Your Official Iona Tour

Friday 28th April, 5:15 pm

An up-and-down sort of day was this, my first full day of bed, easy to cheer myself singing while working, quick the fall of spirits when I realise I don't know my place among the people here, and slow my contentment to build when work is over and relaxing can begin.

Right, so for convenience's sake:
A British-American Guide to Translation on Iona

trousers=pants pants=underwear (to) frank=to put postage on
polishing=dusting hoovering=vacuuming uni=college A-levels=SATs
vollies=volunteers (an Iona phrase)

So. . .a descriptive tour of Iona. After the ferry to the Isle of Mull, the bus from Craignure (the landing point) to Fionnphort (pronounced Finn-a-fort), and the ferry from thence to Iona, you step off onto this island that's three miles long and one mile wide, but teeming with grassy hills and old stony ruins. Less than a hundred people live here, they say, and no wonder: only the ferry can get you back to its neighbour island, and then another ferry back to the Scottish mainland. If there's an emergency, you call the coast guard.

In less than a mile, you approach the Benedictine Abbey built in the 1100s for monks, and now it's the spiritual centre of life in the Iona Community. In it are a church, cloisters, a refectory (dining hall), meeting rooms, and guest rooms (the last two were added in the 20th century). If you continue on up the path, passing sharply rising mounds of earth and green fields filled with wandering sheep, you'll come to the MacLeod Centre, where I live. Everyone calls it the Mac. In my room, which I share with three other vollies, I have a bed with some storage space, and I share a toilet and sink with the other girls. The shower's down the hall.

Some of the other vollies live in a residence called Cul Shuna (Gaelic for "behind the cow"). I eat all my meals in the Abbey refectory, since it's the place I work, and the vollies who are "attached to" (work in) the Mac eat there.

There's two services every day in the church-- one at 9 am, one at 9 pm-- and each contains a few hymns, contemporarily worded liturgy, and unique worship features depending on the theme of the service. I work seven hours a day and get a day and a half off per week; my work consists mainly of cleaning rooms, corridors, bathrooms, dishes, clothes, floors, and laundry throughout the Abbey. Hard work, but worth it because it means I get to be here.