****BLOG UPDATE****

Heather Orford now has a blog. She said she'd start one if I could think of a really good name for it, so I did.

That is all.

Dancing around the world

Ok, so I didn't find this by myself (credit to Estelle Blake at Summer School) but here is a really cool video of a guy who thought he'd travel all around the world and video himself doing the same ridiculous dance in each place. So simple, yet brilliant.



(He also recently created a 2008 version, where loads of people from each country dance with him...)

On a completely different note (although just as ridiculous), I have had two extremely dappy moments this week that I would like to share with you. The first occurred when I scraped together just enough change to buy a car park ticket and stuck it to my side window. Then I got back in the car to make a quick phonecall, and promptly wound down said window. The car park ticket was immediately lost somewhere in the door. So that was Idiot Moment Number One. Idiot Moment Number Two occurred when my parents prepared a lovely roast dinner on Wednesday, giving me the one job of making the gravy. However, I must have been talking and/or distracted by a shiny object, as I made the classic Uncle Albert mistake of pouring coffee over everyone's dinner. Fool.

Summer School 2008

I'm not really sure where to start with this one. This year's summer school (the first one I'd attended since 2004) was exhausting, challenging, exciting and lots of fun. So I shall write under those headings:

Exhausting

I have really grown old since 2004. Back then, I went the whole week without a single nap. This year, at exactly 2pm every day (apart from Wednesday, when some friends came up for Oscars night- more on that later) I would retire to my room for a sleep. For a good hour. And even then, I ended up looking like this after the week had finished:

Challenging

Now, there are two kinds of challenging. There's the 'fun' challenging, for example trying to get a Jaffa Cake from your forehead to your mouth without using your hands (it will come as no surprise to you that I failed this particular challenge...):

And then there's the 'challenging' challenging. And in a lot of ways I found the week really tough. There was my cell group of 16 year olds, who I initially really struggled to connect with but by the end of the week felt like we'd all come a long way, learnt a LOT about each other and that it had been the making of me as a cell group leader- a learning curve indeed!

Also, I'd chosen the Social Action option this year. Our leader, Jo Taylor, was excellent- so passionate about social justice and determined to instill that same passion in us. And she did a very good job. I came away from the week with a real drive to Do Something- we'd spent some of the week helping a charity called 'Re-Cycle' prepare old bikes to be shipped off to Africa (where bikes are life-changing), and would like to carry on helping those guys in some way. One quote that really stuck in my head was:

"Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could only do a little."- Edmund Burke

So will keep you posted on that one!

Exciting

The entire summer school was split into 8 tribes (I was the leader of The Flowerpot Tribe). Each tribe had to make a short film in preparation for Oscars Night. Ours was called 'Overfield', (a variation on 'Cloverfield'), where the students get a little too curious about what was beyond our field boundaries at the University of Essex... Anyway, we won the much coveted 'Best Film' award, at which point I couldn't even imagine winning an actual Oscar, the feeling was that good! I think we look a little famous in this photo, like we've just been snapped by the papparazi (although I think that was the idea):

However, whereas all the other award winners when home with actual Oscars (well, garden gnome shaped Oscars), Chell hadn't bought quite enough, so I was handed a bit of playdough instead. Rubbish.

Fun

We had a really, really fun week. There were lots of silly games, running jokes (who knew that holding a banana to someone's ear and making them pretend to have a conversation would never, ever get old, no matter how many times you did it...) and late nights where we would literally cry with laughter over the most ridiculous things. I made plenty of new friendships, rekindled one or two old ones and had a brilliant time. Roll on next year...

Yes, that is toilet paper wrapped round my head.

Top of the mornin' to ya!

It HAS been a while, hasn't it? I haven't been really been at home for the last couple of weeks, hence the lack of blogging. But don't worry, all that is about to change. However, because I've done a few different things (and would like to blog about them all) I shall blog in bitesize chunks. Starting from the most recent event... DUBLIN.

Yes, John and I recently visited Dublin. When we go abroad the places tend to be rather random (Kaunas, Riga and Bratislava to name a few) but for once I got to choose. So Dublin it was! And we had a great time. After a lie-in (we left at 5.30am instead of 3am) we went to the airport and managed to get to Ireland without any real hassle (apart from nearly missing our flight waiting on a bacon sandwich and scrambled eggs... luckily John has the superhuman ability to inhale his food). And the whole visit was kinda like that- no hassle, no rushing around, no transport issues. Naturally, much of the time was spent doing things we could have done in London- for example Wagamama's and shopping in HMV and H&M- but it was nice to do it in a different place. Dublin is a really good city for walking (and man, did we walk...) as everything is fairly close together. I was a little disappointed that there didn't seem to be many actual Irish people around, but it was fun trying to copy the accents of all the American/Geordie/Scottish tourists there too. Here are a few of the places we visited:

Ok, so I can't actually remember what this is, but it reminded John and I of two completely different historical buildings from other countries we've visited. 'Seen one, seen them all' springs to mind...

The grandest post office in the world EVER. A significant part of Irish heritage. Go look it up on Wikipedia.

A rather cute Salvation Army corps building. There are only one or two left in the whole of Ireland, apparently...

Dublin Castle. A little oddly designed, but quite cool all the same.

Not really sure what this is either, but an American guy offered to take our photo here as we walked past. I think it's part of the castle...

We were extremely lucky with the weather too. It was fine the whole time we were there, but as we left the view from the plane window looked a little bleak:

Lovely.

A rollercoaster of a weekend...

This weekend has been crazy busy. But in a good way. It started off on Friday, when I FINALLY got to see Mamma Mia! This made me very happy:

I was really excited by this point (probably to the point of irritating), as not only were we about to see the film I been going on about for months, but we were going to the Odeon in Leicester Square to see it! I was very impressed by the free souvenir programme, but not so much by the leopard print seats. Nevertheless, I absoloutely loved it...

On Saturday the Hadleigh youth (with a bit of Southend and Wickford mixed in) went on a day trip to the big, enormous, giant, humongous, GREAT Thorpe park! And it really lived up to its name. I felt a little sorry for Rich, as I convinced him to come by telling him we could visit Thorpe Farm. But when we got there it turned out they'd got rid of the farm a couple of years ago. Cue a slightly subdued Richard... until he discovered the wonder of the Rumba Rapids. See if you can spot in this video:

a) Richard comparing the whole experience to a high budget action film

b) Heather getting increasingly irritated with the video camera/the fact she was getting wet... we had a conversation prior to the ride along the lines of:

Heather: Will I get wet? I'm not going on it if I'm gonna get wet.

Katie: You won't get wet.

This was Heather after Rumba Rapids:

And here's a little slice of the fun:

It was a great day out, although some of us got wetter than others (as some chose to queue up for Stealth instead, which terrified the living daylights out of me):

Finally, it was Farewell Sunday today, which meant saying goodbye to our corps officers at Hadleigh Temple and Richard. Ben and I wrote an 'Ode to Richard' and shared it with the rest of the corps during the meeting... but I'll leave him to blog about that. It was really sad saying goodbye to the Wrights- they've been excellent officers and will be missed very much! I spent most of the afternoon feeling like I was in 'Challenge Anneka', running round Basildon trying to find a photo processing shop and suitable photo frame for Richard's leaving present before the shops closed at 4. It was worth it though. You'll just have to imagine this photo in a frame, wrapped in Indiana Jones wrapping paper:

Boxes

Every month, a worship event called CARUS is held at Mashbury. Last night's event was really good- it was given the theme 'Dreamtime' and involved us writing down our dreams for ourselves and dreams for the community on two sides of a large cardboard box. After that, we rebuilt a massive 'house' of boxes and it looked quite impressive. Until, that is, someone came up with the idea of playing Jenga... and taking one box out at a time. Here was the eventual outcome of that game:

I think Ben was pretending he was in some kind of disaster movie where he was trapped under rubble. I then tried to get an action shot of Glyn jumping mid air into the boxes, but all I managed to get was an action shot of a box:

I think Christina got more than she bargained for when she tried to join in the fun:

And it wasn't all playing with boxes, there was some worship and thought-provoking stuff in there too. One thing I realised is that I don't really have any 'crazy dreams', dreams that are very unlikely to come true but are an ambition anyway. I'd like to have a few of those.

It was a great evening- if you've not been to CARUS before, come along next time!

Happy Half Birthday to me!

I've been looking for an excuse to wear my new birthday hat for ages. I'm officially 23 and a half! And also happy half birthday to Stacey, who is 21 and a half today. Hooray! :-D

(It also happens to be Glyn's actual 25th birthday today- happy birthday Glyn- but as that's not quite as important, it can go in brackets.)

The children in my class all bought me John Lewis vouchers and expensive gifts, which was very generous of them... (although there's a slight chance this was due to the fact today was the last day of term-a happy co-incidence). Today was rather emotional, they've been a lovely class this year and I didn't want to let them go- there were lots of tears all round! It's so frustrating moving them on just when you're starting to see them really improve. It's always my favourite time of the year though- it's so rewarding to see how much the children have matured and how grateful their parents are. I'm very lucky that, for all its faults, teaching certainly isn't a thankless job. (Not at my school, anyway!)

Right, as a little half birthday treat to myself, I'm off to buy a Sat Nav. (I should've invested in one ages ago, I spend most of my life being lost...)

(Oh, I meant to add a Quote of the Day- our headteacher retired today and everyone in the class wrote a little message in his leaving card. Good thing I checked them though, as one boy had made a slight spelling error: 'Dear Mr. Chandler, I am very sorry you're living.' Oops.)