This past weekend I met with the rest of the district YAC and Marc Loustau for our Summit pre-planning meeting. We completed all our goals and had a great time to boot. Marc's knowledge and experience proved to be a great asset to our cause.
We met at Horizon Church in Carrollton, TX. Jason Fricke and I drove up there together. Well, I drove, and he offered to drive anytime I got tired. Heh. He played some of his CDs, indoctrinating me in various forms of punk rock, from ska to 3rd wave ska, and 3rd wave punk, and some old school punk. I enjoy learning all the terminology.. I wonder if I've got it right. ;)
I called Annette, our contact person with the key to the church as we passed the exit to Mars, south of Dallas. I told her that some of the youth were probably gonna be there soon, or may already be there, so she left her house to meet us at the church with the key.
The high-energy rally-induced excitement filled the church as we greeted everyone with hugs and happy energy. And it wasn't even a rally!
"Tia! I brought all my nine inch nails CDs!" We had wanted to compare collections for quite a while. (Our collection of Halos is pretty much the same, although she has an import version of halo four, and I have the mini disc version of halo five. She had several more bootlegs than I do, but we have a couple bootlegs in common.)
"Bryan! I brought Vanilla Ice!" For some crazy reason, we both love beatboxin' "Havin' a Roni" from this CD. We did it for the talent show at SWUUSI, and Arlene (I think) brought a picture from that night.
Once crazy happy energies had stablized, I left for DFW airport to pick up Marc Loustau from the youth office, and Tera Little, who flew in from Arkansas. DFW is *huge*!! There is an 8 lane highway that flows between all the terminals with enormous signs indicating arrival flights and times. It's well labeled; I was able to drive straight to where Tera and Marc had just walked outside to meet me. I didn't see them, though, but I heard 'em. "ROB!!" I stopped and looked back and yay Marc and Tera!
They tossed their junk in the back of the truck and off we went back to the church. I mis-anticipated the direction I would have to turn to go back north, so "whuups!" as I halted traffic for a bit to drive across a lane of traffic and a curb to get to where we needed to be.
Marc was all, "!!! well, I guess this is a truck!" They must not have pickup trucks in Boston.
Tera and Marc mostly just talkity talked the whole way to the church, where the youth bounced up to greet us as we arrived. Big hugs were given all around, and everyone finally met Marc who we've been expecting since early September or so.
That first night we just played and ate pizza that someone ordered.
Tera, Melissa and I went to get groceries for the weekend. Coolest things there were stickers advertising Melissa Brand squash of various types. I asked the manager dude if he had some extra stickers in the back. He did not, but said I could take a couple off the squash. I grabbed one off the spaghetti squash, and the brightly colored turban squash. I thought it was great fun to get the manager to look for stickers for me!
Oh, and I tossed two 12-packs and a 2-liter of SURGE into the cart. Yum.
At midnight or so, after Arlene and Aaron arrived, we had a worship led by Marc and Austin. We started by each lighting a candle and bringing to the group the skills and/or energy of one person who was not present. Then we each wrote on paper our goals for the weekend, and drew a visualization of two of the goals. Then we had a hand creme finger orgy:
eyes closed, everyone reaches into the middle of the circle and grabs someone else's hand. Then turn palms up and Marc dribbled hand lotion onto our palms. We wiggled and squirmed our fingers together for what seemed like several minutes with our eyes closed. That was a cool worship activity I had never done before.
After that we mostly just stayed up and talked until people crashed asleep between 2:30 and 4am.
At 8am I woke up. Melissa was already awake; we went outside to share the bright sunshine and cool dew covered grass. I only remember talkin' about her minister, but I don't really remember what about.
People started waking up and we got to work around 10am I think. We looked through all the bylaws of other districts, took the best parts from each of those and broke up into small groups and just got a lot of shit done. We played frisbee and took quick energy breaks to get blood pumping again, but mostly we worked diligently. I won't bore you with details, but the work was quite effective and rewarding.
The funniest energy break started with the group in a circle with your left hand facing up toward the person on your left and your right hand facing down on the person-to-your-right's up turned palm.
Then your right hand makes a circular motion, first clapping against their palm, both of your own thighs, the bottom of your own hand then the top of your hand twice. This clapping made up a six beat human metronome as Marc began singing the words to Edelweise (sp). But the funniest!!! thing was that Jason simply started clapping and snapping and then movin' and groovin' dancin' a crazy dance as I laffed my ass off watching him and most everyone else hummed the words that we didn't know. Jason stopped when Marc stopped singing, "c'mon everyone sing!" and we were like, "we donno the words!" and Marc started again and Jason immediately danced even crazier! I couldn't stop laffin' he was so fuckin' hilarious!!
We went to dinner at Arby's (cause we couldn't find anything better and the Frosty machine was broken at Wendy's) and then hung out in the back of the truck in Arby's parking lot for about 20 or 30 minutes. Crazy fun. Bryan Beck and I beatboxed and traded lines from DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince; Jason and I play fought while I stood on the side of the truck bed; everyone had a fun time just relaxing and stuff.
Back to work at the church we went, broke up into groups and got even more stuff done than we had expected to the entire weekend. We were not quite as focused this time and by about midnight, some were getting kinda fiesty and gripey, but we were still struggling to get more finished.
Marc interjected: "You guys have accomplished so much this weekend. Do you realize that we achieved all our goals before we went to dinner? You have grown together and bonded as a group like I've never seen before. I suggest that we wrap it up for the night."
We all agreed. Jason goes, "how about Bish Bish??" Several people including I said naw, and then we were like, "wait... there is absolutely no one else in the church....."
I haven't chanted Bish Bish (maybe once) in the more than a year I've been advisor. That night I shouted it like never before. Wow that felt great!!! (If yer goin' "what is Bish Bish???" you'll have to ask me via email.)
After we cleaned up, everyone except Jason and Austin played Silent Football outside on the lawn. Marc was Dictator and he gave quite a different flavor to the game. Different motions and names and nearly random penance points awardance and it was crazy. For example, he gave us all 1/2 penance point for essentially no reason in the middle of the game. He was quite talkity while people were tattling, and he awarded points before people had even tattled on something. We still had great fun. (If yer goin' "what is Silent Football???" Go to my "friends on the web" page.)
I stayed up talking to Marc for about an hour or so until like 2am and then talked until 2:30am to the youth in the kitchen who were making rice crispy treats for Tera's birthday (yay Tera!)
Then I slept until 7:30 and woke up to my beeper alarm. I played "wish" by nine inch nails really loud to get blood moving as we cleaned and stuff. After we had all cleaned up, most of us went in search of breakfast.
We ended up at McDonald's cause it was the only place open that early in the morning. The great thing was that Arlene climbed up the spiral tube of the indoor playground thing! We waved like proud parents to her crouched in the little room at the top, and then most of the youth climbed through it too. I actually did not; I was eating my salad and by the time I was done, some little kids were playing on it.
To the airport Tera and I drove with Jason and Marc sleepin' in the back of the truck. I'm glad they were sleepin' because a cop was driving behind us for a couple miles. Eeeps!
I stopped at the departure place corresponding to where I had picked up Marc and Tera 36 hours earlier. Big hugs were given and we looked forward to seeing everyone again at Little Rock Rally in December.
Jason and I drove home, engaging discussions on flag burning, abortion, drug use, and various genres of punk rock. As we were driving through Houston area, conversation turned to rock climbing and roller coasters and twisty flippy turning rides commonly seen in parking lot traveling fairs.
I said HI to Jason's mom and was too tired to figure out a problem she was having with a printer error she had on her computer. I went home and slept from 5pm till 7:30 am this morning.