A photo of my favourite boy during school time
To all those who’ve tuned in, this is an extension of yesterday’s post about my recent weeklong holiday in Cape Town, and you may want to check that out before reading any further (yeah, I know: I’m bossy and a lot of work. I’m also cheeky and I tease all my friends about their age as I am anything from a year to fourteen years younger than most of them. 😛 ). Ok, breathe, my friends, breathe hard. Here it comes: The Mario Saga #2
Waking up on Wednesday morning to know that in a couple of hours we were going to be in Simonstown with one of the coolest youth groups in town, was pretty awesome. We’d watched Les Misérables the previous night, and so were all pretty exhausted as after saying “goodnight” we got chatting and telling stories. Then the boys (Bex’s and my brothers) started having a farting competition!!! And so we were all a bit tired. But we got to Rocklands early still, and so had half an hour to chill, explore the campsite, chat a little bit with our leaders whom we haven’t seen in months, and prolong our goodbyes to Lou and the girls (Bex’s mum and little sisters).
Sam arrived (he’s one of the leaders but is only 19 so he’s of friend age 🙂 ) and we got chatting to him once he’d unpacked all the sound and band equipment. It was so much fun seeing him again after the Monday evening. We were calling each other “Darling” all the time and we confused a couple of Princess Pop’s school friends because they were so unconnected to the story. Man, it was so funny.
From the moment we arrived, camp was just incredible. We got assigned to our chalets and sent to them to sort out rooms and dorm leaders etc. I knew no one in my room. Not even through Facebook. I was the only white kid in my room too, but that was great as generally I’m always with my friends but that first evening I was thrown out of my comfort zone in a place I’d never known and when originally I was feeling sad because all the dorms around me were loud with laughter and screams about the g-string found beneath one of the beds, as soon as my dorm leader walked in, damn did my mind change! Limpho (pronounced Dimpoh in her language, which I regret to have to tell you, I’ve forgotten the name of 😛 ) is one of the freshest breaths of air I have ever encountered. All of us were sitting on our beds, me on my top bunk trying to text my uncle about something, and she walks in like “Hang on, what are you doing up there all alone?” the next minute she was complaining about the girl who didn’t show up in our dorm and the fact that she had to sleep on the floor and about all the girls next door (my friends, lol) who were making a racket; she made us all feel very at ease, and I realised later that none of us knew each other and therefore we were all probably feeling a bit lonely, I wasn’t alone either because the moment before she walked in, I’d prayed for some opening into my dorm. Love the way God never leaves.
Back to the daytime though, it was so much fun. I hadn’t seen a lot of them for ages, and so saying hi and getting to meet even more new people was incredible. We were welcomed to camp and then had free time until lunch, which was amazing for camp food. We were served fresh, hot, homemade beef burgers and chips and were giving a briefing by our leaders and the woman in charge of our camp. Then there was more free time which we spent laughing with friends, and teasing those who were there at Sweetie’s birthday party, about their dodgy storylines which had been blotted out and replaced by new tasks and underlying stories, but we still all discovered what was supposed to have happened in the story and yoh! some of the things…. :O Needless to say, we were glad they had been removed from the scripts. 🙂
We were organised into teams, and it was really great for me to be with my Summer Camp team leader, one of the best dancers in youth (he’s a seriously amazing dancer!!!!!!!!!!), a bunch of other guys, and then all my preschool friends. Well, the main core group anyrate. And we called ourselves….the…..LAZY PEOPLE!!!! Lame, I know, but pure genius if you look at our inspiration behind the name. Year after year, we give ourselves (or are given) names with high expectations (The Prime, Party Rockers, The Believers, The Tarantulas (their team leader, Darryn, had his legs waxed as punishment for coming last in all the games :O ), to name a few) but not this year, no. The Lazy People, themesong a mashup of Bruno Mars’ Grenade and The Lazy Song, got a big cheer from the rest of the youth for our genius idea in pretending to be less than we were. We turned out to be one of the strongest teams on camp. Literally one of the best decisions we could have made. ^_^
We had some incredible sessions where we really met with God in new, exciting ways and found out new truths as our leaders talked about living for God at home, in school, and with friends whether they’re Believers or not. I really want to write about all the amazing, unexpected things that I learnt, but on a camp like that where so much happens and so much is processed, that it’s really hard to write it all down because there’s just too much to try and put into words. It was just a purely awesome time with God and a words just don’t cut it.
On Wednesday or Thursday evening, I was making coffee for myself while my friends were chilling somewhere else, and I had to pass a group of guys who were hanging around, to get milk from the fridge. As I passed them with my really, really hot coffee they ALL watched me. Once I’d poured my milk I turned around to place the milk back into the fridge, opened the door and then suddenly there was one of the guys standing beside me with his arm on the top of the door. “Don’t close the door, I’ll do it for you.” I replied with an “aww cute” and told him thanks, he was really sweet. He returned to his friends and they were all laughing, cheering and slapping him on the back. It really made my night, he was so very funny with his serious…command that I mustn’t close the fridge.
On Thursday night we had a talent show which…was one of the single most embarrassing situations of my life so I won’t dwell on it any further except to say that I tried to pull out of it but my friends persuaded me to stay in… unfortunately our act was terrible. The only bright side was that now at least I know that all my friends are real friends as they still think I’m awesome. 😀
We had some awesome seminars on amazing topics and the one I went to was on reading and studying the Bible. It was led by two hilarious British guys, one of them a soon-to-be Bible scholar, and it was just really helpful to listen to them talk. Oh, and I had some crazy people in my discussion group, Sam being one of them. We were all high on sweets too, it just made us weirder 🙂
Being greeted every morning with a “good morning Darling” from Sam, was awesome. Yeah that does sound weird, I know, but it was really sweet and it opened up a different connection and familiarity to what Sam and I have had before. It has helped me to fully understand who he is and what makes him laugh and the sort of things he likes and remembers. It’s good to know those things in a friendship and I realised properly how well we actually get on with each other.
Friday was our last day. We were kicked out of the campsite before 12pm, like everyone had to be gone by then, and I was chatting to a leader friend who was one if the last to leave as he did a lot of the packing up, and he said how ungraciously the camp people were trying to get them to leave. For some reason I don’t think the lady in charge of our group liked us very much. She barely smiled when I greeted her etc. and she gave the same reaction to everyone else who smiled and said thank you.
On a whole though, the camp was beyond expectations! It was truly unbelievable.
Be back next time, for another episode in the Mario sagas!
BlueXx
Of Sorts 