Summer?

It's August already?

Bare with us while we play catch-up on our summer happenings....

1.  It's been the wettest June and July in the UK ever.  It's also been pretty chilly.  The combination of these two things don't really make it feel like summer, especially when we hear of temperatures that are 40 degrees (F) warmer back home.  There have been more days than I can count when we got soaked walking...not fun.  Because of all the rain, we get slugs....in our house.  That's no fun either.
 One cool thing about the summer here is how long it stays light outside.  We had daylight from about 4am to 11pm in late June.

2.  BBQ--If you're from the South this means an entirely different thing to you than it does here.  Here, a BBQ is like a cookout, and in June we went to one with our fellowship group from church and another for the entire church. 

Here's the one with our fellowship group:

Unfortunately the weather didn't turn out so well for the full church BBQ:

I gave up taking pictures in the monsoon (it rained three hours straight and we had lightning/thunder for the first time since we've been here), but despite the rain, it was a nice time--there was a giant teepee, a bouncy castle, ice cream truck, archery, and other things as well. 

We have thoroughly been blessed by our church here.  They have loved us, befriended us, fed us, given us rides, let us borrow bikes, taken us to concerts and to see places around the country, and given us countless cups of tea and coffee.  We just cannot thank them or say enough about all of them.  We fully did not expect to find a church that felt so much like home to us here, but it really has been a haven and has helped us grow spiritually as well.

3.  Seven words I (Autumn) never expected to say: I work for the Irish Football Association (American friends that means soccer).  It took eight months for me to find a job here, and when I finally did, it was not at a place I expected for two reasons---1. I know pretty much nothing about soccer/football (except to call it football anywhere outside the USA) and 2. I am not Irish (Okay, it might be in my blood somewhere).  The job has been great though and I am really enjoying doing Admin work again.  It's just a temporary four month position, but we are thankful for God's provision of a job while we're here.

4.  Casey has been working hard on his thesis and as of yesterday has 15,000 out of 20,000 words completed!  He has to turn it in mid-September, so continue to pray for him as he finishes strong.  With Casey finishing his paper, we have been planning our next moves and over the summer we decided we will head back to the US on October 2nd.  We are looking forward to seeing family, but are sad to leave our friends here in Northern Ireland.

Okay, I think we're caught up.... :)

Visit to Londonderry and the Queen's Jubilee....

So I'm a month behind on this, but at the beginning of June we had a holiday to celebrate the Queen of England here and we spent the day with some other friends from church visiting the city of Londonderry/Derry.

Londonderry, or as it is also known, Derry, is the oldest fully intact walled city in Europe.

The walls surround the entire central part of the city.  In the center of the city is a diamond shaped roundabout with four main streets jutting off of it.  Up on the city walls we visited St. Columb's cathedral (below)

Inside St. Columb's cathedral

Each pew had hand-carved wood on the ends.  We were told that each one was different.  Amazing!

I mentioned the holiday for the Queen....well, we just missed the celebration for her at the cathedral, but we did get in on the tea time....

So yeah, the Queen....she's sort of a big deal around here.  This year is her 60th year on the throne, so she gave everyone a holiday to celebrate, which was pretty nice of her.  While the Queen was celebrating big in England in early June (when we were in Londonderry), she did make an appearance here in Northern Ireland two weeks ago as part of her big Diamond Jubilee.  Unfortunately, we didn't actually see her, but she was five minutes from our house!!

So enough about the Queen.....here's more of Derry....

 Londonderry has a really interesting history that is rather hard to explain, but there was a time called the Troubles in the 1970s and 80s when Catholics and Protestants didn't get along here in Northern Ireland.  There were a lot of problems in Derry.  Below is the Peace Bridge which is a footbridge across the River Foyle that connects the East and West sides of the city.  It just opened last year to bring the city together.

As you can tell we learned a lot of history and had a full day touring the city.  Thanks to our friends Nigel and Carolyn for a fun day and for taking us to see the Gettys in concert that night!!!

Casey with our friends Nigel and Carolyn

A Place Called Kilkeel....

We've mentioned before that we've met a lot of nice people here....

Our friends from church, Adam and Lynn, invited us to visit their hometown, Kilkeel, for a weekend.  Kilkeel is near the sea and  Mourne Mountains (where I was in the previous post).  Adam and Casey had been trying to go golfing together for months somewhere around Belfast, so that sort of sparked the trip for all of us to go down to Kilkeel for the weekend.

We stayed at Lynn's parents' house where we learned to play Rummikub on Friday night.  Sadly, the guys won all three rounds...

On Saturday Adam and Casey went golfing and Lynn and I went to a butterfly house and garden!

There were peacocks roaming around the garden!

Bluebells!

I wish I could've had a wedding photo at this little spot...love love love!

Then Lynn took me to Kilkeel harbour and to see Green Castle!

 I wish I had more pictures of the countryside in Kilkeel because there are tons of sheep and rolling green hills.  I did manage to get one....

After that, we met the guys and went to a place called Silent Valley.....

Silent Valley is a reservoir in the Mourne Mountains.  It was a bit cloudy but still beautiful.  The craziest thing happened while we were there.  We asked some people walking by if they would take a picture of the four of us, and after getting the photo we started to chat about where we were from.  The lady who took the photo was from North Carolina like us, but not only that, her husband taught at Southeastern just before we were there!  About that time, her husband walked up and we all had a chat, but it was really strange to be up in the mountains in Northern Ireland and meet people from home!  It really is a small world!

We had a great time with Adam and Lynn and loved seeing another part of the country. 

A Day in the Mountains

A few weeks ago, a friend of mine from fitness class found out I hadn't been to see the Mourne Mountains yet.  The Mournes are the highest mountains in Northern Ireland and are considered to be one of the inspirations for C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia.  So, of course when my friend, Edel, asked if I wanted to make a girls' trip out of it, I said yes! (Sorry Casey!) 

This past Saturday, Edel and I went on our hike up Slieve Donard--the highest peak in Northern Ireland at 850 metres or 2,790 feet.  It is less than half the height of a lot of peaks in my home state of NC, but since there are no trees for much of the climb, it created some breathtaking views of the other peaks, the sea below, and towns far away.  I also wouldn't consider it an easy climb--I could barely walk the next two days!

The hike started out with dense forest and waterfalls, a lot like hikes I've been on in the NC mountains...

Once through the forest, I turned around for this view....

And looking at what was ahead to climb....You can't even see the top of the mountain we were climbing from here..it's hiding behind the others!!

Below is the rock wall that was built back in the early 1900s to set a boundary for the nearby reservoir.  It goes over many of the peaks. We stopped for lunch when I took this photo, but this was our last steep climb to the top!

We made it!!!

 And back down again....

 

 The town of Newcastle....

And the sea!

Thanks for bearing with all the photos...I had trouble narrowing them down.
I'm so glad Edel took me on this adventure.  It gave me a chance to get to know her a bit better and I got to see another part of Northern Ireland!

Next time I'll take Casey :)

Because I realized April is almost over....

This month has been flying by it seems....so much so that I realized we hadn't blogged this month!

 The last week in March the weather here was amazing!  The high was in the mid-60's which we found out is like "mid-July bring out the shorts and tank tops" weather for here.  People were sitting outside their houses playing music and chatting, and our quiet Botanic Garden walk turned into seeing hundreds of people on the lawn in said summer attire visiting an ice cream truck parked nearby.  Seriously, I was beginning to think, warmer weather is here and it will only get better!  Our Northern Irish friends warned us of impending nasty weather because of the unusually beautiful days we experienced.  We hoped they were just being pessimistic...

Then it sleeted.  A whole day.  Temps were 30 something.  All day.  Our friends were, unfortunately, right.

The weather has gotten better since then, but still hasn't gotten quite as nice as the last week in March. 

Even so, April has brought everything into full bloom!  I especially love the tulips! Here are a few pics of Spring in this crazy weather place :)

This is the field where all the people gathered when it was so warm.

This is the Palm House, one of my favorite places to visit.

The blooming trees outside this church are fabulous!

We are enjoying Spring and walking around even more now that the weather is warmer.  We also borrowed some bikes from friends, so we'll be putting those to good use in the weeks to come!

Anniversary Getaway

Last Tuesday, March 20th, was our second anniversary.  It's hard to believe it's been two years!
We have loved the adventure it has been so far and are so thankful that God brought us together.  We like to celebrate good things like this, so we try to take a trip each year and reminisce about the last three years we've known each other and look forward to the many years to come.  For our first anniversary we went to Washington, DC and loved it.  This year, we took a trip down to Ireland to Dublin and the Wicklow Mountains.  We figured since we were so close to Ireland, but not actually in Ireland (even though most people think we are), we thought we should at least make a trip down while we're here.

We rented a car and thank goodness my dear husband knows how to drive a stick shift and manage himself well on the opposite side of the road, because I wasn't having any of that!

We spent the first two days taking in the sights of Dublin...

Trinity College Founded 1592.  It was located in the middle of the busy city, but was so tranquil!  We walked through an archway in a building and it was like entering another world.

This is the Spire.  We don't know what in the world it is for except that it's really tall and pointy and fun to look at...

Temple Bar....one of the famous areas in Dublin.  I liked it because it looked Irish.

This is the cool design in front of castle-like buildings that we couldn't go inside.  But, we did go to a really cool museum called the Chester Beatty Library.  They had some of the oldest biblical manuscripts in the world!!!!

This is Dublin Castle.  This part is supposedly from about the year 1228.  Again, we didn't go inside or anything, just pretty to look at...Those are cherry blossoms in the foreground...love Spring!

Saint Patrick's Cathedral....there are a lot of old churches in Dublin, but I wanted to see this one most.

After seeing a bit of Dublin, we spent our last day driving a few minutes south to see the Wicklow Mountains.  By far, this was our favorite part of the trip!

This is Great Sugarloaf Mountain.  It's easy to see, but hard to find the road that takes you to it.  However, we did find it and enjoyed our little hike.

On our way up!

We made it to the top!  Or at least I did....just kidding....Casey was there too.  We enjoyed eating our lunch up there and taking in the view....

Speaking of the view....it was gorgeous!!  We could see in every direction!  These pictures don't do it justice....

 

These yellow flowers were everywhere in Ireland!  They were actually yellow thorny bushes, but really pretty!

 This is our little car that got us around.  We had a fun time and are glad for life's little adventures....

Beautiful Irish countryside....

Thanks for all the well wishes for our anniversary.  We are blessed.