Fourth (and Final) Easter Egg
*sniffs twice like a rabbit* Does anyone else have any easter eggs left?
Well finally finally finally I'm finishing up the Easter Camp update!
And hopefully I'll catch up some on life since then too (but I'll put that in a separate post)
So: Games are left. A couple of things to say here: firstly, I learnt a new game (Blokus) which was great fun, and saw that overall there was a great selection of games available for free time. As well as the above, there were cards, Risk, Bohnanza (Hi Ingrid!), Balderdash...
Other interesting games were the challenge series: we did what could best be described as a mud-and-water course - relaying water by throwing it bucket to bucket, crossing a shallow pond on a log...and doing a 360 turn in the middle...and being sprayed with water all the while, being forced to snake through mud, and some other (less messy) challenges. Last one was a jigsaw of sorts, and I managed to solve our group's one by myself afterwards (we gave up); the BCS people said it was possibly the fastest they'd seen someone get it out solo. I'd had help from our group's attempts though. Anyway, other challenges were the traditional foul food thing: eat a Kiwi as fast as possible, same for (dry) weebix, hold Eno with Coke in your mouth as long as possible (Josh managed to do the Hokey Pokey as well...we'll get to that), etc. Third challenge was to make a raft and get it up and down the swimming pool; we played minesweeper, per se, made a crash dummy, and made a film! The 8 groups did a scene in the life of Gavin each, which lead to hilarious moments. We had...the birth (brilliant scene with a toilet door opening and about 10 people coming out from it, one after the other - how they fit them in there goodness knows. The birth 'twist' was that Gavin was twins with a football, which was kicked away as they could only afford one child), the first day at school (his imaginary friend told him that she was imaginary), the first job (lap dancing, applying at a laptop company by mistake), the first kiss (can't quite remember how this happened...I think this was the rather unusual senior school thing), his marriage (our groups. We took off Holy Grail's chanting monks, and had to stop the wedding because she liked karate, which Gavin hated), his death (lots of people tried to kill him and failed, but he eventually was bumped off somehow), and the afterlife. This was in some ways the funniest, because they decided to reveal the 'secret' parts of Gavin's life - he killed his mother, ate his children, did all sorts of things. But he ended up in heaven "remember that time you got converted in Tahiti?". Strange strange strange indeed. But hilarious.
The games highlight for me though was the MythBusters night. The challenge groups (minus helping leaders, which was quite a significant proportion) were each given a myth to investigate: they had to find an expert (engineer, doctor or scientist) to tell them where to go to bust it (or confirm it), and then go to that place and do the activity. So: "that you can throw a playing card through a watermelon" - some groups got their card at least into the melon, so that was moderately successful. "She could talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles" - Chinese whispers underwater (no marbles for obvious reasons). "Males can't do two things at once" - a range of activities, from what I hear. "Humpty Dumpty couldn't be put back together again" - try to fix a smashed chocolate easter egg using super glue and sticky tap. Two groups achieved this (with a decent sized egg) - amazing effort. A couple of others, and then the one that I was given charge of: "That the Hokey Pokey is what it's really all about". This was so much fun. The game was at night, and I was at the bottom of the campsite and thus in very poor light. I sat at the top of the slippery dip; it usually took people a while to find me, and then I would slide down with my cape (towel) flying behind me, leap around and introduce myself "Good evening fair travellers: I am Master Hokay" and bow. Then would follow 10 minutes of some Sensei/Jedi style induction into the mystery of the "Great Hokey Pokey". We would play for a bit, I would stop and ask them if they felt the great Hokey. Then ask them if there were unbelievers, and ask what could be better. Some of the results here were fairly common ("chocolate"), creative ("the chicken dance" or "macarena": this response would cause me to twitch and scream "INFIDEL" at the poor person), or of course the expected answer "Jesus". This one I met with "I'm not quite sure...but I've heard it said that Jesus himself was the greatest Hokay master of them all!". No-one gave the answer I wanted, which was friends. So I would prompt that out of them, and then do the exercise taken from Encounter training - send some people out, play the Hokey Pokey, and keep them from joining. At this point I would ask them if they agreed that friends or the Hokey Pokey were greater (or was it what it was all about, etc.) and they would say yes or no, and then always go away and say no. Ben told me that all the groups came back saying "the answer's friends!" (answer??), except for one group which particularly got excited about the God point and told Ben that. Hilarious, either way. Favourite moments included "It's Unkie James!" (Mel)..."Who IS that?" (quite a few of the campers)..."Let's go before he makes us do anything else wierd" (camper in the second group, sounding quite freaked), "look at him run away!"...
So much fun. Apparantly it was (somehow) for many people the best myth busting activity of the night - for me, a chance to be ridiculous, flamboyant, show off, and of course do the Hokey Pokey 40 times in a night was one of the most fun things I'd done for quite a while.
Phew, games. Knew that would be a big one.
Quickly then: the camp Mum and Dad were Amy's parents, who were M&D on Encounter. They're a lovely couple and it was good to have them round again and get to know them a little.
Myf-busting: early on in the camp, we displayed the 'busted' stamp, and Ben and Peter decided that we needed to bust...poor Myf. And then we repeated the exercise on the last (or second-last) day. So she had a stamp on her forhead...but then, so did lots of us on the last day.
Swimming: quite a minor point. I've been to Mylor campsite quite a few times (just visited), done a whole camp there, but never seen the swimming pool until this one. Went in too (in the boat activity).
AV: Got to spend a fair bit of time with Andrew on camp, which was a real blessing. The ride up was a great opportunity to catch up, and camping with him is always fun, encouraging and challenging. Particularly appreciated the last night where we went for a brief walk, sang "I Love you Lord" ("do you know this one?" says Andrew, and launches into it...of course I did. I'm sure he knew that), and had a prayer together. Really good, and the trip home was fun too.
Christian swear-words: this sums up one of the big challenges to me on camp. Matt had a phrase to describe much of the jargon associated with Christianity (grace, sanctified, hallelujah, etc etc etc): "Christian swear-words". Hilarious, but quite an interesting point! This was then borne out to me strongly as I talked with a girl who said she had so many questions, but being a new Christian she found that Christians who had been around longer tended to seem to say 'as if you are asking that!' This was an encouragement and inspiration to me - she kept on asking. But also a huge challenge not to be exclusive, or to ever be showing off my knowledge, or to be all academic about my faith, but to be humble and always ready to help those seeking. She had a few lovely words to say on the last day too, as did Josh.
So that's it! Also enjoyed yelling WISHHHHHEEEEEEEEEE across camp in response to his "SCHNOOKUMS!", camper ball (and it's umpiring: the leaders were getting thrashed, so the umpiring became incredibly biased (which is apparantly traditional). "tackling the medical officer", "harassing fake leaders" (those who'd joined us out of pity), and all sorts of others). Great game, although playing with exercise balls was not such a success as we envisioned (and one popped!). Second half was way better as many of the campers retired and more leaders were on the field. There were some very good female players who played with passion (Mel did a very strong job forward, Myf played a great centre-ish role, and a girl whose name I don't know on the campers side was just phenomenal), and some very talented guys too. I got complemented on some of my marks; I pulled off a nice dive towards the end which I was very pleased with.
Could go on forever, but won't! That's it! Easter Camp updates over! Well done to anyone who read them all all the way through. Hi to Gemma, btw, who is one of my 'anonymous' readers (except that I've named her now) who asked me about the update last Sunday, so not only was reading but possibly even interested! Amazing! Hi!
Catcha
Schnook
Well finally finally finally I'm finishing up the Easter Camp update!
And hopefully I'll catch up some on life since then too (but I'll put that in a separate post)
So: Games are left. A couple of things to say here: firstly, I learnt a new game (Blokus) which was great fun, and saw that overall there was a great selection of games available for free time. As well as the above, there were cards, Risk, Bohnanza (Hi Ingrid!), Balderdash...
Other interesting games were the challenge series: we did what could best be described as a mud-and-water course - relaying water by throwing it bucket to bucket, crossing a shallow pond on a log...and doing a 360 turn in the middle...and being sprayed with water all the while, being forced to snake through mud, and some other (less messy) challenges. Last one was a jigsaw of sorts, and I managed to solve our group's one by myself afterwards (we gave up); the BCS people said it was possibly the fastest they'd seen someone get it out solo. I'd had help from our group's attempts though. Anyway, other challenges were the traditional foul food thing: eat a Kiwi as fast as possible, same for (dry) weebix, hold Eno with Coke in your mouth as long as possible (Josh managed to do the Hokey Pokey as well...we'll get to that), etc. Third challenge was to make a raft and get it up and down the swimming pool; we played minesweeper, per se, made a crash dummy, and made a film! The 8 groups did a scene in the life of Gavin each, which lead to hilarious moments. We had...the birth (brilliant scene with a toilet door opening and about 10 people coming out from it, one after the other - how they fit them in there goodness knows. The birth 'twist' was that Gavin was twins with a football, which was kicked away as they could only afford one child), the first day at school (his imaginary friend told him that she was imaginary), the first job (lap dancing, applying at a laptop company by mistake), the first kiss (can't quite remember how this happened...I think this was the rather unusual senior school thing), his marriage (our groups. We took off Holy Grail's chanting monks, and had to stop the wedding because she liked karate, which Gavin hated), his death (lots of people tried to kill him and failed, but he eventually was bumped off somehow), and the afterlife. This was in some ways the funniest, because they decided to reveal the 'secret' parts of Gavin's life - he killed his mother, ate his children, did all sorts of things. But he ended up in heaven "remember that time you got converted in Tahiti?". Strange strange strange indeed. But hilarious.
The games highlight for me though was the MythBusters night. The challenge groups (minus helping leaders, which was quite a significant proportion) were each given a myth to investigate: they had to find an expert (engineer, doctor or scientist) to tell them where to go to bust it (or confirm it), and then go to that place and do the activity. So: "that you can throw a playing card through a watermelon" - some groups got their card at least into the melon, so that was moderately successful. "She could talk underwater with a mouth full of marbles" - Chinese whispers underwater (no marbles for obvious reasons). "Males can't do two things at once" - a range of activities, from what I hear. "Humpty Dumpty couldn't be put back together again" - try to fix a smashed chocolate easter egg using super glue and sticky tap. Two groups achieved this (with a decent sized egg) - amazing effort. A couple of others, and then the one that I was given charge of: "That the Hokey Pokey is what it's really all about". This was so much fun. The game was at night, and I was at the bottom of the campsite and thus in very poor light. I sat at the top of the slippery dip; it usually took people a while to find me, and then I would slide down with my cape (towel) flying behind me, leap around and introduce myself "Good evening fair travellers: I am Master Hokay" and bow. Then would follow 10 minutes of some Sensei/Jedi style induction into the mystery of the "Great Hokey Pokey". We would play for a bit, I would stop and ask them if they felt the great Hokey. Then ask them if there were unbelievers, and ask what could be better. Some of the results here were fairly common ("chocolate"), creative ("the chicken dance" or "macarena": this response would cause me to twitch and scream "INFIDEL" at the poor person), or of course the expected answer "Jesus". This one I met with "I'm not quite sure...but I've heard it said that Jesus himself was the greatest Hokay master of them all!". No-one gave the answer I wanted, which was friends. So I would prompt that out of them, and then do the exercise taken from Encounter training - send some people out, play the Hokey Pokey, and keep them from joining. At this point I would ask them if they agreed that friends or the Hokey Pokey were greater (or was it what it was all about, etc.) and they would say yes or no, and then always go away and say no. Ben told me that all the groups came back saying "the answer's friends!" (answer??), except for one group which particularly got excited about the God point and told Ben that. Hilarious, either way. Favourite moments included "It's Unkie James!" (Mel)..."Who IS that?" (quite a few of the campers)..."Let's go before he makes us do anything else wierd" (camper in the second group, sounding quite freaked), "look at him run away!"...
So much fun. Apparantly it was (somehow) for many people the best myth busting activity of the night - for me, a chance to be ridiculous, flamboyant, show off, and of course do the Hokey Pokey 40 times in a night was one of the most fun things I'd done for quite a while.
Phew, games. Knew that would be a big one.
Quickly then: the camp Mum and Dad were Amy's parents, who were M&D on Encounter. They're a lovely couple and it was good to have them round again and get to know them a little.
Myf-busting: early on in the camp, we displayed the 'busted' stamp, and Ben and Peter decided that we needed to bust...poor Myf. And then we repeated the exercise on the last (or second-last) day. So she had a stamp on her forhead...but then, so did lots of us on the last day.
Swimming: quite a minor point. I've been to Mylor campsite quite a few times (just visited), done a whole camp there, but never seen the swimming pool until this one. Went in too (in the boat activity).
AV: Got to spend a fair bit of time with Andrew on camp, which was a real blessing. The ride up was a great opportunity to catch up, and camping with him is always fun, encouraging and challenging. Particularly appreciated the last night where we went for a brief walk, sang "I Love you Lord" ("do you know this one?" says Andrew, and launches into it...of course I did. I'm sure he knew that), and had a prayer together. Really good, and the trip home was fun too.
Christian swear-words: this sums up one of the big challenges to me on camp. Matt had a phrase to describe much of the jargon associated with Christianity (grace, sanctified, hallelujah, etc etc etc): "Christian swear-words". Hilarious, but quite an interesting point! This was then borne out to me strongly as I talked with a girl who said she had so many questions, but being a new Christian she found that Christians who had been around longer tended to seem to say 'as if you are asking that!' This was an encouragement and inspiration to me - she kept on asking. But also a huge challenge not to be exclusive, or to ever be showing off my knowledge, or to be all academic about my faith, but to be humble and always ready to help those seeking. She had a few lovely words to say on the last day too, as did Josh.
So that's it! Also enjoyed yelling WISHHHHHEEEEEEEEEE across camp in response to his "SCHNOOKUMS!", camper ball (and it's umpiring: the leaders were getting thrashed, so the umpiring became incredibly biased (which is apparantly traditional). "tackling the medical officer", "harassing fake leaders" (those who'd joined us out of pity), and all sorts of others). Great game, although playing with exercise balls was not such a success as we envisioned (and one popped!). Second half was way better as many of the campers retired and more leaders were on the field. There were some very good female players who played with passion (Mel did a very strong job forward, Myf played a great centre-ish role, and a girl whose name I don't know on the campers side was just phenomenal), and some very talented guys too. I got complemented on some of my marks; I pulled off a nice dive towards the end which I was very pleased with.
Could go on forever, but won't! That's it! Easter Camp updates over! Well done to anyone who read them all all the way through. Hi to Gemma, btw, who is one of my 'anonymous' readers (except that I've named her now) who asked me about the update last Sunday, so not only was reading but possibly even interested! Amazing! Hi!
Catcha
Schnook