SYC 09' - Day 0

Another year, another SYC, another blog series! Summer Youth Camp (SYC) is run by Cabramatta Anglican Church and St Georges' Anglican Church Hurstville and a bunch of other leaders we have connections with, and Christians seem to have a lot of connections.
I probably explained back in last years SYC blog series but I'll quickly explain it again.
SYC is a camp for high schoolers, it is primarily an evangelistic camp, meaning you're gonna hear about Jesus and what He did for you, secondarily, it is a fun camp designed to tire out the youth and leaders both physically (youth) and mentally (leaders). It runs for a week, Monday to Friday and this is just my little blog series remembering all that happened from my perspective, giving you a behind the scenes look too of what a leader does for all you youth reading this so without further ado/adieu/achoo lets try and remember...

Day 0 - 4th January 2009 Sunday - My Drive Up

On Sunday the leaders usually head up to the campsite first, to set things up and get a headstart before the highschoolers come. Out meetup point is Cabramatta Anglican Church for half of the leaders. I got to church sometime between 5:30 and 6:00pm to see a few of the leaders there rushing to get the SYC booklets together, people folding, stapling and chatting.
We had to wait until evening service finished at around 6:30 before we could go and grab sound equipment, drum kit and cables to take to SYC, so we waited and waited, chatted to other leaders.
Soon enough we got to load up our cars, I had less luggage this year compared to last year so I didn't have that much to tetris into the car like last year, I had to take the drum kit, pretty much all the microphone stands, cable leads and of course people's luggage.
I'm not sure what time we left, but it was pretty late, either 7pm or sometime past that, we drove to Heathcote McDonalds for dinner, then continued towards the campsite. The theory that after eating food, you often feel sleepy is pretty true I'd say because driving after Macca's I got pretty sleepy and wanted to just nod off, so I had to keep myself up somehow, and I did so by talking to the people in my car, which always helps, to keep my mind buzzing with stuff other than the mundane long stretch of road ahead of me.

Eventually we reach the campsite, the potholes were still there like the year before and the urge to drive onto the grass utilizing my 4WD capabilities was still there like the year before but I resisted, given the darkness and not knowing when a ditch would suprise attack me. All our cars were covered in dust and dirt (mainly dirt), so people proceeded to write on each other's cars, I had DUNG written on my back window, which I left because I was too tired to clean it off. For those who don't know Dung is a sort of nickname I was given, derived from the first letter of my first name and the surname, it also has the same name as a form of feces, unfortunate I know but I've gotten used to it, new people however, aren't used to it, which produces amusing reactions when people see friends calling me "Dung", and I respond casually like its all good.

But I digress, we unloaded our cars, paid our leaders fee, mingled, then had a meeting to get things officially started, we broke up into our groups, be that evening games (games we play in the evening), wide games (games we play during the day), concert night team, music team and I think that was it. I was in the evening games team, and was allocated a "get to know you" game with another leader, trivia night and glow stick game, of which I'll write about as they happen on the corresponding days. Each year we try and play different games and this year was no different, so we had to test some of them, which we did tonight. Some of the leaders played around with straws and paddle pop sticks to protect an egg, Victor (our Evening Games leader) became our balloon sumo and took damage for our entertainment (I'll try get a video of that up when I can, inbetween working on the SYC DVD).

Afterwards, we had music practice for Monday's music, which I used to make the powerpoint for the Monday, I would've made it before but I didn't know the what the projector would be like, and where "screen" would be, but making the powerpoint was fairly quick anyway.
Eventually it got really late, and it was time for sleep, all the leaders had the boys side of the cabins to sleep in, and we could pick any room which is always fun as its the one time we can sleep with the other leaders before the youth invade...anyways, I don't know about the other leaders but the cabra boys stayed up, chatted, got to know each other better, got to know who were the scaredy cats (lame term I know) screaming at the non-ghost, talking about ministry and random stuff when we realise we should really get to sleep, our wake up time was 8am, we slept sometime past 2am...

Note: From here on out, they're gonna get longer, and I'll probably take a long time to get them all done, meaning I'll eventually forget a few more things, so apologies in advance to all those that care.