Second Day at the Mission

Hello all,

This is Michael L. here for todays blog post.

Today was the first day that Danae and I were on our own to get down to the mission form the suburb we are saying at. That involved walking down to the train, buying tickets and making sure we took the right train but it was strait forward and now that we done it once we are confident we wont have any trouble.

During the day at the mission we spend most of it just helping with clubs and getting to know some of the clients who some we meet yesterday. In my experience most were very willing to chat with us but some are still wondering who we are and why we are there. I helped out with a under 40's mans club which consisted of just moving about the room talking to with clients and getting to know them and them getting to know us. I met one guy who just started coming to the mission today who has had a lot of ups and downs in his life. after that I went to help with a club that was for helping find a job and filling out applications. There wasn't that many clients that came to that and the staff said that was some what normal when its nice out (it was sunny and a little worm). So I got chance to talk to some of the staff and volunteers. I had a good chat with one volunteer about how Scotland has become more of a missions field. I was wondering how nationals felt about being seen like that, particularity from the Christians who live here. He told me that it is a missions field and he isn't upset that other countries think that, he is more sad that it was true.

After the clubs finished up for the day the Team went out for a quick bite to eat and chatted a bit about how things were going. After Danae and I popped into Poundland (the UK's Dollar Tree) to see if I could get a coin pouch because it is getting more difficult to manage all the coins they have here. They have about twice as many coins ranging from 2 pound coin to a pinny.

Over all I'm not getting too over whelmed with being here. Actually I was telling Danae its not really different at all from a city in the US. but that's just in the feel of it walking down the street. But as I write this I'm going off in my head what is different and I'll share that with you now.

-the money, the smallest paper money they have is £5 the rest is coins so when ever you buy something you have to look through the hand full of coins you have.

- The amount of sun light hours they have, the sun is just now setting and its 11:15 and it rises at 4ish in the morning

- The accents, I have heard a wide range of accents Glasgow's accent is the hardest to understand but there is people from all over the UK so some are easier to understand.

- The slang and phrases they use for example they way the communicate time is different instead of saying 1:30 its "half past 1" or 2:15 its "quarter past 2" and so on.

- The really surprising one is the Keyboards are different, the letters are all in the same places but the shift key is smaller and next to it is the \ key and the " key is shift + 2. its something you have to experience before you understand that its quite hard to type your normal speed when you go to capitalize a letter and just end up typing a row of \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\ instead.     

Thank you for reading this I know its a bit of a long one. I talk to you in about a week in the mean time enjoy all the other team members points of view on Life In Glasgow.

- Micheal \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\lammers (shoot I did it again, lol)