Commute day one.

Day one of commuting from Liverpool to Manchester for more work at Christie Hospital. And get this right, how funny is this. They guy that I'm replacing, he not only is from Woodford/Lawson (about 10-20 minutes away from where I'm from in the Mountains in Australia), he went to Wollongong Uni to do dietetics as well! He finished the year I started though. Too crazy. There's gotta be someone we mutually know! He's going to Glastonbury Festival for the next 5 days so they've got me covering him.

It's going to be pretty easy week really. They have a massive project where basically they need to nutritionally screen EVERY single new patient who attends the hospital and that's what I'm doing. The commute went well this morning. I leave Liverpool at 6.50am, arrive at Manchester city just after 8, catch a bus to Christies and I had about 15 minutes spare. It was a bit more complicated getting back because it took me longer to get back to the city and I think the people I was commuting with were a bit grumpy about having to wait an extra 10 minutes - even though I did point out that if they picked me up from where I caught the bus to, we would be able to leave at the same time they normally would. So we'll see how that works out. I've got to catch the bus back tomorrow evening because they've got work stuff on somewhere else.

Anyway my blog has been a bit boring lately so I've thrown in a couple more photos of around Liverpool for you to view and a couple more lambananas

Always providing

Once again I have been so so blessed and looked after. As I haven't been working much the past few months, things have been a bit tight at times. On the whole I have been alright with it, but there are defintely times where I'd get stressed or worried thinking about what I should do next, what to do and need to remind myself to just hand it over to God and take it as it comes.

Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and petition with thanksgiving present your requests to God.
Phillipians 4.6

Over the last few days though, while I've been down in London everything has started falling into place again. It's always one of those, where everything happens happens all at once. On wednesday I had a call from one of the agencies who gets me dietetic work, saying that they had a weeks worth of work from Tuesday next week at Christie Hospital one of the hospitals in Manchester where I had already worked. Because I haven't done any dietetic work in the past 2 months I immediately accepted it beucase I'm already going to be working there for a month in August. Then on Thursday first thing I had anohter call from another agent saying that another hospital i worked at in stockport stepping hill had a vacancy that needed filling, to start Monday next week for at least 4 weeks or longer.

So then I had a bit of a debate, do I stay with the Christies for one week and then the month in August because I had first said yes to them, or take the month at Stepping Hill? I didn't want to go back on my word so said that I would be able to work for stepping hill from teh 28th for all of July if they needed, but I wanted to honour the commitments that I had already made. That was thursday. Then on Friday I got acal late in the afternon sayin that stepping Hill wanted to definitely book me for at least 3 weeks of july starting the 28th. Which essentially means that I am employed for hte next 3 months I believe! Cheering. It was a little bit more complicated than it sounds here though, because while trying to organise this I was in the middle of a course and doing all this training so I'd be lucky to have a five minute break every few hours, during which I"d be making calls and missing calls. But it was all sorted and now I'm set. God provides! :)

I've even managed to already sort out a way of getting over there because I'm not ready to leave Liverpool yet (never though I'd say that I wasn't ready to leave somewhere...). You can get buses to Manchester pretty cheaply, like 3 pounds a trip or something but I figured that there would be someone somewhere commuting, so had a look on gumtree, put an ad up and almost imediately linked up with agirl who is driving from basically where I live in Liverpool to the centre of Manchester and petrol costs are split 3 ways so should only cost about 13 pounds a week. God is definitely looking after me.

Fancy that

I'm back in London again this week doing some training in paediatrics. I'm the only Australian but there is an Australian girl and quite a few South Africans. I was chatting with one of the girls from South Africa today about nutrition and interests and things and was talking about international nutrition and the sort of areas that I've been looking at trying to get into. She had never heard or thought about that concept of nutrition before (quite a few people haven't either) and got quite passionate about the topic as well and is probably going to look into doing something like that herself, as her heart is still very much back in Africa. It also came out that she was a Christian as well, so that was cool to discover.

This weekend I'm going to be volunteer again for Action against Hunger at Taste for London which should be good, then catch up with Ben Andison before heading back up to Liverpool. I think I'm working in Manchester next wek at an oncology hospital there I worked at last year which will be good, I haven't worked as a dietitian for a couple of months now and it will be good to refresh my memory not to mention pay my rent! :)

sleep schmeep

I think I have officially destroyed my body clocks' sense of time! Many late nights due to music mostly. I am addicted to music. It is now 3am and I have just gotten home (from my neighbours flat) and yeah not really feeling tired yet. A brief rundown of my week so far:


Sunday I went to Sheffield in the evening for a young adults meet at the church there and when I got back to Liverpool at 11pm I went over to Hannahs to catch up with some music mates there and watch the open mic (until 2am). I often sing, but it was pretty packed out that night, some wicked random jams with guitars and even a guy with a saxaphone jumped up so that was pretty cool. I've arranged for next sunday that myself and another Aussie guy called Neil, we're going to do an aussie set of music so that will be fun. Someone suggested that we need to play the theme song for Home and Away, so see if that will happen. Would be slightly amusing. A guy played a cover of Postman Pat the other night at Leaf. Absolutely brilliant, everyone joined in!!

I love music. I think that is why I love Liverpool so much. My life here almost revolves around music and different events and things. On Monday night I had a set at a bar called Chameleon, which was through a French guy Augustin I met at Leaf a few weeks back. He is an amazing guitarist/singer in a band called the Dots. Later a whole bunch of us went out afterwards and ended up at his flat where we were jamming and playing each others songs and mucking around. Good fun. But because of that I didn't go to bed, and then it was about 6.30 when I was walking home and it was a beautiful looking day, a bit windy though and then I got home and sort of just kept going and then didn't have any sleep. And then on no sleep I went to Leaf for their open mic, met up with some friends there, got to play there and then after that ended at 11pm went to Hannah's (its on my way home... that's my excuse) and played there as well. So because of that, it was about 2am before I got to bed Tuesday night having had no sleep on Monday night. I think I kind of needed sleep after that because I slept all day yesterday. Literally. I woke up at 4pm! I never do that!

Then tonight I went to connect which was at the Megacentre for church because they are moving back there this weekend. On my way home I went to the supermarket and bumped in to Yaz and Ida, two people who live in the same buildings as me and they invited me to come around (to someone else's flat) for a movie and chill out so I did that and then ended up playing guitar up there as well and having my first (un)official guitar lesson!! actualy part of it was a semi bass guitar lesson too. oh well. woo hoo. I don't even know the name of the songs that the guys were teaching me, but I know that everyone else does and I need to learn a couple more songs that other people can play! Music makes me happy!

In a couple weeks I've got a gig at Zanzibar. I haven't actually been there yet, so will see what it's like. Should be fun. I was pretty excited on Monday when I found out that I'm going to be on a poster for it!! woo hoo!! Cheering. All I need now is to get some paid work singing and I am all set. I've never been paid to sing before. Apparently I should go busking. We'll see! I did get offered some work singing and playing at a restaurant on Lark Lane (major music hangout) except I've got work at Hannah's that night so I wasn't able to, which is a shame. Oh well next time I'm sure something will come up.

Church wise things are going well, except I can't go for a couple of weeks because I'm working and then next week I'm in London for some uni work training. I had a day trip over to Sheffield last week to check out their leadership academy. I'm still undecided, so will see what happens there. It was good to go for a bit of a drive in the countryside, we went down a road called 'snakes pass' rather than the motorway which was nice. The landscapes reminded me a bit of the Lake District, similar sort of mountains. It made me miss my car and being able to go for drives and escape.

I've had some amazing conversations lately about being a Christian and my beliefs and things. There have been times where I immediately tell people, and then others where I have definitely held back out of fear of scaring people away and them not liking me. I was challenged by that on Sunday night, well a good reminder at least that we need to break the silence and talk, meet the needs and forget recognition. This was in reference to the story in Mark 2 about the 4 guys who brought their friend to Jesus by breaking the roof so they could get to him. Brokenness silences us, reduces the confidence we have, the authority and influence we have on our own and others' lives.