River work ensues - Week 1

Well, I've had just over a week of Holidays and I feel I've got enough to blog. Each "part" of the week has a little section, so if you feel one section must be really boring then you can just skip it. Church My local Church is an hour walk away. On the first Sunday I found out it took me just over an hour to get there, today I woke up late and had to request a lift from my dad. The Pastor is not that much older than me and interesting. The first week wasn't him preaching, it was a guest speaker, today however he did preach and it was interesting. I'm not going to compare the two Johnathans with each other because that'd be rude. The Church are having a "building" session where people come along and help terraform the area, I'm planning on going (they have free hot drinks and it'll help my get bigger). Also, my Testimony is online. I've also found something like the Screwtape letters but in blog form. Okay my Uncle Brett found it but rememeber, I'm the one linking to it, not him ;) River I am engaging in the sport of "River Moving", or at least, that's what I've told someone very gulible, I'm seeing how long it takes them to catch on that River Moving is not actually a sport, let alone an aincient Welsh one. Outside my house is a nice river. It's a bit low at the moment as it's summer, however, it's got enough water in it for me to do stuff "in a river", namely moving rocks. Currently I weigh in at a massive 60kg and little to none of that is fat. This means that I should be able to gauge how well I do by both how far the river moves and also by how much I weigh at the end of the holiday. At the "top" of the river, is a lovely overhang, I'm not working there because it's dangerous. Just down a little is the main work area where I am creating a bridge across the river into that spot. Sadly the river has to flow somewhere so I (well, Coel has started to help) am digging a little channel and removing rubbish that some people have dumped there. The main bit that I am digging around is already somewhat different, for a start there's now a huge hole where a rock about the size of a pair of car tyres was removed, it required a bit of work to dig it out but it was most satisfying. Here is the "around the corner" part, it took a while to remove all the rubbish people left there. Family On one of the first days back I tried windsurfing. Well, by tried I mean that I went to the beach and found it was too windy to learn. I tried using a boogie board (apparently they're fun) and must have managed a good 1kph before getting a very small ammount of sea water. I promptly threw up into the sea (which was a lovely dark brown colour). Watching windsurfing, I don't think it's my thing so I'll stay with River Moving. My cat is still as stupid and useless as ever. In the link there are several versions of his standard "road kill" sleeping position which allows him to suck up the maximum ammount of heat from a given area. Coel has exams, as does Gethin. Brecon plays computer games and runs around somewhere that I can't see him. Cerys is so short that I can't see her half the time (only joking, she's at school most of the time as are Brecon and Gethin).

Homeward bound - Thursday

I got up and spent several hours packing stuff up, room check and then a half hour lying down. I then looked on the beach with Lorna for something that she'd lost there, she found it after searching through a bin (crazy person that she is). My parents arrived and I introduced Brierley and Lorna to them, sadly neither of Brierley or Lorna had come up with any really good questions, the wimps. The drive back was fairly long but we got back in the end. I spent most of the next hour or so sorting out what stuff I needed to throw out (it's amazing what stuff I accumilated over the course of secondary school). While in Wales the blog will be somewhat less interesting, as such I'll be posting once a week, probably Thursday-Friday.

Not the best day - Wednessday

I got up, chatted a little and grogily made my way to the exam. It wasn't the best start to a day that was going to get worse. The exam itself wasn't as nice as I had hoped, however, I think I've passed well enough. After the exam I intended to go to the Prayer Lunch, sadly, through no fault of Sarah, I wasn't informed (my email forwarder wasn't working). This meant that I not only waited around for 15 minutes in the sun, but I also got to walk a long way home because I missed the bus. So far, not the best day ever. It got slightly better when I first logged onto WoA and found that an argument had been settled, then, got a lot lot worse when I found that one of the players has now committed suicide. A lot worse, he's been playing since the start and the sad thing is that nobody saw it comming, he'd posted not that long ago and everything seemed okay then. Somewhat downcast from this news I trudged to dinner and didn't overly enjoy my massive donut, partly because of the WoA thing and partly because I was sitting alone. Hallgroup was at least nice, though, still, that was not as good as usual because of the miserable feeling. To compound it all, I've still got a potato that somebody didn't accept, as such I'm quite confident in saying that this day is the worst since comming to Uni, probably the worst in many years. The only thing that currently is making me smile is my desktop picture. The evening should have been spent packing but I was sorting out what to do to prevent anything like the suicide happening again if I could help it. My parents are picking me up tomorrow and going to be meeting Lorna, Sarah and Brierley. When talking to my Mum on MSN her comment about the picture was "Why has that girl got Her arms around your neck?". Now Lorna and Sarah plan to try embarissing me infront of my parents, Lorna is thinking of trying to kiss me goodbye and Sarah's going to say that I called her a load of horrible names (which I might of, just in jest after she said them first).

Picnic - Tuesday

I got up at umm, well, it was some time in the morning and I had breakfast before 1030. I WoAed a bit then left for the Picnic. I was bringing drinks and supplied 10 litres of stuff. I'm glad I did because we had a sort of water fight and I had all the ammo, I won. When everybody else went for Ice Creams I left for home to do some revision. I did do some revision, in that I planned some Database stuff. I found that I am in the top 10 (I think it might be 5 but we'll say 10) marks for the Exam I did a week ago, I got 69% in total (80 ish in the exam itself) so I'm happy about that. Apparently the people that know me and look at the picture I got yesterday laugh about it a lot, well, I'm really not that fussed. There's actually a more serious side to it, it reminds me that in the CU I've got friends, more friends than I've ever had before and I know I should try to remember it. In the evening I found that my arms had caught the sun a little and so I've been using the Cocoa Butter well (thanks Brierley). Jo brought along to the Picnic three books for me to read over the summer which I thought was really nice of her and I appriciate it a lot. My exam tomorrow is from 1115 to 1315. There's a Prayer lunch at 1300 tomorrow that I want to attend, so, if it takes me more than an hour and a half to do the exam I'll be turning up late (which will be mildly annoying). Still, I'm sure the rest of the CU will live with it.

Testimony - Monday

I got up nice and early for the prayer meeting. It was very nice to be able to think and pray about the things that have been good over the last year. Afterwards myself, Justin, Jo, Siän and Lorna went to the coffee shop and had coffee (or hot chocolate). We sat down and chatted about the CU and Christianity, the part that made my day however was this. From left to right is Jo, Siän, me and Lorna. What you can't see is the chocolate on the table. I currently have that picture as my desktop background and any time I feel slightly upset, I'll just look at it and cheer up :D After missing the bus I walked back, did some WoA then went over to see Huw. We recorded the Podcast, played Halo and worked on some WoA rules. We had dinner and went to CU. CU tonight didn't have a speaker. We had some singing and discussion, I also shared my Testimony which I'll post up online when I write it in HTML format. After CU we went to the pub and I played two excellent games of Chess. We also played "Honey I love you". I walked back with Steve, Lizzie, Jo and Andy K. Andy K also had a chat with my about my Testimony. It appears he became a Christian in a similar way to me and for similar reasons which was nice.

Water water everywhere - Sunday

I got up, went to Church. The morning service was about Pentacost and the comming of the Holy Sprit. After the service we went over to the Hackers for lunch. It was very nice, seeing as it is Siän's birthday we were going to have a waterfight. Brierley started it early. We were in the Hacker's garden and as a joke I dripped a little water over Lorna, within 15 seconds Brierly had picked up a jug of water (maybe a litre of water) and thrown the water at me. I was very impressed that she did that and for the first time, had no witty comeback (except to get a jug myself). For the actual water fight I had a slight edge over other people. I gave my water gun to Phil as he didn't have one, for my gun I used my two 2 litre bottles. The problem came when I wanted to refil them, In the end I simply walked into the sea. The end result was that I became very wet, I almost got Jo into the water (I decided that it'd be bad sportsmanship to actually throw her in), Siän + Sarah + Brierley all got very wet. Phil and Steve got a little wet. I walked back to langstone and had a shower (I was drenched in sea-water). The evening service was more about Biblical leadership and how some problems can be solved. After the service I managed to get some photos of Sarah, Lizzie, Siän, Jo, Steve, Andrew, Johnathan Hacker, Tim, The Mitchells, Phil, Brierley and Andrew (another one). They'll be up on a site some time in a few weeks, maybe after I've tried to learn a little photoshop. We sat around afterwards for some singing and prayer. It was quite peaceful and calming. The really intersting thing is that only one person wanted any chocolate! Phil gave me a lift home and we talked about proof of Christianity, he'll be at a BBQ or Picnic or something on Tuesday and I plan to talk to him more about it then. Overall, the thing that's in my mind is that I'm impressed with Brierley, that's the first time a lady has done anything like that to me, we all agreed that if I'd done it to her first they'd all have been shocked, clearly it's something about me (probably my face).

Lots of Sun - Saturday

I finnished the WoA results at about 0700 and then tried to sleep for a while. I napped and got up at about 1200, had lunch and then tried more napping. When that failed I talked to people on MSN and did some basica graphical stuff. In the afternoon I walked to Jo's house to return the books I was lent, sadly there was nobody in so I had a nice hour and a bit walk in the scorching sun, with a bit of luck I'll develop a good looking tan, apparently bright white isn't fasionable. In the evening there was a joint birthday meal for Lorna and Siän. After the meal we all went to the beach and sat around talking. I've not felt very tired today except when in strong sunlight (but that's just the geek in me), it's tomorrow I'm wondering about.