Lake District and Salads

I am now all alone in Manchester. My flatmate (I'm told I can't say roommate here because it implies something different) has moved out and I am left to keep myself  entertained. Over two days I've read a book and half so far, sketched, played sims, and am in the planning stages for two animation projects and restarting my graphic novel. I think being alone will work out well for me.

 

Although my classmates have left, I'm not really alone. I have all my friends at church to annoy...er, talk to! Last weekend I managed to snag a last minute spot on the church weekend. We went to the Lake District. Here are a few pics...

 

 

My room. The weekend before I had been at the Rockabilly Rave and the accommodations there had been...not so impressive, so I was really happy to see that at this one it was much more hotel like and not the bunk bed style I'm use to from youth church camps.

 

 

During our down time most everyone went on a "walk". I thought I'd join but then I was asked if I had 'gear'...for a walk? I'm told to walk I would need a water-proof windbreaker, water-proof shoes and pants at minimum. Yeah, that sounds like work. I can't say for sure since I decided not to go, but when they say walk, I think they mean hike. I don't know if I will go buy gear for hiking or not...

 

Instead I walked around the grounds of the building we were staying at.

  

I had a really nice time over the weekend and got to meet a bunch of new faces. A lot of times what happens at the church's weekends is that people who have moved away in the past come to just the weekends in order to see old friends. Seems like a really nice compromise to me. We got to learn a bit over the weekend but in a very relaxed atmosphere so it felt more like a vacation rather than a seminar.

 

Then, Tuesday was creative salad night at church. Apparently word has circled around amongst my family about it since I asked my mother and grandmother for their recipes so now everyone has expressed interest in how it went.

 

I volunteered to bring two salads, Taco Salad and Pinkie's Blueberry Salad. I bought the ingredients and then the point of the activity night is to make the salads together and of course enjoy eating them together. For the blueberry salad I did a lot of prep work on it because you have to leave time for the jello portion to set. The only thing left to do for it that night was to make the icing but not everyone wanted to be too involved in salad making so that made a nice easy option for people. The taco salad was much more involved. I had one person making the salad portion and another person just for the dressing. I couldn't find Catalina Dressing at the local Sainsbury's and I asked their customer service person and was told that it's not just me, they really don't have it. Had never even heard of it.

 

These are some of the other delicious options we had that night. Both of my salads went over very well and several people told me they planned on making them again at home. It was a lot of fun and I'm really glad I had the opportunity to participate :D

 

Well, I've eaten up all my leftovers now so I've got to go to the grocery store today and buy something I can pack up into lunches. For one week only I'll be working full-time and then my sister comes and we are going to travel around Europe and see as much as we can possibly see. We still don't have a plan, but whatever we end up doing I'm sure will be amazing.