Aryn and I were craving Chinese food, so we decided to take Dani with us to London’s Chinatown, a list of our friend Sam’s recommended restaurants in hand. I was also hoping to find the Chinese grocery stores, but we got so hungry that all we wanted to do was sit down and eat. We found an inexpensive Cantonese restaurant and had won ton mein soup noodles there.
We decided that we needed to walk off lunch, so we wandered from Leicester Square to Covent Garden, browsing clothing shops (we stumbled across Aryn’s favorite designer Ted Baker) and used bookstores. I found the perfect gift for Ariel—a signed T.S. Eliot essay—but unfortunately, it was way beyond my student’s budget. It gave me a brief moment of excitement though.
Since we had already wandered so far, we decided to continue on to Piccadilly Circus in search of the Japan Centre, where we were able to buy Asian groceries. Aryn bought the ingredients for sukiyaki that we cooked later in the week. Oishii desu! We basically hit the mother lode.
5. CCiL and Central DCG (10/12, 10/17, 10/19)
Despite the fact that I’m only here in London for a few months, I wanted to find a good church here where I could get plugged in as much as possible. I really enjoyed St. Paul’s Hammersmith, where Justin and Andy settled down. For some reason, though, I felt really determined to find a Chinese church here.
So I searched online (much to their amusement) and found Chinese Church in London. They have around 7 congregations all over London, with one English service in nearby Hammersmith. I dragged Aryn with me to Sunday service a week ago and we both really enjoyed it. They had a guest speaker that day—an Australian—who preached a message on prayer. And this past week was also a guest speaker. I’m eager to hear a sermon from CCiL’s Pastor Ong.
Anyways, we got to meet some of the university students who attend CCiL and hang out with them for lunch (yummy Chinese food, and free for newcomers). One of those students we met is a guy named Eric, who is studying at Cambridge. More on him later.
I also wanted to join one of the fellowship groups at CCiL. Sadly, my Biola class is at the exact same time as the university fellowship, 360, on Wednesday nights. Since I can’t attend that group, they invited me to go to Central DCG (District Caring Group), which is the young adult fellowship (think Kaleo).
So this past Friday, I made my first trip into Central London on my own (I usually have at least one other person with me any time I go into London). I felt so proud and accomplished for getting to church and back by myself. Central DCG is actually held at CCiL’s other site—the Soho Outreach Centre, or SOC. I’m not sure why there are so many acronyms at this church.
Since I didn’t want to travel during rush hour, I left pretty early and had quite a lot of down time before fellowship started. I wandered around Chinatown and FINALLY found all of the grocery stores. I still had time to kill after that, so I walked down to the Malaysian restaurant I had seen on our last visit to Leicester Square. I got some strange looks, but I sat inside the café and enjoyed a cold glass teh tarik (teh ice?) and journalled.
The SOC was only a two minute walk from there. I arrived and joined all of the young adults as they ate their various dinners. Because most of them are working, they either brought frozen dinners or ordered takeaway from the nearby Chinese restaurants. I tried very hard to meet everyone and memorize all of their names.
My first night there was the first night of small groups. I guess they knew that I would be coming, because they had already assigned me to one. It’s quite interesting. Our small group, at least for that night, had three Cantonese (one born in HK and raised in New Zealand, one born and raised in England, and myself from the US), one black Jamaican, and one Caucasian London native. Alex (the BBC) and Rob (the white one) are my small group leaders.
It was really neat, because we broke up into our respective groups, and my group spent the rest of the evening sharing our testimonies (which were AMAZING) and preparing shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child. It was only my first time, but I’m definitely excited to see what God has in store for Central DCG this term.
This past Sunday, Aryn and I were back again for Sunday English service. This time, Pastor Ong actually came up and introduced himself to us personally. He even mentioned the possibility of inviting us over for dinner sometime. That made us really happy.
After service, we were contemplating eating lunch at CCiL (the food looked and smelled delicious), but Hannah invited us to join the university students for lunch at a nearby, reasonably priced café. We got to spend time with Roselle, Sam (the foodie friend I met last week) and Tim, whom we were meeting for the first time. After lunch, we dropped Roselle off at the Tube Station and went shopping in Hammersmith. Don’t worry, I didn’t do any major damage. I only wanted two pairs of long socks and a one-pound Nalgene bottle.
Because it was cold, we decided that McFlurries sounded good. We found four red counter stools facing to the west wall of McDonald’s, adjacent with another counter facing south. Tim, trying to be polite, sat in the inconveniently-placed corner seat. We were just settling down and beginning to enjoy our ice cream when suddenly, we noticed that Tim was leaning over the counter with a really confused look on his face.
I heard a girl behind me mutter a quick, “thank you” as I turned. Then I noticed that a girl was suddenly sitting on Tim’s stool, forcing him to stand and lean awkwardly onto the counter. After a about half a minute, the girl finally realized that she had actually tried to take Tim’s stool while he was still on it!
Poor Tim whispered incredulously, “Why do these things always happen to me?” Aryn, Sam, and I almost choked on our ice cream. We all had a really difficult time trying to hold in our hysterical laughter. The girl muttered a quick apology and found another chair, bringing an end to a horribly awkward situation.
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