I have to make up for my missing posts. After the tutoring fell through I worked at St. Aldates for Alpha Course. I got about four hours there. That was fun because I got to work with Kara and Zach and a bunch of other people. We did a number of different things. The first hour we came in and got situated and met the people who were a regular part of Christ Church. Most of us were new so we followed around the few who had been coming because we were pretty clueless.
After that we began to set up tables and set out the places and cups. We set out cups, pitchers and silverware. They also taught us how to fold the napkins fancy-like and set them in the cups the proper way. It was funny to go through the tables because you could tell which ones Zach and Jason folded... not pretty.
Then Kara and I helped the lady in charge mix the punch. We were assigned to pour and serve drinks. We did that as everyone came in and mingled for a little while. As they settled in we got in our place to serve the food. We served food in the lines after it got started. They had made couscous, which we had just become familiar with because we had just been to Morocco. It was sweet reminiscing. Watching Jeremy and the dish washers was a treat, especially watching them make fun of him. It was three funny guys with water sprayers, bad news. We served and then got our food and ate while the speaker talked.
After the speaker was done and they were wrapping up we went through trying to clear the table of plates and cups people were finished with and taking pitchers off of the table. This helped us later when everyone left because it sped up the clean up. We spent another 45minutes or so cleaning and folding tables and table cloths after it was over and then we were done.
After Alpha course I got involved in being a steward at Christ Church with Zach, Casey, and Jay. The first two hours that we got from Christ Church were spent getting to know Jim, one of the vergers, and getting the details worked out. After about an hour of talking to Jim he sent us to have our first training with Stephen. We learned the first of many facts about the Cathedral and the college. Jim gave us some papers with information about the Cathedral to start us off then Stephen filled our heads with more dates and facts, it was quite a load for the first day.
The best part of working for Christ Church is the special privileges and the opportunity to see things that most visitors don't get to see. Stephen took us to the garden at Christ Church. First he showed us where Alice's parents and sister were buried, right beneath the window honoring her sister. Then he showed us the mammoth tree that inspired the cat's tree in the story Alice and Wonderland. I'm not really familiar with the story it has been a while so I do remember it in the story but I don't remember what it is called. He also showed us the green door that is the late rabbit's door in the story and he told us a story about the Dean that inspired the use of the door.
Our second training was much longer but it was enjoyable. It is tiring trying to remember everything that we need to have just a basis of knowledge for stewarding but it was interesting. This time we trained with Jim. He is very interesting and always has special tidbits that aren't just dates and facts. First we went around the cathedral and he mostly reviewed what we learned with Stephen.
Jim had us sit in the seats and explained to us why Christ Church's chapel seats were split and faced each other. It was because it was first a monastery and because it is also the chapel of a college. Then in order to show us how it worked he had us grab the prayer books and we practiced reciting back and forth reading the lines of the psalms and prayers out loud. He explained that they began doing it that way because they recited their prayers so often that in a lifetime a monk would say them some astronomical number of times and this cut the number of times in half.
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