Lots of Thoughts

This will be a slightly longer post than usual, as I have much to say. On Wednesday, I met with Jenny, the head of Friendship House, a drop-in centre in downtown Belfast. I’ll be working with them one day a week, starting on Tuesday. I’m going to start helping out with their afterschools drop-in and homework club for primary school kids. Jenny and I were talking about my role with the afterschools programme, and talents/skills I might be able to offer. I mentioned my theatre experience and, as has happened a few times since I got here, saw her eyes light up. “Oh, they’d love that!” she said. As yet, it’s not clear how all this will work together, how (or if) I’m going to do drama with the kids at Friendship House. But I do have to say, it has been pretty amazing to see people’s joy when I mention theatre training. Friendship House is located in a very overtly Protestant/Loyalist area of Belfast. There are murals on nearly every street corner, many of paramilitaries or of people killed during the Troubles. There is a new addition to Loyalist propaganda in the past week: posters with yellow “support our troops” ribbons on them. On November 2 (that’s Sunday), there will be a parade of British armed forces returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. Any show of British military force is perceived as a re-assertion of Loyalist politics and a thumb in the eye for Republicans, though more moderate people will rightly point out the existence of Catholics in the military. At any rate, the Republican political party Sinn Fein is planning to stage a demonstration at the parade. The prime minister of the UK, Gordon Brown, yesterday issued a plea for a peaceful march in Belfast, calling on everyone to support troops who have sacrificed for the country. Everyone is hopeful that it will go off peacefully, but there is the potential for a radical riot. So pray for Belfast on Sunday. (And no, I’m not planning on being anywhere near the march, as I’ll be working at church all day.) Also, on Sunday pray for the drama team I’ve been leading. Sunday evening is our first presentation of our work. There’s a youth worship service that night, and they’ll be doing a sketch I wrote about the calling of the prophet Samuel. They’ve been doing quite well in rehearsal, really improving by leaps and bounds the past week or so. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing the final product. In unrelated news, I keep getting mistaken for a telemarketer. As annoying as that is, I find it rather entertaining. As part of collecting stories for the church’s book, I have to call a lot of the older folks in the congregation. Apparently, there have been quite a few American telemarketers calling people in the area lately. So all of the elderly people, who can’t hear very well down the phone, think I’m trying to sell something. One of them didn’t even let me get through, “Hello, this is Megan from Kilmakee Church” before setting down the phone. I’m about ready to give up on telephone calls entirely and just start going round to people’s houses. Word of the Week: Bun. I know it’s also a word in the U.S., but it has a rather different usage here. It’s not very often in the States that you come across a sweet food item called a “bun;” I can think of cinnamon buns/rolls, hot cross buns, and (thanks Mum and Dad) Birdie Buns. That’s about it. Here, though, many things are called buns. Basically anything cakey-ish and sweet, or really any kind of dessert. The kids in my drama team laughed at me the other night for calling a bun a “cupcake.” And also for calling the icing “frosting.” I was trying to tease one of the girls on the team for having a hard time putting the frosting on her cupcake, but as it turned out, I became the butt of the joke.