Guidepost - Day 4

The second to last day kicked off much the same as the rest, apart from me getting up earlier again because I needed to wash my hair and tidy my room because I had friends coming around later that day. I must admit that over the course of the week, my room has been falling further and further into disarray, with my frantic multiple outfit changes and rushing from day to night activities with only the time to write a blog post in-between, so it felt good to tidy things up and sort out my dirty washing and just make things a lot nicer and neater again.

I then set off for guidepost a little earlier than usual because my friend had to get there early and was lonely. However it was lucky I did because our group leader was a little late arriving and so we barely had time to organise the workbooks and everything before the children came.

The pray and prepare session that day was again taken by a local priest, but I don't know what it is about these services, I can never seem to remember what the talk was about or what the point was. Which I guess is really bad, considering that these are important, but then again I do have a very busy day right afterwards!

Today I was standing outside collecting the children in, but a couple of friends in a different group were also doing this so I didn't get too lonely. Also, where we stood, we were in a pretty perfect position to hear the music from the ark tent and from the main tent, so we all had a great time dancing along to all of the songs.

The day started and today we watched the two girls that were planning this party have a falling out because one of them wasn't doing any work to help prepare for the party. However at this point I was fussing over some latecomers, so I didn't really hear the point of this again.

We were soon out the door and off to craft where the children were making puppets. They started by just making plain scarecrow puppets on a person shaped cut-out to which they added clothes and hair and a hat and then decorated very vigorously. They then made another dog puppet out of a Muller corner yoghurt pot, where the large section had the eyes and nose and then the smaller section was the chin and the gap between the two was the mouth. It's quite hard to explain, but it ended up that when the children put their fingers into the yoghurt sections, the could make the dog talk by moving the sections.

After craft it was back to the ark tent for bible studies again, although we got there a little bit early and so entertained ourselves outside by playing duck duck goose. Got to say though, I am very offended that I wasn't chosen! In bible studies that day we were looking at the last supper, the crucifixion and the resurrection, which is probably the most famous story in the Christian faith - except perhaps Christmas!

The crucifixion and resurrection can sometimes be quite a difficult topic for children, but everyone seemed ok and no one appeared to get particularly upset. We then sang one of my all time favourite guidepost songs that we hadn't yet sang this year. Group assistants were invited up on stage to dance, so I went with my friend Mylie and we had a great time!

After that it was then time for drama where today we saw the good knights finally catch up with the bad knight where he had captured the princess and rescue her before the good knight and the bad knight engaged in an immense duel to find a winner. It had a cliff hanger ending with the good knight standing over the bad knight telling him to surrender. Ooh I just can't wait to find out what's going to happen!

After drama it was lunch where I actually got to have quite a peaceful time for once, only making one toilet trip the entire time! However, there was something today that made all of the children very restless. I don't know whether it was the weather of the fact that it was the fourth day or what it was, but our group of really good enthusiastic but quiet children were crawling all over the place, refusing to sit still and being very loud. Keeping them all together was like trying to keep an armful of ferrets. A bizarre metaphor I grant you, but it was what popped into my head!

Then today, instead of having the usual story and nap time, the children sat down to watch some short sketches performed by the absolutely fabulous Rise theatre group, who were a Christian theatre company. They did one about penguins, one happiness-fitness regime thing, and one about the difference of having a lot and being spoilt and having a little and being grateful.

After this it was time for games during which I spent some of my time running around frantically looking for a child who's parent had come early to pick them up and the rest of the time playing my normal game of catch with my friends and some kids. I've got to say though, and witnesses will back me up with this, I made some pretty spectacular catches, including leaping up in the air and catching with one hand. And believe me, that ain't normal for me!

We then went back into the ark tent for the final part of the day. As we were still talking about the crucifixion, the children each had a little picture of a cross to colour in which will all be attached to a very large model of a cross to make a beautiful sculpture creation covered with the children's artwork to show the beauty and wonder of the resurrection.

It was then time for the daily quiz with the group leaders being put in danger of being pied in the face. Unfortunately our group got the question wrong and so our poor group leader got pied in the face for the third day in a row! Fingers crossed that she may finally get a day off tomorrow!

It was then time for the daily gunging. Today the competition was a joke-off to see who could tell the funniest joke. They then had a competition to see who could gather clothes from around the tent and put them on. Unfortunately, it had been rigged so that the band member who was competing couldn't collect all of his items of clothing and therefore had to be gunged. Today the gunge was made up of rice pudding and bits of cake and things like that - so I'm sure it tasted lovely!

After that it was the usual end-of-the-day rush where we struggled to get everyone's crafts and lunches and everything they needed back to them before their parents came to collect them, but we got there in the end!

The relax and reflect session that day heard from the special guests which included the head techy techy person (did you know there are 193 lightbulbs on site), and the lead dancer on stage who does the actions for all of the children to follow.

I'm sorry this is coming a little late, I had some friends around because I am very occasionally sociable and I didn't really have the time to write!