Tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999!

Hey y'all! 

I know I said it would be a fortnight before my next blog but this week has been a pretty good one and deserves the spotlight.

#Funtimes| Okay those of you that grew up in the 90's and early 00's will surely appreciate this! I'm so excited just thinking about this again!! I played Mario Karts on a Nintendo 64!!!!!!!

It was so fun - I played as my favourite character DK and enjoyed memories of winning :-D It also made me miss my bro and sis that little bit more this week. We used to play it for hours! Love you guys.

#Food| I went to British Restaurant this week guys! It's called Across the Pond and it's run by an English family that moved to Texas eight years ago. I had chips with sausages, gravy and onions and it was good to have a little taste of home. I also had apple crumble and custard for desert HOWEVER to my surprise the custard was cold - eeeek - let's not dwell on that!!! But to make up for that they all support Arsenal and have pictures and memorabilia on the walls. They even invited me to join their little community that watch all the Arsenal matches together. 

I also had some homemade cookies with a nice cold glass of milk and tasted some new Pringles flavours this week :)

#School| We had more lessons at Eastern Hills High School this week which was fun and we are really getting to know the students more. It's so cool talking to them and finding out more about what it's like being a student in an American High School and noting all the differences. 

#Global Prayer| We had a global prayer and fasting this week. We all fasted for 24 hours and then met as a big group to pray over all the nations Pais is in. It was powerful! 

#Happy Moment| On Sunday my team mate prayed for us to get into more schools and as soon as he finished writing down the prayer at the end of the service this guys walks up to us and asks what we do. Turns out he is a teacher and wants us to come into his classes to help him out and possibly his colleague too. God is good!

#Prayers|Please pray for us to get into even more schools in the Fort Worth area over the next couple of months. We need to reach more students this year. 

Thanks for reading folks - God Bless :-)

These are a few of my favourite things

Hey y'all!!

Weather|We've had thunder storms this week! Oh my how I've missed the rain and when it rains in Texas it rains hard!! 

Thursday morning on the way to work!

The same way London is built to handle heavy snow, Texas isn't built to handle rain so large puddles form fast and car accidents are fairly common. 

School|We had our first full teaching day at Eastern Hills High School. We taught 6 lessons from 8.35am to 3.35pm and it was a really long and tiring but also fun day. We work with AVID classes which stands for Advancement Via Independent Determination. All the students in AVID have to apply to be part of the class and pass the interview. It's really cool working with them and one thing that is safe to say is that a 16 year old is the same whether in England or Texas!

There is one main difference though! They think my accent is really cool and ask me to repeat things just so they can here it again. Most conversations start like this:

Me: Hey, how you doing?
Student:(moment of silence) Wow! I love you accent. Where are you from?
Me: Oh thank you, I'm from London.
Student: Like London London - that's so awesome!


Food|I finally gave in guys - after 6 weeks I had my first Mcd's experience. I had chicken nuggets - They are tastier here - sorry guys. Oh and I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before but there is no such thing as buying the same soft drink twice during one meal here! #refills #bringrefillstolondon

Favourite things|My favourite things so far in Texas are........drumroll........

3rd Place: Coffee Creamer - okay so everyone knows I DO NOT like coffee! Well my life and taste buds have been changed forever thanks to coffee creamers. They are a non-dairy cream that you add to coffee instead of milk (or half and half) and they come in a wide variety (obviously) of flavours. I've only used the Caramel (pronounced Carmel here) one so far and I love it. Good Morning America!

2nd Place: Lemonade - This is my favourite drink so far - with lots of ice. It's the most refreshing beverage (minus water) and it's perfect for this weather. 

1st Place: Cornbread - Unfortunately there is just no way a verbal explanation would do this justice - you'll just have to book a flight and come taste it for yourself. 

Moments|Happy moment: Teaching our first AVID class and getting to know the students.
Sad moment: Missing Moriah's first day at school - She looks so cute in her little uniform!! They grow up fast eh! I get what my dad means now when he says that he still remembers me as the baby storing milk in her cheeks!

I'm waking up at 6.45am this Saturday to watch the Arsenal vs Man City match - we better win!! 

Prayers|If you like to pray please pray for my team to stay unified and healthy!

Thanks y'all!

I'll be updating you every fortnight so be safe til then :)

God bless!

Summer Nights

Howdy y'all, 

This has been a really busy week. Hope you all enjoyed the Bank Holiday weekend. 

First of all I made my first quesadilla :-D

It had black beans, eggs, onions, cheese and sweetcorn in it - yes it was yummy!

On Friday we had a Back to the Future themed party for the youth at church to mark the start of the new school term. It was really fun and everyone dressed up in 50's, 80's or futuristic costume.

We ate, sang and danced - it was an excellent way to chill with and get to know the kids at the church.

Unfortunately, as the night ended we were given the news that one of the students from Eastern Hills (the school I told you about last week) had committed suicide. It was a real reminder of what we are really here to do this year and all the young people that are in need. 

Please pray that God will give my whole team the wisdom to say the rights things at the right time and be a blessing to all the young people we come into contact with. Thanks.

Okay so the best part of this week has been Basketball Church!!! This guy called Mr Ralph had a vision over 20 years ago to see lots of young people playing basketball together with no racial divides. So for the past 20 years (since 1994) Mr Ralph and his wife and Sue has been holding basketball church every Friday night.

It's for all high school students and its starts off with 4-on-4 half court matches. Then after about an hour they break and Ms Sue serves dinner. Then they have a 20 minute bible study and it's back to the court for more basketball. It was amazing and I loved it!!

That's it for this week folks! 
It's labour (whoops labor) day on Monday so I get a long weekend too :-D

Have a great week!
Love!
Tess

I keep on moving with the lights on

We are the light of the world!

Hey Y'all! 

Okay so first things first - I honestly think the TMC (The Mosquito Community) have put a price on my foreign blood! They are relentless!

Onto the good stuff! I'm not going to talk about food too much this week but I will talk about one of the main differences between American and European/African food culture. If your childhood was anything like mine you were most certainly expected to finish everything on your plate (this is a good thing!) However you are NOT expected to finish what's on your plate here in the US......and this is why...

The burger was so big it came in a bowl!

On Wednesday we were given a team challenge. The challenge was to take $5 and make as much money as possible in 3 hrs. So we brainstormed and decided that the best thing would be to sell lemonade at the UTA Campus (University Texas Arlington). We went to the store and bought some powdered lemonade mix and cups for $4.81. 

It was really HOT outside but we found a nice spot in the shade to set up shop. We had just over an hour to sell the lemonade and we made $50 for our team :) that's a 900% increase!! My first ever lemonade stand experience was brilliant! 

On Friday we went to visit a high school called Eastern Hills in Fort Worth - one of the schools we will be working in this year. We met with the principal, Mr McCarty. He is a huge man!! Each of his arms are the size of my thigh!! He played American Football for one of the best college teams in Texas (TCU) and then coached teams before becoming a vice principle and now principal at Eastern Hills! He's really cool and supportive of us working in their school and prayed for us before we left. 

My Team - Jenoa, Jan-Niklas, Me, Lucas and Anna-Lena (from left to right)

The school has a bit of a rep for being a 'bad school' but I'm really excited to work there! It's been going since the 60s and some of the classrooms, bathrooms and lockers look like it BUT I know the kids there will really benefit from having us around. 

So if you like to pray - please pray that God will lead us to specific students for us to build relationships with. 

Lastly I'm really missing all my family and friends in London AND I'm also missing the small things like having a Tesco Express on every corner #missingthecitylife

Talk to y'all next week! 

Love you lots!

We're All In This Together!

This week has flown right by!

I've eaten three burgers this week........nicht gut (not good in german) BUT they have all been so tasty. The Americans do burgers very very well. The best one was called the Black and Blue Burger (tastes much better than it sounds). It was a beef burger with bacon, blue cheese, cheddar cheese and crispy onions - VERY NICE :-)

But what's been really good is.....
This has also been the second week of training and it's been great. I've learned a lot and we had a commissioning service on Friday to celebrate finishing training. The morning bible studies with my team have been really good this week and we have learned so much from each other.

Pais USA have 7 teams and we've all been spread out in Fort Worth, Arlington, Colorado, Amarillo, Flower Mound and Midlands - you can check them all out on google maps ;-) 

So there were lots of goodbyes to the people in other teams we won't see for a while. 

My team bible study on Thursday morning 

I noticed that nobody updated me on the premier league action today and that Arsenal Won their first match 2-1! BUT it's all good BECAUSE I get to watch all the premier league matches I want on NBC Sport!! Whoop whoop!

Highlight - Planning and delivering our first lesson as a team (and discovering NBC Sport)
Lowlight - Mosquito bites and catching a cold

If you want to find out a bit more about Pais and what we do check out the website www.paisproject.com and they're always looking for more great people to join the team :-)

This year's Fort Worth team

Bye for now!

Feeling Hot Hot Hot!

I've made it through my first week!! Praise God!!

It's HOT!! Like really HOT. Like 40 degrees HOT!! 

But it's has been an amazing week so far and I've seen many cool things. 

There is soooo much to tell you about - It's been a packed week but I will try my very best to give you all the best bits.  

Just to start with, when people say everything is BIGGER in Texas - They weren't lying. Even down to the paper towels (kitchen towel)!!

I didn't know what to expect of Texas but from what I've seen so far it's a really cool place. 


FOOD

Quick note - There is no way I can really describe how good some of the food is - just book your ticket and come on down. 

The first thing I had was a biscuit......my oh my as it good. I know what you're thinking but it isn't what us Brits call a biscuit instead it's a light, fluffy, flaky buttermilk bread type circle of loveliness....mmmmmm. I had a breakfast biscuit with sausage and cheese form Whataburger (see the pic below - it was so nice that I forgot to take a pic of my actual one - sorry!) but you can have biscuits with lunch and dinner too. 

We went for dinner at a team members house and their host parents cooked us steak, corn, chicken and lots of veg on the grill. It was delicious. Oh and courgettes are called squash here. But the best part was desert. Now I'm not really a desert person but this may just be the best desert I've ever had (apart from my sisters ;-)) It was grilled peach with a plain yogurt ice-cream. Healthy and delicious. 

I had breakfast at a place called Tom's. There is a lot of Mexican influence in Texas and so I had a TexMex (you get it?) style breakfast - mexican omelette with little, soft, corn-flour tacos and hash browns (again different from the English has brown - it's really small chip shape potato pieces moulded together and fried) served with salsa. :-)

I know I've probably made you hungry now so I'll stop talking about food but I'll put a few more food pics at the end :-)

WORK

We've spent most of the week at training. We have two weeks of training before we start work so and it's been pretty intense. We get to church (where training takes place) at 8am - have bible study with our team at 8.30am and then start the day worshipping through singing some songs. We have about 5 session a day and usually finish around 5pm. The sessions have been really good and challenging so I'm enjoying it. 

We also went to UTA (University of Texas) Arlington Campus this week and met  some of the new students there and had a chance to talk and pray with the people we met as we walked around the campus. I'm usually the shy one but I was going up to people and talking/praying for them. Good times :-)

PLACES


We went to a beautiful place called the Water Garden. It was so nice and peaceful down there. The water creates a nice calming atmosphere. 

On that theme we also had a pool party at a lovely home belonging to a member of our church. :-D

I felt like I was in a film set when we got to go into a high school this week. It was just like the shows and movies - wide hallways, lockers, teachers names outside each class, cafeteria and gym. 

PEOPLE

I've met many lovely people since I've been here which has been lovely. My host mom's (yes I meant mom) name is Sonya and she is very welcoming, kind, warm and knows lots about American politics - she's teaching me!

And a few pics of my team, a few others who have joined Pais too and some people I've met along the way...

Just to round up...

Happy moment - Going to the UTA campus
Sad moment - Missing Debbie's Birthday and Sim's Wedding

My first week here has been wonderful and I'm really settling in well :-)


Thank you so much to everyone for all your supporting in making this year possible for me. It's going to be such a great year and I'm really looking forward to getting even more stuck in once the school year starts. 

Love you lots,
Tess

PS. I'm looking for someone to be my official Premier League updater form next week. Let yourselves be known :-) (Must not hate Arsenal - slight dislike is okay)



And just incase you're missing my face....

And as promised......more food pics....and random ones too (oh I do spoil you)