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Thursday, September 7, 2017

Never Let Age Extinguish the Fire of Your Inner Child

"One way to find out if you are old is to fall down in front of a lot of people. If they laugh, you're still young. If they panic and start running to you, you're old."-Anonymous, but this definitely happened to me yesterday.


A few hours ago, I got back from our "Preparation for Service Conference" in Leeds. Actually it was in Headingley. At the age of 28, I am one of the oldest YAGM volunteers this year, I am the oldest in the United Kingdom YAGM group, and I was definitely the oldest at this conference. The U.K. YAGM program is unique in the respect that while I am serving as a volunteer for YAGM, I am also serving as a volunteer for Time for God, which is YAGM's partner program here in the United Kingdom. So at this conference, there were 8 of the 12 United Kingdom YAGM group, we really missed the other 4, and then there were other Time for God volunteers from Hungary, Germany, Uganda, and also other places from around the world, and a lot of the other Time for God volunteers were 18 years old. There are two of us in our group who are over the age of 25, so we don't qualify for the Rail Card, which gives a pretty significant discount on train tickets. Our friend, Allison, likes to tease the two of us about being "old", by saying things like, "Does it bother you that there are people here who are decades younger than you?" And of course, every time Allison talks, she changes our ages. For instance, when we started Orientation in Chicago a little over three weeks ago, I was 28. By the time Allison and I parted ways today, I was 903. But last night at dinner I was 1,224. So sometimes my age decreases too 😊.

We traveled to the conference in Headingley on Monday, and we had to change trains in Leeds. Well, turns out that all 8 of the YAGMs heading to the conference had to get on the same train from Leeds to Headingley, so we reunited sooner than we thought, and we were all so happy to see each other, because most of us hadn't seen each other since we got to the United Kingdom, two weeks ago today. A lot of the other Time for God people were on our train too. So we got off of the train in Headingley, and we had to walk from the train station to the University Campus where the conference was being held. That was an adventure. We got settled into our rooms, had some snacks, and did some introductions and had dinner. Then we had worship after dinner, and then we had some free time that night. Our group of 8 quickly became known as "The Americans". We were also broken up into small groups that night, of five or six people in each group. Our group of five became known as "The Adventurers".

On Tuesday, we had some free time in the afternoon, so our original plan was for all 8 of us to go to lunch in town, and then go to the Kirkstall Abbey ruins. Well, four of us ended up going to the ruins, and it was definitely worth almost being late to the meeting that was supposed to start at 4:30. The meeting actually ended up starting a few minutes late, and we got there at 4:32, so we weren't really that late.

Yesterday, we were supposed to go into the city of Leeds and do a scavenger hunt. We were walking down a hill, and the grass was pretty slippery, and I fell down. Don't worry, the only thing I hurt was my pride 😌. There were about 20 something of us at this conference, and we all decided to take the bus into the city. We were trying to find the right bus into the city, and we had asked one bus driver which bus was the right one, and he let all 20 of us get on his bus and he drove us to the right bus stop, for free. You won't find that happening at too many places in The United States. Then we got to Leeds, separated into our different small groups, and kept bumping into the other groups at various places, and we did that for a few hours and then went back to the University. We then went over the scavenger hunt, and we broke up into our country groups for part of that, and Grace pulled a bag of carrots out of her backpack, and shared them with us, and it was really random, but also really great 😊.  Last night, our small groups had to do presentations to the rest of the group, about different aspects of culture in the United Kingdom.  Our topic was travel and transport, and our presentation was not perfect, but it was less of a train wreck than I thought it was going to be 🙂.

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The Adventurers at the Corn Exchange.



The first Marks and Spencer stall. It was opened in 1884.


The Adventurers with Equus Altus. The Equus Altus is a sculpture by Andy Scott. It represents how packhorses were used in Leeds' wool and textile industry in the past. 


One of the owls from the Leeds Owl Trail. Not really sure what it's all about, but I intend to find out at some point. 


Taking selfies with giant chess pieces is hard.


United Kingdom YAGMs eating carrots. Photo Credit to Paul Webster, who obviously found this entertaining 😊.


This morning we packed up our stuff, had a closing worship and some closing activities, took some group photos, and headed back to the train station in Headingley. We then parted ways at the Leeds train station, Izzy and Allison and I got on the train back to the Manchester Picadilly station, and then Allison and I wandered around Manchester for a bit before she had to catch her train back to Wolverhampton, and then I had a late lunch at Subway, and caught the bus back to Longsight. And now I am at home with my nuns, who I missed over the last few days. I've gotten used to having them around. So yeah, this was a long blog post, but I think it was worth it. It was great to see some of the other U.K. YAGMs again, and ALL of the U.K. YAGMs will be reunited in October 😊, at which point I will probably be 907, but we'll see what Allison comes up with 😊.














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