Y.C.
Wow! I would have updated last night, but we got home at around 12:30, so I couldn't. Anyway, Youth Conference. Ah! So much fun. Okay:
Day one: We go to Iowa (2 hour drive) park thing and get signed in and everything, just hanging out for a while. Then we played this funny games. Actually, I didn't get to play any of the games except the one that I had to help teach (elbow tag.. tell me if you don't know what it is and I'll explain). So everyone was all hot and sweaty and gross because we've been out there all day in 100 degree weather and 5000000% humidity and yeah. Ick. Anyway, they we all (370-ish) crowded around the pavilion thingy and sat on the ground or on picnic tables designed sort of like an amphitheatre and listened to people sing a sound about "The 12 things not to do at Youth Conference" (guess what music that was put to, especially considering the theme was 'Christmas in July'...). People talked, too, but we couldn't really hear them...at all. Oh well. It was funny because we were all crowded and stuff so people were just sitting on the picnic tables, including my bud Jaron, who've I've mentioned before in this blog, preventing me from seeing anything. Funny kid. 8) Then we went to our "host's homes" which are just places where people volunteered to keep around 8-10 youth or so at their houses and provide them with rooms, showers, and food. I tried to go to sleep right away, which didn't happen too easily considering the other people staying there were 7 other girls...but I fell asleep for a few hours, then woke up at midnight to the other girls talking loudly and puting in a movie. Yes, I was shocked too. Watching a movie at 12:00???? Crazy. But I've now decided that Coach Carter is a pretty good movie. We ended up talking after that anyway and I finally fell asleep around 4 or 4:30, then had to be woken up at 6:30. Very unpleasant, but bearable.
Day two: We did a service project today for the Corps of something... I can't remember, but I get it later. Our group pulled a ton of weeds around these flowers for a while (next to the nastiest, mossiest, blackest lake I had ever seen or imagined.. grossnes..) just to find out that we had been pulling in the wrong spot. It wouldn't have been so bad that we had to move spots, but the weeds that we had to pull out now were - not kidding or exagerating - around 2-3 feet high. Ugh. So yeah, it was alright I guess. It was hotter than the day before, and we were all ickier than the day before, but this day we got to go to Wacky Waters Park for FIVE HOURS. AH! When I first read that I almost died because I knew I was going to get so superbly sunburnt it wasn't even going to be funny. But actually, I had a really great time. We were first got there and ate some awesome pizza, I went to the wave pool (ginormous!) with Patrick and Todd, and by the time we actually got used to the water and everything and had some fun with that, it was already a half-hour in, but we decided to go look around the park. I hung out with different people throughout the day, but near the end (last hour or half-hour) I was hanging out with Jaron and Mark, and they were trying to get me to go down this GIANT SCARY slide, which I had sworn not to go on. I'm very clostraphobic, and SUPER afraid of heights, and when I had tried going on the slide earlier that day with them and some others, I almost fainted half way up so I had to go back down. This time I just kept telling them that I was going to die it I went up there, but they wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, let alone 'no way, I'll die'. So Jaron grabbed two of those foam things that you ride down the slides with and he grabbed my hand and said "I'll hold your hand the whole way up, okay? I won't let you fall, alright?" And I just mumbled an agreement, sort of in a shock about the whole thing, and remembering what happened last time. When we got up to the spot that was ultra scary to me, I started squeezing his hand uber tight, and I hope I didn't hurt him or anything (probably didn't, but I still feel bad). I felt like a psych-patient or something because I felt weird and Jaron was trying to calm me down by asking me questions about my brother (who he's buds with) and school and stuff. But I did it! I went down that slide! I might have screamed a lot of the way down, but I succeeded! Oh yes. 8) Well, after Wacky Waters we went back to our host's homes and started getting ready for the 'fireside' and dance that night. I curled my hair and I wore my twirly skirt and my princess shoes and I felt pretty good. (Also, for the first time in my life, I painted my nails and they actually looked alright!!! Amazing.) When everyone got settled into the chapel area and stuff, the fireside began (a fireside is just a sort of fun in a weird way thing where usually a speaker comes and shares a spiritual message and shares thoughts and stuff. it's cool) and I was surprised when we found out that Jericho Road was coming to give us a musical fireside. Well, 3/4 people from Jericho Road. FYI, Jericho Road is a Christian Rock singing group of 4 guys, and they are cool. Anyway, that fireside was really neat, and now... THE EVENT OF THE EVENING! The Dance!! The dance itself was pretty fun, but the music pretty much sucked. They would play songs out of the 80s, then about 3 slow songs in a row, which was annoying. Okay, apart from the Slides and the Macarena, they played country songs, songs from the 80s, and then SUPER old songs too. Gross. But, I enjoyed it a ton. OH gosh, something funny but rather disturbing!: I was dancing with Todd (slow dance, which are basically having a 1-on-1 conversation while moving around...usually, and in this case, it was) and well, I guess I'll have to go back farther. We all got seperated during one of the slow dances, so Jaron and I decided to go and get some water and look around for people. We went out into the hallway to the little water fountain, but it was gross and there was a huge line, so we went down to the other hallway looking for a nicer fountain and we found one, with no line, so we got our drinks and hung out a while, then went back into the dance place to look for more people. We sat down by a girl named Jessica who was being a recluse and not dancing at all, and after a while we got her to dance, then when we all did the macarena (hahahahaha!! fun) Todd and some other people found us again. A slow song came on and I danced with Todd, and I'm back to where I first began with this thought. I couldn't tell if he was teasing or being serious, but he asked where Jaron and I went and when I told him he was like, "Ooohhh, getting a drink of water..." You know what he meant, like we were doing something else! I started blushing really bad and telling him that NOTHING happened! I was so embarrassed. Most of all I couldn't believe Todd, of all people, would say something like that. I'm pretty shy and stuff, so I was practially blushing for the rest of the night, I think people just couldn't tell because I was sunburnt on my face. Geez. I'm not planning on "officially" dating in the church like that (not LIKE that, you know) until I'm 16 (DECEMBER!! YAY!!) and I thought he knew that. Pfftt. Stinky. The dance ended at midnight, which was cool, 'cause I felt like Cinderella for a few moments when I ran outside in my princess shoes. That night we all fell right to sleep after a snack. Wonderful day.
Day three: I have to admit that I was grumpy that day. Nasty grumpy. Nasty hadn't-had-enough-sleep grumpy. I tried to hide it, but I was sore, and tired, and cold, and looking toward a day where we where going to be in the same building for.. about 9 hours. Ick. In fact, I sat in about the same spot the entire time. It was fun having paper convos with people and falling asleep during the talks (watching people fall into funny positions when they slept through the talks), even though that sounds weird. I liked the talks, but I was really bored, so I basically watched Jaron knit (yes, he's cool because he knits) in the row in front of ours while I leaned against the wall and tried to fall asleep. It was like this the whole day until dinner, when everyone was starting to get a little 'sleep-happy' (the affects of being sleep deprived). We were doing stupid and random things all through dinner, and then Todd, Jaron, Mark, and I (I think there were some others, but I can't remember) went into the chapel for the talk from retired NBA star/convert to LDS Baily (can't remember his first name!) from the Utah Jazz. So we sat down, but we had no hymnals, and I thought we were probably going to have to sing, so I asked Todd if he would go get us some hymnals from the stack. He came back with a few and passed them out to every other person, and I hear Jaron say, "Hymnos?". I looked over and saw, to my great surprise, that the hymnal was all in Spanish!! In fact, it came to everyone's realization that all the hymnals Todd got were in Spanish! We laughed for about 5 minutes straight. Hilarious! Then Jaron and I decided to see what songs we could recognize and he sang/read some lines of a few in Spanish. After that, all the people left and we started off for the Jericho Road concert at Augustana College. The leaders told us that we didn't have time to change clothes in the church, so, us girls in our giant bus of a van, decided to just change on the way. Oh, we are clever. (FYI, I loved my outfit. I had been waiting to wear the jacket that I did for a while to the perfect event, and it happened. Fun!) I'll explain about the concert later, I guess, because this entry is already (probably) longer than it should be, and much longer than I thought it would be. So, yeah.
I had the most awesome time of my life, and I can't wait 'til I get to go next year!! 8)!!
(Also, I know I mispelled a lot of things.. okay, a TON of things, but I don't care!)
Day one: We go to Iowa (2 hour drive) park thing and get signed in and everything, just hanging out for a while. Then we played this funny games. Actually, I didn't get to play any of the games except the one that I had to help teach (elbow tag.. tell me if you don't know what it is and I'll explain). So everyone was all hot and sweaty and gross because we've been out there all day in 100 degree weather and 5000000% humidity and yeah. Ick. Anyway, they we all (370-ish) crowded around the pavilion thingy and sat on the ground or on picnic tables designed sort of like an amphitheatre and listened to people sing a sound about "The 12 things not to do at Youth Conference" (guess what music that was put to, especially considering the theme was 'Christmas in July'...). People talked, too, but we couldn't really hear them...at all. Oh well. It was funny because we were all crowded and stuff so people were just sitting on the picnic tables, including my bud Jaron, who've I've mentioned before in this blog, preventing me from seeing anything. Funny kid. 8) Then we went to our "host's homes" which are just places where people volunteered to keep around 8-10 youth or so at their houses and provide them with rooms, showers, and food. I tried to go to sleep right away, which didn't happen too easily considering the other people staying there were 7 other girls...but I fell asleep for a few hours, then woke up at midnight to the other girls talking loudly and puting in a movie. Yes, I was shocked too. Watching a movie at 12:00???? Crazy. But I've now decided that Coach Carter is a pretty good movie. We ended up talking after that anyway and I finally fell asleep around 4 or 4:30, then had to be woken up at 6:30. Very unpleasant, but bearable.
Day two: We did a service project today for the Corps of something... I can't remember, but I get it later. Our group pulled a ton of weeds around these flowers for a while (next to the nastiest, mossiest, blackest lake I had ever seen or imagined.. grossnes..) just to find out that we had been pulling in the wrong spot. It wouldn't have been so bad that we had to move spots, but the weeds that we had to pull out now were - not kidding or exagerating - around 2-3 feet high. Ugh. So yeah, it was alright I guess. It was hotter than the day before, and we were all ickier than the day before, but this day we got to go to Wacky Waters Park for FIVE HOURS. AH! When I first read that I almost died because I knew I was going to get so superbly sunburnt it wasn't even going to be funny. But actually, I had a really great time. We were first got there and ate some awesome pizza, I went to the wave pool (ginormous!) with Patrick and Todd, and by the time we actually got used to the water and everything and had some fun with that, it was already a half-hour in, but we decided to go look around the park. I hung out with different people throughout the day, but near the end (last hour or half-hour) I was hanging out with Jaron and Mark, and they were trying to get me to go down this GIANT SCARY slide, which I had sworn not to go on. I'm very clostraphobic, and SUPER afraid of heights, and when I had tried going on the slide earlier that day with them and some others, I almost fainted half way up so I had to go back down. This time I just kept telling them that I was going to die it I went up there, but they wouldn't take 'no' for an answer, let alone 'no way, I'll die'. So Jaron grabbed two of those foam things that you ride down the slides with and he grabbed my hand and said "I'll hold your hand the whole way up, okay? I won't let you fall, alright?" And I just mumbled an agreement, sort of in a shock about the whole thing, and remembering what happened last time. When we got up to the spot that was ultra scary to me, I started squeezing his hand uber tight, and I hope I didn't hurt him or anything (probably didn't, but I still feel bad). I felt like a psych-patient or something because I felt weird and Jaron was trying to calm me down by asking me questions about my brother (who he's buds with) and school and stuff. But I did it! I went down that slide! I might have screamed a lot of the way down, but I succeeded! Oh yes. 8) Well, after Wacky Waters we went back to our host's homes and started getting ready for the 'fireside' and dance that night. I curled my hair and I wore my twirly skirt and my princess shoes and I felt pretty good. (Also, for the first time in my life, I painted my nails and they actually looked alright!!! Amazing.) When everyone got settled into the chapel area and stuff, the fireside began (a fireside is just a sort of fun in a weird way thing where usually a speaker comes and shares a spiritual message and shares thoughts and stuff. it's cool) and I was surprised when we found out that Jericho Road was coming to give us a musical fireside. Well, 3/4 people from Jericho Road. FYI, Jericho Road is a Christian Rock singing group of 4 guys, and they are cool. Anyway, that fireside was really neat, and now... THE EVENT OF THE EVENING! The Dance!! The dance itself was pretty fun, but the music pretty much sucked. They would play songs out of the 80s, then about 3 slow songs in a row, which was annoying. Okay, apart from the Slides and the Macarena, they played country songs, songs from the 80s, and then SUPER old songs too. Gross. But, I enjoyed it a ton. OH gosh, something funny but rather disturbing!: I was dancing with Todd (slow dance, which are basically having a 1-on-1 conversation while moving around...usually, and in this case, it was) and well, I guess I'll have to go back farther. We all got seperated during one of the slow dances, so Jaron and I decided to go and get some water and look around for people. We went out into the hallway to the little water fountain, but it was gross and there was a huge line, so we went down to the other hallway looking for a nicer fountain and we found one, with no line, so we got our drinks and hung out a while, then went back into the dance place to look for more people. We sat down by a girl named Jessica who was being a recluse and not dancing at all, and after a while we got her to dance, then when we all did the macarena (hahahahaha!! fun) Todd and some other people found us again. A slow song came on and I danced with Todd, and I'm back to where I first began with this thought. I couldn't tell if he was teasing or being serious, but he asked where Jaron and I went and when I told him he was like, "Ooohhh, getting a drink of water..." You know what he meant, like we were doing something else! I started blushing really bad and telling him that NOTHING happened! I was so embarrassed. Most of all I couldn't believe Todd, of all people, would say something like that. I'm pretty shy and stuff, so I was practially blushing for the rest of the night, I think people just couldn't tell because I was sunburnt on my face. Geez. I'm not planning on "officially" dating in the church like that (not LIKE that, you know) until I'm 16 (DECEMBER!! YAY!!) and I thought he knew that. Pfftt. Stinky. The dance ended at midnight, which was cool, 'cause I felt like Cinderella for a few moments when I ran outside in my princess shoes. That night we all fell right to sleep after a snack. Wonderful day.
Day three: I have to admit that I was grumpy that day. Nasty grumpy. Nasty hadn't-had-enough-sleep grumpy. I tried to hide it, but I was sore, and tired, and cold, and looking toward a day where we where going to be in the same building for.. about 9 hours. Ick. In fact, I sat in about the same spot the entire time. It was fun having paper convos with people and falling asleep during the talks (watching people fall into funny positions when they slept through the talks), even though that sounds weird. I liked the talks, but I was really bored, so I basically watched Jaron knit (yes, he's cool because he knits) in the row in front of ours while I leaned against the wall and tried to fall asleep. It was like this the whole day until dinner, when everyone was starting to get a little 'sleep-happy' (the affects of being sleep deprived). We were doing stupid and random things all through dinner, and then Todd, Jaron, Mark, and I (I think there were some others, but I can't remember) went into the chapel for the talk from retired NBA star/convert to LDS Baily (can't remember his first name!) from the Utah Jazz. So we sat down, but we had no hymnals, and I thought we were probably going to have to sing, so I asked Todd if he would go get us some hymnals from the stack. He came back with a few and passed them out to every other person, and I hear Jaron say, "Hymnos?". I looked over and saw, to my great surprise, that the hymnal was all in Spanish!! In fact, it came to everyone's realization that all the hymnals Todd got were in Spanish! We laughed for about 5 minutes straight. Hilarious! Then Jaron and I decided to see what songs we could recognize and he sang/read some lines of a few in Spanish. After that, all the people left and we started off for the Jericho Road concert at Augustana College. The leaders told us that we didn't have time to change clothes in the church, so, us girls in our giant bus of a van, decided to just change on the way. Oh, we are clever. (FYI, I loved my outfit. I had been waiting to wear the jacket that I did for a while to the perfect event, and it happened. Fun!) I'll explain about the concert later, I guess, because this entry is already (probably) longer than it should be, and much longer than I thought it would be. So, yeah.
I had the most awesome time of my life, and I can't wait 'til I get to go next year!! 8)!!
(Also, I know I mispelled a lot of things.. okay, a TON of things, but I don't care!)