International Easter Rally: Part 5 - Purley

Rev. Catherine Lauber and Rev. Dave Gaffney (Purley Chase Programme Director) greeted us with smiles and waves at Nuneaton Station. Weary as we were, I immediately felt cared for and loved. How blessed to be welcomed by these two distance friends from another country. In fact, everywhere we went throughout London, we were greeted with kindness and generosity. Everyone was supportive and helpful. We did not experience even a hint of brashness, contempt or rudeness. All of the folks in London were delightful. The whole lot of them, as they say. So as we loaded into Catherine and Dave's cars, I felt completely at ease. The drive to Purley Chase Centre was short, but the roads were narrow bending and twisting this way and that. When I commented to Catherine how narrow the roads were she laughed and replied, "These are quite wide. You should see some of the dirt roads that wind through the rural wood". Catherine added that our timing was just right as the English Bluebells were nearly in perfect bloom. We crossed over a short tight bridge and over a little hill where the countryside opened up in the front of us. Then, off to the left in the forest, a brilliant carpet of indigo blue spread out under the trees. I don't think I have ever seen such a pretty display of native wildflower. The bright blue color accented by the setting sun was breathtaking. We arrived at Purley Chase Centre (just called Purley by most). As I stepped out of the car, the first thing I noticed was the lovely floral aroma that wafted through the twilight air. It was a delight to the senses. We entered the building and I was impressed by the cleanliness and order. I immediately noticed the care that the keepers of Purley took to make it presentable and homey. Beautiful oil paintings hung throughout the building and inspirational writings and keepsakes adorned the main hallway. Purley Manager, Anne Gaffney cheerfully welcomed us, helped us settle in and showed us to our rooms. After finding my room and taking care of my belongings, I was drawn to a pleasant sun room which had windows to the outside on three side. I learned that this was the conservatory (prior to Purley, I had only visited a conservatory while playing the game Clue). I entered and heard a chorus of different song birds singing softly above. How nice, I thought. They have bird music playing quietly through speakers in this little room. After a brief look around, I found Liz and Holly's playing a game of Jacks. Cody was passed out on a sofa and Celie and Chris were snuggled in a love seat. I sat for a bit relaxing, watching the jacks spin and thinking about our exciting day in London. Then we all called it a night and sleepily went off to bed.

International Easter Rally: Part 4 - London

Big Bus Tours offers international tours of several great cities, including London. We knew we would have very little time in London and we wanted to see as many of the famous landmarks as we could. So we traversed the Big Bus Tour green bus line to join up with the blue (taped recording) bus line. We soon realized that we really should have a live person as a guide when we pass by the really important attractions of London, so we hopped off, waited for awhile for a red bus, then hopped back on. The red buses were more crowded and sitting upstairs in the open air was not possible when we first got on; however, a lot of people got off at the Thames river cruise stop and then we could go upstairs and enjoy a better view of the sights and get some fresh air. We had a nice guided open air bus tour of Tower Bridge, The London Eye, Big Ben, Westminster Abby, and Buckingham Palace. We would have loved to spend more time on the tour, hop on and off more to see everything as well as take the complementary river cruise, but time was marching on and we had to get back to Euston station to catch a 7:00 pm train to Nuneaton (which is about a 10 minute drive from Purley Chase Centre). We had a couple hours left and had a decision to make. We could stay on the Big Bus tour and use up the rest of our time in London, jump off and walk along Oxford St and shop the major chain stores, or take a bit of a risk and ride a city bus to Portobella Market, which a Londoner woman I met on the plane told me is an antique hippie shopping place that teens would enjoy. We chose the riskier option and hopped off the Big Bus tour for the city bus to Portobella Road. With thanks to Cody for his expert British coin counting, a hot dog vendor for making change, and the rest of the teens for their coin contributions and help with the bus ticket machine, this turned out to be the best decision. Portobella market was fantastic! Two miles of little boutiques, second hand shops, antique stores, street vendors and performers. Excellent prices, a fun crowded street and everything you could ask for in the way of souvenirs, gifts and trinkets. This was a real London experience and everyone enjoyed the market. I highly recommend going here if you travel to London. With some help from a friendly young college student, we were directed to the #18 bus stop, which took us right back to Euston station with plenty of time for dinner before our train departed for Nuneaton. We ate dinner, reclaimed our stored luggage and boarded the Virgin train utterly physically and mentally spent. It was now 2 pm EST (7 pm GMT) and we had been traveling for 24 straight hours. We walked perhaps 5 miles on our London tour and we were very happy to have a seat (and a nap for some) on our one hour train trip. Purley Chase Center awaited us and we were all looking forward to getting there and starting the Easter Rally retreat, once we had a nice, long, long, sleep.

International Easter Rally: Part 3 - Platform 9 3/4.

The six of us, Celie, Chris, Cody, Holly, Liz and I, made our way to the underground. After we figured out the zones and tickets, we caught a train to Green Park where we transferred to the Piccadilly Line. From here we continued on the Tube to Euston train station where we stored our bags. Then we proceeded on foot to King's Cross train station to visit Platform 9 3/4. This was a must see for the Harry Potter fans in the group, as within King's Cross, a "Platform 9¾" sign has been erected on a wall of the station building and part of a luggage trolley disappearing into the wall has also been placed below the sign. On the way we visited the adjacent gorgeous St. Pancras station which has a beautiful Victorian Gothic facade and a magnificently clean and spacious interior. The exterior of the St. Pancras station was used in the movie Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets as it was considered more impressive than King's Cross. From here, we returned to Euston station and got a bite to eat. The food in the train station was quite good; lots of french pastry shoppes and a nice little place to get authentic British fish and chips (but don't bother with the onion rings). After lunch, we boarded the green line Big Bus Tour to continue our London sightseeing adventure.

International Easter Rally: Part 2 - Where's Cody?

We arrived at Heathrow, in the early hours of Saturday morning. As it was 7:30 am GMT or 2:30 am EST we were blurry eyed and weary. Yet the excitement and anticipation of the events that lie ahead kept us alive and moving cheerfully forward. Immigration was very busy and the line for those entering the UK snaked back and forth, slowly crawling along like the queue for a major attraction at Disney World. After about 45 minutes, the five of us stood in front of the the customs officer, who promptly stamped all our passports without asking any questions or reviewing any paperwork whatsoever. We were in England! We retrieve our checked bags and left baggage claim to find Cody in the arrival area. We fully expected to find Cody waiting to greet us or maybe sleeping on a bench in the arrivals area. No such luck. No Cody. None of us had a cell phone that worked in the UK nor did Cody. We went to the information desk and had him paged. We confirmed that his plane had arrived hours ago. An hour later, still no Cody. A couple of us decided to travel over to his arrival terminal (he was instructed to meet us in our terminal) in case he was waiting there. After the long walk to his terminal, no Cody. Where was he? We checked with immigration and no one from the U.S. had been detained this morning. We returned to our terminal and went back to the information desk. We thought perhaps Cody had fallen asleep in baggage claim, but we were informed that he would have been woken up and sent on his way. We were not permitted to go back into baggage claim to look for him but the security personal were alerted that he was missing. After 2 hours of worry and anxious plans for what we might have to do if Cody did not turn up, here comes a groggy Cody strolling out of OUR baggage claim terminal right to us. After much celebration and many hugs we figured out what happened. Turns out he found a way from his baggage claim to our baggage claim area and he propped himself up folded over a chair in an area where he thought we couldn't miss him and he took a snooze. Well, we did miss him and thankfully he decided to go looking for us after he napped for a few hours. Cody's response to all this was, "I can't believe you missed me! I was wearing my purple skinny jeans?". Now that our group was finally complete, we could change our money into British pounds and start our whirlwind tour of London.

International Easter Rally: Part 1 - The Long Journey

Well, wow. Let's see. Where to start. How about starting with AWESOME. An overused word, but one that fully encompasses the experience of the SCYL in England. I think the best way for me to blog this incredible event is to chronologically take you through the whole thing in a series of posts. So this first post is the Long Journey and will take you from the afternoon we leave our houses in the United States to arrival in London. Most of you will probably not want to read all this. So, don't! But it is important for me to have a written record of an event this big and there just might be a few parents of teens or very interested people who want all the details of this incredible experience.

I cannot describe very much of the departing activities of Cody, as he left out of Chicago, or of our three Canadian SCYL friends (Jordan, Joesph and Ashleigh), as they left out of Toronto a day after we departed. Cody, we were to met in London at Heathrow airport and you will read more on that later. Our Canadian friends flew into Birmingham, England and we did not meet up with them until Sunday evening at Purley Chase Centre. So you will need to find out their stories directly from them. I do know that Cody took a bus to the airport. That is about it.

I left the house at 1 pm on Friday and drove to Celie and Holly's house. The plan was to leave my car at their house and get a ride to the bus terminal to ride down to Logan airport in Boston. Liz, was driving to the bus terminal from Fryeburg and was to met us there. When I arrived at Celie and Holly's house, their dad, Steve kindly offered to drive us all the way from Portland down to Boston Logan. So we loaded into the car, drove over to the bus station to pick up Liz and rode down to Boston. At Logan, we met up with Chris who rode over to the airport with his dad, Lee Woofenden. Everything was going smoothly up until this point. We encountered a slight problem when we went to check in. There was a 13 lb weight limit on our carry on luggage and everyone's bag exceeded this. So, we needed to check more bags than we intended and needed to repack a bit so that everyone had what they needed on the plane. Other than that, everything was fine and it was no real big deal. We arrived early to the airport and had plenty of time before departure to eat dinner. We boarded the plane on time with bellies full of Sbarro pizza. We were blessed on this leg of the journey to be traveling economy premium, which is pretty much business class. Bigger, more comfortable seats, warm moist towels, drinks before take off, more leg room, real china, etc. I am not sure how this happened, as we definitely did not pay more for it, so I assume that either Expedia or God (or both) was looking over us. As this was Chris' first real time on a plane (he flew as a baby but did not remember it), we all made sure that Chris knew that these are NOT the usual flying luxuries. We received confirmation from Cody that his plane was on time meaning that he would arrive at Heathrow nearly two hours before us. So, the four of us departed Logan on Virgin Atlantic bound for London England at 7:45 pm to arrive in London as scheduled at 7:20 am (2:20 am EST). And we had a nice comfortable flight across the pond.

Talent Night in Kitchener

The Talent Night in Kitchener

By Joseph, SCYL Canadian Officer

Recently a talent show happened at the Church of the Good Shepherd in Kitchener. Its purpose was to raise money for the youth trip to England. There were people from all ages that signed up to show a talent they had or a skit. They sang songs, read poems, played music, did British skits, and other ridiculous things. Everyone sat and watched these in a cozy room drinking hot refreshing drinks with a happy and supporting crowd.

The youth helped out with the talent show by making espresso drinks, setting up tables, cooking food, and decorating. First it started with dancing cows, then went through large contrasts of completely ridiculous things to more serious things. People showed many talents from acting in the Vicar of Dibley to singing a song. The person that brought this all together and got it working was Rev. Alison Longstaff.

One of my favorite parts was Dorothy amazing acting skill put on stage. She acted out Gollum, a creature from Lord of the Rings and acted as a character named Simon from Firefly. She is a really good actor and is definitely going to be well known for her skill and talent later in life. Another well done part was the amazing poetry done by Jen. I didn’t think I like poetry, but she made it come alive. The Vicar of Dibley skit was well done and especially Alison’s ballerina dancing and gracefulness! Overall the talent night was well done plus fun to watch and be in. We should get more people for the next time we do this because it is definitely fun to watch and worth going to. We raised a lot of money for the trip to England and successfully made many people enjoy themselves.

With special thanks to:

Greeters/Ushers/and “go-fer”: Debbie and Carol

MC: Rev. Alison Longstaff

Kitchen Supervisors: Don and Jeanette

Baked Goods Coordinator: Jeanette

Barista: Vincent

Decaf Brewer: Jeannette and Don

Cappuccino machine lenders: Eden, Aaron, and Jennie

Technical and Lighting: Cameron and Frank

Decorating: Rev. John Maine

Babysitting: Ashleigh

Set-up and take down: Good Shepherd Men’s Group

Videographer: Nicole, Carol’s daughter

Event Planner: Rev. Alison Longstaff

Donations overseer: Peggy

The Vicar of Dibley cast: Pamela, Lisa, Steve, Vincent, Dori and Alan and Joseph, Alison and Jordan.

And a big Thank you to business owners Dwight of Uptown Waterloo Starbucks for his donation of pounds and pounds of coffee, decaf, flavored syrups, and a barista for our cause.