More Craziness

Monday 5th October
Breakfast at 7:30. Alarm went off at 7. Snooze went off at 7:05 Dragged myself out of bed at 7:28. Had to wake up most of the room as well. It was good fun last night, but yet again, we’ve decided we REALLY need to go to bed earlier.

Not too tired, but I think it is going to be a struggle to stay awake through some lectures.

Speaking of lectures: we had two on a walk through the Old Testament. It’s basically an overview of the OT, looking at some of the major characters and events so that we can see how everything fits together chronologically, geographically, contextually etc. The general message at the beginning was: you don’t have to write anything. Which actually turned out to be pretty accurate! OK, I took some notes and Paul took the mickey out of the folks who were, but never mind! He’s teaching us words and actions to remember the major points in the Bible. In two 45 minute sessions, we managed to get through an introduction, Genesis and up to the ten plagues in Exodus. Not bad going, eh?

Oh, there was an announcement that since we’d done swing dancing, they were going to teach us Klassikal (sic) ballet, one which had been choreographed by Marco Tomass (Capernwray MD). This announcement was delivered by Trevor Patterson (pastoral worker) whilst wearing one of those inflatable sumo suits, a pink paper tutu with gold skirt and a crown complete with wig. The Irish really do have a fantastic sense of humour!!

Went with Liesbeth up the tower because we finally managed to get the key on a day when that mythical glowing orb that freaks me out was in the sky. The views were as wonderful as I remember. Checked the post and I’ve been invited out to afternoon tea tomorrow at Viv Patterson’s – she’s one of the two pastoral workers. She’s having all the girls and age groups round at some point or other, but it should be fun. She was very encouraging after I stood up on the first Sunday and said I wanted to be a writer, so I’m looking forward to that.

We had a taster session by an(other!) Irishman called Sean . . . didn’t quite catch his surname. He’s doing an optional series of lectures on Christianity in relation to other religions or something like that. They’re optional but after next week we need to decide whether or not to commit to them. Based on the taster session – which was called “There’s a Jedi in our spare room” – I think I’ll probably be committing to the series.

The day finished with two more lectures on the Old Testament. We finished at the end of the Book of Ruth but that was actually pretty frustrating because the action for Ruth also includes another character which Paul is going to tell us about tomorrow; so each time we ran through the actions, we’d all be very enthusiastic but then we’d get to Ruth and come up short. Still, it’s an incentive to go back tomorrow, I suppose!

Managed to get a reasonably early night – I think the trick is to turn the light off. That’s a pretty good hint to anyone coming in what time it is! May have to try it in future but we’ll see how we go. Holly managed to get locked in the castle again! She keeps phoning home but staying there past lock-up so she has to hunt around trying to find either someone or a door that hasn’t been done yet. I am so glad I’m in the same time zone as the peeps I phone.