The daffs are out...

"I wander'd lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,

When all at once I saw a crowd,

A host, of golden daffodils;

Beside the lake, beneath the trees,

Fluttering and dancing in the breeze."

William Wordsworth 





Angie took us back to Lister Park were the crocuses were done blooming, but the daffodils were just starting. We were walking in fields of daffodils and they weren't even all blooming yet!





Angie and Nellie



Nellie- Angie calls her the most photographed dog in England...could be true!



A day for Charity- Red Nose Day 2011

What a fun day... It reminded me of all of those crazy dress up days during homecoming week in high school. Red Nose Day in the U.K. is a day when comic relief is used to raise money for charity. "Do Something Funny for Money" is the motto of the day and I tried my best to accomplish this. Every other year when this event takes place they come up with a new red nose that you can buy. This year, you could buy one of three faces on the nose. Lidget Green involved the theme of beaches into the day too, so the teachers were all wearing their flippy-floppies and sunglasses. Luckily no speedos or bikinis were present today at school! hahah
The rebellious thing that the Year 4 teachers did this year was print our principal, Mr. Pope on our t-shirts with a red nose on his nose. This shirt was modeled after many of the designs that they sell online were they put famous faces in black and white with a red nose on them. We did the same, but with Mr. Pope. It was kept a surprise until today when it was revealed. I must say, it was a little awkward last week when I had to take a picture of him without him trying to figure out why I would do such a thing. It happened to be after I had brought in homemade blueberry pie and I told him that I was taking pictures of different staff members...yeah I lied.

Abby, Linda, and I (missing our Sue, who was poorly)

The kids spent some of their day writing a repot about Red Nose Day and some of the history about it. Since this was my first year, it was good for me to learn about it too! We played a lot of videos from previous years. Here is the website that you can look at to learn anything you would like to about Red Nose Day and it's history: http://www.rednoseday.com/

All throughout the day today the kids got to come and eat ice cream with their classes. I helped dish out the sprinkles and toppings for a few of the grades. It was a bit of a struggle with my glasses and nose, especially because breathing was not possible with the nose on...I kept reminding myself that I was suffocating for charity. Most of the kids picked a reasonable amount of toppings, but leave it to Uzair to be the first to ask me for everything. (about 8 toppings)

          

The kids enjoying their ice cream during their beach party. They got to not dress in their uniforms if they donated a pound. Most of the kids did that, which helped Lidget Green raise over 500 pounds total.

 During the day the kids also got to vote on who they wanted to "grunge". After a close call with Mr. Bird the P.E. teacher, Andy Grant a year 6 teacher ended up being the lucky person. I found out that "grunge" means "to slime". The kids LOVED it! Poor Mr. Grant... he got his awesome shirt slimed... I really did have a fun day and I'm glad that I did the extra day and went into school. A lot of time we miss the fun activities because they are held on Fridays and we don't work on Fridays. That makes these days extra special...

Abby's Birfday!

Monday was my good friend Abby's birthday! We ended up going to the Italian restaurant, The Ital. We like this place for groups because on Mondays and Wednesdays they have pizzas and pastas for half price. About 20 people ended up going out that night, which was really cool because our director of Radical Journey, Lyz, was here this week and so she got to meet a lot of the teachers from school. I love the teachers at my school. They have been really great to make us feel included and I really feel like a part of their gang even though I am just a volunteer. I feel like they care about my well being and because of this it is easy for me to help them and give 100%. They have taught me a lot of things so far this year about dealing with children. They've also been able to give me advice in non-school issues, which has been amazing!

Abby is loved by so many! It was a fun get together with everyone!

One of the amazing people that I get to spend a lot of time with is the Abby, the birthday girl. She works in Year 4 and so she gets to spend a lot of her time in my classroom. It has been so great meeting Abby because we have a lot of similarities and get along great. She's my age, and a Christian too, which has been a little more of a struggle for us to find here. Not that that limits friendships for me in any way, but it is an important part of my life and is fun to find someone with similar beliefs. Abby is so generous (almost obnoxiously so...) and is so thoughtful in all situations. I feel so blessed to have found a friend like her and I've said it before, but I'll continue to call her my British lifer, because I expect to be friends with her for all my life! When I think about the fact that I am only about 3 months from leaving this place, I start to get emotional already because the people that I have met and become close to mean a butt load to me. I thank God for these relationships and experiences that I'm having here in England. It will be hard to leave...Luckily, I will be getting a visit from Abby this summer in Kansas. She will get to see the Kansas way of life in August and I'm excited for that, but not excited to leave this place...

Abby, Helen, Ruth, June, Me, Bethany and Leigh

Spring is in the air...

Spring is all around. I am really loving all of the new color. I've never seen flowers in this setting. Crocuses replace the grass in the spring and it is just purples, yellows, and whites.

This is a picture of my blooming blue bell baby. I rescued some
blue bell bulbs from the woods by Angie's and potted them to see
how they grew. The first one bloomed even though it is really
early for them. So pretty though!

There was an amazing pussy willow tree on one of our walks. Absolutely gorgeous!

Cluster of Crocuses

These are snow drops.

Hyacinth

Bethany and Tina

The hills in this park were covered in crocuses. I've never seen anything like it!

A School Art Project... Faith in our Community

For 3 weeks before my half-term break, I was a whirlwind...or a tornado as we Kansas folk would call it. With many projects going on at school, Flat Stanley, Enrichment, and an Art Exhibition, this last one,

This year 2 girl did a world with
people standing around it. It
turned out amazing!

"Faith in our Community" almost pushed me over the edge. Nope! Just kidding! I was a bit stressed though to say the least and I think the teachers noticed because they were beginning to get concerned! Though this project brought stress and worry, looking back all of it was well worth it. For this "Faith in our Community" project we basically had the teachers select the gifted artists from each class and grade level and we did a special project with them. These ranged from fabric paint to screen-printing to fibers and wire and to batik. This meant that everyday that I was working at the school I had a big art project to set up that would take the afternoon. It took a lot of organization, and luckily Miss Fenney (Jo, the teacher for the other year 4 class) and gotten all of the projects ordered and planned, I just had to carry them out with the kids. Even more lucky, Leigh was available to help on most of the afternoons which was a big help!  Since each grade level was doing a different technique, I got to see how that age level could handle something that was different and a little challenging at times. I think that we had some great success stories. 

This silk painting was done by two
year 4 boys, Turki and Bilal. 

These we two year 2 students that
drew on fabric and we cut it out and
they glued it down. This was a picture
of their mosque.

This design originally started out with
just wire, but then we added the fibre
so we could see it better. It was done
by year 6 students

Two year 3 students transferring
their image from paper onto fabric.

This batik project was a bit tricky. They
had to drip hot wax to make a design.
They pulled through with great results! 

These boys printed off pictures
from online and collaged them.
Then they transferred them from
paper to fabric.

Shumrez and Hafsah are
working on their
screen-printing project.

Anees and Hamza's screen printing project.

These two year 6 girls did Batik
and I thought they were quite
successful. Minus the words...

Shumrez and Hafsah's final project.

All of the kids with the final project sewn together. This is going to be one of the artworks that hang in Bradford Cathedral for the next few weeks and then after there, all of the pieces are coming to Lidget Green and being displayed around our gym and school for awhile. It was a lot of fun to take part in this big project and it was neat to work with kids of all ages too. We have plans to continue some special projects for the kids who are interested in art in the future. I'm looking forward to those!

Crazy town a.k.a. Glasgow

Glasgow was a very interesting city...Completely opposite of Edinburgh as far as I could tell. If Edinburgh was the clean cut historically important city, Glasgow was the artsy, edgy, a bit grungy step-sister. I'm not meaning that was a bad thing. Glasgow did have some beautiful parts and we did get to see some cool things but man, I saw some really weird people there. I think that Leigh described it best.."Picture a crazy bachelorette party happening all day every day and you've got Glasgow."
All day it was not hard to find someone wearing the most ridiculous outfit ever made. Sadly the next person you saw would top it! High heels, fish net stocking and low cut everything was all over the place. At one point we were a little nervous going through a mob of people waiting to go into a venue because there were like 100 punk teenagers crowded together with their multi-colored mohawks. Now, this is being said by the girl who attended art school in Lawrence, but it has been years since then and I am no longer immune to these insane looks!
My opinion is formed by the fact that our hostel was in the city. When we left the city center and ventured to Glasgow University, it was really nice- great buildings, museums and thrift stores. I really liked that part of the city. It seemed like a completely different world!  We did manage to go out to find some people to take pictures of. I'm sure they thought that I was as crazy as I was thinking they were...
Every part of Scotland that we went to it was easy for us to pick out a part of it that was uniquely special to us. We really felt so blessed and fortunate in every place we visited. God was in all of these places in different ways and it was amazing to see!

I found some bloomin' heather! :)

A wee-sized island...Tiree, Scotland

Tiree my be wee-sized, but it made up for size in awesomeness! Tiree was definitely my favorite place that we visited in Scotland. It really was so different than any place I've ever been and the people there made it even more special. 

We first heard about Tiree in the first few days that we were in Bradford. We met a girl named Emma who grew up on the island of Tiree and when she talked about it we really had this urge to go. At first it was just a thought, but then when we were planning our Scotland trip it became a reality and we really wanted to make it happen!

Emma was so amazing to "hook" us up with her sister Lynn, though she really didn't have to.  And Lynn found us a family to stay with when the hostel on Tiree turned out to be closed! These things were incredible and Leigh and I both have not taken this hospitality lightly. It has shown us Christ love is everywhere- even tiny island in Scotland. AMAZING STUFF!

We didn't even know if this journey would happen. We had heard that the ferry was sometimes not able to dock when the weather was bad, but we schedule it in and bought plane/ferry tickets in faith. As we got on the ferry at 5:30 in the morning we were warned that they weren't able to dock earlier in the week and that there was a possibility that we wouldn't be able to today. We were told while on the ferry about 3 hours in that there was a 50% chance that we would be able to dock and get off the ferry at Tiree. If not, we would have to continue on for four hours to return to Oban. Yuck! 

Luckily they were panicking us for nothing, and were able to dock. Emma's sister Lynn was waiting for us when we arrived there. She had rearranged her diary to be able to take us around and show us the island. We realized once we got there that this was a necessity because in the winter, Tiree doesn't get many visitors and there wouldn't be much of a way for us to get around. We are eternally grateful to Lynn. She was amazing! First, we went to a little museum about Lighthouses, (apparently it is never locked, and it looks like a shed, but has some displays in it) we collected sea glass on of the beaches, and we stopped to visit the highland cows of Tiree. 

I had really wanted to get a nice picture of a highland cow, but while we were up in the mountains we really didn't have the opportunity. I went into Tiree depressed that this didn't happen, so I was very excited when Lynn told us that Tiree had some Highland cows! They are so furry and weird looking. 

I think they might need a haircut!

I'm sure everyone thought we were crazy. 

Cows with the prime real-estate...right next to the coast!

Now, let me tell you about Tiree...

They are a bit like my hometown of Peabody in some ways, but spread out over an 11 or so mile long island. There are under 700 people that live there, so everyone knows  everyone. Everyone knows everyones busy, and if they don't, they make it up. I can identify with that aspect for sure! That is small town life for ya! Now, because it was winter, very few things were open. None of the shops were open. Tiree does have a little grocery shop, and acutally they have a little of everything. Except there are no clothing shops. The people have to go to the mainland for clothes or do some online shopping. All of the roads were single lane roads with these little pull-off that you could go if you met a car. That meant that you had to pay attention when you were driving or a head-on collision could happen.

 Lynn had expressed how nothing was really open, but my favorite example of this was when we decided to go to the hotel cafe to eat because the two other better options were closed and when we got to the cafe we learnt that it was closed because the cook was sick! The whole place had to shut down because the cook was sick! We did have to have a chuckle about this... 

This is one of the houses of Tiree. Not one of the typical ones, but one that we encountered on the island.

I thought that this was a funny thing to have in the middle of nowhere. The best part about it was that there was actually a dial tone of the receiver!

 This is a video of a true Scotsman playing the accordian. Darren, Lynn's middle child was not shy at all, but sadly her two other children were a bit intimidated by us! Poor Bradley hid under the table the entire time we were there. I usually can get kids to loosen up, but even bribing him with sweets wasn't working! 

This is the MacIntosh's home, but it looks similiar to most of
the houses on Tiree. White, simple and clean!

That evening after taking us all over the island and dealing with all of the weird looks from the locals, Lynn took us with the family that we were staying with, Sandy and wife Judith and kids, Calum and Ruth- The MacIntosh's. This family was also amazing! That night we had macaroni and cheese with leeks and bacon in it. It was gorgeous! (that's how we say it here-means tasty) It was really neat to stay with born and bread Scottish folk. Sandy had actually been born and raised on the island and only had left for a short time about University age. Everyone that we talked to said that they didn't think that they could move back to the mainland to live. It would be hard to deal with the way of life. I can understand that because everything was so simple and amazing there. There was no fuss about anything. I feel like I could live in a place like Tiree.

We woke that morning at Sandy and Judith's to an actual sunrise. We had to step outside and document this occasion.  It was so beautiful there!

Anyways, back to the MacIntosh's...The two kids were sweet. I wish that we could have spent more time with them. With all of them- and with Tiree. Sadly the next day we had to leave. This was because flight and ferries don't go everyday so you either go or get stuck there for 3 more days. I would have liked it but we needed to get back to school eventually!

We got to Tiree on a huge ferry and we left of a tiny plane...Conquering all forms of transportation on this Scotland trip...bus,train, ferry, and plane! This plane held 18 passengers and as I got on with a nervous look the pilot asked if this was the smallest plane I had been on and it made me realize that this was the 3rd smallest and good gosh I jumped out of one way smaller! Nothing to be nervous about! ahah

Me on the beach. Courtesy of Leigh :)

Goodbye Tiree!