Monday, September 26, 2005

Let them eat cake


Just thought that I would share this picture of my birthday cake that my housemate Gilly was so sweet to make me. Bruce wouldn't stop opening the oven to see if it was done so it collapsed in the middle. How cool is the "Chip" written in chocolate chips? Pretty cool I thought....and so very tasty for that matter.

Good night to all, Chris

Sunday, September 25, 2005

The artist formerly known as Chris

So in Boston it was "Sully" and in London it did not take long before I obtained the moniker of "Chip". I think that it might stick because about half of my housemates use it interchangibly with Chris. Before long I suspect that the use of "Chip" will obtain critical mass and I will forever be a british french fry.

While I would like to think my new pseudonyme is a reflection of my generally good-natured attitude, in reality, Bruce (my Scottish housemate that dubbed me) just thought that it sounded like a good American Marine name. And as we all know, when you think Marine, you think Chris, er uh, Chip. Semper fi.....

It could be worse though and I actually don't mind because I think it is somewhat a term of endearment. When Bruce asked me if he could call me that, I did make it a point to ask if "Chip" had other conotations that might be less flattering, but he assured me that there were no hidden meanings.

I guess that is a good segue into an introduction of my housemates. On the volunteer side there are three guys and two girls, Steve, Bruce and me share a pretty big room and Isabell and Gilly have their own rooms for now.

Steve is a native of England and has just recently returned to the Community a few months ago after traveling and volunteering for a while and most recently having a real job as an outreach worker with one of London's major homelessness organizations. A few years ago when the Community was still a completely volunteer run organization, he was the community leader so I think that he has a wealth of knowledge and I am looking forward to picking his brain a bit.

Bruce is from Edinburugh, Scotland and has been with the community for almost a year and a half. Unfortunatly, he just recently got a full-time job with the homelessness organization that Steve used to work for so he will be moving on in the next couple of weeks.

Isabell is from Singapore and has been with us since February. She is one of those folks that is just such a kind and gentle person so although her english isn't the best in the world I am sure that she is an incredible asset to the household.

Gilly is from the Isle of Man and started along with me this past Monday. She has been my translator for the past week and has informed me of so many coloquialisms that I can't even recall many of them right now. It is amazing the differences between speaking American and speaking English, but I am catching on.

I have decided that in the interest of confidentiality, and so as to not to compromise the trust of the folks that are living here, I am not going to divulge anything too specific about their circumstances. However, I do want to give ya'll a profile.

There are three homeless guys that are currently living in the house, well, I say guys quite loosely because on of those fellas is a very large Latvian transvestite named Viola. I must admit that I was a bit taken aback when I first met her, um, him....hmmm, well, Viola anyways. Viola doesn't really speak english very good so you really have to listen closely to pick out certain words and reconstruct a sentance that may or may not be what Viola is actually trying to say. It makes me laugh...quite heartily sometimes. Viola plays the piano very well from what I hear (although there is another resident who has discouraged him from doing so, so I have not had to the chance to hear) and dreams of becoming a go-go dancer to finance his sex-change operation.

Ok, so then there is Robert, he hails from South Africa and is quite a strong-minded fella. We hit it off very well though due in large part to my willingness to play chess with him. Although the score currently rests at at about 0-50 in Robert's favor, I am getting much better and soon is the day when victory will be mine.

Michael is the last resident in the house and is originally from Scotland. He tends to enjoy being by himself but is not too incredibly socialy awkward. I really like Michael and we seem to get along pretty well. Unfortunatly, he will probably not be around for too long because in three weeks he will be 60 and become eligible to recieve benefits. These benefits will allow him to get his own flat and he had already voiced his desire to get out of the house as soon as possible. In fact, he left the house for a few days right after I arrived, apparently initiated by a drinking binge. He is back safely for the time being.

Many different personalities but somehow we seem to get along pretty well. I am looking forward to having more homeless residents move in.

Friday marked my one week aniversary in London and to celebrate I decided to get quite ill on Thursday and sleep for 14 hours. Not only did this mean that I was laid up in bed but I also missed my first chance to do a soup run as well as the two big meetings that we have as a community every Friday. It is quite amazing what 2 consecutive days of 10 + hours of sleep can do to restore an immune system though, so by yesterday I was feeling much better. In celebration of my recovery, and because it was my day off, I decided to go hunting around London and get my bearings a bit more. A few other folks that were off went "on the piss" but I decided that in light of the fact that I am really not much of a drinker, I don't have any money, and my stomach was still a bit flip-floppy it would be best to abstain.

Below this entry, you can see a few of the pictures that I took last night in the Victoria section of town. They enlarge when you click on them and some make quite good desktop backgrounds.

On Wednsday night, me and Bruce had gone down to Victoria to do outreach so I though it would also be a good idea to get a feel for how to get around that part of the city, also there are a lot of touristy things to see in a small circumfrence so I thought that it would be time well spent.

I believe that this will be a stopping point for today because I have already spent much too much time writing. The smell of banggers and mash is floating about and I have a special birthday Coca-cola awaiting me downstairs.

As I enter into this first non-training week, please be in prayer that I would be able to integrate quickly into the community, that I would be granted favor with community members, and that I would have wisdom and discernment as I begin to take on responsibility and participate in the regular activies of the community that I mentioned in my previous post. Thanks so much guys!

Grace and peace, Chris

Oh, what a tourist I am


Piccadilly Circus or Times Square?


I love this shot of a fountain on Trafalgar Square

Another cool fountain on Trafalgar Square


Buckingham Palace seen during a stroll through St. James Park


Big Ben at Night (the buildings to the right are the Houses of Parliment I believe)


A side entrance at Westminster Abbey

Oh, those ubiquitous Underground signs



Wednesday, September 21, 2005

And so dawns a new day


Just thought I would share this neat picture that I took from the plane of the sun rising somewhere over Ireland I believe. And a new day dawns indeed...quite fitting I felt.

I have now been on foreign soil for approximately 113 hours. When you measure that in hours it really does seems like quite a little amount doesn't it?

However, if my suspicions are correct, I believe that when you take the airflight speed of a Virgin Atlantic Airbus A340-300 multiplied by the coefficient of friction risen to the power of how many times I have thought about home, hours are actually longer to the east of the Prime Meridian. Hey, but I am not one of those -ologists folk.

So yeah, I miss home very much, but I do so with a healthly dose of desire to be here and the realization that this is good and the Lord is good and His plans are good.

Now that I have that out my system, let's recap shall we...

Got into town last Friday morning at 7 AM and a few other volunteers with the Simon Community picked me up from Heathrow. Though I didn't really sleep on the flight over, I made myself the promise that I would not crash as soon as I found something that resembled a bed. Well, I compromised with myself and decided that a few hours could be a good refresher. This did prove to be true but also allowed me to stay up fairly late on Friday night which in turn allowed me to sleep until 2 in the afternoon on Saturday. It was a glorious thing, but I felt a bit silly. By yesterday, though, I had pretty well shaken off the jetlag so I am on a fairly normal sleep schedule now (well, normal for me anyways).

I had originally thought I would be living in the "Simon House" which is located in North West bourough of London called Harlesden. The Simon House is sort of the flagship project of the Community and houses 9 volunteers and 10 or so homeless residents. This house is more of a short term living facility and is intended for 2 or 3 month stints by homeless residents.

The house that I am living in is in a North East bourough of London called Hackney. Simply called "Anton Street", after the name of the street that it is located on (duh), this project is smaller and currently houses 5 volunteers (me being one of them) and 3 homeless residents. Anton Street is intended to be longer term housing (I suppose somewhat like what we would call transitional housing in the States) and has an 18 month time limit. We actually have capacity for more homeless residents so hopefully there will be some more folks joining us soon. I believe that I will save introductions to my housemates and other community members until a later time, but suffice it to say that they are quite an eclectic crew.

Training started yesterday (or "Induction" as it is called which is funny because you can refer to the process as being induced...alright, anyways) by meeting with the Services Manager (essentially the VP) to get the low down on the Community, background, etc., etc., etc. It was good though, he is such a funny, quirky, Brit, but seems like a great fella and is definitly passionate.

Today I made it over to Simon House for the first time to meet with a couple of folks about certain aspects of our work. One of the guys, Matt, the House Manager (who by the way is one of the only 6 staff members), was really great to meet. I really dig his vision of further developing a theraputic community and he is just seems such a super-super-sharp fella. I am definitly looking forward to getting to know him better. The rest of the day consisted of meeting with the volunteers that have assumed certain coordination responsibilities of our key services to learn how they operate. I will definitly have my hands in a lot of different pots, but the general break down of our services is as follows:

Tea-Runs - preparing and handing out sandwiches and tea, very, very early on Sunday and Monday mornings
Soup-Runs - preparing and handing out sandwiches, soup, and tea on Wednsdays and Thursday evenings
Street Cafe - essentially we use the beautifal garden of a church downtown to operate a spot on Monday and Wednsdays where folks can come and have tea and read newspapers or talk
Street Work - every night of the week groups go out to meet folks who are living on the streets and build relationships
Drop-in Center - our main office operates as an informal drop-in center during operating hours where folks can drop in and use laundry and shower facilities, computers, etc. (I will probably assume the coordination of this as part of my responsibilities)
Operation of the Houses - day to day operation of the houses (shopping, cleaning, supporting the residents, etc.)

I believe that I have way over simplified a lot of this stuff but I just wanted to give a general impression of what our work looks like.

So there you have it, all the boring background stuff. I promise though that I will try to make my prose much less dry in the future. Oh also, I would love for you all to post replys on my blog too. It would be cool to get a kind of trans-Atlantic dialouge going on.

Grace and peace, Chris

Thursday, September 15, 2005

I'm leavin' on a jet plane, don't know when I'll be back again....

Less than 24 hours from now I should be decending upon the grand metropolis of London, UK to begin the next journey in my seemingly neverending transience....

There has been months of build up to this day (and the 6 months to 1 year that will follow) but I am not sure how well the reality of it has actually sunk in. I did have a fleeting thought earlier this evening along the lines of, "wow, this is the last time I am going to be on American soil for a while", but it was just fleeting.

Much packing has yet to be done, but in my characteristic procrastination I rationalize this with the fact that I don't need to leave for the airport until 2 tomorow afternoon. That should leave plenty of time to finish last minute preparations. No doubt I will sleep hours later than I intend and in my rush to reclaim that lost time will forget things that I wanted to bring.

I have already done all the goodbye stuff with buds and budessess in Boston and elsewhere across the United States. Tommorow will be the family goodbyes which promise to contain enough mother tears to soak the collar of whatever shirt I may be wearing.

So these are my thoughts on the eve of departure. Nothing special. Ready to go. Wanting to stay. There really is no inbetween ground there, huh?

...and I'm off, Chris