A lot of everything

Today marks my third week. It is weird in looking back how fast but yet slowly time passes when you are experiences new experiences.

This last week has been busy. I have established more of the area now, whether by walking around on a morning adventure, taking a bus to see things, or having wonderful people drive me places. Carlisle England, for those that are curious, in square miles seems to be about the size of Hamilton, OH. I have not looked that up, but now that I have seen much of it, that is what it appears to me. It may be a little bigger. It is hard to know these days where Hamilton begins and ends anyway. The population of Carlisle is between 80,000 - 1000,000. That is bigger than Hamilton, so needles to say things feel a little cramped, more so than what I am used to at least.

Also on my free time I have been going to this local museum. It is a really cool place. It devotes much of the museum to the history of Carlisle. There is a lot of history here. Because it is only 10 minuets away from Scotland the Romans (back in the day) occupied this area and built a huge wall so the barbarian Scottish could not come into their empire. Part of the wall still stands. I have not gone to see it yet, but one day.

Other interesting facts:

• At one point, a lot of Carlisle was burnt down because a man set his house on fire. The reason...he wanted to kill his wife. The story did not say if the wife actually died, but because most of the houses were made of wood, much of the town burnt to a crisp in the 15 or 16 century.

• Carlisle lost a third of their population during the outbreak of the Bubonic Plague.

There are many more cool things to learn about Carlisle. I hope to share an interesting fact each week.

Besides reading up on history, I have been discovering more opportunities to plug myself into the community. I visited OM (Operation Mobilisation) headquarters this week to see how they run. I have some connections with OM from the past, so it has been really neat to watch, observe, and see OM in action. I love that it is very international. I had dinner on night with a group of them. There were 7 people there. Everyone was from a different country. It was so cool : USA (me), Canadian, British, South African, French, Dutch, and German. That has been a great part...meeting people from all over and building connections and networks (which goes along with my social workness).

I still don't have my own use to the internet on my computer so pictures will have to wait till I can access my computer. The first post I took from the family's flicker page. Soon very soon there will be more.

Thanks for reading!