Team RYLA 06 - Saturday - Camp Arrival
Alrighty, well, I've been essaying this blog for a while and now i think i'm up to about 50,000 words. It's a tad belated so what i've decided to do, instead of not writing, i'll blog it in a day by day process. So for every day that i blog this week, will be about one whole day of camp RYLA. It's the only way i think this blog is going to be blogged. Like one of my new friends from RYLA, procrastination is my middle name!
Soooo.....
Neil Gonslavez is the creator of "Team RYLA 06" and apparently he wants jackets to be made with this slogan strewn across the back of it.
So i thought it was a good title for a blog and seeing as though i haven't blogged for awhile, i may as well blog about the first day we arrived for the RYLA 2006 experience, enjoy the (week's long) ride.....
It was an extremely early morning on January 28th when 7 of us, Alan Hamad, Luke Nowell, Sarah Campbell, Anita Crown, Kylie Unicomb, Mary Taouk and myself set off on our trek to a camp called RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award) along with 3, tightly crammed/squished, Rotarian men in the front seat, which was a sight in itself.
None of us knew exactly what to expect and, in fact, many of us didn't want to even be going at all but nonetheless there we sat, all thrown in together in a little white mini van heading to Stanwell Tops. Most of us knew each other but for Mary and Alan, it was a great 'getting to know you' trip down.
Once we arrived we registered, threw our things in the rooms we were allocated and headed back for the official opening (ahhh i can still imagine it as if for the very first time) and wasn't the official opening quite something. Many people hadn't even been to a Rotary meeting let alone the formalities of camp opening.....
Alot of us who were set to endure the week of camp were amused and fidgety, some wondering what the hell they'd got themselves into as we sat in front of a panel of "camp counsellors", camp directors and official Rotary people.
After we'd been welcomed into our little commune for the week, we then moved all the chairs and started playing games and things, which was a nice start. Very quickly we became acquainted with the people we'd get to know intimately during the course of the week. The first game we played was a 'who can do what' game - i'm guessing this was to display the different talents various people had and sort of to get to know each other better....i whistled loudly which seemed to draw people's attention towards me as you had to mark off your page who could do what. One of the talents we had to find was someone who could make the noise of a bunyip... ?????..... what the???
For the duration of the week we were all assigned to discussion groups which, if it was a Christian camp, which it wasn't, would most likely have been called biblestudy groups, which they weren't. So we set about our first activity in our discussion groups. What we had to do was present to the rest of RYLA what the name of our group was and introduce each member of the group, either by their interest or name or whatever.
And so that's how group SAKADALLA came to fruition. We rocked the house with our unprepared cheer leading squad. We came up with the name by creating an acronymn (i think that's what it's called) of our names. Sammie, Adam, Kandis, Adrian, Daniel, Alexandra, Liljana, Liz and myself. That was interesting.
I very much enjoyed the "Priceless" group, it was such a creative, awesome idea and has obviously stuck in my head, they each talked about an expensive obsession they had and then talked about the RYLA experience as being....you guessed it...priceless. i hardly remember any other ones except for the one where they acted out something about their personalities....all i remember was Anita sneezing alot....
That afternoon we had Greg Meyer speak to us. Yep, he was good, very animated. A yankee but not proud of that.....weird....but good speaker. We had to do an excercise with another RYLArian and say stuff like who are you and keep repeating it and why we were at RYLA and what we wanted to get out of it - you know the deal....anyway, i partnered up with a guy called Blake, absolutely lovely fellow, smile from ear to ear, as wide as the ocean. Now i'm really awkward with one on one conversations especially with someone i don't know from a kellog's cornflake! So we got started on the activity and as expected it was uncomfortable but then we both realised we were both passionate Christians and so had a completely different outlook on life and what we wanted to get out of it and RYLA. It definately put a spin on the activity! This led us into a really great conversation about where we were both up to in our Jesus Journeys and low and behold, the conversation became comfortable, perhaps because we were on the same spiritual level, who knows?! I was just buzzing after that conversation, it was soooooo good to know that there were other Christians at the camp other than us Salvos. There was some sort of calming safety knowing that you were in good company.
On Saturday night, we were left to amuse ourselves until we got so tired we went to bed. It was fun and it was a great way to start getting to know people at our own pace, not so force-fed. I found some people who knew how to play 500 which was the highlight of my night. Tim, Adrian and Lianne. Lianne was my partner, so it was kind of a boys against girls game. As they say, first impressions last and these people were great!!! It was tops beating the boys too - Lianne is the best partner for a 500 hundred game, she just totally rocked the joint!!! We kicked their butts!!!
So that's Saturday, first day of camp for ya....stay tuned this week for more exhilerating RYLA camp stories (i don't care if this bores you all to tears, i'm loving reliving every moment of it as i miss it sooooooo much!!!)
Bye for now
Tink xoxo
Soooo.....
Neil Gonslavez is the creator of "Team RYLA 06" and apparently he wants jackets to be made with this slogan strewn across the back of it.
So i thought it was a good title for a blog and seeing as though i haven't blogged for awhile, i may as well blog about the first day we arrived for the RYLA 2006 experience, enjoy the (week's long) ride.....
It was an extremely early morning on January 28th when 7 of us, Alan Hamad, Luke Nowell, Sarah Campbell, Anita Crown, Kylie Unicomb, Mary Taouk and myself set off on our trek to a camp called RYLA (Rotary Youth Leadership Award) along with 3, tightly crammed/squished, Rotarian men in the front seat, which was a sight in itself.
None of us knew exactly what to expect and, in fact, many of us didn't want to even be going at all but nonetheless there we sat, all thrown in together in a little white mini van heading to Stanwell Tops. Most of us knew each other but for Mary and Alan, it was a great 'getting to know you' trip down.
Once we arrived we registered, threw our things in the rooms we were allocated and headed back for the official opening (ahhh i can still imagine it as if for the very first time) and wasn't the official opening quite something. Many people hadn't even been to a Rotary meeting let alone the formalities of camp opening.....
Alot of us who were set to endure the week of camp were amused and fidgety, some wondering what the hell they'd got themselves into as we sat in front of a panel of "camp counsellors", camp directors and official Rotary people.
After we'd been welcomed into our little commune for the week, we then moved all the chairs and started playing games and things, which was a nice start. Very quickly we became acquainted with the people we'd get to know intimately during the course of the week. The first game we played was a 'who can do what' game - i'm guessing this was to display the different talents various people had and sort of to get to know each other better....i whistled loudly which seemed to draw people's attention towards me as you had to mark off your page who could do what. One of the talents we had to find was someone who could make the noise of a bunyip... ?????..... what the???
For the duration of the week we were all assigned to discussion groups which, if it was a Christian camp, which it wasn't, would most likely have been called biblestudy groups, which they weren't. So we set about our first activity in our discussion groups. What we had to do was present to the rest of RYLA what the name of our group was and introduce each member of the group, either by their interest or name or whatever.
And so that's how group SAKADALLA came to fruition. We rocked the house with our unprepared cheer leading squad. We came up with the name by creating an acronymn (i think that's what it's called) of our names. Sammie, Adam, Kandis, Adrian, Daniel, Alexandra, Liljana, Liz and myself. That was interesting.
I very much enjoyed the "Priceless" group, it was such a creative, awesome idea and has obviously stuck in my head, they each talked about an expensive obsession they had and then talked about the RYLA experience as being....you guessed it...priceless. i hardly remember any other ones except for the one where they acted out something about their personalities....all i remember was Anita sneezing alot....
That afternoon we had Greg Meyer speak to us. Yep, he was good, very animated. A yankee but not proud of that.....weird....but good speaker. We had to do an excercise with another RYLArian and say stuff like who are you and keep repeating it and why we were at RYLA and what we wanted to get out of it - you know the deal....anyway, i partnered up with a guy called Blake, absolutely lovely fellow, smile from ear to ear, as wide as the ocean. Now i'm really awkward with one on one conversations especially with someone i don't know from a kellog's cornflake! So we got started on the activity and as expected it was uncomfortable but then we both realised we were both passionate Christians and so had a completely different outlook on life and what we wanted to get out of it and RYLA. It definately put a spin on the activity! This led us into a really great conversation about where we were both up to in our Jesus Journeys and low and behold, the conversation became comfortable, perhaps because we were on the same spiritual level, who knows?! I was just buzzing after that conversation, it was soooooo good to know that there were other Christians at the camp other than us Salvos. There was some sort of calming safety knowing that you were in good company.
On Saturday night, we were left to amuse ourselves until we got so tired we went to bed. It was fun and it was a great way to start getting to know people at our own pace, not so force-fed. I found some people who knew how to play 500 which was the highlight of my night. Tim, Adrian and Lianne. Lianne was my partner, so it was kind of a boys against girls game. As they say, first impressions last and these people were great!!! It was tops beating the boys too - Lianne is the best partner for a 500 hundred game, she just totally rocked the joint!!! We kicked their butts!!!
So that's Saturday, first day of camp for ya....stay tuned this week for more exhilerating RYLA camp stories (i don't care if this bores you all to tears, i'm loving reliving every moment of it as i miss it sooooooo much!!!)
Bye for now
Tink xoxo
posted by Unknown at
Monday, February 27, 2006
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home