Journal #6 Tuesday August 18, 2009 (This journal is about August 17th)

Today was in short, awesome. Astounding. Better than I could have ever imagined. So much happened today that I can’t even begin to describe, but, I will attempt at getting in as much as I can, with my limited time and memory. The day began like the others, I awoke feeling sweaty and gross in the basement of our conference house, and promptly went back to sleep until I could wait no longer and breakfast was being served. Breakfast was pretty meager this morning, muffins were the main course with a banana, cereal, OJ, and something else which wasn’t too appetizing. Shortly after breakfast we were ushered into our morning session on Simple Living, given by our chef Katie, Monica, as well as Sarah. Simple living, in short, is how we are supposed to be living this year. We must be attentive to those in our community and work hard in order to successfully complete this year as we should. Overall I enjoyed the presentation and found a number of things which I could take from it, which I won’t get into now.
We ended 1 hour early, and thus had some free time to work on our performance which we had yet to prepare for. We were thinking about doing some sort of choreographed dance, and since no one else had experience in instructing dance I stepped up and started choreographing some moves to Disturbia, with the initial intention of me playing the French horn at some parts (which ended up not happening). We worked pretty hard, sweated a ton, and made it happen. It was a great experience to work together as a community doing something fun and silly. At the same time it demonstrated how well we were working together to achieve a common goal. The dance routine goes something like this. Hip left, Hip Right, get low, circle hips. Thust, Thrust, R leg up and out, L leg up and out. Pony R, Step L Clap, Pony R, Pony L, Pony R, Pony L. Cross arms, X Arms, turn the key. Shimmy Front, Shimmy Back, Shimmy Front, Rainbow to R thigh. Arms to adjacent, R L up and out, L leg up and out, Grab head w. hands. Head down up L, Head down up R, Head around. Down, Arms up, Summersault, Up. Spirit Fingers walk back, Bunny hop back L, R, L, R. Chorus: Crawl 8, kick 8. Solos. It was quite awesome we were able to do this in a couple hours and have it basically ready to go at 8:45 for the talent show. After this rehearsal we went to lunch of leftovers, then had the afternoon session which discussed spirituality nights, after which we had a conversation with our communities about our own faith backgrounds and a lot of my community members were surprised to hear about my story and my own history with Christianity, and that I was not a Catholic, they felt kind of sorry for me that I had to go through their services when I had no idea what was going on. That was some condolence. After that we had a little time to work on our performance again, then we went immediately into the afternoon Olympics. All in all it was a great afternoon with a lot of competition. The first three events went poorly for the South, we lost every one of them. From the water balloon toss, to Bump, to the food eating competition, we lost each one. It wasn’t until the relay race that we began to win. At the end of the day we came out beating the North by one point, via a tie-breaker. The tie-breaker was the orange transfer game, a very intimate game if you will. An orange is passed from team member to team member using only their body and not their mouth or hands. The neck is the preferred method of transfer and it gets quite hot. There is a video of this which I’m not sure if it will be posted, I highly doubt it due to the explicit nature of the video. Anyhoo, we had our afternoon mass and yes, it was sufficiently awkward for me, and we did receive medallions, which I have lost and need to recover tomorrow. After mass we had dinner, which was amazing, BBQ themed. We didn’t have much more time to practice until the evening liturgy so we ran through it one more time. It didn’t seem like we could practice it enough. The liturgy came and went and it was time for the talent show, which I have to say was the best talent show I’ve ever been at, period. Tricia and Ryan (?) were the MC’s and they did such an amazing job. Plus every act was phenomenal. Ours went ok, we forgot the middle section where we go down and do the sommersault but it all worked out.
So now its almost time for bed, it has been a great weekend and I feel as ready as I will be for my job to start. I’m nervous, excited, terrified, and hopeful for what this upcoming year will bring for me. Well, its late and I need to rest, good night journal.