Off to church today to pray for my many sins, and for forgiveness for all those missed Sunday services. Almost ironically, I get a break from the dreaded very early alarm call, with it being replaced with a much more social 7am blast instead.
Suzanne, her baby and myself tootle off down the road like a little family. The service is quite lively and vocal, though not quite the evangelical stuff of the U.S. There are a huge amount of churches in this part of the world and many people are very religious. It's a sellout today and we get two of the last seats as the service begins. There seems to be a small team of preachers who take it in turns for the two and a half hour service- yes, that's 2.5 of your earth hours. It goes by surprisingly quickly. Despite the din of the service, two people manage to get public warnings for falling asleep.
We get back to the house just in time for a neighbour's christening party with food and drink being the order of the day. Katherine forces me to hand over this Cassava (some Africans answer to the spud) stuff to the family who insist on coming around sometime to thank me properly. My fraudulent feelings are further exacerbated when a maths teacher genuinely informs me how much he loves Britain and the British. He is very unstinting in his praise of the honest, hard working British people. I try to inform him that it's not always exactly like that without sounding too treacherous, but he's having none of it and continues to gush.
I'm spared further embarrassment by a call from the UAC director calling me to tell a local football tournament is starting in 30 minutes and I should come down out of the clouds to watch it. The tournament is an initiative undertaken by one of the German volunteers, using soccer as a mean to promote social collectivism and moral responsibility. At the opening address, instead of the usual thanking those who have attended and "shame about the weather" type comments (it does start to rain), he goes straight on the offensive demanding to know where his tools are from last year's scheme. He finishes by ordering that there be no repeat of last year's mass brawl, which didn't quite encapsulate the "Espirit D' Core" of the competition.
Bokova village lose 1-0 on a simply astonishing pitch. The main road runs through one side of the pitch and there's a spiritual tree in front of one of the goals-it can never be chopped down. Just incredible. I imagine any tie on this pitch is determined by the team with the least broken necks.
Suzanne, her baby and myself tootle off down the road like a little family. The service is quite lively and vocal, though not quite the evangelical stuff of the U.S. There are a huge amount of churches in this part of the world and many people are very religious. It's a sellout today and we get two of the last seats as the service begins. There seems to be a small team of preachers who take it in turns for the two and a half hour service- yes, that's 2.5 of your earth hours. It goes by surprisingly quickly. Despite the din of the service, two people manage to get public warnings for falling asleep.
We get back to the house just in time for a neighbour's christening party with food and drink being the order of the day. Katherine forces me to hand over this Cassava (some Africans answer to the spud) stuff to the family who insist on coming around sometime to thank me properly. My fraudulent feelings are further exacerbated when a maths teacher genuinely informs me how much he loves Britain and the British. He is very unstinting in his praise of the honest, hard working British people. I try to inform him that it's not always exactly like that without sounding too treacherous, but he's having none of it and continues to gush.
I'm spared further embarrassment by a call from the UAC director calling me to tell a local football tournament is starting in 30 minutes and I should come down out of the clouds to watch it. The tournament is an initiative undertaken by one of the German volunteers, using soccer as a mean to promote social collectivism and moral responsibility. At the opening address, instead of the usual thanking those who have attended and "shame about the weather" type comments (it does start to rain), he goes straight on the offensive demanding to know where his tools are from last year's scheme. He finishes by ordering that there be no repeat of last year's mass brawl, which didn't quite encapsulate the "Espirit D' Core" of the competition.
Bokova village lose 1-0 on a simply astonishing pitch. The main road runs through one side of the pitch and there's a spiritual tree in front of one of the goals-it can never be chopped down. Just incredible. I imagine any tie on this pitch is determined by the team with the least broken necks.
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