Croatia: part 2.

so you've heard part 1...and i'm hoping you've not gotten bored with me bombarding the blog with croatia fever, though i do feel it has been one of the best experiences of my life so far, and i do enjoy telling some of my favourite stories from the trip over and over again. i assure you though, they're not in the slightest way boring!!

these gorgeous kids in the village!

//day 3. rainy morning so instead of exercise in the park to jolt and refresh ourselves, we lay in bed and sang frozen. we reflected on our uniqueness and ways in which we could step outside our comfort zone during our devotional time. how great is it to have people encouraging you and supporting you on trips like this? :D

rain, rain, go away!!

we dived right into preparing more crafts this morning at the iclub, cutting ribbon and counting 600 of them. we met some of our helpers again, who are around 10 yrs old, some even younger, and taught them how to make the planned crafts for the festival, so they could be more involved and serve alongside us. :) 

ribbon-cutting crew

teaching the little croatian helpers how to make the
pasta tambourine craft!

anna claims cutting ribbon is tiring!

 what was great about this session was being able to bond much more with our helpers. now that its the second time they've met us, they're much open.....to tickling, chatting and learning a handshake i do with one of my best friends! 

the two girlies on the left came with a small group of kids from the
village to help out and get involved :)

this evening consisted of doing some more grocery shopping (a team of 11 eats lots.), playing banagrams and chopping up watermelon triple the size you will find in your average tesco's! 

croatian chocolate spread - yummyyyyy

banangrams at its best

big, huh?

weightlifting watermelons up to our apartment!

we made a trip to the village again this evening after dinner, loaded with packs of loom bands. around 30 children turned up and our team tried teaching as many of them as possible to make the bands. i taught a group of 7/8 year old boys to do them and in no time they surprised me by sitting in a circle on the floor, concentrated and knitting their own bracelets! 

teaching the children how to knit their own loom bands in the
village ministry house.

i'm ever so thankful we bought the kids so much joy this evening and it wasn't as chaotic as i expected - a sitting down activity was defo much relaxing than duck duck goose and running round the fields!

success!! we've officially brought the loom band craze to the
croatia villages!

we left the village at 8:30pm and went back to the apartment to jam with the guitar, debrief and pray, and go on our ice cream walk (which is fast becoming our norm and engraved into our weekly routine!) 

we also stopped at a fast food resturant along the way, grabbing some fries cos we all know how much we love a bit of shredded potato dunked in oil! the day ended with a good game of monopoly deal and boiling and peeling 12 eggs for our potato salad lunch tomorrow.

fries - oh yes!

ice cream walks quickly becoming a norm

 

which flavour ya want?!

quality ice cream. ^^

//day4. howdy sun, you're back! we held a helpers party at the iclub this morning to thank the helpers for their time learning the crafts and helping prepare for the upcoming festival. which means.....pizza!
i also spent the time making some more props for our plays, this being a set of donkey ears and a tail :) we chilled together, continuing our loom band craze and playing some music together.

testing the ears and tail of course

loom band craze goes on!

playing the violin...or at least pretending to.....

getting to know a teen from the village (left)

 after some briefing and logistics planning for the festival, we headed back to the apartment for dinner, which included peeling potatoes into empty watermelons as bowls were scarce. 

anna captured our inventive potato peeling

once again, we drove to the village after dinner where the kids were all excited about more loom bands! unfortunately, we miscalculated how popular it was going to be and didn't have enough loom bands for them all to play with :( it was a bit dissapointing for us as we could've so easily bought more for them and they would be so happy. 

the bright yellow ministry house!

darlings!

but this wasn't the case, and God used this opportunity for us to do other activities together. this being nail painting with the girls! i can't even recount how many dainty nails i painted that evening! we also engaged in singing together (popular in roma culture) and had lots of fun dancing, even giving each other massages! - the unexpected came out from our initial disappointment.

this sweet girl wanted me to paint the same nails i wore - summery pineapple ones!

pleased with their new nail colours

their massages are g-o-o-d!

 annoyingly, i felt a bit ill-ish and as if a cold was gonna haunt me. nevertheless: ice cream walk and even hopped over to surf 'n' fries, a chicken wing shop! oh yes pleaseeee!! after some gurrrd evening snacking and games (and exercise :/), lights out shifted to 1:30am!

dipping into surf 'n' fries after fetching our ice creams

THIS is midnight snacking.

what ice cream forces you to do....or not in my case..

Insta-Thursty: Week 15

this insta-thursty is mainly from my trip to croatia, which you could find out more about here!

6am selfie at the airport

meeting the beautiful girls in the village, croatia

making cardboard props for dramas - this one's called finny the fish.

saying goodbye to croatia :(

croatia blues - the time we got out the car from our 2hr drive to
take pictures posed as chickens by the river .

an array of colour at the portsmouth kite festival

painting a lobster miso soup for my grandad's birthday

<center> <a href="http://icing-for-sugar.blogspot.co.uk"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjZ5QzyOu3w87hZ0GjpGniAUQwYrlDIVa2AzMs7Q9pVer-Oe6ZcB4SUoT9sH4QfgONP8kVz95cZuAnJprig6nZ-m24Q6wmgyn_pZQh3QzvwagdvfBkbzNGI7uWANoAYhjvJAWIQczZxko/s720/insta%2520thursty.jpg"></a></center>

lately.

sushi with the church family

dancing down the street with dad and sister

rock climbing at the olympic stadium

discovering colourful wall murals by southbank

trying to be funny.

dim sum lunch with grandparents and cousins

selfies with cute (confused?) babies

living with this. and hearing drilling noises everyday.

portsmouth kite festival.

my family decided to trek to portsmouth to see a few kites a weekend during the summer. and oh no they're not the flimsy bin-bag material ones, they're full-on tigers, crocodiles and batmans!

mesmerised.

oh dad.

it was a day of colourful floaties in the blue sky and a challenge to shortlist your favourite kite.

i still wonder how the kites managed to stay afloat despite the weather being quite "windless" and sun-blazing....

the artist of these kites was inspired by stained glass windows.

there were exhibitions explaining the history of kites, stories of what inspired the design of specific kites, and even kite dances - bet you've never heard of that one before! :P

i'm sure there was a feeling of nostalgia as i looked up to the sky and admired each kite. i remember running circles round the garden trying to lift up a primary-coloured diamond kite, but it just. will. not. fly. 

i believe this was a three-day exhibition and i'm so glad to have discovered you can never be too old to love these beautiful air-puffed creations!!

Croatia: part 1

hey guys!

thought it would be about time to share with you all my trip to croatia this past summer of 2014. two words to sum it up? eye-opening! ok, bit of a cheat, but hey!

6am selfie mode!

you may or may not remember this post from when i first flew to croatia for a short term mission trip with my church. like last year, it was a 12 day trip filled with exciting opportunities to share the gospel, mainly to children, in less well off villages.

this year, our team had decided to plan a visit to the sister village of the one the missionaries had been working with for a good couple of years now. although exciting, it all felt like a mystery to us as we do not know the kids well and many of them didn't know what playing games as a team was, nevermind hearing about christianity. - more on this later!

i've decided to split my experience over a couple of posts, just so i could give you guys glimpses rather than a detailed report lol. stay tuned, and here goes........ croatia: part 1!

selfie after failing to find mcdeez. :(

//4th aug 2014. flight was 8:30am. i set my alarm for 3am for some last minute packing and caught the earliest bus we could get with my good friends who were also part of the team. we arrived at the airport around 6am. hungry, cold, sleepy, but raring to go!

team spirit!

did you know? there's no mcdonalds at terminal 5 of heathrow airport :( make-do with a mozerella tomato crossaint from pret a manger once you've checked in. all was smooth and we safely arrived at zagreb, the capital of croatia. once we were picked up and greeted by our missionaries, we made our way to slavonski brod (2hr drive) where we will be based for the next week or so.

^^ seeing big fat juicy watermelons on our 2hr drive to slavonski brod

once settled down in our apartment (opposite the beautiful river separating croatia from bosnia), we were greeted by homemade stuffed peppers and mash - pure joy after a wonderfully busy morning!

taking in some croatian fresh air opposite our apartment

arriving at the iclub, an internet cafe the missionaries opened,
and also a place we were based for briefing and meetings

greeted lovingly to super yummy lunch

chilling outside after an eventful morning.

the rest of the day was mainly prep for the coming two weeks - we visited the village briefly and said hi, then proceeded to dinner and grocery shopping. we sealed the day with a prayer and conked out at 12:30pm.

our excitement about grocery shopping. WOOO

day 2 was all about preparation. we had small devotion groups within the team, and it happens so that my group was the first to lead our short morning session of prayers and reflection! after sharing a few encouraging bible verses, we helped prepare some crafts for the upcoming festival we were going to hold. this included writing 200 'isus' (jesus) for my particular task!

200 of these for a forgiveness bracelet craft

we met some of our festival helpers too, learning their names and getting to know each other - in croatian of course! :/

bonding with the festival helpers who joined us from the village

after a pizza lunch, we continued craft prep, singing frozen to encourage and lift up our spirits! we had planned to perform a few sketches and dramas of some simple parables in the bible, one being 'jonah and the big fish'. of course, this would be a boring play if no big fish was actually involved in it! knitting our ideas together, i created a massive cardboard fish with my arty companion anna :) we were extremely happy with the outcome!

sourced some cardboard for our jonah fish! you'll come to know anna as the
one who tries to fit exercise into everything she does.

the finished prop!

after dinner, we visited the village again to build our relationship with the kids, playing duck duck goose and tickling each other. it was all full of laughs despite our language barrier and my croatian only going as far as 'hi', 'what's your name' and 'how are you'!

saying hi to these beautiful girls in the village

it soon became dark and the end of the evening became quite chaotic with some of the kids becoming hyper and aggressive, given their background which sadly were mostly abusive. an incident occurred, hurting me emotionally and i became quite overwhelmed, with tears running down my cheeks. we left shortly as it was already very dark, and the team decided to get ice cream to brighten me up and as an encouragement for our tiredness. i must emphasise, ice cream makes you even more happier when they only cost 30p each!!!!

30p ice creams :O

kept seeing 'bad blue boys' on our ice cream walk.
later found out it was a football team!

the rest of the night consisted of debriefing and sharing our experiences from today. one of the missionaries told me that the kids were asking him how i was when they saw me leave, crying. their care and love for me touched my heart, and soothed my pains. :')
 after a longgg, all the most reflective and emotional day, it became a 1:30am bedtime!

part 2 coming up!