire, Alex (the Tall’s baby), and I went to tourist in Durham.

Tall Claire: http://minimansell.com//hope/pages/durhamtallclaire.htm
Alex: http://minimansell.com//hope/pages/durhamalex.htm

It was amazing, we got to see these winding streets with shops, but the most amazing thing was the cathedral and castle that I had always seen driving into Durham at night for juggling club. The castle is a part of a college, so there are students wandering around, so we wandered in pretending to look like students and got to see the dining hall. It was positively medieval, I was blown away by the hall full of tables with huge glass windows, a giant coat of arms, portraits lining the walls, all overlooked by suits of armor and ancient weapons. Wow.

The Cathedral was completely jawdropping, completely towering from the outside but so stunning on the inside. The hold church services there daily, it was unbelieveable the history that was contained. Way high up there were huge stained-glass windows, floor after floor of doors and hallways, and all sorts of fairy-tale looking things. There was amazing architecture, there were tombs and statues for people who died some housing bodies, others dedicated to people laying in the crypt. The section in the middle was like a long church, with places for kneeling, praying, huge sections for different members of the clergy, the choir, and a huge organ which was being played the whole time we were in there. It was completely totally indescribeable.

Durham pictures here:
http://minimansell.com//hope/index_3.htm
http://minimansell.com//hope/index_4.htm
http://minimansell.com//hope/index_5.htm

The rest of the day was spent running back and forth between the two convention centers. They split it up between a school and a community center, so in order to see certain things or find certain people we had to do a lot of back and forth traveling. We headed to a local pub for (tea) dinner before going to the show in the evening. The pub wasn’t all that impressive, I heard it is usually nice there, but it was packed, running out of food, and filled with not-so-friendly staff. But food is food, and we somehow managed to get everyone fed before heading down to the show.

The show was actually really impressive, the acts were mostly of pretty high caliber, with some amazing routines. Particularly a yo-yo and a diablo guy that were doing rediculously techinical and very impressive routines. And we actually sat where we could SEE so it was nice to not have the view obstructedby any tall or big-headed people. After that we cleaned up everyone else’s mess and then evacuated to the community center for the night. Most people sat on the floor, however I (with Miark’s help) went to the trouble of rearranging Roger’s car so I could sleep there instead of the loud hall. It took a little work but the result was a night of reasonably good sleep. I apparently missed out on some late-night fun, but I less tired and more awake then anyone was the next morning.

The next morning we went shopping and wandered over to Patrick’s to cook ourselves a huge breakfast of beans, eggs, mushrooms, sausage, bacon, coffee, tea, and juice. Then we all laughed and paired off playing foosball. The funniest game was when I paired off one-on-one with this other girl named Maddy who goes to Durham club. The comments ranged from “Kill the Yank!” to “Fight little British men, fight!” That was a hilarious international moment where I got to represent my country on a small scale.

After that we took down signs and headed home, tired, but none the worse for wear.