Bryan woke up at around 7am to take a jog, I know this because he woke up me, apparently not only do I take long to sleep (slight insomniac) I get woken kinda easy, though only in my lower levels of sleep. I stayed in bed and tried to get as much eye rest as possible, eventually everyone else got up, I continued to stay in bed. Nelson came by blaring music out of his laptop, declaring it was "30 minutes until 8am! 30 minutes until 8am!", as if he was the only person at camp with the time. I stayed in bed a little longer, but knew stuff had to be done, and I would be the one to do it, so I got up, washed up, got changed and packed my bags so cleaners could come into the rooms to clean.
Took my bags somewhere, I think the main hall (my memory is already starting to waver, not good) and had breakfast in the dining hall. Not feeling that hungry I had a bit of Sultana Bran, that was the last time I ate cereal at SYC, too cold and never in the mood for (bland) cereal. We had a few meetings here and there, I think we had music practice (not me, the band) and soon enough it was time for the youth to arrive, and as the phrase says, 'a picture is worth a thousand words', then a video would say a lot more words...1,704,000 words to be almost exact for the following video which depicts the EXCITE of the leaders as the youth head towards the camp site, needless to say the attempt at a cheer squad welcome was marred by the inner workings of a bus, not sure what I mean? Watch on..
S-Y-C! S-Y-C!
People exit and we welcome them with cheers and open arms and more cheers, and proceeded to help them unload their luggage and have them register.
Nametags! Get Your Nametags!
Not long after, the second bus came, which carried people from Hurstville (the first bus had Cabramatta people) so both leaders and youth came out to greet them. One such youth tried as well, but the difference between a door and a window was lost on her. Even though I didn't get it on video, I got what I could and its better left for the video to show than for me to explain...
Bumpity Bump Oww!
Finally and eventually everyone registered and we were all seated and given a quick orientation by Cam Phong and Nelson before we were given our dorm rooms. I was partnered up with Ian so we were co-leaders you could say. We were supposed to have 3 youths in our dorm, but two of them didn't show up, only one did, Jason. This then gave the opportunity for Man (Do) and Daniel (Haste) who didn't have a dorm nor leader to change into our dorm room. So three year 12 youths who all know each other and also know their leaders (somewhat), I knew right then and there sleep was going to be scarce. We dumped our stuff in our room (room 11) and soon enough found a spider on the wall. Man freaked out like a girl, screaming to get rid of it. Haste got rid of it, and then Man proceeded to Mortene the whole room to get rid of anything else. Man had the wrong name growing up it seems...
Youth and Leaders sitting together
We soon got into the swing of things with activities to get to know each other better, involving drawing on each other (I stayed at the powerpoint to avoid being drawn on, not a fan of ink on skin) and hitting each other with a pillow. At some point it was lunch time, I think we had a sausage roll. Eventually we had 'get you tired' games, which were designed to get the youth tired, this involved a game of Fresh, or Clean and Unclean as Cam made us change the name. The game was slow to start as people didn't understand the game, but after a helpful demonstration by William we got the ball rolling and roll it did! After Fres-Clean and Unclean we played Bullrush, a game everybody knew and quickly got tired from. I think Amazing Race was placed too, but I wasn't there for that as I took Ian into town to see how his car was (it was still sick), so we took the car to another car fixing place and things looked fixable, which was good, then we proceeded back into camp.
Oh wait, before we returned to camp, Claire asked if I could buy some medicine, something called Neprogesic, apparently period pain medicine. So being the nice guy that I am, I did. When I had the chance I visited the chemist while Ian went to check on his car, I walked around for a while trying to find it, unfortunately I had forgotten the name of the medicine, thinking it ended in 'zyne' for some reason. Eventually I gave up and had to ask the lady for the checkout for help, but I waited until everyone in line had left.
"May I help you?"
"Yeah, I'm looking for some period pain medicine, but I uh forgot the name, I think it ends in 'zyne'.."
"Um..okay, let me take you to the section"
"Thanks"
"Alright, do you see the medicine?"
*Spots Naprogesic*
"Hm..I think this could be it"
"Hold on, let me get help...hey, this guy is looking for some period pain medicine but he forgot the name of the medicine"
"I think it could be Naprogesic"
(wanting to get out now) "Yeah, Yeah, this is it, I'll take it"
Suffice to say, I shan't be forgetting Neprogesic anytime soon.
Dinner time arrived and I forgot what we had, unless it was a sausage roll. See how forgettable camp food is? After dinner we had our first chapel time of the week, which involved songs, announcements, a talk and question time. Just like I do nearly every Sunday I did again at SYC, which was run the powerpoint. With only 15-20 minutes to prepare I had to format all the songs to suit the projected screen (church screen and SYC screen are different, and so require different formatting), so while it was a bit annoying in the beginning to receive a songlist 20 minutes before chapel time, I ended up seeing it as a challenge as to how fast I could do things.
The talk was on Mark 7:1-24, Clean and Unclean, which was to be the theme, essentially of SYC. Not a physical uncleanliness but a spiritual uncleanliness is what Jesus is talking about. We are all unclean because of our sin, and Jesus is the cleaner, the only cleaner who take take our sins away, so we have to trust in him to be clean, and to go to Heaven with eternal life. Don't we all want to go to heaven?
Silly me, at some point during the day I realised my car keys were missing, usually either in my pocket or on the desk with the laptop and projector but this time they weren't. I slowly retraced my steps and soon enough found them where I last left them, in the car ignition...fortunately we were at camp and not elsewhere so the car was safe.
Evening games involved breaking up into teams that the youth were allocated into, and creating a Warcry for their group. So with eight groups in total, we had eight team names and eight warcries. Which were all different and interesting and fun to watch. The judges thought otherwise and gave most teams low scores for their warcries, which was fair enough. Bryan has a video of the warcries, so I'll have to get it off him and maybe I'll chop them up and throw them on here.
With the team names settled, it was time to face them against each other, in the ultimate test of asian skill, the M&M game. Eight bowls filled with M&M's, eight pairs of chopsticks. A colour is called, one team member must, using their chopstick pick out the called colour and put it in their hand, then eat the M&M. They continue until a different colour is called, teams switch players and we keep going until a team finishes all their M&M's. It was a fun game to watch, with teams cheering their players on, complaining about other teams cheating, then cheating themselves. I have a bunch of video's but the video of the final run best sums up the game and how frantic it is, and just so you know, the colour called out was 'all colours'...
Gobble Gobble Gobble
Kevin, as seen in the video gobbled up as many M&M's as he could, but what he couldn't do was contain them all in his mouth, so what does one do when they can't handle anymore?
They spit it out...
Soon games ended and supper time started, which was basically time to snack, shower and get ready to sleep before lights out at 10:30pm. I helped clean up and when I returned to my room I found the place rearranged a bit...
Man's Sister's Pink Blankey
The boys decided to take three mattresses and dump them in the middle of the room so they could sleep together, and so they could avoid the creepy crawlies on the walls. I slepted on the bed on the very right of the picture, right next to the window, next to the door, so if I happened to roll too much and fall off the bed, I'd land on Haste, thats how close our cabin was going to be, too close...
But I suppose the best way to get to know each other would be to sleep close to each other? I can't remember what time we slept, but it was somewhat late, listening to the three guys chat and Man's trancey, technoey music I soon fell asleep, I think some people came in for a bit of a party...Day 1.
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