Abuse of the Feet

By Saturday a realization had hit us: because of our detour in Ireland and an upcoming side trip, we would only have 20ish days to get our time in. This seems to be no problem for 2 vigorous young men, except we want have time to be tourists too. So Saturday was decided to be a long service day. We started at nine doing park witnessing, where we ran into another sister doing the same thing by herself. By 10 we had walked to the Kingdom Hall to meet the group. Some minor remodel work had been started that morning in the foyer/entryway, but the main hall was intact and everyone came in the exits next to the stage. This would be no issue except the doors face a busy street, and had to remain open to let latecomers in. The meeting was interrupted at least 3 times by police sirens on the road, and the buses that go by every 2 minutes. Of course no one thought to speak up, consequently not much was gained by us from the meeting, but I'm sure the lengthy demonstration they prepared was great. (There is also an Albanian group who is in the hall. They had their own meeting for field service a few rows away from where we were having the English meeting for field service. -Eric) That morning I worked with Kam, the special pioneer sister who was a missionary in Japan for 40 years(Her husband picked us up from the airport). She proceeded to take all the doors and do all her return visits, but I was happy watching her teach and learn all about her years in Kobe. Eric worked with a pioneer sister named Estera, you'll be hearing that name often. At noon I met them both and another sister named Anna for lunch at a deli. After, the europepros were assigned a section of not-at-homes to do, and off we went by ourselves.

At the time we thought nothing of it, but this turned out to be quite the experience for us. After a 15 minute walk to the territory we started going through the list. The first door was straightforward, not interested. But then we came to a door with 4 bells, and the front door was wide open. It had been split into flats(apartments), so we marched right in and started knocking. But at the second door the lady marched us right out and told us to use the bells. How were we supposed to know? But that was only the beginning. After that we found the next door to have 6 different doorbells, and one front door, locked. Most of the houses on this street we big and old, and had been split similar to the 2nd house. We're not fans of this style. You have to ring the first bell, wait a minute, ring the second, wait a minute, ring the third, and finally someone comes all the way down to the front door. They say they're not interested and while they're walking back up the guy from the first bell is finally coming down and passes his neighbor in the hall. And you talk to resident number 1. And while you're talking to number one number 6 arrives from shopping in town and tries to walk in the door. I may or may not have used a little creative licence in the description, but you get the point, its strange and partially chaotic. But we survived the that house somehow. The next door a man was working in his yard, and I was able to read him a scripture. He asked me if that was the Bible, and said he reads from the Koran. Inside my head: "Uh, ok, well um hmm what people use that?" My face must have betrayed my thoughts because he clarified that he was a Muslim. Inside my head: "Uh, ok, well um hmm what in the world am I supposed to say to that?" But he was very nice and Eric helped out with how we all are trying to be good people. So we did have some things in common. (Actually he was very pleasant to talk to. Much nicer than most "Christians" that we have been meeting. The territory is filled with Muslims so we should be pro at talking to them by the end of the summer. -Eric) Time to search for those articles about talking to Muslims that I thought would never apply to me! Moving along, this same stretch of houses introduced us to intercom witnessing, a slightly better variation of the 6 bells in my opinion. At least this time you spare the householder from walking to you and potentially passing their neighbors in the hall. Except when someone comes to the door anyway when you've already moved on and are on the intercom with their neighbor when they open the door. It was a learning experience to say the least. And not really as bad as it sounds, we were just a bit flustered the first time. All our efforts were rewarded when I placed a Teach book with a very nice young Polish man. (The young Polish man lived in a small flat that was apart of a large house. The door to his flat was around the side of the house. The main door was mine and the woman was definitely not interested, and when we politely asked if there were any other flats around the side of the house she scoffed and said no. As we walked away from the house we noticed the side door with another address and realized the woman lied to us. So we decided to knock on the side door on the way back. And that's where Blythe met the young man. -Eric) At 330 we met the sister from the park, Naomi, and also Anna and Estera at McD's for ice cream(it has been really really hot so far!). After I went with Estera and Eric with Naomi. We walked all over creation doing calls and a little territory, and once again was able to place a book at the last door. We stumbled in the door within 2 minutes of each other, around 5:30. It was a long service day, bearable, but keep in mind we had no motor transportation from the time we walked out the front door till we walked in. I will eventually stop complaining about all this walking, but for all the blisters we acquired, I think we're allowed a few lines of self-pity. We ended the day with a little football, the European kind, in the park next door.

This day deserves no creative title, London day 2

Friday all the go go going finally caught up with us. Even though we should have continued to press on with getting our time, we slept till 11 and were slowly up by 12. We walked to Acton High Road (Our Main Street is their High Road) to put money on our Oyster cards, the tap cards that work on buses, trains, and the tube. We walked around a bit and then came back home to start the blog project. That evening we went out and caught a bus just to ride it around, to see where it went and get the hang of everything. I realize this wasn't the most action-packed script, but hopefully there won't be many of this variety.

Our First Real Day Here

On Thursday morning it was so tempting to use the jet lag excuse to sleep in, but we decided to get a start on our time and went out in the ministry. We arrived barely on time at 9:30, to a group of about 10. We plunked down, still in the US mindset of being put in a group and riding around all morning. We hoped to be gradually introduced to how service was here, and then easing into the territory. As we soon found out, however, that's not quite how it works. The territory is relatively local, and with parking scarce, petrol expensive, and the Brits lack of the American laziness, they usually walk the territory. Not our definition of drive to the territory ("map" as they say) and then get out and walk a few doors or maybe a street; this means walk strait from the hall and into town. So bring good shoes if you ever visit(more on this later). After all these exclamations about walking, i did end up riding with a brother that first day, but rest assured it hasn't happened since. Eric got thrown right into the tradition of hoofing it on the first morning (Such an understatement. -Eric). The other thing that is different about service here is that you only go by twos, not four or six. This is a challenge for us because:

• We don't have many calls yet, so we have to just follow our partner around
• The balance of brothers and sisters is never even (they solve that problem by just going brother-sister, but since they aren't in cars and always public places they have no objection to it) (And its nice to be trusted that we will all be doing Jehovah's work. At times in the states people seem to be almost paranoid in believing that others will do something wrong. Its just very refreshing to see everyone focus on positive things, and have mature thinking. -Eric)
• Awkward silences run rampant, especially when you don't know the person well yet and have exhausted the usual list of introductory questions.

But we survived the first morning without any adverse effects, and logged our first 2 hours. Afterwards was back home for a quick lunch. We were already feeling cell phone("mobile") withdrawal, we we set off to find SIM cards (what they use here, hard to explain, click here if you want it explained) for our mobiles. We received directions from the family, just spoken vague ones. We set out anyway, confident in our ability to navigate the unfamiliar. Within the first few blocks we were obviously already trudging past new landmarks, and eventually consulted a passerby who confirmed our course, but added some details that ended up misleading us. We knew to walk till the train station and turn left at some point ("Turn left at the green"... um... what's a green? -Eric.) and we would be on the desired road. In all the confusion of navigation and narrative, we ended up turning one road to early. Unbeknownst to us, this put us on a parallel course with the road we needed; we were expecting to intersect it. Twenty minutes later we decided we had strayed to far, and traced our steps back. We tried a new route, and stopped to ask a tube(subway) attendant for directions, and 1 hour 15 minutes later arrived on Chiswick High Road. (At the tube station we saw the sister I had worked with in service that morning so that was cool. -Eric) It should have taken no more than 20 min. We got the sim cards but had to wait around as the employees fussed and huddled and consulted about how to get our dumb American phones to work, which we thought would just be plug and play. After that was all sorted(partially anyway, my phone worked), we discovered that since we had come in from a different angle, we now had no idea how get home. We somehow picked a road that "just looked right" and it happened to somehow go right by the Kingdom Hall, which we then knew where. So that little trip ended up running us about 3 hours. Meeting was that night, and we were introduced to many many friends, and promptly forgot all of their names. (After meeting about 50 people, we remembered maybe 2 of them by name. But we have a system now so meeting and remembering their names is a little bit easier. -Eric) We will write more about the congregation in a future post. London started out busy right off the bat, and no doubt will continue to be that way.

"Wait, weren't we just here?"

Wednesday night, back at London Heathrow Airport again, the flight was cramped but short. (Oh and the female flight attendant's uniforms... ask me about them in person sometime. -Eric) Our bags decided it would be fun to take 30 minutes to come to the baggage carousel. (My bag missed me so it came right away, but Blythe's wanted to be away from him for awhile. -Eric) After everything was collected we walked out to the reception area where we were supposed to meet Brother Beaver, who is our main contact in London- you'll learn a little more about him shortly. We hadn't exactly determined a meeting point, and this proved to be an issue. We didn't realize it at the time, but our flight arrived early. Because of this, we didn't see the brother right away. After some waiting, we reasoned that he was probably downstairs near the exit, so we took self and bag down the escalator to find him. 5 minutes and a call to his wife later, we determined him not to be present downstairs. So back up we went, except there we only down escalators not up, so up 3 flights of stairs with 40+ lb bags. We went back to the gate reception area and waited some more. And waited. And waited. Nothing. By this point we decided that he must be downstairs, so down we went. 4 minutes later, guess who was lugging the baggage back up the stairs? Shortly after our second mountain climb, here he comes, just 2 minutes after the scheduled arrival time. Relieved to finally find him, we obediently trailed him back to the car. (Like little lost puppies. -Eric) Except we kept going in and out of the same doors and walking in big circles. This elderly brother is in his 80s, and our exhaustion delayed the realization for a bit that he had no idea where his car was. With the help of a friendly airport worker (Smoking like a chimney. -Eric) we finally got to the car. The ride back was interesting; London drivers are not reckless, they just make Chicago drivers seem like the grandma who can't see over the wheel. We arrived at the Ellington's (our residence for the first month) about 20 minutes later. After dropping our bags they showed us where the Kingdom Hall is, and the Acton High Road, then we walked back and fell into bed.

Ireland Insights 2.0

After a much needed slumber we were ready to tackle Dublin. We slept strait through breakfast, but were able to have a some soup and tea in the restaurant downstairs. Strong tea with real cream was a nice start to the day. We needed a good start, for we were in for the first of many long trips on foot. Just as a disclaimer for following narrative, yes the drinking age over here is 18, and yes we are being responsible. There was an attraction we just couldn't pass up: the St. James Gate Brewery, home of Guinness. We weren't quite up to tackling the bus system, so we took a 30+ minute stroll down O'Connell St, over the canal, and to the west on the twisting, narrow streets of lower Dublin. We ran into sign trouble again, this time there were no street signs whatsoever, at least on the occasion that we were nearing a turn on our route. After a few wrong turns and back tracing our steps a bit, we finally arrived. (And I must add that the Dublin road system is, um, interesting. Some roads change names every block with many curves and corners filling the city. So it can be a little difficult at times for the new traveler to find their way. -Eric)

Guinness has put much effort into making a high quality experience. Due to sanitary regulations, the tours are not allowed in the actual brewery, but they have created a 7 level, self-guided tour in an old warehouse - hence the name Guinness Storehouse. The info from the tour could be a book in itself, so I'll keep to the highlights. A fun fact: Arthur Guinness, the founder, was so pleased with his location and the high-quality water supply that he signed a 9,000 year lease on the property to make sure the business would have a proper site for years to come. They've only got 8,750 year left! (We got to see the original document that had the signatures of the men involved in the lease. I wonder what was going through the man's mind when Arthur Guinness was attempting to negotiate for a 9,000 year contract? -Eric) The ground floor detailed each of the main ingredients(hops, barely, water, and yeast), as well as the importance of each. The first floor went through the steps of malting, roasting, milling, and mashing the barley, adding the yeast, and completing the brew. (Right after the area explaining the process of making the porter - the type of beer Guinness is - there was a sampling area. In the room they had instructions explaining the proper way to swish the glass to get all the flavors properly. It also explained how when it hit your tongue you would get different flavors and tastes, on different parts of your tongue at the same time. It was quite amazing. -Eric) There was a very cool original video of coopers making the barrels by hand, each one was truly a work of art. The second floor was fun, for here we learned how to pour our own pint the correct way, for optimal taste. This involved pulling the tap a certain way, letting it sit a specified amount of time, and then topping up the glass. We are now certified to craft perfect pints of Guinness, but I can't tell you how. (So don't ask. -Eric) It's a secret that we pint masters guard with utmost care. (The picture on the right shows a pint that was very recently poured, the glass on the right, and one that has set for a certain period of time, on the left. You can see how the beer is a much lighter color at first then turns darker as the head is formed. -Eric) On the next floors we were amused by their advertising past, with blatant generalizations such as "Guinness is good for you!" and "Guinness gives you strength!" as their catch phrases. They even detailed stories of how nursing mothers and patients recovering from illness were often prescribed Guinness to feel better. Add a quote from a doctor I just had to share: "I often prescribe Guinness... a bottle in front of a dispirited, health-greedy convalescent has a wonderfully cheer producing effect. It makes the patient feel better and eat better and think cheerfully." Needless to say, they had a bit of a racket going on in the early years. The subsequent floors talking about using the product responsibly, (Ha it took til the 3rd floor to finally mention anything about responsibility and also being able to choose not to drink. Irish people are funny. -Eric) as well as more advertising. The top floor, the Gravity Bar, provided a 360° view of Dublin, advertised as the best views of the city. From here we saw the lush green hills that we hope to visit some other day. The tour took us about 1.5 hours, but could be done quicker if you desire. I highly recommend it if you are ever vacationing here. We then got the joy of a long walk back to the hotel. The realization of how much we were going to be on our feet this summer was really setting in at this point. For dinner we found Murray's, a local bar and grill, and had a proper meal, much better than the previous evening. Afterwards we explored the city a little more, and ended up down by the canal, where we took this shot was taken. The next day was mostly uneventful; already getting sick of the concrete jungle, we journeyed out to Phoenix Park, and spent some time relaxing on the greenspace. On the way back we stopped at a little sidestreet tavern for lunch, (We got a little confused because the tavern had a bar on one side then lounge on the other, so we weren't quite sure which side to go in but we got it figured out. -Eric) and walked back to the hotel. The task of re-packing 2 months clothes into one suitcase each was definitely a challenge to say the least. (Blythe had to help me out by sitting on my bag as I zipped it up. -Eric) Wednesday afternoon we were back on the street with bags trailing. Caught our bus back to the airport(double-decker, rode on top, it was sweet) and by the evening we were back in the air, off to conquer London.

-One thing I'd like to add that i just remembered: Going through security on the way out of Dublin was the first time in our trip Eric's backpack didn't throw any red flags in security. Hooray for and a big thanks to Ireland!

Update

Just a small bit for all you who realize we are in fact in London at the moment, but I'm still producing editorials on Ireland. We have been a little busy with getting settled, and quite a bit of service, for we are auxiliary pioneering both months. For those of you who know me well, there is undoubtedly a teeny tiny share of procrastination involved as well. However, I'm working diligently to get up to date. After lots of begging and tears, I've reluctantly decided to allow Eric aboard as co-editor. Just kidding eman, welcome to the team, lets do work. You'll notice his commentary inline with the text in parentheses. Thanks to all you who have commented, we'll try our best to respond quickly to any questions or comments. One last matter, we're still determining the best method of sharing pictures, be it this blog or a separate web album, but the decision will be made shortly. Suggestions welcome on that matter. Back to work!
I'll

Ireland Insights

In most cultures, a sign at the street corner pointing the the west indicates in which direction particular attraction is located. As weary travelers we fell victim to this assumption. After arriving in Ireland we found a the proper bus, and took it the O'Connell St, the center of Dublin. Our stop was conveniently very near Parnell Square, the address of our hotel. After jumping off the bus we walked in the direction of the square, obviously marked by this figure in the picture. This is where we located the sign, pointing in the same direction as the statue. Bags in tow, we walked down the street looking for our accommodation. We saw several promising buildings, but none turned out to be correct. After walking about 10 blocks west, we finally caved in and asked for directions from a passing cyclist. He didn't know where the hotel was, but confirmed that the Square was indeed where we came from. So we trekked back on the opposing side of the street, still dragging the 40+ lb bags. Ten blocks later we arrived back at the statue, still without clues of where to go. We started wondering down the street again, hoping for anything. Eric decided to turn down the first street we came to, just to try. We walked for a distance, looked up to check our bearings, and barely spotted the yellow flower of the Maldron Hotel. I don't know what our problem is. After almost 24 hours of traveling, we just didn't realize that a sign pointing down the street accompanied by no further instructions clearly means go one block, turn right, and walk 3 blocks. I know, i know, dumb American syndrome.

After check-in, we stumbled into our room and fell on the beds in exhaustion. The travel of this extent is not kind to the olfactory mechanism, and the hot shower was a relief like nothing before. A word of caution to those attempting a similar journey in dress clothes: unless you want to have to take off your shoes in security with toes poking out, buy a good pair of dress socks that don't turn to Swiss cheese. After fresh clothes we realized the onset of starvation, and journeyed outside for some food. We found a local carry-out, decided on the fish and chips, stopped by the grocery for a beverage, and dashed through the rain back to our room. We were hoping for a satisfying meal, but instead got an extremely greasy, undercooked slab of cod with with chips (fries) of matching quality. Needless to say we were to tired to care much, and eventually fell into deep slumber, not to awaken until 12 the next day. (We did stay in a nice hotel. I would say atleast a 3 star. Interestingly the tele (tv) channels were all news and British drama shows. Not very entertaining but did help us get to sleep quicker. -Eric)

-stay tuned for more Ireland insights

Chicken Soup for the Traveler's Soul

I ♥ airports. Lines: lovely. Stressed travelers: super. Walking 6 miles: wonderful. Being frisked at security: I just can't wait! In all actuality, the trip from the plains of Indiana to the hills of Ireland was quite boring and with minor episodes to keep it a little interesting. Security in Chicago was the first small hiccup, as Eric's bag was pulled from the scanner for a search. The good folks of the TSA took their sweet time in determining that the powdered vitamin supplement he had really was not a hard-core narcotic. Then walked a decent way to our gate. Now starving, we prowled the long hall for food, finally finding the best deal around, a $7.50 6 inch sub.



The flight to Toronto was short, and disembarked to find the customs booth unstaffed. We after 20 minutes the passengers were herded to another area for check in. We were last in line, and the customs agent, obviously bored out of his mind, took great pleasure in asking us every question he could dream up about our trip. Where are you going? Whatever for? Where are you staying? How long? How old are you? Why are you dressed like that? Are your parents paying for this trip?...(Insert 20 other questions)...Let me see your itinerary? Why are you going again? If you eat ice cream on a Wednesday, what kind of toppings do you prefer? All the meanwhile we were sweating in our suits that we were going to miss our flight and be stuck in good ol' Canada and forced to train for the curling team 23 hours per day. Our good friend David finally decided we weren't up to anything sinister and less us pass. Security once again tagged Eric, and once again they weren't to happy about all the drug paraphernalia he was supposedly transporting. After another marathon walk we made it to our gate, where Eric saved a passport for someone. ( We were expecting a bump up to first class for this wonderfully kind and responsible act, but no dice). Eventually we were taxiing off into the velvet Toronto night; the city was once of the best looking I've seen from the air. Maybe i will come back to provoke David's paranoia again.



The flight across the pond was nice, the in-flight entertainment was very good. Each seat had touch screens with a large selection of movies and TV shows, so How to Train Your Dragon kept us occupied for awhile. (Don't laugh, it was good) The meal was very good for airline food: Beef and pasta, corn veggie salad, and a fantastic brownie dessert. This was one of the best meals I've had on a plane. (Yes dinner was excellent. But breakfast was a little bit less. Cold grainy muffin, orange juice, coffee; seems they were planning that we would all be alseep. But sadly we were awake. -Eric) After what seemed 3 days later we touched down at London Heathrow. Here Eric learned that even when there isn't a sign for it, it's still always good to pull out your liquids. After 10 minutes of fussing we were off again, (Hm lets please move on with the me always slowing us down and have my mysterious "vitamin supplement bottle" searched the man frisking me, none to gently I might add, was enough punishment. -Eric) and had the grand privilege of staring at people we didn't know for 4 hours. We once again got to heat up our shoe soles, as London airport is spread over several buildings, quite far apart. Finally in the evening we jetted off to Dublin. After arriving and finding the right bus, we were off to the center of town for the adventures to come.