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We left on Friday night, taking the train to Tamworth, and then we were ferried by car over to the church in Kingsbury. While waiting for my turn to go over, we sat at the station and I learned something of 'trainspotting', as the two guys waiting with me were fans. From what I gather, you watch trains that go past the station, and then try and determine the engines which are pushing/pulling the train (there are usually engines at the front and back of the trains). Based on the types of engines, and looking at the trains, you can also try and guess how fast the train might be going. There is probably more to it than this, but that is my understanding so far.
After arriving, we had a hearty dinner, did some singing, then headed off to bed. The next day we started with a Catholic-style morning prayer, and then had discussions on happiness. I won't bother to try and explain them in full, but the main points that arose is that only by being at peace with ourselves, God, and the world around us can we achieve lasting happiness. All the other types of happiness are short lived (like drinking), or do not make us as happy as we think they might (material possessions).
During the day we also had time to just hang out together, and we played football (soccer) in stocking feet with a tennis ball, indoor frisbee toss, and 'piggy in the middle'. We also enjoyed frequent poems from Robert, an Anglican priest from Uganda who was visiting with us. During the day many people also practiced on instruments and sang, although I did not join in since I am about as incompetent at music as one can get.
Sunday most got up early and went to an 8:30am Anglican service, but I was very tired and slept in. Later, most of us went to the Methodist service at the church we were staying at. We also had our own service later in the day, which incorporated bits of all the different traditions.
After returning from the weekend, I went to the regular Anglican Sunday service, after which we had a talk about Ecumenism by Rev. Robert Grimley. It tied in nicely with the weekend retreat and some of the things which we had learned. Why do we Christians so frequently fight among ourselves, in stead of concentrating on what we have in common? One story that was told was about a Catholic priest that refused to come to the death bed of a non-Catholic christian married to a Catholic. It seems petty the amount of legalism that sometimes comes between christians. It would be much better is we could instead find some common ground. (By the way the Catholic example is not intended as a slight against Catholics; such things occur between all types of christians, including different protestant denominations).
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After the footie (football match), we retired to the bar at the Guild for a drink. Robert, a priest from Uganda, and I went from there to the birthday party of one of the Methodist's we had met on the retreat the previous weekend. The rest of the Anglican's headed for a Balti, and came to the party later. The party was quite good; I was especially happy that it was a no-smoking party. While at the party I met an American who was studying in Manchester. We had a good conversation about how we had found life in the UK. I was the first American she had met here since she arrived in September, and she commented that it was good to talk to another person of the US. I also enjoyed the chance to talk to somebody from my country. Even though I have many friends here, somehow it is not quite the same talking to them. I think this is especially true since everybody comes at things from the perspective of their own culture, and it is hard to talk about the differences between your culture and the one you are living in with somebody who has always lived in that culture.
Yesterday, Sunday, was the Birmingham University Orienteering Club event-- that is the orienteering meet that is run by the O-Club here on campus. The pickup time was at 6:30am, which is incredibly early considering the sleep schedule I am on now where I seldom rise before 9:00am. I went to the pickup point at the assigned time, and waited for one hour, at which point I figured something had gone wrong. I walked to the two other pick-ups on campus, just in case somebody was waiting there for me, but there was no such luck. Unfortunately, since I had gone to bed at 9pm Saturday night, I wasn't able to go back home and go to sleep. Instead I went home and spent most of the day lounging around my flat. I went to scan some pictures into the journal, but found that the transformer that connects my scanner to the wall had blown out, causing the fuse in my UK-US power converter to go as well. This is actually pretty disappointing, since it means I won't be able to add pictures to my journal until I figure out how to get a new transformer, which is difficult since it is a US transformer. I also use the UK-US power converter for backing up my computer with a Zip drive, so I decided to go into town and get some more fuses, so at least that works again now. I called the team captain of the O-Club when I got back from town to figure out what went wrong with the pickup. I thought that I must have gone to the wrong place, so they left after they could wait no longer. It turns out in this case that I was OK. There were two cars that went to the event, and each assumed that the other would pick me up. By the time they got to the event, it was to late to come back and get me. I actually didn't mind too much, since it was nice to have an unexpected free day!
Some of my flatmates were going out to the Dome night club, and I decided to join them. Shaggy, one of my roommates, just began to work at the Dome, so I figured I would go and check it out. Two Swedish girls also went with us. It turned out that it wasn't too crowded-- only around 800 people there. Shaggy told me that on a normal Tuesday there could be over 2000 people at the Dome. I spent most of my time dancing, but once again the music was too loud-- my ears rang for several days afterwards. Overall it was much better than 'The Pulse,' but I probably won't go back unless it is a special occasion.
Of course, following Shrove Tuesday is Ash Wednesday. In the morning I went to physio therapy (physical therapy) to have a check up on my shoulder, which I have been working on exercising on my own. Ironically, the left shoulder which had the surgery was okay, but the right shoulder is now slightly unstable. Because of this, my physio-therapist asked me to work on strengthening it and come back in another two weeks. I was supposed to be discharged then, so I was a little disappointed, but I now have good motivation to work on strengthening the shoulder over the next couple weeks.
I did go to the service on Wednesday afternoon, and had the cross of ash placed on my forehead. Ash Wednesday is the start of Lent, and you are supposed to give up something to recognize the sacrifice which Christ made. Normally I give up chocolate, but I decided to give up something different this year. Since I arrived here in Birmingham, I have gotten into the habit of having a Twix Bar and Cherry Coke for a snack several times a week, and I decided I would give up this habit for Lent.
Finally, last Friday was Valentine's Day, but that is about all I can say about it. Once again I didn't have any Valentine around to spend the day with, but that was nothing new to me. Other than that, the day wasn't a bad one, and I hope that everyone else had a good day.
After the day at the Pearce's, Allan Pearce gave me a ride back to campus, and I arrived just in time for the evening service. It was a special service, since it was the day of the Annual General Meeting (AGM), when new committee members for AngSoc are elected. On account of this, the outgoing AngSoc Chairman gets to chose the readings for the service and also give the Sermon. One of the readings that was selected was Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, and they asked me to read it since they figured it wouldn't sound right without an American accent. The reading went pretty well, but I don't really have the southern accent it takes for the speech. Still, it was probably better than an English accent for that particular speech.
Last night was the Annual Dinner at the Solihull St. Alphege Rotary
Club, with the theme of World Understanding. A bunch of the Ambassadorial
Scholars in the district were invited, along with a couple of young people
who were sponsored by the Club to go to Tanzania and build infirmaries.
Each of us was only given about 5 
minutes
to speak, and to make things a little more interesting, we were each given
a unique topic to speak about. Some of the other speakers got education,
and food, and how they differ between their home an England, while one
Japanese student was given the topic of what idea he would introduce from
his country to improve England. I was given the topic of sport and recreation,
and how they differ between the US and the UK. I spoke mainly on Sport,
and contrasted Cricket and Baseball, Soccer/Football and Basketball, and
Rugby and American Football. I chose these three pairs, since they seem
to be the three biggest sports in the UK and US, respectively, and matched
them for their similarities. Basketball and Soccer don't match particularly
well, other than both of them being continuously moving sports. One of
my comments was that both Cricket and Baseball are fairly slow moving (Cricket
matches can last 5 days!) and this gives people an excuse to go to the
ballpark or cricket pitch, hang out with friends, and drink beer. One of
the Rotarians came up to me after the dinner and informed me that by making
that comment with the wives present at the dinner, they would no longer
be able to convince their wives that going to the cricket match was a noble
obligation that they were burdened with.
Last Friday night the Debating Society on campus held a debate entitled, "This house moves that: God is Redundant." Since the Anglican Chaplain, Rev. Gorham, was speaking against the movement, I and a few other Anglicans went to the debate. Having done some debate in High School, I was a little bit surprised at the shape which it took. Normally, you would expect the proponents to define the phrase first, and in this case the phrase is a bit bizarre. They didn't state it as: "God Does Not Exist," or "Science is Correct, therefore God cannot be", which was a bit strange. Being redundant more implies that the role which God serves is entirely filled by something else. Because of this, I expected the proponents to argue that science, or psychology can fill the role of God, therefore he is not needed, and that the opposition would say that God still fills a valid and important role in society. Instead the proponents argued that all man's power is derived from evolution, and that belief in God is wrong since so much evil, such as the Holocaust and Inquisition have been done in the name of God, while the opposition argued that God does exist, and that God and science do not necessarily clash. Overall the debate was informative, but did not develop as I expected it. At the end they allowed members of the audience to speak for a few minutes if they desired. One fellow stood up and argued for the House that he was an Atheist, and he was managing to get through life, so it was obviously possible to survive as an Atheist. This point was moot, however, since it suggested that God was redundant to him, but did not establish the general statement. Most of the people who got up and argued against the motion stood up and said that they were Christian and had accepted Jesus as their Savior, and that God existed. This also was valid but moot, since even should God exist in accordance with their faith, it is still possible He has become redundant. I got up to argue on the point of the debate, and pointed out that whether or not God exists, whether or not humans have power derived from evolution, and whether or not evil has been committed in the name of God is irrelevant to the support of denial of: God is Redundant. To establish that God is NOT Redundant, all that one has to do is show that He, or the concept of Him, serves a purpose in this world that cannot be replaced. I then said that since millions believe and rest their lives upon their faith, God is not redundant unless it can be satisfactorily shown that something else can be given to these people to replace their faith. In the end, the audience voted on both which side spoke more eloquently, and whether they were opposed or for the motion at the end. The audience voted that those for the movement were more eloquent, while the majority were opposed to the movement. For the record I was opposed to the movement (obviously since I spoke against it), and, further, believe in God (also hopefully obvious since I am a Christian).
Last Saturday night was MethSoc Quiz Night, which the Methodist Society put on to raise money for Charity. Members of many of the Christian groups on campus all came together to compete in teams of four. I had talked to some other Anglicans earlier in the week, and they had said they would be attending, however, when I arrived nobody from AngSoc was there. Eventually Phil, the new AngSoc Chairman, did arrive, and we were afraid we would have to compete as two people, until fortunately, two Methodists came and joined us. The Quiz was divided into a variety of different rounds, such as Science and Music, each with twenty questions. Each group wrote down answers as questions were asked, and the totals were tallied up. Each group was also allowed to double their score for one round before it started. Surprisingly, our group wound up winning, a surprise considering it was thrown together. The big help for us was getting all twenty questions right for the Science round, which was also the round we had chosen to double before hand. I must admit, however, that I didn't have a whole lot to do with us winning, since many of the questions were specifically related to Britain and British culture.
Finally, the busy week ended with an orienteering meet, the Chiltern Challenge, which took place at High Wickham. The event took place at the Christmas Common, which was a large Christmas Tree farm. There were many groves of pine trees mixed in with the deciduous forest typical of southern England. All of the pines were in neat rows, as they were Christmas Trees that either hadn't been cut and were now quite big, or were soon to be cut. It was the first event I had been to since the fall, and I was hoping to do better than the last time when I took over 3 hours to do the 9 km course. Fortunately this course was a little bit shorter, at 8 km. It was an interesting run, and I finished in just over 2 hours, so I did better my time. Two interesting things did happen during the run, however; I lost my watch (then found it), and sprained my ankle.
First, as I was going between the fifth and sixth controls I noticed that I had lost my watch, which had a loose strap. The watch is a G-Shock which I've had for almost eight years now, so I was disappointed to lose it. I debated briefly whether to continue with the course, or go back and look for it and take a poorer overall time. Although I wasn't hopeful, I decided it was worth going back to look for the watch. Coming from the fifth control I had been running through one of the above mentioned Christmas tree groves which was quite thick, and I guessed that one of the branches must of hooked the watch and torn it off. The problem was that this grove was very uniform with all of the trees about the same and equally spaced, and I couldn't remember which rows I had come through. Further, the ground in the grove was covered with a thick layer of pine needles, in which the watch could easily have become buried. I made it back to the grove and searched for a while, but was giving up hope. I gave a quick prayer then that God would help me to find the watch, thinking that it was petty and small, and hardly worth praying for. Not thirty seconds later, however, I saw my watch lying right before me on top of the pine needles! I was amazed and said a quick prayer of thanks and was on my way, having lost no more than 10 minutes for the race.
The second thing happened to me between the fifteenth and sixteenth controls. I was running down a path covered in long grass when I stepped on a stump. I didn't see the stump, so I landed on it with my toes, bending my foot back up toward the shin. Unfortunately it was my left ankle, which is the same one I broke a few years ago. At that point I knew I wouldn't be running for the rest of the day. Fortunately, after a short rest I was able to continue hobbling through the course, and actually did make it through to the finish (which was at control 18).
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