I'm home...

and have been for a while so it's update time I suppose. Both a lot and nothing has been happening since I came home.

I came back on the 7th of June, so I've been home nearly a month. In that time I've been clearing my room, a mammoth challenge, gone shopping and seen a few friends.

The evening before I came back, Ben, Ineke, Dan, James, Hayley, Sarah and I went out for a very enjoyable meal at Tootsies, before most of us heading out to Ben's house in Titchfield Common (hopefully spelt correctly!) to watch The Pursuit of Happyness. It was a bit of a late one, but a very nice way to end to year!

I've restarted my work with the Beaver Scouts every Tuesday night, although I was doing a few things for them whilst I was away. At Beavers we have been looking a safety: Safety in the home - what to do in a fire, chemicals and electricity hazards; Safety by water - going to visit someone at Bristol floating harbour who gave us a talk on keeping safe and the hazards of being near water, as well as a planned walk, but that was called off because of a massive thunder storm. Not that that dampened the Beavers spirits and they would have been quite happy to have gone out in it; Personal safety - stranger danger mainly, who you can trust and who you can't. They were shown some faces, and asked to decide who were strangers. All except one face should have been identified as strangers, only one was...oh well, hopefully they know now; and last night we had an American evening - match the English words to the American words, identify the National anthem and eating cookies and doughnuts, and drinking coke and fanta, and having a visit from a police office and a PCSO (both very nice people and worked very well with the Beavers!)where the Beavers could look at the warrent cards, hand cuffs, pepper spray (not that they were allowed near it!!) and the radio, as well as looking at a PCSO's car, which they all loved doing.

I was also back in time for Meg's baptism. Meg is one of the girls in the youth group that I helped lead last year and it was such a joy to see her go through the waters of baptism and to see some of the people we met last summer come and support her. I just hope and pray that she can keep relying on God's strength to get her through the challenges she faces and will face in the future.

On the weekend of the 23rd, I went down to Ben's house for the Goodwood Festival of Speed. We had been planning it for a while so I was excited, despite the early morning and long day. Ben, Ineke, Dan, Tessa and I had a good day (I think!) and it was great to be around cars (how sad am I???) The only down side (except a painful shoulder and aching muscles and cut ankles...) was the thunder, lightening, rain and hail that descended on the site and turned it a little bit muddy! I arrived at Romsey on Friday and was met by Ben and Ineke, and stayed until mid Sunday, so got to visit Ben's church and meet Ben's family.

I also lead a Bible study with some of the children at my dad's church, that seemed to go well, even if the kid's were a little on the quiet side. But reports back have said the the kids were impressed.

Results are back... and I have officially passed the first year!! Yay, that's a relief, and the good news was that it wasn't as close to failing as I had feared :D.

Final thing: my right shoulder has been hurting, aching and generally being annoying, for a while, but was aggravated during the Goodwood weekend (the heavy bag didn't help... :S). Can you please pray for healing? I am probably going to have to take it to the doctors but feel pray is the permenent solution. Thanks :)

It's my mums birthday today so were going out for a meal soon ish so I should get ready. I hope to see some, most, all (maybe?) of you over the summer before restarting in October (October...?? My dad's not impressed, he thinks it's far to long!) Hopefully the weather will start being more summery.

Bye for now! Have fun! God Bless!

Clare xxx

I'm a Meerkat...

...according to this site. It's really interesting! My "power animal" (whatever one of those is...!) is a Kalahari Meerkat.



My name backwards is HTUR SENOJ, and in ASCII Binary 01010010 01110101 01110100 01101000 00100000 01001010 01101111 01101110 01100101 01110011 ! I am also averagely envoweled as 33% of the letters are vowels!

Hope that's enlightened your day!! And the picture is very cute!! :P I got the link to the page from Ben's blog.

Clare xxx

Then there were three...

The flat is slowly emptying...it's quite sad really...signals the end of the year, the first year at uni, my first time not living at home, with total strangers, in a new city...wow!

Clare went home yesterday, and Nick and Sam went home today. Now it's just Sammy, Lewis and me...and is quiet and empty. It's Friday night and I know that the kitchen will still be tidy tomorrow, that I won't get woken up...and I'm actually sad about that...

I wonder about what life will be like at home, I'll settle back ok, but before, I've always known that I'll be going back, but not this time. The next time I won't be living at home, it will be with a new set of people, people I know and have chosen to live with...yet another new experience!

So, Lewis, Sam, Sammy, Nick and Clare, if you happen to stumble upon this, it's been fun, and I'm so glad that I had such a nice bunch of people for my first ever flat mates!!

For now...

Clare xxx

Wow!!!

Pirates of the Caribbean: At worlds end, was amazing!! It was a really good concluding part to the trilogy, and I would say, maybe better than POTC 2. It's really difficult to write this with out giving anything away... so it's going to be brief.

There are some very funny moments, few sad, few scary. All the usual characters are there as well as a few we haven't met yet. It feels like any loose ends are tied up. And if you go to see it, don't forget to stay to the very end after the credits and see the final scene.

My only moan about it was that, due to a cinematic error, we had to watch the film with subtitles...

Great film, worth seeing, I wanna go again.... :P

Clare xxx

Steve...

Just for the record....I am not in competition with you...end of story...for now...*cue evil laugh...!!!"

Clare xxx

Me again...

Hello!!

Once again we have entered the dreaded exam period... :(, but that also means that I have nearly finished my first year at uni. I think that I more scary... To think that around 8 months ago things were sooo different, I had very few Christian friends, very few close friends, I rarely went out, whether it was just to see a friends, or a film, or clubbing. I never imagined quite how settled I would feel down here, that I would get on well with my flat mates, and hopefully not loose contact with some of them next year, that I was have a house sorted with house mates I'm looking forward to living with.

I go to a good, active church. I'm part of a great cell group, where I don't feel like I have to hide anything. God has been doing alot of work in my life, both with issues that I was aware of, and some that I had tried to bury. I would say that I have been broken by Him, but healed by Him. My faith has grown, through the rough patches, the really bad homesickness (which, I'm pleased to say has nearly gone..!! I still miss home tho!), the times I felt really distant from God.

The course is going well. I have found me feet, and am understanding lectures. The work side still need some more improvement, but it'll get there.

Things have been very positive. Four months at home, then back to the uni life.

Clare xxx

Blog Design

Since I set up this blog, I have been trying to find a design and colour scheme I vaugely like. Ben has been helping me with this, by re-colouring sections of the site I couldn't do with Blogger, and centering the sunset picture.

Cheers

Clare xxx