This morning I was taken to the OMF office in East Belfast (an actual office) where I occupied myself with placement paperwork and beginning my essay. I was alone for a few hours in there, and then I met Nat whom I shall be shadowing for the remainder of my placement, he does the same job as Andy, but in Northern Ireland.
We went out to get lunch at an allyoucaneat Chinese buffet called China China, and we ate lots. over this we talked about ourselves and OMF and how strange it is that there are lots of oriental people here who have healthy Irish accents.
Back at the office went through my aims and outcomes sheet for this assignment which has brought me here and talked about what I could be doing. I’ve already been getting involved with outreach work (that was the bible study last night) and I’ll keep joining the OMF Diaspora workers Mark and Christine throughout my time here – this is mostly evening events though. during the days I shall be shadowing Nat, as I did with Andy the last 3 weeks, and I have various tasks to to do in the office including the updating of fact sheets which the office stores, they are double sided pages listing data about a particular nation in the far east, but they’re so 5 years ago now. the other is to compile an inventory of all of the books which are actually just sitting there, some good new books too, which I recognise from seeing all weekend at the China Conference. the final thing Nat mentioned was that he too had done a couple of the new church leader surveys but he hadn’t yet typed them up. so I will be doing that for him when I have time.
After this and before the next thing, we went to Nat and his wife Donna’s place to have a chikkin. it was good. and I got to meet their two children who are still young and messy.
In the evening I was taken to an English class. a nice event where Chinese students regularly get together to talk about selected subjects in depth to learn the vocabulary and syntax for said subject in more detail – I think its a brilliant idea! Tonight we talked about disabilities and a specialist came in to talk about some disabilities and how they are handled in the UK, then we talked about people we had encountered with various disabilities and the different care offered for the disabled in different parts of the world. It was a really nice time and afterwards I got to talk with some of the students, and one gentleman asked for my testimony.
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