The Games Manual!

Doug asked me to write a post on instructions of cool games (because those science games are so lame :P)
But alas, I know so many games! So, I'll just list the games I know, and then you can request certain games.

1. chicken game
2. watermelon game
3. big tractor
4. bucky bunny
5. pass the beat a round the room
6. stupid
7. orchestra game with conductor
8. carrots
9. alien
10. pear
11. G'Day Bruce
12. Grand Master Sensei
13. Giants, Wizards and Pixies
14. I'm a celebrity
15. Evolution
16. Family Serious

From Car-O-Line

p.s: I went to an "all the meat you can eat" restaurant the other day with Naomi... and it made me think of all my guy friends who would have loved it so much.

hmmm...

I was looking over my ACG Super Blog (look below) and I noticed that there is no link for people to write comments. Where did it go?

Then I checked the settings for that post and saw that somehow it automatically disallowed comments... so I fixed it now. I am expecting EVERYONE who reads that post to comment on it. After all I did spend a lot of my sleep time writing it. Plus, I like reading comments... you guys are funny.

From Car-O-Line

p.s: no one updated their blogs today... I'm very disappointed (and bored).

words...

BLUE STEEL! (or magnum... you decide)
back row: Dan, Dave, Gu, Darn, Felix, Meray, Kate Martin, Gary, Warren, Lindsay.
front row: Elsie, Kathy, Doris, Me, Anna, Meredith.

Words cannot express the funness that was Arts Colleges Getaway 07... well actually... that's a half-lie... I could express the funness in words... but you may not feel from reading these words that it was fun:

On friday arvo... I dropped off my stuff at Felix's place. Then I had trumpet. Then I met Elsie at her house, and I helped her carry more things to Felix's room. It was a lot smaller than I had expected it to be... and also a little messier... but that was probably because he had everyone's luggage on his floor.

Then me and Elsie went to Central Station to meet up with some other people: Doris, Kathy, Meredith, Dan (Darn), Lindsay and Warren. We bought Hungry Jacks for dinner and got on a very crowded train to Campbelltown. At first me, Doris and Elsie were sitting down the bottom of the carriage while the other stood in the middle... Elsie was worried that the other weren't talking to Cathy (the new girl). But they were. :)

Once we got closer to Campbelltown, me, Doris and Elsie moved to the middle of the carriage with the others where we all got a seat. Since we were all together we decided to play a game of mafia... and it begun! In the first round, I had my head down, waiting to be woken up... when I felt someones finger poke me in the head! I was shocked! To my disgust, I was killed off in the first round. Before I officially died though... I told everyone that someone poked me to kill me... meaing that Warren, Lindsay or Elsie were mafia. Evil evil Warren was the one who killed me... lol.

Warren looking very shifty... (with George, the neckless giraffe)

From that round on... I was always the first person to be killed off. *sigh*
When we got to Campbelltown... we swapped trains to get to Tahmoor. And our mafia game continued. Luckily, we all got seats next to each other. After a few rounds of me getting killed off first every time (unless I was mafia), I decided to be narrator... and then it begun. Doris got killed off first this time... so it was always either me or Doris getting killed off first. It was funny because whenever we wanted to kill people, we would be like "LETS KILL KATHY" or "LETS KILL LINDSAY" etc. And the train carriage was pretty full... there was this one lady very close by giving us very weird looks... haha. On another note, the scenery was very beautiful around Tahmoor... sweeping hills with a very nice purple/pink sunset. awww.

When we got to Tahmoor... we had to wait for people to pick us up in cars to take us to the campsite. To kill time, we played a few old classic games like big tractor and alien.

Playing Alien when we finally got to the house
clockwise from left: Lindsay, Felix, Darn, Dan and the back of my head.

Then, Warren and Kathy decided to play this game on us... one of those games where you have to work out what the rule is. It took me over an hour to work it out. The problem with those games is that you try and overcomplicate the rule when the rule is quite easy. Poor Meredith was too tired to work it out. But oh the liberation when you finally worked out the rule.

Over an hour later, Dan (Dan) picked us up. As we left, we heard a train honk... we knew it was honking at Doris... cuz she had been dangling her feet over the platform. The place we were staying at was really nice. It was like a house. We all stayed in the same house which made it nice and cosy. In my room was Kathy, Doris and Elsie. After hot chocolate and games (a couple of long rounds of mafia... thanks Warren for saving me this time), we slept.

On Saturday, I reluctantly got out of bed after a quite uncomfortable sleep. After breakfast we had our first session from Ron Serje. YAY for Ron! He was our MTS person last year (with Elsie). The topic of the weekend was Resurrection (1 Cor 15). It was full on stuff... but basically... the resurrection is important because:
-since Christ was raised, we can be raised.
-if Christ wasn't raised, our way of life (faith) is absurd.

Then, we had morning tea... then we had seminars. The college boys went off and did a seminar on "being Christians in colleges" while the arts people did a seminar on "being Christians in arts" and also talked a bit about good purposes for travelling overseas.

Then we had free time! It was raining, so I stayed indoors with most other people, although some people did go play tennis in the rain and some people went for a swim.

Tennis in the Rain
l-r: Lindsay, Anna, Darn, Dan

Indoors we played lots of card games. We played a lot of "Emperors and Scums." Then Doris straightened Nicole's hair. We tried to convince the boys to let us straighten their hair... but they refused.

Before dinner, we had a missionary spot about some missionaries in Russia. It was run a bit like a quiz competition which was fun. It was very informative too.

After dinner, we had the ACG SUPER CHALLENGE run by Lindsay. This was a giant trivia evening with sections such "super sudoku," "super taboo" and "the music game." There were also other general trivia questions. It was very well planned. I think my team came third... which was quite good seeing that we only knew about 5 of the 60 countries of Africa. LOL! My team's name was "Darn we're good" because Darn (ie: Dan Wilton... yes... he has a new nickname now) was in our group.

Look its Darn!

Look it's Elsie, Dan and me (now you will forever be able to tell the difference between Dan and Darn)

After trivia, we chilled in the lounge room a bit. We were all pretty tired but too excited to go to sleep... which was a good thing because we convinced Lindsay to let us straighten his hair! It was so funny... I'll let you look at the pictures.

Lindsay Before and After
with Doris looking very proud of her efforts

Once Lindsay got his hair straightened... all the other guys agreed to having their hair straightened. It was so funny and fun. We tried to flatten down Darn and Warren's 'Tin Tin" fringe... but it didn't work... their fringes stubbornly stay up. Once all the boys hair was straightened out... we went to sleep.

Prim and Proper People have Straight Hair
l-r: Dave, Darn, Lindsay, Martin, Anna, Meredith and Gu

To our disappointment, all the guys' hair was back to normal in the morning. We had leaderless bible study groups in the morning about "the bodily resurrection" (Luke 24) and then Ron gave his second talk on the Resurrection. I learned:
-The kingdom of God wont accept our lowly bodies, we need an imperishable body.
-because we are in Christ (who was raised), our bodies will be radically transformed when he returns, this is the conquest of death.

Then we had lunch and went home. Meray drove me, Kathy, Meredith and Doris. Me and Kathy got dropped off at strathfield where we caught a train home together. The train ride was... interesting... gotta love public transport (not).

And that was it.

From Car-O-Line

Waiting for Dan to pick us from Tahmoor Station
l-r: Warren, Me, Kathy, Elsie and Darn

ACG is over :(

Arts/Colleges Getaway has been and gone. It was so much fun and I miss everyone already.

Once I overcome my sorrows of not being there... I'll post a blog on all the very interesting and fun things that happened.



From Car-O-Line

to do: stuff

I got my trumpet yesterday! It's shiny and colourful. I played it for a bit this morning... some notes actually came out... and some of them sounded good! I'm happy.

So on the weekend I had my church camp in Morriset. The topic was on prayer and our guest speaker was Anthony Petterson. We talked about why people struggle with prayer nowadays... mainly that culture discourages prayer. Anthony taught us that our understanding of God shapes our understanding and practice of prayer. He explained to us the importance that God has a name: I AM, and what it means... because it always baffled me that someones name could be I AM. To explain what it means... we looked at the footnote reference: "I will be who I will be" which shows that God is who he reveals himself to be. The fact that God has a name also shows that he is a very personal God. Which is awesome. I was saying in a previous post how I think people take prayer for granted. At camp... Anthony pointed out that prayer is a gift by God's grace, it is our relationship with God in action. How cool to be directly in contact with God... through Jesus, in the Spirit.

Those were the big points that stuck out for me. There was other stuff too.

I think I've already realised that uni is going to be a lot busier this year, but I haven't really done anything to make it less busy. There is quite a bit of work that I should be doing now... but I keep on putting it off. I should practice my violin now too. I also need to stop shopping and buying summer clothes... I need winter clothes now.

I bought canvas ages ago to paint something... but I dunno what to paint. I saw some nice tulips at IKEA... I might paint those. Any other ideas? I'm a big fan of still art.

Gah... just realised I should practice for choir too.

This weekend I got the Arts/Colleges getaway. I'm excited. It should be lots of fun! Apparently Lindsay spent 9 hours working out the Saturday night activity... I wonder what it is!

Once I get photos from Church camp... I'll post them up. There are some good ones of the girls in my cabin... kekeke.

From Caroline

Uni has begun

Well... I haven't posted in quite a long time.

I'm back at uni now... 2 whole weeks gone. My classes seem to be going quite well. They are all interesting and I think they will be useful for when I start teaching. I can't wait to do full time teaching now. Having my own classes and being able to use all the really good resources I've got so far. I'm sure all the other teachers out there will be thinking that I'm crazy... but I'm sure it'll be fun for the first few days.

Tomorrow I'm going to church camp. My first camp for the year... I can't believe it! It will surely be lots of fun. I just hope that the storms will hold out on Saturday so that I can go canoeing and that we can have the bonfire. Our Guest speaker is Anthony Petterson and the topic is going to be on prayer... I've heard only good things about this guy... and I'm looking forward to learning heaps and heaps more about prayer. I guess prayer is a thing that you sometimes take for granted.

Tomorrow is my first trumpet class. EXCITING!!! I know it's going to be a very noisy class... I thought clarinet was loud... but surely trumpet is louder. Hopefully the office lady will find out what's going on and Ill get my trumpet tomorrow.

Currently listening to "Barwon River Love Song" by "The Andre Ellis River Band." It's very sweet. The lead is one of my class mates.

Me and my parents went to IKEA the other day (I still wanna go with you Jen) and I got a new desk. It's long and skinny so it fits nicely in my room and I can sprawl all my stuff over it which is nice. If anyone wants my old desk (at a negotiable price) let me know... it's one of those study IKEA primary school study desks which everyone has (you know you want to conform too!) and its in basically perfect condition. It was just a bit short for me.

LOL!!! I always get distracted when I blog... I just temporarily disappeard to listen to Aboriginal music for uni. I have to transcribe it... it doesn't sound too hard which is good. Although I wouldn't be able to transcribe the lyrics... I find it hard enough to work out lyrics of pop songs on the radio.

I joined choir at uni this year. It's been really good... I'm so bad though... I'm so out of practice in choral singing. Like I sing in church... but that's nothing compared to choir... like you have to pronounce everything in a certain way and you need to sight sing and do all these super big leaps. Choir is going to be very handy for when I go to a school because then I will be able to conduct choirs. I tried to do some choir conducting at my last prac and that didn't turn out very well.

I guess I should sleep soon... because sleep is good.

From Car-O-Line


P.S: my new favourite threadless shirt... which I got in the mail today:
note to self: don't do anymore shopping unless it's for pants, ie: no more tops!

Fresh Start Mission

"I will extol the LORD at all times;
his praise will always be on my lips.
My soul will boast in the LORD;
let the afflicted hear and rejoice.
Glorify the LORD with me;
let us exalt his name together."

-Psalm 34:1-3

If you hadn't noticed... I have been away all week. Last Sunday night I 'moved' to Kensington into the Hodgkinson household. It was such a lovely house and I was given a very nice room (I've been inspired to clean my room up). I went to St Matthias church in Padington and met Jess who is one of the Hodgkinsons... as well as many other people. After church we went to a tasty tasty thai restaurant called Chao Praya... only cost us $10 each!

Monday was my first day of "fresh start" mission. This was where people from Campus Bible Study (CBS) came to uni everyday to meet new students and invite them to study the Bible on campus this year... it was O-week so there were stacks of people there and a lot of people signed up to join CBS and find out more about God and the Bible. At first I was quite anxious about walking up to strangers and talking to them about Christianity... but praise God... he helped me out so much.

What I found from 0-week mission was that God is fully in control of everything. At times when I was tired and unmotivated to go talk to people... people would just walk up to me and start asking me about what CBS was. It was so encouraging. And even after approaching heaps of people and being rejected, God would bring along a person who I could have a really good conversation with and that would get me excited again about ministering to the people on campus.

Not only were we working hard to meet people and organise BBQs and the like... we were being trained by John Chapman and Paul Grimmond. We learned about God's will for evangelism and how to do it better. We learned about God's love for people and his desire for people to be saved. And I was encouraged to keep on trusting in God... not relying on my own works... but on God because he is Almighty and Sovereign. Chappo also gave us a good talk on 1 Cor 8 & 9 which was very helpful in thinking about how to encourage other Christians in our deeds.

One thing I really loved about o-week mission was that all the 50 CBS people who came and stayed locally grew as a team and as a family. During the evenings we ate dinner together or went out to get coffee and we were able to reflect on our experiences and pray a lot together. I love all my brothers and sisters in Christ who I served with during o-week. They were so supportive and encouraged us to take breaks when we were doing too much and told jokes and made funny faces to cheer us up. How will I ever forget:

-our night at Tea Scapes where Doris showed us how she could plug her nose and where Becky found it difficult to lift her pinky
-the large amounts of slab cake and plums consumed (thank you Steph!)
-those sickingly sweet cadbury creme eggs which we often ate for breakfast
-evil Dan (Wilt) painting us with cornflour glue
-water guns and water fights, seeing Grimmo going crazy with his water bottle
-Morris (leader-Dan) doing some amazing impersonations of Napoleon Dynamite
-pegging grapes at everyone
-bountiful amounts of free stuff with Doris picking up double so that she could give it to Elsie

I'm sad it's over but I'm excited about seeing new people at CBS and hopefully growing together in Christ.

From Car-O-Line

I've had an epiphany! (or a few more)

Ok... so people have been asking where I've been during the day... and here is the answer!

I've been at uni doing my summer course. And my first epiphany for this blog is that it is so boring! There are people in the class who know a lot more than my lecturer... including me. So the course is called "Introduction to the internet and e-commerce." The e-commerce part of it is that businesses have webpages (woo!) and the internet part is... "google is a search engine... to search something... just type it and click search." Today we did a bit of html which was a little more exciting (although I do know the basic html already... so it was a bit of revision). Now... onto more exciting epiphanies:

On my first day of my summer course... (get ready for epiphany no. 2) I got there at 9am ready for my lab... and then realised (along with the other 40 people in the course) that there was no lab for the first day... so we were all 3hrs early for our lecture. So I took the bus to Bondi Westfield. Man that place is a cool place. And I found the most awesome shop! Epiphany no. 3 - Smiggle!!! It has all this really cool and cute stuff. They had all these notebooks and journals... I wanted to buy them all. But since I have many notebooks/journals already (epiphany no.4) I decided to buy something that I didn't have...

2 blue mini highlighters, blue staples, a stapler and an elephant cut out punch.

I went on the smiggle website today and they have so much more stuff that I didn't see. Lucky for me they have a store in Hornsby (epiphany no.5) so I can go browse there if I want. Their pencils/crayons/textas look very cool. I'm thinking of getting some new coloured pencils and one of their pencil sharpeners.

Today is one of the days that I'll actually be home for dinner with the parents this week. Tomorrow is CBS summer edition... thursday is work and friday I will be rushing to go to switch (plus tutoring before that). I'll also be working saturday. I think my parents miss me.

From Car-O-Line

busyness

I've been busy catching up with school friends which has been awesome. Yesterday Me, Jen and Jenny watched movies at Jenny's house. Haven't seen Jenny in possibly a year... so it was good to catch up. I took lots of pics:

Me shocked and Jen striking a pose

Me, Jenny and Jen.... then Me and half of Jenny

Sexy Jen... and not so sexy Jen

Happy Jenny... and not so happy Jenny

Jen's eye.... she blinked.... or was in the middle of the blink

Then today I went to Steve's house for a fare-thee-well party for Sarah who is going overseas for 5 weeks! I saw Sarah and Bec and Jen and Elly and other people. We played a bit of e-toy "play sports" and had a very fun round of carrots, stupid, big tractor and g'day Bruce. Then Jen, Jono and Sarah got in the pool (sometimes thrown in) and they had an interpretive handstand competition which was very amusing. We had crossaints and raisin toast and multiple spreads, plus coffee, tea and orange juice (with and without pulp! oh the choices!!!) and we also had pizza for lunch. They have 2 very cute king-cavalier spaniel doggies... Ronny and Ginny. Ronny is very sweet. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures there.

This evening I worked for a bit in pizza cutters. Pretty ordinary.

From Car-O-Line

the Corinthians???

Ok... So I sorta didn't finish up my 'read a bible in a year' last year... I'm currently a month behind. So yeah... I've sorta been trying to read more quicker to get it done... which hasn't really been helpful. Today I finished reading the letters to the Corinthians... and I'm totally confused. I have no idea what it's about. Well... I do understand parts of it (all the little passages that you do in sunday school and stuff). There are just parts where Paul seems like a complete weirdo... not sure what he's trying to say. So... let me share a confusing verse with you:

"I know a man in Christ who fourteen years ago was caught up to the third heaven." - 2 Cor 12:2

To give you some context... Paul had just been talking about boasting for about 3 whole chapters. In the context of the passage... Paul's above example makes some sense but my question is... what is this third heaven?!?!

Paul is too deep for me. Once I finish my reading plan I think I'll have to come back to the Corinthians and read it a whole lot slower (I basically read it all in 4 days?!). Yeah... reading fast just doesn't work for me.

From Car-O-Line