Talk Like A Local

Before I lived in the UK, I wasn’t sure what to believe about idioms and how British people used them. I know we’ve all passed some language exams like IELTS before we came here to study, but you might still feel confused when you have conversations with native speakers as you can't always rely on a word's definition to tell you what a phrase means. So today I’d like to share some idioms and coded language that I have learned from my British friends.

• Rings a bell

  • Something that sounds familiar. Makes someone remember something indistinctly. To awaken a vague or indistinct memory. So you can say “The place he was talking about rang a bell but I couldn't remember where I had read about it.”

• A Blessing in disguise

  • A good thing that seems bad at first.

• An arm and a leg

  • A phrase used to massively over exaggerate when something might be expensive. For example: “This pint cost me an arm and a leg!!!” When, in reality, they're just paying an extortionate amount compared to what they're used to.

• Worship the golden calf

  • An unworthy or inappropriate object of worship, typically wealth. For example: “Let’s devote ourselves to something more meaningful than worshiping the golden calf.”

• Off the top of your head

  • Without careful thought or investigation. Like, "Off the top of my head, I think Lucy loses the key every week."

• A penny for your thoughts

  • A way of asking someone to share their thoughts with you. For example: “I'll give you a penny if you tell me your thoughts”

• To sit tight

  • If you sit tight, you remain in the same place or situation and do not take any action, usually because you are waiting for something to happen. “Sit tight. I'll be right back.”

• Beat around the bush

  • A typical British saying meaning you're purposely avoiding the topic; not speaking directly about the issue.

• Bee’s knees

  • You should know that “the bee’s knees” is actually a lovely term used to describe someone or something you think the world of. So if someone says “Go-karting yesterday was the bee’s knees” they’re actually telling you that “Go-karting yesterday was totally awesome!”

• Steal someone’s thunder

  • To take credit for someone else’s work or to take attention from them during their special moment .

• Speak of the devil

  • Used when the person in question arrives right on cue - as if they knew you were talking about them. 

Apart from idioms, British people also like using coded language to avoid embarrassment:

• Interesting…

  • Especially when followed by a long pause, this often means the opposite.

• That's not bad!

  • Even though “bad” is in this sentence, it means “that's good”.

• I almost agree.

  • This sounds like they’re close to agreeing. But, it actually means they do not agree at all.

• With the greatest respect…

  • What you did or said was totally wrong.

• Bit wet out there

  • Actually it’s pouring, welcome to the UK.

I hope this is helpful for your life in the UK! Please let us know if you have more idioms/coded languages to share.

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To get in touch please email chris.cambell@transformationsleeds.org.uk

Making New Friends

Welcome to Leeds! There are loads of places to go to make new friends here. This quick list of our top recommendations should serve you really well as you get started!

• The Living Room

  • The Living Room is a weekly, term-time, gathering for international students who attend a university in Leeds.

• University Clubs & Societies

  • Leeds University

  • Leeds Beckett University

  • Leeds Art University

  • Leeds Conservatoire

• At Church

• Your Flatmates / Coursemates / People At The Gym

  • It’s always good to start with the people you know you’re going to see regularly no matter what!

• Ideas For Making Friends Without Alcohol

Here’s hoping this list helps you find your feet and make friends fast!

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To get in touch please email laura.palmer@transformationsleeds.org.uk

Find The Food You Love

Food can be powerful. It’s an exciting way to learn about a new culture and it’s also the thing that helps us feel at home when we’re far away. That’s why we wanted to bring you this list of specialty grocery stores to help you find the food you love!

• Morrisons British Supermarket

• FilFoods Filipino Store

• Hang Sing Hong Oriental Supermarket

• Sing-Kee Oriental Supermarket

• Ofosua’s African Supermarket

• Mydonose Turkish Food Store
  

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To get in touch please email chris.cambell@transformationsleeds.org.uk

Travelling In Leeds

Welcome to Leeds! We understand that moving to a new country is exciting, and can also be quite stressful, especially in the beginning. We want to help you learn how to travel in, and around, Leeds by train/coach, taxis, buses, and on foot!

TRAIN

Leeds train station is operated by Northern Rail, who are mainly responsible for travel around West Yorkshire. British trains generally share starting and ending points, but individual trains will be operated by different companies taking different routes. This means there will be differences in fares and times, so remember to check your tickets as soon as possible. I always use the Trainline app on my phone to check the ticket. 

If you are new to Leeds, don’t forget to set up your Railcard immediately. Always try to book your tickets as early as possible; you can save lots of money if you book your ticket a month in advance!

COACH

Coaches are generally for travel between cities in the UK. The two major coach companies are National Express and Megabus. If you plan to use them frequently, you can apply for student discount cards.

National Express: if you have a low budget and you plan to travel for a long distance, I suggest taking a coach with National Express. It generally costs less than half the price a train ticket and you can go all the way to London for £14 rather than £140 (or more) on the train.

Megabus: These coaches are even cheaper than National Express, making it the cheapest way to travel between cities in Britain. I find that megabus is often up to an hour late when leaving so be prepared for that possibility.

TAXI

Uber: is the easiest way to book a taxi. This requires registering via the Uber app with your phone number, credit card information, etc., and you can only pay by card instead of cash. Using the app means you usually wait 5-10 minutes to be picked up by the taxi. Uber’s safeguards help ensure your personal safety.

Amber: is the most trusted taxi company in Leeds and is cheaper than Uber. They also have an app to download and you can book a car several days, or even weeks/months, in advance. It's cost-effective, especially if you take it with your friends. Amber has been guaranteed by the university, so it is very safe for you to use even if it is midnight.

BUS

Public transportation in Leeds is mainly operated by two companies, First and Arriva. It may be cheaper to take a taxi than a bus if you’re not going very far. On the bus, you can buy one-way, round-trip, daily or weekly tickets, and monthly tickets. Some of them have student discounts or special types of tickets for students. 

I suggest buying daily tickets if you need a return ticket as it will be cheaper and you can take buses from any company as many times as you’d like. Students who have just arrived in Leeds can wander around by bus and see the area around Leeds. You can download the APP and find more information HERE.

ON FOOT

Leeds is bursting with attractions and beautiful architecture. If you live in the city centre, Leeds is easy to navigate on foot. It will take you 20 minutes to walk from the train station to campus and you can enjoy lots of historic buildings on the way, so why not?

You can find more tourist guidance HERE.

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To get in touch please email chris.cambell@transformationsleeds.org.uk

The Surprising Aspects Of International Student Ministry

Stuart Aitken, is our guest blogger this week and he shares with us from his first few days working for Transformations Leeds and what surprised him about international student ministry. 

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I didn’t know what International Student Ministry would be like. So, on my first day working for Transformations Leeds, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I was meant to help the Christian Union with their 2019 ‘Welcome Week Café. But would this be like the times I had doors slammed in my face when doing cold contact evangelism in Poole? Would these students even be interested?

I taught Pastors in Ecuador for 10 years, so was used to working cross culturally, but that was different. It was working with Christians, many of whom were poor, and some that were illiterate. International students at the University of Leeds felt like it would mostly be people of other faiths, many who would be rich, and all highly educated.

As I started to meet international students, that day, many of my assumptions and biases began to unravel. I’d like to walk you through some of this so you can learn alongside me exactly, ‘What surprised me about international student ministry’.

First of all, I was shocked by how many international students there were! When I was at University, I didn't really think about international students and I don’t recall there being that many! However, as I walked from the Transformations Leeds office to the University of Leeds campus, I was stunned by the number of international students walking past me. Later, I discovered there were over 12,000 international students at the universities in Leeds, from over 140 different countries. Incredible!

My next observation was how open the international students were to speaking with Christians. Instead of rough refusals, similar to those doors being slammed in my face, many warmly accepted our invitation to the pop up café. Soon we had a queue of students waiting for drinks and many more chatting with the volunteers at the tables. Making conversation was so much easier than I thought it would be! The international students were incredibly polite, many wanted to practice their English, and even more were keen to learn everything about the local culture.

I also realised that the international students who come to the UK universities tend to be a specific sort. Many will return to positions of importance and influence in their country. Just to be here means they're either wealthy enough to afford it or accomplished enough to have been given a scholarship. In fact, I learned that one of the pervious students who came to our social events was a Japanese Princess! And other international students had routinely gone on to become important politicians in their home countries after graduating.

Seeing how "open" to Christianity many students were who had come from what are considered "closed" countries was a big surprise. These students knew that their government had prohibited the practice of Christianity and persecuted Christians and yet these students were undeterred. The fact that they still wanted to know what Christianity was about in spite of the potential backlash was amazing!

Finally, I was surprised at how international student ministry helped me discover new things about myself. I realised that I’d had massive cultural stereotypes regarding Asian students; assuming that their cultures were more or less the same. However I discovered that was wildly off base. For instance, many Chinese students like spicy food whilst Japanese often don’t. Most Chinese students adopt a western name, whilst this is almost never the case with other Asian students. I also discovered just how individualistic I am in comparison to students from collectivist cultures. They weren't thinking, “Will I go to the meeting?” but rather, “Will *we* go to the meeting?” This meant we either got very large, or very small, numbers of students along to our events!

On reflection, I realise that we have an amazing opportunity right here in Leeds, today. I truly loved being a missionary in another country. But the idea that you have to go abroad, learn a language, and a whole new culture in order to share the gospel with the nations of the world is no longer true. If it ever was at all.

In Leeds I have the opportunity to meet with students from all over the world. From closed and open countries, people of power and influence, and I don't even need to travel to another country to do it! These international students genuinely want to talk to me, to share their culture with me, and to learn about what's important to me and my culture. This makes it natural and effortless to share, in word and deed, about Jesus with them. If you’re a Christian in Leeds, I'd challenge to experience international student ministry for yourself. Volunteer for an event and, if you like it, there's plenty of room to get involved long term!

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To get involved in welcoming international students to Leeds this autumn just email phil.thomas@transformationsleeds.org.uk

Transforming Your World: Developing A Theology Of Work

You will spend 3,500 days of your life at work. Or at least you will if you’re an average British worker. If you’re in the UK that’s 84,000 hours however if you're in China then it’s probably far more. One graduate who recently returned messaged me to say he’s working 9am - 9pm, 7 days a week and that he considers that normal! Whichever country you're in, work will fill more of our waking hours than anything else in your life. So, if you’re serious about Jesus being Lord of your life, you must know what the Bible says about the largest part of your day. But is this the case for most Christians?   

Ken Costa says “many people do not see God as a 24/7 God, but as a withdrawn actor confined to a Sunday show”. He talks of how a ‘sacred/secular’ divide means that many see the church service, prayer meeting and Alpha course as far more worthy than the office, classroom, and hospital. This view is influenced far more by Greek thought than the Bible, where God is described as an artist (Genesis 1:1), a potter (Isaiah 64:8), a shepherd (John 10:11) a builder (Hebrews 3:4) and ‘always at work’ (John 5:17). Although many of us know in our heads that God is interested in everything we do, the sacred/secular divide, is amazingly pervasive.

I realised this a while back, a couple of years into working with international students. I had started to get more and more emails from those who’d recently graduated telling me how they struggled to connect their Christian faith to their work. What to do about the long hours? Should they ‘bend’ the rules? When did ‘chatting’ become ‘gossip’? And other such questions. I looked at what we, Transformations Leeds, and local churches, had taught them in our discipleship, particularly as many of them had become Christians at university. I noticed that we’d covered how to pray, how to read the Bible, how to share their faith, why church is important but we’d never even mentioned the workplace in our discipleship! No wonder they had questions!!

That was when I vowed to make sure we covered the topic of work through our ministry and encouraged our church partners to do the same. We’ve used Ken Costa’s excellent ‘God at work’ material, and have theology of work as a key component in our Apprenticeship programme. This has certainly made a difference. More students respond to the teaching like Janet from India: “I now believe that the place to work out your faith isn’t just at church. What you do in your workplace is ministry, just as much as singing in the choir is at church.”

However, one thing that students were still asking for was the opportunity to learn from older Christians in their sphere of work. This request was, in part, behind why we started our annual conference ‘Transforming your World’, equipping Christians to be godly influencers in their workplace and culture. This year it’s online, so you can easily benefit from it as well. Whether you’re a recent graduate or someone who’s been working for a while Transforming your World will help you Biblically and introduce you to some inspiring Christians from all around the world. 

Krish Kandiah will give us Biblical principles for the workplace from the book of Daniel and there will be seminars from experienced Christians in the areas of business, health, education and the charitable sector. There’s even an early bird discount up until April 3rd. So, why not invest some time in understanding God’s view of work. Investing 7 hours now can make all the difference to how you spend your 84,000 hours at work!