Schoolies 05

I've got my glass of milk (hooray...back to trim!!!! No more full cream ;-) and iTunes playing my favourite....um...tunes. Anyway.

Between my journal, my schoolies folder and my memory, I will begin to tell you the story of schoolies 2005. Later in the week (or next week, depending) you may get to see some photos.

For now I'll just tell you some random bits and pieces, rather than try to recount things day by day.

IMPORTANT THING THAT STUCK WITH ME THROUGHOUT SCHOOLIES:

On the first day Lindsay was running a prayer session and gave us some verses to read. 1 Corinthians 2:1-5 stuck with me:

When I came to you, brothers, I did not come with eloquence or superior wisdom as I proclaimed to you the testimony about God. For I resolved to know nothing while I was with you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. I came to you in weakness and fear, and with much trembling. My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit's power, so that your faith might not rest on men's wisdom, but on God's power.

Just reminded me that it's not about how well I explain it - it's the Spirit working through me that will bring people to Christ. So that was good :-)

TOILETS

I may as well tell my toilet stories here, since I have one written down for the first night. In the headquarters (which is where we sign in as schoolies volunteers for the first week - also where they give us free juice, Red Bull and doughnuts!), we found 'gender-confused' toilets. The men's room had a sign that said 'ladies' on it and the ladies had a 'men's' sign on it. What the ?!?! This was because the men's room had 2 cubicles and the ladies (apparently) only had one. But it was a bit worrying on the first night - which toilet am I supposed to go into?!

Once again, the spaceport toilets were there. This time I couldn't revert to the Random Button Press method, since there was only one button to press. So it was easier. Maximum use time was once again 10 minutes, but I discovered that the song they played was "What the World Needs Now".

TIM MULLER

He needs his own section. (Tim was one of the guys on our team - he sometimes comes to my church and is the cousin of one of the dudes in our music team - but anyway.....)

Tim visited the spaceport toilets and came out absolutely stunned.
"They're crazy!" he exclaimed. He then proceeded to imitate the toilet. "Welcome to Doing A Poo. Please enjoy your experience. You have ten minutes."

This little speech made me laugh. Lisa and I composed a song based on his speech and it goes like this:

Welcome to doing a poo-oo-oo
We really hope that you-oo-oo
Enjoy your stay
Please don't go away
And remove the toilet paper from your shoe-oo-oo

*That reminds me - Carla wrote a poem once about going to the toilet. You should ask her for it - it was funny! :-)*

Okay, toilet comments over now. Back to Tim.

He has a Peugeot. (Is that how you spell it?) And the horn is crazy! It's this high-pitched, woosy 'beep!' Anyway, I went to Australia Fair (shopping centre near where we were staying) with Tim, Rob, Krystle and Marika (other street chaplains) in Tim's car. Rob couldn't resist beeping everyone in our path! And if Tim wasn't screaming at Rob to cut it out, he was beeping people who cut in on him. (Gold Coast drivers cut in a lot) I laughed all the way there and all the way home.

And when we got back, Krystle's phone rang and he was holding it, so he picked it up and said, "Hello, Krystle speaking." The guy on the other end hung up!

One day he left his car doors open in the carpark of the church we were staying at (probably to air it out). Hee hee - then I went crazy with the horn!!! Until he came running out to get me....and then Lisa went for it! Yeah Lisa!

LISA

Was on the leadership team with me :-) I'm so glad she was there :-) She stayed up till about 4.30am one morning cos I needed to talk. She drove us everywhere. She let me borrow her CD's.

She had an accident in the surf during our beach day where she hurt her nose and had to go to hospital :-( That was sad. But she took it really well and didn't let it get her down. The only time I heard her talk about it after that was when some schoolie said to her, "Your eyes are black and your nose is swollen!" and began POKING HER IN THE FACE :-s Hello?!

She also gave us all our own pet rocks! (it was part of the talk she did about how we need to treat people) My rock is known as Ishi the Second - 'ishi' meaning 'stone' in Japanese, and the second because I once had a pet rock called Ishi, but lost him. :-s He probably starved to death.

We also had a prank planned. Actually we've had it planned for ages. It might happen one day. And she had a second one planned....she brought confetti and we were going to put it in the boys' beds......but we never got time. Oh well, next year maybe?


PRANKS

Damien brought a toy dog called Rufus. When we meet a schoolie and get their details we have to put their details on a form so we can follow them up. Luke threatened to chop up Rufus if we didn't put enough follow-up forms in. Then Rufus was kidnapped!!!! (No, it wasn't Luke)
And THEN someone staged his death!!!! There was a death threat in Damien's encourageogram box (more on that later) and bits of a stuffed toy on a chair. We had to put police tape (i.e. masking tape with 'Crime Scene. Police. Do not cross' written on it) around the area.
And someone (no names mentioned) wrote this huge code in order to figure out where Rufus was. But guess what? By the time they found the last clue to get him, someone had already got there first and taken him again! So the people who played the first prank (kidnapping Rufus) got pranked! Aargh! It was crazy!

*Rufus turned up on the last day*
*And we got a lot of follow up forms in*

ENCOURAGEOGRAMS

Last year we had a thing called 'Happygrams'. This was a similar idea - everyone had a soapbox with their name on it. During the day you could write someone an encouraging note and put it in their box. I read mine last night, they were awesome :-)

THE STREETS

This is going to need a whole post of its own, so that'll be the next post.

But on the streets, we heard lots of.....

PICK UP LINES

"Yellow yellow. Does saying the colour of your shirt turn you on?" (I don't know how this supposed to be funny....or even effective)

Beth walks past someone who is bent over, feeling sick. "Are you alright?"
He looks up. "No. But you are!"

A guy sees my street chaplaincy shirt. "Missing peace? I'm missing you."

"My friend's really shy and doesn't want to ask you. Can I get your number?"

"I'm your missing piece" (while attempting to make himself into the shape of a jigsaw puzzle piece)

"Are you Jamaican? Cos jamaican me crazy."

"Are you tired? Cos you've been running through my head all day."

"There's no stars in the sky tonight cos God took them all and put them in your eyes."

"Are you a volunteer? I'm volunteering to be with you."

"My mum gave me 40 cents for this holiday and I'm going to use it to call her and tell her I'm in love with you."

"You guys give mouth to mouth, hey. I'm going to drop to the floor right now."

TREV G'S PICK UP LINE:

I've eaten koala, but it wasn't as sweet as you.

(Correct me if I've misquoted you Trev)

DAMIEN'S PICK UP LINE:

You're like a good book - I just can't keep away from you.

Good stuff guys, keep practising :-p


DATE NIGHT

Once again I was in the best group ;-) Drew, Lindsay, Darcy and Trev G. They wore these suit jackets over matching blue shirts with jeans and thongs.....hey, they looked pretty classy! And took us to a photo place where they dress you up and make it look like an old-time photo. So we were all dressed as though we'd stepped straight out of Gone with the Wind. (Great book, btw)
Trev was looking particularly Rhett Butler-esque, and Marika would have made a great Scarlett O'Hara. (They're characters from the book - okay, since Gone with the Wind is not the most widely read book at the moment I'll quit talking about it)

Then we went to a park and had a barbeque for tea, which was awesome :-) Good cooking guys. There was also a storm (which the guys said they'd organised by having a word to the Big Man Upstairs). We went to a park for dessert, and some of us went for a walk on the beach. Hee hee - coming back I decided to walk backwards so I could still watch the storm. Trev kind of tried to trip me up a bit - unfortunately I was too unco to avoid it and fell over in front of everyone! That was funny :-)

PERSONALITIES

We spent time trying to figure out each other's personalities. Marika and I discovered we've got a similar personality. Actually so do Lisa and I for that matter. Drew and I discovered we're almost the exact opposite of each other (well, according to the Myers-Briggs personality test, which he explained really well). There's the DISC (DISK?) model -and I can't remember what any of it stands for - but you're either introverted & people oriented, extroverted & people oriented, introverted & task oriented or extroverted & task oriented.

No real personality clashes - everyone got on quite well for the most part. And if we needed space, I think we all took it. (I know I did!)

SPACE

We should have warned everyone before we left, but I think that at some point everyone cries on schoolies. I'm not sure about the guys - they probably come close, if they don't - but I know that most of us girls cried at some point, whether we just had tears streaming down our cheeks in front of everyone, or whether we went somewhere and hid out for awhile.

Time for a new post or this one will get too long to read!