Liza Clough's blog

Alright peoples, here’s what a typical day is like for me.

I wake up at way too freaking early to get to morning exercises at the park by 6:00. (maybe a 10 minute walk, give or take)

Morning exercises alternates between a walk/run (I walk) and calisthenics. On Friday we play soccer. (I prefer the calisthenics days)

Then I walk home and have my quiet time while everyone else is taking a shower.

Then I take a shower. 😉

We walk to the base (15 minutes) and do morning chores. I’m on the bathroom crew and I was doing the toilets but we’re going to be switching around jobs this week.

Then I go to my classroom (IT HAS AIR CONDITIONING) and we get announcements and stuff.

We break for morning tea and I get to eat. Yay! (I’ll usually have eaten something at home too but I’m also usually hungry by then too.)

Then when we get back we have lectures basically until lunch.

We eat lunch.

Then we usually have free time so I’ll either go to the city with some people (I’m not confident enough with public transportation yet to do it by myself, although I might be able to figure out the train not that I’ve taken it a few times.) or I’ll go home. Then I get to do fun stuff/homework.

I have to be back at the base by 5:00 because I’m on the dinner dish crew (along with most of Compassion) and that means I help set up too. (approx number of people we’re feeding, 300) I usually set out the knives then help with the food.

Then we eat! 😀

After announcements we head to the kitchen to get started on the dishes. My job is to detail this thing that I think works as an oven but it doesn’t really look like one. Picture a fridge shaped contraption that has racks that I can roll out and clean separately. If the auto clean is done I can get to work right away and it takes most of the time. Then I just ask for random jobs until we finish. We usually finish between 7:00 and 7:30.

Then sometimes I have free time and sometimes we’re doing stuff like small groups.

Then at night I have to remind myself to go to sleep at a decent time because I know I’ll be waking up at way too freakishly early the next morning.

Now for what you’ve all been waiting for. Pictures!

This is Azera. (I think that’s how you spell it.) She’s from Australia and she’s in Compassion with me.

Erin on the left and Deborah on the right. Erin’s a fellow student and she’s from somewhere in Europe, I forget the exact country. Deborah’s one of the leaders and she’s from Germany I think.

Here we have Clarissa and… I’m not sure. 🙁 I completely forget her name. I feel bad. Much sadness. 🙁 Anyway Clarissa is one of the leaders and my one on one. The other girl is a fellow student.

Grace! (She’s a student too.)

Ashley is also a fellow student.

This is Kaylie, she’s also from Australia.

This is Rachel, she’s from California.

This is Tara (New Zealand) and Sarabeth (Seattle Washington) looking spacy. (natural photography)

Here’s Emily, she’s from Brazil, and Clarissa again.

And here’s Malin, she’s from Norway, she has an awesome accent. Behind her is Chris, the only boy. He doesn’t like having his picture taken.

This is Mina, she’s one of three students from South Korea.

And Vella, another from Korea.

Latif, one of the leaders.

The woman is Petra, the leader of Compassion DTS. The guy (I forget his name) isn’t from Compassion but I wanted to show him to Mom because he’s from Millersburg.

Peta, another leader. (And half of Sarabeth.)

Tara again! She along with Sarabeth, Emily, and Vella are my housemates.

This is Connie. She isn’t from Compassion but we had fun talking.

Okay this journal assingment is going to be harder then I thought it would. It’s also going to be a lot more fun.

Oh! I have a few more observations.

7. The heat isn’t so bad if there’s wind.

8. There are lots of fences surrounding lots.

9. There seems to be a shortage of trash cans… and paper towels.

10. Bricks are a popular building material.

Alright I’m going to carry my camera around tomorrow so hopefully I’ll have more pics soon.

Well, I have mixed feelings about this.

One one hand, OMG I got to swim in the ocean for the first time in my life and the waves were all epic and everyone was like “Liza you’re doing really well for your first time” and opening my eyes underwater didn’t hurt like I thought it might and going under waves wasn’t scary at all.

On the other hand, getting stung on the neck by a jellyfish really hurt.

(P.S. If anyone shows this photo to my Grandmother I will hunt you down.)

In other news, I paid for the first part of my tuition and chose my books. It was kinda hard to choose the books because the first group I had to choose from was mostly self help books which I have trouble getting excited about and most of the second group were stories so I had trouble choosing between a few. Wow, I seem to be a fan of run on sentences today.

Alright After spending a few days here I have a few observations.

1. It’s HOT.

2. My foot is giving me more trouble then I thought it would with all this walking, grrrrrr. (Pray?)

3. I’m possibly a lot less picky then I thought I was. So far I’ve been suspicious of almost everything I’ve eaten but liked it fine when I tried it. (Sheep is actually very good.)

4. Doors to large buildings/shops tend to be big/non-existent.

5. Did I mention it’s hot?

6. I’m not having as much trouble making friends as I thought I would.

Alright I figured I’d give everybody a brief summary of my trip so I didn’t have to cover it for my first “real” update.

Went to sleep about 1-2:30 a.m. and  woke back up at 4. Yeah, no sleep is going to be a theme. Anyway the flight out was delayed because it was, well, winter in Wisconsin, and they needed to de-ice the wings. I managed to doze a bit on that trip but it wasn’t long enough for real sleep. I got breakfast at Auntie Annies (A little too much actually, I felt bad about throwing some of it away) then boarded the next flight to Dubai, the longest stretch of my journey.

Let me just say this, Emirates Airlines is great. Seriously, if you ever get the chance to fly with them take it. They have personal TVs for each passenger with literally dozens of movies to choose from, not to mention TV shows, music, and more. (Wow, I sound like a commercial.) The people were also very nice and the food wasn’t bad either.

Well, 14 hours later I had maybe dozed for two of them. (I have a lot of trouble sleeping sitting up.) We landed and took buses to the airport proper. I have to admit I was a little nervous. It was a foreign country and I didn’t know what to expect. It wasn’t all that different though, crowded with a lot of people speaking other languages but the only two really strange things were the men’s and woman’s prayer rooms next to the bathrooms and randomly hearing the call to prayer while walking around. In fact, I spent a decent amount of time just walking around because I really needed to stretch my legs. Then I actually did get some sleep on these sort of reclining lobby chairs.

The flight out of Dubai to Perth was delayed too. We spent a good half hour just sitting on the tarmac. I watched more movies for the shorter 9 hour flight. I think I did get to sleep for that one, no more then an hour or so but progress is progress.

Then it was just a matter of getting through customs (where they asked strange, unanswerable questions such as “where will you be staying?”) finding my suitcase (in the extremely crowded baggage claim area) and finding the lady with the ywam sign (I didn’t see it at first). A short ride later and I found myself at the house I’ll be staying in until they can fix the air conditioning in the dorms.

Wow, that was longer then I expected. I hope it was at least interesting and doesn’t read like my rambling as long as I can to stay awake until night time.

Well, the time has finally come and I’m both excited and terrified. Thank you all for your encouragement, prayers, and financial support. I will try to give all of you short updates once a week (I’m thinking on Saturday, but I won’t know for sure until I get there and get familiar with the schedule) to keep you posted.