Camp

This weekend was Queen's Birthday Weekend.  (The queen being Queen Elizabeth II.)  Since most people have Monday off, the churches of the South Island get together to have a family camp.  There were 40 or so people there for the whole weekend, with more driving in from Dunedin for church on Sunday and afternoon activities.  There were people from four churches in Dunedin, Invecargill, Matura, and Christchurch, a group from Harding University, and my family.

I had a really great time reconnecting with old friends and meeting some new ones.  Dad, with help from Mom and I taught the classes.  It hit me Saturday night, that Dad had me do all the activities that involved being mean to people.  But hey, I guess when your talents are identified, they should be used, right?

Many people have made comments about Hobbits and such and coming to New Zealand.  One of the ways we've felt Hobbit-like over the past few days is the camp meal schedule.  It goes like this:  Breakfast, Morning Tea (snack), Lunch, Afternoon Tea (snack), Tea (Dinner), and Supper (snack involving fantastic cheese toasties.)  The first time I came I was very confused by all the meals called Tea and the fact that Supper wasn't a proper meal.  These occur every two hours of so, so we certainly didn't go hungry.

We had lots of kids at camp this year, which made things fun.  It was great to hear the kids singing songs in Bible class and running all over the building playing.

There were two major highlights for me at camp.  The first was reconnecting with my friend Leith.  I stayed with her family in Christchurch on previous trips.  We got to relive some of the previous silliness we got up to and had a good time chatting in general.

The other major highlight was representing the old crowd from 10-15 years ago by winning at Links.  This is a some what violent game that involves everyone standing in a big circle around a chair, linking up by holding onto one's neighbors at the wrists, then trying to knock each other into the chair.  If you touch the chair or let go of your neighbor you are out.  Well in the end it was me and three college boys... I thought for sure I was toast... luckily they had never played before, so while they had strength, age, and agility on their side... I had experience...  EXPERIENCE WON... I dedicate this win to my friends Leith and Marianne Edwards and Stephen Woodrow who trained me long ago in the ways of Links.  My favorite two quotes about it were "You got beat by a girl!" and "That's why she can keep up with her college students."  :)

After cleanup we headed to Queenstown which is a big tourist spot where among other things, bungy jumping was started as an extreme sport.  It was a beautiful drive.  However, as we have limited MB access on this webserver, at least without paying extra, I'll have to wait to upload a bunch of pictures.