Outreach Announced!

The time came for us all to learn where we were going to go on Outreach in October. We all piled into the classroom and took our seats, and everyone was anxious and excited. The leaders decided to start off with a game, probably to lighten the mood, so pieces of paper were passed around and everyone had to write down something interesting about themselves on it and then pass them to the front. My tablemates and I were kind struggling with what to say about ourselves, so after watching people come up with their paper for a while, I quickly jotted down "I had surgery on my hip when I was 10 and I have a pin in it." and handed mine up front. Once they were all in, the game was for each thing read, people raise their hand and guess who they think wrote it and people got points for how many they correctly guess. I didn't get any points, but there were some pretty interesting/funny ones. One guy drove a golf cart into a lake. My  roommate went to Disneyland once a week for a year. Another guy had wet his bed within the last year (he said later he was on meds after surgery, but the director who was reading it kept laughing so he had someone else tell us what was on the card).

After the fun was had, it was time to get down to business. The director got up and told us that they had a really difficult time choosing the outreach teams, so he picked up the garbage can next to him and told us that everyone was going to pull a card from the bucket, and whatever one you chose that was where you were going. What. Here I was assuming that they had taken a great deal of time to choose these teams and I wasn't that nervous before, but I sure was now. They called one girl up, and she reached in and pulled out Middle East which she was relieved about, since she was on the ANZAC group which aims at helping the Middle East. The director then said "no I'm just kidding, we're not doing it this way. We already picked your teams." as he threw the garbage can aside. Relief swept the room, and everyone was laughing. It was a good trick, a tad cruel (he said he's had people cry when he's done it before), but still really funny. I probably should've realized it was a joke when he chose an ANZAC-er to come up first, since everyone knows they're going to The Middle East since their whole program is set around that.

The director then called out all the teams while a staff member wrote it on the board. For outreach I will be going to.... The Middle East! Yay!  I am quite excited, though a little bit nervous. My team looks like it will be good, it's one of the larger teams with about 10 students and 3 staff (including Simon which should be really fun),  though they might split the group up smaller for traveling around because a big group of white people traveling may not be so inconspicuous. One of my roommates is on ANZACs so she's in my group too, as well as one other adventure group girl. I think it'll be a lot of fun, though it'll be winter while we're there so I'll need to get more warm clothes. There are a couple of the girls that I wish were in my group since I've gotten to know them pretty well, but I'm excited to get to know the people in my group as well. So, on October 15, I will be leaving the beautiful New Zealand springtime and heading into winter. I just hope the AC adapter I bought has a setting so I can keep blogging while I'm there.