The students have arrived

Things have been super-busy here the last few days. Students began arriving on Thursday and continue to arrive today. Last night was our opening ceremony. This is where we welcome the students and give them leis. We as staff were supposed to arrive early to pray and help set up. I was just about walk in the door of the chapel when one of the DTS staff told me I needed to pick up a student from the airport. Apparently he had slipped through the cracks and had been left at the airport for an hour thus far. The DTS staff was busy with opening night bisnass, so the task was left to me.

I hopped in our of our terribly tacky big green vans and headed to the airport. All I had was a name and a picture. I searched a bit and finally found Graham. He had had a rough day. It was 7pm and he had not eaten since 10am. He had waited in the airport for an hour, his luggage was lost, he had had to sprint to make one of his flights. Needless to say, he was not in the best mood.

When we got back to the base, someone had parked in the van's spot so we had to drive up the hill to one of our other houses and walk down. Luckily Graham didn't have any luggage. I showed him his room and gave him som Count Chocula cereal in a ziploc bag to go. Then we headed into the opening ceremony an hour late. Right when we came in, everyone exclaimed that he must be Graham. They were in the middle of announcing all the students' names and I guess they had already come to his. I think the whole experience was quite overwhelming for the guy.

After this we had refreshments and I tried to learn the names of more students. I like to aggressively get to know them in this first awkward stage when they are not friends with eachother yet. It is pretty amusing since they are all so painfully insecure at first. I also played my favorite group game- "Blame-shifting Butt Grab." I grab someone's butt and then scamper away to make it look like it was the unlucky person behind them that did it. It is a good game. I only did it to the people I knew and not the students I had not even met.

Now the students are on EXODUS- this two-day bonding wilderness time. Amy and I are picking up two students from the airport later today and dropping them off unwittingly at the campsite. Suckers!