Dogs and Old People

So I have come to the conclusion that I must attract trouble. I hadn't planned on volunteering for another adventure when I woke up this morning, but with a day like today, I guess I could expect as much. The weather was amazing! Shorts and t-shirt weather for sure! After being here for 3 days, it was the first time I actually felt warm, so I enjoyed thawing out in the sun. Not a cloud in the sky to hinder me from soaking up some warm rays.
Today was Karissa's 21st birthday and the 4 of us girls that were still the only students thus far, decided we wanted to go out for the day. One of our directors drove us to Hayward's Heath so we could shop and just explore around a little bit. I gotta just throw this in there quickly - the drivers out here are crazy! It wasnt too hard to get used to the steering wheel on the right, or driving on the opposite side of the road, but the cars drive so fast! Speed limits basically dont exist here. And the roads are very narrow - at least where we are. There are no shoulders on the side of the road whatsoever, so when the sidewalk runs out, you gotta be careful of the cars for sure! And the cars all park on the side of the road, even if they're in a lane, so the traffic that's moving is just blasting through the middle of the road as if it's one-way, but when you have two cars trying to go through at once... my heart rate rose a few times. ahah.
The town was really cute - especially the tiny shopping district we visited (which I will post pictures of, I promise they're coming!). After a few hours of wandering around, we had to catch the bus back to the manor for our BBQ 'Welcome' dinner at 5pm. Well, when you're with 3 girls that are just as terrible as you when it comes to directions, transit in a new country is very interesting! The director had printed off a paper for me with the bus routes and times, and told us which stop we needed to get to and then going on to say we need to "walk right when you get off the bus and the manor will eventually appear on your left". Simple enough, eh? Well, after waiting for an hour for the bus - which was late - we ended up missing our stop. yeup. Unfortunate. The bus driver lady was not friendly at all, either, and not helpful in the least! But she pulled over on the side of the road about a block later and let us off. So we backtracked to the pub that was our directional marker, and realized we were on a corner with 3 streets. So lemme ask you... go 'right' in which direction? Facing the pub and turn right? Facing the corner and turn right? Or facing the bus and turn right. Okay. Well, then.
Lets not go back the direction we came from, and we now have a 50% chance of picking the correct street. We didn't. Too bad we didn't realize we were walking down the wrong street until about 40mins later when we realized NOTHING looked familiar. You may ask, "wouldn't you have noticed earlier if nothing looked familiar?" Nope. Understand that we are in the middle of the countryside in England, so rolling fields and old brick houses scattered here and there begin to all look the same after a while. Oh, it was great fun in the start - the countryside is gorgeous so it was nice to walk along it on such a fantastic day, and we found some great photo opporunities involving old gates, sprawling manors, and an abandoned telephone booth, but after a while, we started getting hungry and reflected that one PB&J sandwhich really is not enough to last you for the day. We were all ready to just be back home and take our shoes off. When we finally did realize we had been walking the wrong direction,I cannot even explain to you how devastated we were. We had been on our feet walking for nearly 5 hours at this point, and now find that we are out in the boonies in the middle of NOWHERE, basically lost. In our distress and fatigue, the sheep across the road were beginning to look an aweful lot like pillows, let me tell you. We debated sitting on the roadside and crying - which I think is logical - and tossed around the idea of roughing it in the fields for the night - I offered to use my survival skills to pitch a tent from raw materials. (I'm glad it didnt come to that because I would have had to get very creative.)
After a few minutes of standing there looking - and feeling - quite pathetic, we deducted that turning back was the only thing we could do. Hitch-hiking was looking swell at this point, but rather than chance that, we took a different approach and exercised some positivity =P. Two things kept me sane as we trudged back up and down the hills of the winding countryside a) the verse that says "Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength, run and not grow weary, walk and not faint" - which we took in its' literal context and prayed for some supernatural strength that we deffinitely weren't feeling, and b) we didnt have another choice! It wasn't so bad though. If anything, I've been learning that things only become a big issue if you make them into one. I have seen my fair share of frustrations this trip, but I didnt allow any of them to affect me. It would have been very easy to start grumbling about being stranded today, but instead we were like, "Look, we have some water left, it's not raining, it's only 4pm so we have a few hours before it gets dark, and we're not alone. Things are okay." Things were okay, but our feet were KILLING us. I decided it was due punishment for the lack of exercising I've done in the last 3 days. Wow. My legs still burn. aha.
So anyways, we found our way back to the pub and redirected ourselves. By process of elimination, there was only one road left to take, so we took it with determination and a whole lot o' prayer that this was the right way. With our feet about to fall off, and everything starting to look the same again, you would not believe our relief when we saw one of the directors from the base drive up in her car. Apparently when we didnt show for dinner on time, she went out looking for us. Thank God that we were on the right street that time or they may have never found us!
We were welcomed back to the manor by the smell of a mouth-watering bbq. I dont think I have ever downed a burger that fast before in my life. (I also ate purple coleslaw for the first time in my life.)
The rest of the evening was wonderful - friendly games of 'football' (soccer) and frisbee, a beautiful walk around the grounds (and yes, I did take some pictures!), and then watching Britain's Got Talent on a projector while eating ice cream and drinking tea in the basement. (Have I mentioned this place has 5 floors??)
All in all it's been another long day. The more time I spend here, the more I'm loving it, though. I still can't get over how unbelievably beautiful it is. The pictures dont do it an ounce of justice.

It's 11:30pm here and I have to be up for church tomorrow -which I am SO pumped for! Im really excited to see what their services are like. I dont remember the name of the church but I know tomorrow we're going to the one that we connect with every Friday night to do our local outreach projects.
Talk to you chaps on the 'morrow!

Cheerio! =)