Timeline

If you are bored by my unnecessarily long posts, here is a shorter historicisation of my OM Existence. Start from the bottom and work your way up:

2008 June: The ship arrives at Landskrona shipyard, Sweden. I, along with many others, am forced to take the bus. I spend a ten-day land team painting and relaxing. The ship gets a hole cut in her side and then welded back up again. We move to Køge, Denmark.

2008 May: The generator shows up in the Arab gulf and by the end of the month we move out, after HopeFest, an over-exuberant celebration of our time here, which gives all the crew a chance to battle out their cultures, and me a chance to stress as I try to co-ordinate over 30 drama team members performing around 20 times over a period of two days!

2008 April: We’re supposed to leave Kiel, but we don’t because of complications with a generator which gets temporarily mislaid on the way from India. I go on a challenge team to Christival with 16,000 other Germans.

2008 March: I can’t remember a single thing that happened this month.

2008 February: For my 24th birthday my best friend gets me a surprise trip to Florence and Pisa in Italy, making a nice pizza-filled hiatus from the tedium of Kiel.

2008 January: Outfitting. I am now a full-time journalist, except as we are short-staffed I also become the part-time drama coordinator!

2007 December: Logos Hope arrives and we move across. This ship is around three times the size of Logos II, with twice as many people. However, it needs a lot of outfitting work done before it is able to sail into ministry. I spend my first Christmas away from home, and for the first time, realise how much I actually miss the UK!

2007 November: Waiting

2007 October: Waiting. (I also take on the job of Music Co-ordinator for two months.)

2007 September: Logos II arrives in Germany, where she is temporarily closed to the public as we wait for Logos Hope to arrive and take us all to a metaphorical better place (locationally, still Germany).

2007 August: We visit the Faroe Islands and Iceland (for the first time in OM’s 50 year history) and see lots of geographical phenomena. I get to touch a recently erupted volcano! My parents visit to “see me”, or alternatively, experience the geographical phenomena too.

2007 July: Summer in the UK – exotic.

2007 June: The ship returns to the UK, which is not as depressing as it sounds. My three years of magazine editing at university finally catches up with me and I become the ship journalist, writing weekly and portly reports for the purpose of communication, partnership and recruiting. I catch some of May Week in Cambridge.

2007 May: Albania, and a long voyage through the Mediterranean. Albania is hot and you aren’t allowed to go out in groups of less than three people because of security. I moved from the galley to the Program department, being trained as a sound and lighting technician.

2007 April: Logos II travelled to the beautiful Montenegro, and then to Rijeka, Croatia. My sister Gillian took an overnight train from Austria to visit for a few days. My friends and I took a lot of pictures and ate a steak dinner – incidentally, my only steak dinner in the whole of 2007. Tragic.

2007 March: The ship spent a long time in Malta, although I experienced a lot of it from a galley porthole.

2007 February: on the 8th of this month, I officially boarded the ship to live while it was in Split, Croatia. I was selected to work, once more, in the galley.

2007 January: I spend two weeks in Mosbach, Germany, undergoing orientation for my two year service with OM. This included sessions on cross-cultural living, spiritual disciplines and OM history, as well as giving me the opportunity to meet around 200 people from all over the world going to work in one of OM’s 106 fields (this organisation is not just about ships!). After that, 27 of us travelled down to Trogir, Croatia, for our Pre-Ship Training (PST) – another two weeks of sessions, this time more specifically aimed at preparing us for life on board.

2006 December: I enjoy Christmas with my family, while preparing to leave again in the New Year.

2006 November: After much emailing back and forth I return to the UK, to be interviewed and inducted by my home office. After some persuasion they accept me.

2006 October: I join Logos II as a STEP-er (short term volunteer) for a period of two months (or so I thought). I slaved away in the galley (ship’s kitchen), before having the bright idea to come back and do the exact same thing again, except this time for two years.