Sunday September 19th: Church and Costco

Friday night turned out to be a pretty fun night out at the pub with some of my AHA classmates.  Erin, Krista, and I walked to a pub called O'Neill's (a place that Erin and I had never been to, but one that our other friends were quite familiar with) and before we got in the door we were stopped by some English girls in their early 20s.  They had heard our accent as we approached, and immediately wanted to get to know us - so we chatted with them, and once our other friends arrived, we all went inside and hung out together.  The pub also had a live band, so it was quite a fun night out indeed.

Yesterday (Saturday) proved to be quite low-key, as Erin and I just slept in pretty late, then went a few blocks into town to meet some of our guy friends for a bit of shopping at the mall.  We had a really late lunch, after which Erin and I wandered back toward home.  She was starting to feel sick (slowly but surely each person in our program is getting a bit of a cold), so we retreated to our separate rooms, where she slept and I watched TV for the remainder of the evening.  I know, so boring.

But TODAY was a very epic Sunday.  I got up early (which is why I was fine being boring and having an early Saturday night) in order to go into town for mass at St. Paul's Cathedral.  I met up with 4 other girls from my program, none of whom actively practice any specific religion, so it was a very nice to experience the service together.  And the cathedral is beautiful - I can't wait for our class "field trip" to St. Paul's in a few weeks, when we can explore even further.

After church, on our tube ride home, we decided we would spend the afternoon locating, traveling to, and shopping at Costco.  There are a couple Costcos in the greater London area, all far out in the suburbs, so we picked one to go to that seemed fairly close and easy to get to.  It wasn't.  After running into difficulty with Tube rail repairs (and closures), limited bus schedules (since it's a Sunday), and traveling out of our "zone" on our travel card, we FINALLY got to Costco, with only 1 hour of shopping time before it closed.  As the crow flies, it was only 6 miles away from the house where we started; however, our trip took us 7 hours to get there, shop, and get home.  But we stocked up on groceries (as many as we could carry, anyway, since we had to travel back on buses), so it was all worth it.

Today's Quote of the Day comes a conversation about culture, religion, and eduation I had with my host mum Saida:  "If you want to help your people, educate them."