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Ashley Bingle

Ashley’s Interim Adventure In England, Second Week

by Ashley on Jan.18, 2012, under Ashley Bingle

This weekend did measure up to my expectations. We spent Saturday wandering around Edinburgh, which was very fun! I enjoyed listening to the street pipers, but the one old man we liked best disappeared before we could go back again. We looked in at a lot of museums and took pictures of the lovely architecture, including Edinburgh Castle, which we walked past many times. I ended up purchasing a kilt as my souvenir of the trip and have planned to wear it to the “Robbie” Burns dinner tomorrow (Thursday) night, where we all get to taste haggis.

The hike in the Lake District was lots of fun too! We climbed up to a peak, but once we got to the “top” realized there were still higher mountains behind that we hadn’t seen. It was very steep, and the “path” was just a beaten down area on the tree-cleared ground. It was quite cold this weekend, so there was still frost on the ground, combined with mud, it made things pretty slippery. I only fell twice, and my pants and jacket aren’t too muddy either, probably because of the frost.

We walked along a gravel and stone path by the river, too, and some of the boys got a bit too close for my comfort. Thankfully Mrs. Schwarz wasn’t comfortable with it either and made them stop and move away from the edge. We got some pretty nice pictures of the waterfall by Aira Force and tried to capture some of the beauty of the view from the top of the mountain before we headed off on a drive up between some more mountains. The trip was really fun, but exhausting, so it was nice to have dinner at the Mallons’ and watch the movie “Robin Hood” for the rest of the night.

The rest of the week has been filled with coding, research, and meetings, including another prayer meeting at which our group is requested to participate in leading part of. I am just looking forward to finishing my work on this help software, and getting on to the next weekend, where we will be in London! It is hard to believe that we are so close to being done with the trip, when we have not even been here very long.

I wish we would have had more chance to visit places, but we already talked them into the trip to Edinburgh and to the Lake District last weekend, and it is not as if we can really skip work or anything. Oh well, it has been a wonderful trip already anyway! Cheers!

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Ashley’s Interim Adventure In England, First Week

by Ashley on Jan.13, 2012, under Ashley Bingle

So as of yesterday, we have been here an entire week. It has been a very full week, too. As soon as we arrived at the actual OM offices in Carlisle we were toured around and introduced to whoever was in the office on a Thursday right after winter holiday. They were trying hard to keep us awake, and I think it worked, but we certainly don’t remember all the names and faces they pointed out that day.

I am staying with a lady named Becky Barnhart, who has two spare bedrooms in her house, so I get one all to myself. Her house is right near the City Center, and all the shops, just outside the old wall that protected Carlisle Castle. Since it is so close, we have been able to walk back and forth to several places, including the 12-15 minute walk down to 3 Richardson Street, the house where three of the boys are staying alone. They are just around the corner from Keith and Dawn Mallon (and their three girls), who have hosted the boys and I on several nights, as opposed to always eating with Becky.

We spent the end of last week getting oriented and then touring around (town and Hadrian’s Wall). Then on Monday we began in full with the IT work, which we have been doing since then. Each dinner we have been having either with our host families or some team member’s house in particular. Today, Friday, we are on break from all that, and going to another “session” of discussions that is going to last all day until the IT department games evening.

I am more excited about this weekend, because Saturday we visit Edinburgh (yes, in Scotland!) and then Sunday we are going to hike through the Lake District and maybe even go to Keswick (pronounced KEZ-ick). So, this first of two weeks with OM has been pretty good, and we still have more fun stuff left. For now, I’m off to the meeting and then fun, so this is all I have time to say.

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Ashley’s Interim Adventure In England, Arrival

by Ashley on Jan.07, 2012, under Ashley Bingle

Just getting settled in Carlisle, England. This is where we’ll be staying for two weeks working with Operation Mobilization (which is based here in Carlisle) on their open source software, Open Petra, before we head to tour London for a few days before we fly back home in 20 days. We’ve been posting our journals online to get “credit” for this as a cross cultural course, which it certainly is.

Took a plane from Grand Rapids to Atlanta and then from Atlanta to Manchester, overnight. Left around 9pm Atlanta time and got here past 9am Manchester time. Slept a little, but now we have to stay up to reset our internal clocks. It is easy to fall asleep, but getting up is going to be the hard part.

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