Graduating NCS

Hey,

The last two weeks of NCS were a blast but very, very busy. I spent the week at my Dad’s house then got a train from Chichester to Crawley. I’ve really enjoyed it — even with late trains, nearly missing my graduation from NCS due to the fact that our car broke down and my dad had to come pick me up and arguments. 

Each of the three groups finished their projects on time. Fundraising ( my team ) fully completed raising money with bag packing at the local ASDA. I really enjoyed meeting new people and raising awareness  about the charity. Even the people that declined my offer to pack their shopping bags donated something most of the time. Four hours on my feet, a dry throat from constant talking and aching arms from heavy lifting but I wouldn’t change it. I actually wish I could have stayed for longer! I reckon I raised about fourty pounds in four hours. By the end of the day I had pretty much a script I just followed due to how many times I said this speech over and over again. The only issue the fundraising team had was when we lost the tickets for our raffle for a few hours on the last day. Luckily, we found it again. In the end, we raised £428.20p! In two weeks, that is really not bad at all! 

The Pond building team finished building their pond and it actually looks great. The fountain works, it is aesthetically pleasing and it is calming. The only issue with this came when the water level seemed to be shrinking as the day wore on. Turns out, this was due to the water from the fountain squirting out, covering the outside of the pond and not landing back in. A quick change of the fountain setting solved that problem. However, another issue quickly arose when we discovered the excess water had caused the pond to almost collapse in on itself in places. It took a few hours of digging, over seven buckets of water being tipped out from under the pond and a lot of sand and gravel, but it was fixed just as the day was drawing to an end. 

The art people didn’t really have any issues until the last day. Their painting for The Olive Tree was hand painted and beautiful. It was waterproofed easily, the hand prints looked great, the pen hadn’t smudged or anything like that. The actual issue turned out to be putting the paint onto the wall. The art team bought brick-wall industrial strength glue. Clearly nobody told the glue this as when us four tried to put the painting onto the wall (it was really early in the morning so nobody else was here. It was four teenage girls, a lot of rain and glue that wasn’t working. It didn’t work out well) it just kept falling off, even when we applied pressure to it for over fifteen minutes at a time. Eventually we gave up and called our leader Tracey to see what she thought we should do. She essentially said that someone needs to go buy a lot of chocolate as she’s going to call the maintenance guys on their day off to see if they could drill it into the wall for us. Luckily, they accepted and after an hour of drilling, the painting was up on the wall in it’s full glory. It really looked great! They are all so talented. 

As you could probably tell by the opening paragraph, getting to graduation was difficult. I had to change trains, was sat on public transport for over two hours, did a hell of a lot of walking just to nearly miss my graduation. Luckily my Dad came to the rescue and gave me a lift to the graduation. My leader Tracey even post poned our groups graduation and made sure we graduated as one of the last groups so I was there on time. It was really sweet of her. I met the Mayor of Crawley and shook her hand, watched a video with the adventures taken by ALL the groups over the last four weeks (we get our own one sent to us in a few weeks with our qualification), I read out part of a speech and I collected my certificate. It was a really fun evening that made me kind of sad that i’ll probably not see all these people again (even with the loud zumba class behind us). I’ve really enjoyed NCS. I’m sad it’s ended. I made some amazing friends, conquered fears, became more educated on local charities and I ate a lot of free food. It’s been great. 

However the day after graduation a massive argument erupted online. One girl called another girl fake for wearing makeup and somehow the whole thing ended many, many hours later with my NCS group setting up some sort of internet facebook democracy. The idea is that we all basically vote on who is involved in this chat we have, who is added into it, if someone should be banned, etc. It’s all very dramatic. 

I’ve been gaining weight. Ugh. Clean eating once school starts!

In other news, I love Doctor Who! Capaldi is amazing. 

He and I have been arguing lately but it’s mostly sorted. Girl trouble. Not involving me. Ugh. At least it’s pretty much solved now. 

I’m nervous about starting college but at the same time I can’t wait! I wonder what college is like? 

Until next time!

-Megan

GCSE Results

Hey,

So on the 21st of August, my father and I drove all the way down from Selsey to Lancing town to go pick up my gcse results. Or at least, that was the plan. What actually happened is we got in the car, turned on the radio and the first song to play? Tragedy. It had such amazing timing that we both burst out laughing. Part of me did hope it wasn’t a bad omen though.

Half way through the journey I get a call from Him saying essentially that his bike pump had broken so he couldn’t get to school and get his results.My dad sighed jokingly and said he’d pick him up and take him to get our results but that we had to have a detour to my house to pick up my mum and say happy birthday to my newly three year old sister, and we had to go to brantanos so I could get some new shoes to wear when I get results as I ‘looked like a scruffbag’. He agreed.

I walked through the door of my house to see my very excited little sister run through the corridor saying ‘Megan I missed you! It’s my birthday!’ Although I was nervous, this made me smile. I gave her a cuddle, let her show me a few of her presents such as her Lulu bike and play doh while my parents chatted. As time passed, I felt myself getting more and more nervous. He put his hand around my shoulder, seeming to sense I was nervous.

After what felt like an eternity, we headed out to the shoe shop and after much deliberation, picked some very solid black school shoes that made my ankles bleed but I didn’t care I just wanted to get out of the shop. I have to admit, it was weird to have both parents shopping together again after being divorced for over five years. I didn’t mind too much though.

Finally, we were on our way to get our GCSE results. The weather was hot, so I took that as a good sign. Time seemed to speed up and in the blink of an eye I was outside of my school and walking into the hall. The first thing I see are lots of happy faces in the hall. Nobody seemed disappointed with their results. I walked over to the table with my surname letter on it and asked for the envelope with my results on it. I waited for him to get his results and we looked at each other. My mum counted down for us to open them.

Three

Two.

One.

I open my results. And… i’m ecstatic. I passed maths. I got a C! I literally jumped around, super excited. My Mum even picked me up and span me around. My maths teacher who had already left the school but came back for results day even gave me a bear hug and said ‘You really deserve that C!’.

In all the excitement I never actually registered my other results. In the end I got 2 A*S (health and social care), three As (english literature, english language and film studies), three Bs (sociology, history and additional science) and one C (maths). My results… i’m so happy with them. I worked so hard and it actually worked out. Even though maths was my lowest grade it’s the one I worked at the most. The one I was never sure i’d pass. The one i’d been told i’d fail by previous teachers. I even beat Him in a subject – english. He always seemed like the one better at school out of the two of us but while he got Bs in English, I got As! It was nice to have that mini victory over him.

I was ecstatic. I could do all the college classes I wanted to do!

He also did really well and passed all except one class. To celebrate, my mum bought a tub of icecream per A/A* for him and i to share. This meant we ended up with five tubs of icecream to share between us. We only managed half of one each before having to put them back, but I have a feeling round two will be very soon.

After results, we headed home, ate icecream, played with my baby sister, sang happy birthday, ate birthday cake and just relaxed and enjoyed the day. It sounds weird considering my summer is nearly over, but it finally feels like my summer holidays have began. Eventually I had to head back to my dads but we celebrated with pizza hut (very unhealthy day I know).

I think my little sister had a good birthday, even if I wasn’t there for very much of it. She seemed super happy with her presents. She especially loves her Lulu bike with a stuffed panda, the handmade doll house our nan did up for her and the sylvanians I gave her, that used to be mine. I wish i’d been there for more of her birthday but there is always next year!

I’m so proud of both he and I. Even if we have been having… issues lately. The issues are to do with a girl that isn’t me in our relationship. It’s made things really hard. I want to stay with him but honestly this girl keeps popping up in conversation (this isn’t me being an irrational female either. He admitted he had a tiny thing for her). I’m trying to be reasonable and whatnot but I am not really happy at the moment. I don’t know what to do. Nobody really knows about this so I can’t vent to anyone and I think it’s doing more damage than good keeping it all pent up. This is the second girl and I just feel like I cannot measure up. That if I was really a good enough girlfriend that he wouldn’t keep thinking of other girls. It’s made me feel inferior and honestly it’s been a massive knock to my confidence. It had a certain dampening effect on my results day.

Oh well.

I completed my third week of NCS  today and my group have been really busy fundraising for The Olive Tree (a cancer charity). It’s been a mix of fundraising, planning, asking for donations, working out prices for a jumble sale, and an insane amount of walking.We’ve raised a little bit this week and hopefully next week should be better through our raffle, our jumble sale, sponsored waxing and other projects. I’m really enjoying NCS and i’m sad i’m graduating next week.

Doctor Who tomorrow! I’m excited. Can’t wait for Peter Capaldi to be the new doctor. He has promise.

Until next time!

-Megan

Second week at NCS

Hey,

so I recently came back from my second week at NCS! I stayed at Sussex university – Falmer campus. I really loved my time away and even though it was more relaxed, I enjoyed myself.

Monday

His mum drove him and I to our universities – he was dropped off first fairly painlessly and then she drove me up to the Sussex campus. However, when we reached the campus we were really early so most people weren’t there yet. This gave us plenty of time to get ridiculously lost. We had to pull into a carpark and call one of the leaders to give us directions.

The leader who met me was called Elinor and was a previous student of the university. She greeted me, bought me a cup of tea and we waited for everyone else to turn up. At one point one boy got lost, leading to another person and I to go and find him. Considering nobody really knew where they were going, that went well.

The coach eventually turned up, meaning we could head over to the dorm rooms. Once we’d registered at the university as guests we went and relaxed in the downstairs lounge. However, due to the coach arriving before we could get to the dorm rooms, this meant people unpacked into their chosen rooms without consulting leaders. This made changing rooms to match your groups a lot more painful for them. Eventually after an hour of leaders consulting each other and trying to organize rooms, we were finally in our rooms and unpacked. I was on a flat with three other girls and our leader Tracey.

Our first activity of the day was meditation. We were told to grab a towel and a comfortable pillow and to relax in a room, while an instructor talked calmly about different parts of our bodies, chakras, our third eyes and something to do with visualising a golden egg. It was weird, but relaxing. Some people were so comfy that they even fell asleep!

Our second activity was actually a charity meeting with Girl Guides that turned into a feminist debate. We started the session by playing some games such as Ninja and the ‘have you ever game’, listened to the representative talk about the charity and got to ask some questions. However, one boy in the other group asked a certain question that made the instructor answer back fairly aggressively. This sparked an entire debate and meant we got very off track very quickly… whoops? It was certainly interesting though! Everyone got involved and made points.

After dinner, our two groups went mushroom foraging with our leaders. We only saw two mushrooms (they were on the same tree) and it essentially turned into a giant walk. I probably would have enjoyed it more if I hadn’t needed the bathroom practically the entire walk journey. Plus it started raining, meaning my leggings got very dirty and ripped.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, we visited a homeless charity called Friends First. We were very impressed by what they did and quickly became our first choice charity – until we learnt they didn’t accept donations so we couldn’t fundraise and there wasn’t much we could do for them.

Lunch time quickly came around and we decided to have a group picnic. So we walked to a local park, sat and had lunch in the sun, while listening to music from a tiny speaker. It was very relaxing.

Our final charity of the day wasn’t even really a charity. We just had to help do up an allotment that was run by a group of older people who couldn’t do a lot of the work themselves anymore. This meant we had to dig a fire pit, sort through compost heaps and tidy up the garden in general. There was a moment of excitement when one boy found a baby door mouse in the compost heap but besides that, not much happened. We were served home grown apples all day which were actually very delicious – and I even got to take home a strawberry plant at the end of the day.

In the evening we did an activity with my group which was based on the idea ‘who would you kill’. We were given a bunch of personalities we had to act out. We had to pretend we were 13 passengers and there were only 12 places on a boat – who should die? We had characters such as a rebellious school girl. a drug addict, a fireman… I found it to be quite fun. Not everyone in our group agreed though and one boy even stormed out towards the end of it.

I took my first showers away at university and found it to be perfectly horrendous. It was cold, low pressure and was on a timer so it turned off every few minutes. It took half an hour just to wash the shampoo out of my hair.

While I was waiting for my hair to dry, I got a phone call from Him. He sounded like he was either crying already or about to cry. Turns out his team had taken a lot of his things and chucked them out of the window for no apparent reason and then acted like they hadn’t done anything. He got very upset due to being bullied before in the past and it took a while to calm him down and get a coherent answer out of him as to why he was upset. I have never wished I could hug someone as badly as I did then. After he had calmed down a bit, we talked about our day and other things that happened over the two days. We ended the phone call with a promise that he’d let me know if anything else happens.

Wednesday

The first charity we visited on Wednesday was The Olive Tree, which was a cancer charity that helps patients from diagnoses to the end of their treatment through various therapies and such. I think everyone personally identified with this charity and that we all knew someone who had died due to cancer as we all donated some money and bough a loom band bracelet. The representative was friendly, wasn’t government funded so they relied on donations and needed help with various projects. This became a potential charity we could pick very quickly.

In the afternoon, we walked along Brighton Beach and went to go for a free cinema trip as a treat for working so hard. One group went to go see The Inbetweeners 2 and the other group went to go see Guardians of The Galaxy. I went with Guardians and i’m so glad I did as the movie was hilarious, had an interesting if cheesey plot and I found myself loving every second of the movie. The people who went to the other movie apparently found it to be boring and unfunny.

After the movie, we went to ASDA to buy pizzas and garlic bread. Imagine it – nearly 30 teenagers and four adults. Do you really think everyone stuck together? No. Everyone went off in different directions and it took ages to get everyone back in one group and able to get back to university. We had to use a free bus pass to get back which was interesting  – you had to scratch off the date and then put a transparent piece of sticky plastic over to preserve it.

When we got back to Sussex university pizzas and garlic bread was shared roughly equally between four floors. Each flat had a kitchen where you could cook in so everyone could eat. However, my flat was being used as the vegetarian pizza people so I had to go downstairs. The general rule was if you didn’t belong to that flat but you brought something either foody or a helpful utensil you could stay ( I brought a pizza knife ) and share the pizza. There was a variety of pizzas from hawaiian to cheese to pepperoni and it was all delicious. We had enough for a slice of each pizza each. One girl comes in half way through cutting the pizzas and demands where her pizza is. We are naturally confused as she didn’t contribute, hadn’t even turned up before this and was assumed to be on another floor. When we told her we didn’t have enough she actually burst into tears and stormed out. We were very confused. Regrettably some went without trying all the pizzas just so she could have some – and she didn’t even thank anyone.

Besides the crying incident, the evening was very relaxed. We listened to music, chatted and munched on left over pizza. It was a fun evening. His friends had even apologised and apparently grabbed all the stuff they chucked out for him. It doesn’t really excuse doing it in the first place, but it is a start.

Thursday

The last charity to visit was Young Carers charity. The two people presenting it didn’t seem to know what they were doing, talked about other charities more than their own and didn’t need help as they were government funded so there wasn’t much we could do for them.

A lot of the people in my group got their A level results and most people did badly with a few passes here and there. This just made me more anxious about my results than anything. After a lot of comforting and promises of chocolate they were okay though, which was good.

After the charity visit, we had a drumming workshop with the Drum Dogs. It was really fun – we had the opportunity to play little drumming games with the drums such as Copy Cat, we made our own tunes, we did the tunes to songs we knew and I think it was a good way to get out pent up stress. I really enjoyed the session – even if it did leave me with a star shaped bruise from where the drum kept hitting against my leg as I hit it and ringing ears.

We started working on a timeline on wall liner. We split it in to week one and week two – we had to draw a record of what we did each weeks to hang up at our graduation.  We did big events such as the bonfire and the giant swing in week one to the bonding and laughing in week 2. It was quite fun to draw – still needed a lot of work though. One girl just locked herself in her room and refused to help until we forced her out. Even then she just doodled on spare paper and ignored everyone. It was bizarre.

One of our leaders, Tracey, lost her key. To replace a normal key it would be 70 pounds. However, since her key was a master key that meant that she’d charged 70 pound per door in the building that the key opened. We did the maths and worked out that she’d have to pay over two thousand pounds if we didn’t find it, so we spent ages that evening with a small group looking around our flat for it. The key was later ‘anonymously’ dropped off outside our door by two people so I assume someone stole it as a joke but returned it when they saw how worried she got.

I felt the sudden need to get out for a bit and went for a walk. I just needed to be alone for a bit. I took my ipod and my phone and walked to the edge of the campus to see if I could spot the train station I needed to get to. I couldn’t see it but I figured the general direction I needed to walk the day after which helped. I headed back after twenty minutes just in time to get changed out of wet clothes and head to my friend’s lounge until dinner. When we actually went to dinner though, we were surprised. We were told that we had no dinner as the main hall we normally ate at was booked by a private party. We stopped and stared at the lady who told us this. This meant that just under thirty hungry teenagers had no food to eat. Someone joking said we should skin a squirrel or something similar but not many people laughed.

We headed back to our flat disappointed. One of the leaders, Steve turned around and said something along the lines of ‘It’s okay we have bread and sandwich fillers. We can make sandwiches.’ Everyone groaned. ‘But wait, i’m not done. Just dont eat too many because dinner is at seven and we’re having mexican food upstairs! We have a reservation!’

All the leaders started laughing – I have to admit, I fell for their little prank. At seven pm we all queued up for mexican food. I had a fajita, vegetable rice and potato wedges with a slice of cake. it was so delicious that I even wrapped up another slice of cake to take home and eat later (which I never got anyway as I forgot to eat it). It was pretty fun.

After dinner we headed back to the flat where we sat and watched part of a really confusing movie before my two friends went off to go answer questions for a big brother style-thing the leaders planned. I waited downstairs and they never came back. I went and looked for them everywhere I could think of – I went to the different flat and rang the doorbell numerous times, I asked people if they had seen them (they hadn’t)… I felt lonely. Nobody really wanted to talk. I head back to my room, totally defeated just to find them about to leave together, not even seeing me. They were both laughing. I don’t know why I didn’t call out to them or anything. I guess after the two hours looking for them, I was tired. I went to my room, cried and called Him. He calmed me down and we chatted for a bit until he had to go since it was late. I was about to give up and go to bed when they came back into my shared flat area and saw me. A weird look crossed their faces but it vanished quickly and they said ‘where were you?’ when I told them I had been looking for them for over two hours they looked guilty but I didn’t really care by this point. I was tired and upset.

As an apology, one of my friends invited me to the little sneak out that was being planned at midnight. I figured it was my last night I may as well accept it, even if they upset. One friend went downstairs to their flat to be met later. The other girl with me came and sat in my room and we…talked. Like really talked. I said how lonely I had been feeling and she apologised and gave me a hug. She said she’d try not to let it happen again. And true to her word, we snuck out of our room at midnight downstairs to our other friends flat. We had permission from the leader in that flat to come over later on, on the condition we didn’t wake him up when he went to bed. The only reason we had to sneak out was because the leader in our room doesn’t like us leaving after a certain point.

The evening was spent eating haribo, listening to music quietly, chatting and practically falling asleep on each other until I decided to sneak back upstairs into bed. My rebelish moment of tenagerdom was over. It was fun and nice to socialise after being sat by myself all evening. However, it was exhausting and I promptly fell asleep.

Friday

Today was the day we were leaving and our last day of residential together ever. I have to admit, the week while adventurous with it’s drumming work shops, tears and movies was fun. I would happily re do it. Even the feeling lonely part. It’s bizarre.

After we were packed entirely we had to carry our bags to an empty room to be locked up while we had breakfast in the canteen. I had a pot of fruit and nuts saved especially for lunch as I had a feeling I probably wouldn’t be able to afford much for lunch otherwise. I shoved it into my backpack I was wearing and went about my day as normal.

Our first and last activity of the day was a group wide geocaching adventure. We all went for a walk around the country side and managed to find a total of five geocaches. It was really fun actually. I was also featured in many ‘selfies’ and group photos as people tried to document our last day. I have to admit i’ve gotten pretty used to cameras and filming things so i’m not really camera shy anymore. This just made the whole posing for photos situation a lot more enjoyable.

The field we were in had a lot of cows in it – easily over twenty. They were spread out fairly evenly over the field and were mostly ignoring us. One thing one noting is one boy in my group proclaimed that ‘I could punch a cow. Heck I could fight a cow and win i’m mad dench’ very loudly. Luckily we managed to convince him that it was a dumb idea. However on the way back from geocaching, all the cows had huddled right up to the exit and were all staring at us as we walked past. It was really bizarre. The only way we could get out was by climbing over a small fence.

When we got back, we span around on spinny chairs, had our packed lunches and waited until the coaches were meant to turn up. I wasn’t actually getting on the coach with everyone and was instead getting a coach from the train station with him. I figured i wasn’t in any rush so I waited with everyone else until I got a text saying ‘on my way’, which signalled the fact I had to leave. I was surprised by the amount of hugs  I received from fellow NCS people and leaders alike. This was the moment that I realised i’m really going to miss these bonkers people once NCS is over.

Eventually I detached myself from them and headed on my way to the train station. The walk was actually fairly short but felt longer due to the giant bags I had to carry. While waiting for him, I bought a cup of tea to sip from and sat on the stairs until he turned up.

When he did turn up (which wasn’t that long ago in all fairness) he ordered a taxi, we chucked our bags in the boot and we chatted on the way to his Mums work about our weeks. We both concluded that we had fun even with our moment of suckiness thrown into the mix.

When we got to his mum’s work we realised that she wasn’t finishing for a few hours. There wasn’t much for us to do. We decided to leave our bags in her office and went on an unexpected date into Brighton town and went to the Sealife Centre to visit a new exhibit. I have to admit, it was really cool looking at all the strange yet wonderful fish. I especially favoured the turtles, the sea pancakes (manta rays) and the jelly fish. We spend a good while walking around the exhibits, holding hands. He at one point told me i’m as excited as a small child in a sweet shop. It was a lot more fun than the last time we were there together I think as it was just us – not us plus my family. No toddlers to chase or anything. We could take our time and enjoy ourselves. It was nice.

When we were finished in the Sealife Centre, we decided to get an ice cream and sit on the beach for a bit. I bought two 99s and we sat and chatted on the beach. We tried (and failed) to skim rocks and attempted to sunbathe. It wasn’t very comfortable without towels and quickly gave up on that idea.

After our surprise date, we got the bus back together and headed back to his Mum’s work. He made fun of my neon pink child-sized cagoule while he was in his rain coat but ultimately it kept my dry from the upcoming rain.

The drive home was quiet, but it was a peaceful quiet. Not one that felt awkward at any point. After my week of solid noise from music, teenagers and general life it was pleasant.

I arrived home far too quickly and had to say goodbye to him. We promised to meet up on results day (Which is actually tomorrow, i’m so nervous!!) and kissed good bye.

All in all, this week was really fun. It wasn’t as extreme as the previous week but that doesn’t mean that it was boring. It was fun in a different form. In the end, we decided to support The Olive Tree an would officially start fund raising and working on various projects next week.

He’s been acting really weird. Not talking as much, and when he does talk he seems distracted. I wonder what it means. Maybe i’m just being dumb.

until next time!

-Megan

 

First week away at NCS

Hey,

so this week I went on my first week at NCS and I can honestly say I had a blast. I went to Liddington PGL camp with my group and did many exciting activities, made friends and ate far too much food. It was good.

Monday

On Monday I got the coach to Liddington and sat next to one of the girls i’d gotten pretty close to – Emma.  We got to know each other on the journey while I shared her headphones and listened to music and it turned out we had a lot in common! Her friend Becki was sat in front of us and fed us marshmallows and haribo at random intervals on the way to the PGL camp.

We arrived at the camp for half twelve in the afternoon. We sat on the grass while the leaders in charge sorted out bags and gave wrist bands to the people in charge of our little entourage.

Soon enough were sent to go pick out a room and our room mates. I went with the logic that since the only people I kind of knew were the people I chatted to on the coach that I should bunk with them.

We had half an hour to unpack and set up before we were ordered out to point 28 by our PGL leaders Dan and Dan (one was male, one was female) to do our first activity – Jacobs ladder.

The idea of Jacobs ladder was essentially to try and climb up as high as you could with the help of harnesses (Which I still couldn’t do towards the end of the week. One of my team members always had to help me tighten it since I could never manage it). The leader we had was this strange dark haired man with a mustache who sang a weird song about coconuts called a ‘Repeat After Me’ song that our group didn’t really engage with. We mostly laughed at the poor guy.

The twist was that each bar got further away from each other the higher you climb, making it difficult. Furthermore you had to use your teammates to climb up with. As first activities go, it was certainly engaging and forced us to work together.

Our second activity was to do with a rope – we had to organise ourself along this rope according to certain characteristics such as shoe size, birth month and age but each time we couldn’t do something and had to find another way of organizing ourselves along this rope. E.g we had to order ourselves by shoe size without talking and with our eyes shut so we poked each other the number of times that was equivalent to our shoe size. It was certainly challenging. We also weren’t allowed to step of the rope and anybody who stepped off of it had to do ten push ups in front of the group.

We also did a rope swing. The idea was that we had three blocks and we were split into standing on two of them. We had to use this rope to swing each of our members to middle block and then to the other block before the time ran out. The idea was to swap blocks we stood on. It sounds easy but it really wasn’t – we even had an injury from where one girl fell of the rope and hit her shoulder resulting in tissue damage.

Our final activity of the day before dinner was the human knot. We had to hold hands with someone opposite with us and someone across from us and essentially try to get ourselves to the point of holding hands in a circle… we managed it with the help of some minor cheating and team building.

For dinner I was worried I wouldn’t have anyone to sit with but a boy called James gave me a tray to carry my food on without me asking and asked if i’d like to sit with him and my roommates – I gladly accepted.

After dinner, we had an icebreaker where we had to sit in our groups and play silly games like wink murder and two truths and one lie. It was fun but a mildly anticlimactic end to the evening.

That evening was spent relaxing in my dorm room with my roommates and getting to know everyone. It was a fun evening.

Tuesday 

This is the day we started ‘borrowing’ apples from the canteen. We only got fed three meals a day and while they are rather large, the amount of activities we did meant we were always hungry. To combat this, my roommates, our adopted roomie James and I all stole apples from the canteen every day and hoarded them in our room to eat when were hungry. It wasn’t technically stealing since you didn’t have to pay for them and could have them with your meal but close enough.

After breakfast the first activity I had an activity called the Giant Swing that is fairly self explanatory – it’s a giant swing. The idea is that you are harnessed into the giant swing and are given a metal bar to hold onto. You are then raised to whatever height you’d like to go by your teammates pulling on a rope. Finally, when at the ideal height you pull a white string that releases the swing and you are dropped from the height and swung ridiculously high. It was terrifying but it was so fun – i’d happily have gone again. James had his speaker connected to spotify so all our activities were filled with a variety of music that I found made them that more fun and exciting – being raised in the swing was so much more interesting with music.

Our second session was orienteering that in all honesty was fairly boring. We played a race game where we had to identify certain directions and run whichever way the leader called, we tried to follow maps with keys (Failing) and then went to go do actual orienteering in little groups. We had a small booklet and we had to go get each number in the booklet stamped by following the directions. All I can say is i’m glad I was with someone who could read maps.

My roommate had started complaining that her arm she hurt was seriously hurt to the point she was actually taken to A&E so we didn’t see her until after dinner.

The final activity before dinner was raft building. This was probably one of the best activities of the whole week. We had to design and build a raft with our group – and test to see if it was actually usable on open water. We had a certain amount of ‘points’ we could spend on certain materials such as barrels, ropes, wooden planks, knot tying lessons, oars, etc and we had to try and build the best raft we could out of these. Unfortunately we spent so long designing our raft we didn’t have time to actually build one of our design so we had to go with our instructors design.

Our instructors design lasted about two minutes in the water – just enough time for us to get stuck on a mini island in the middle of this giant lake where we were pulled into the water by the other team. We spent the rest of the afternoon pulling in other teams, splashing each other and desperately trying to avoid swimming over baby ducklings that seemed to appear from thin air. It was fun – even if I nearly lost my shoes in the lake and I was soaked from head to toe. Luckily I got back to our room first so I could shower before anyone else.

Capture the flag was our evening activity – it was so fun. There were four-five groups from NCS at Liddington and each group was split up evenly into roughly two groups to compete against each other. The groups included the leaders so we had a ton of players. The game lasted a few hours and I even managed to stop a few people stealing our flag. The rules were changed up every once in a while to keep it interesting (for example if you made it to the box with the flag in it you couldn’t be tagged until you stepped outside of it). The task forced us once again to work together in stopping the other team and my team won best out of three!

When we got back to our dorm room we had a mini party with everyone else in our group – James and Emma played with a small ball she bought the night before (she bought it with a pound she found under a frog, it’s bizarre), we had food, James supplied music, and everyone else crowded into our room and just chatted without being prompted. It was nice.

Wednesday

Our first activity was activity was a ‘challenge course’ that was essentially a park with some challenges thrown into it. We had to buddy up with a partner and try and get around the course as well as you could. I have to say, Emma and I did really well – even with water being thrown at us by the leader and me accidentally kicking her in the face during a tire crawl. She got me back by accidentally punching me in the face a little later though so it all worked out.

The second activity of the day was essentially crawling through a large set of pitch black tunnels with your group. You had to hold the ankle of the person in front of you so you didn’t get lost and were told to follow a certain corner constantly – we had no leader in the tunnels so it was scary trying to work together in the tunnels but we managed it. I went into the tunnels a total of three times – we explored the short tunnels and the long tunnels as a group but on the third go you had the choice to play hide and seek with your team. You had to pick a partner and had to hide in the pitch black tunnels with them while two people had to find everyone. However this went very badly when everyone got really lost and one girl ended up having a panic attack in pitch black tunnels deep underground without and adults around. Luckily we were fairly close to an exit by coincidence so we could get her out and soothed fairly easily. This was the same girl who had been to A and E during the week previously.

Our third activity was the crate challenge. The objective simple enough – one team is blind -folded and has to climb up as many crates  as they can in a set time and the other team has to stack crates as high as they can for the other people to climb on but they also have to direct the people on the crates where to go. This gives them full opportunites to purposely lead you in the right direction, lead to people having water thrown at them while blindfolded and some were even tickled on the crates.

I was the first group to go up and since we hadn’t had the whole thing explained to us, I wasn’t sure what to expect. This lead to me crying while high up in the air towards the end of my groups task and meant I had to walk off and calm down for a bit before I could return. I quickly learnt that even though I have a strong dislike of heights, I can deal with them while I can see what i’m doing. Once I can’t see what i’m doing, I freak out and assume i’m falling constantly to the point of tears.

Fun.

Better late than never I suppose?

The evening was much more fun than the few hours before. We had a disco. Originally we had something called a snapchat challenge planned but since nobody really wanted to go it was cancelled for this. The disco itself I found really fun – there was cheesey music, bad dancing and it had a good atmosphere. However people only really danced for the ‘typical’ songs like YMCA and whatnot.

I went with the logic that I don’t want to regret not doing anything while I was away so I totally joined in with the crazy dancing at the front of the hall, I was bullied into singing a Karaoke version of midnight train by Journey that actually turned out to be pretty fun by a boy who ended up becoming one of my best friends, and I even was challenged to a plank off and won! It was certainly an adventurous night.

The rest of the evening was spent playing truth or dare that resulted in one kid sticking his foot in a pond and an awful lot of kissing,  and chilling out reading in my room reading with my roommates and James. The evening certainly made up for the start of the day.

Thursday

After breakfast, our first activity was climbing up a giant wall. We were harnessed in and the objective was to climb up to the top and ring the bell at the top when we reached it. I Managed to make it all the way to the top without freaking out too much, so i’m proud. James managed to get all the way up to the top blind folded and with his arms restricted – it was certainly impressive.

Aeroball was the second task of the day. We essentially had to bounce on trampolines and try to shoot balls into hoops in the trampolines – it was so much more fun than it sounds and I really enjoyed it. I found out I completely sucked at it and barely scored any points but the mini games kept the whole thing fun. The leader was also funny so that made things even better.

We also had a session on a trapeze. We were once again harnessed in and had to climb up what looked like a wooden telephone pole with metal steps in it to climb up. One of the steps fell out while I was climbing, giving me a minor heart attack. Luckily it was fairly easy to get it passed back up to me and continue climbing up. Once you were at the top, you stood on the edge of a wooden ledge and were told to stand ‘like a zombie’ while we jumped and tried to grab a metal bar. Apparently we stand like a zombie since we automatically reach out and grab what is in front of us. I don’t know how scientifically accurate that is, but I caught the bar and it actually wasn’t as bad as I thought it’d be, even though I was high up.

The third activity was called Survivor – the idea is that we were to be taught survival skills in a fun and interactive way. I don’t know about survival skills but it was certainly fun! People were allocated certain plane parts – e.g two people were the wings and were told to spin off in random directions and the ‘engine’ had to roll away from us. This was meant to be a simulation of a plane crash to get us in the right frame of mind. The rest of the session consisted of us doing a race to try and pick up certain resources we needed against another team, building a shelter and having to explain why it was a good shelter, and getting given cards with certain resources on them. We had to use the cards to explain how we were going to use whatever was on them to survive (e.g I got a bowl so I said it could be used in transporting water). The highlight of the session was easily the part where we had to use flint and steel to light some cotton wool on fire. The whole thing was filmed and I was the only one who couldn’t light the cotton on fire… i did cut my thumb with the flint and steel though! I reckon I could have managed to light it if I hadn’t been struck with a case of the giggles that was so bad I cried with laughter. It looks like I wasn’t the only one who was infected as one girl fell off her log with laughter, one boy nearly set his hand on fire since he was laughing so hard… the point of the session was very quickly lost. It spiralled into insanity. It was hilarious though!

Other teams have a team name or a logo but we never really had one while went around. However after the survivor session, we had a new team name. We are team ‘Yeaaaaaah’. It sounds bizarre but the reason we have this name is because one member on our team, Bonnie, was half asleep one night and couldn’t stop talking. She said ‘Me and Foziya yeaaah’ as the start of the conversation and apparently the way she said the word ‘yeah’ had her roommates in hysterics. They told us all about it the day after and everyone loved it so much that it became our name. You have to say ‘Yeaaah’ really deeply and extend the end of it. We said it so much that we all had sore throats by the morning after. Not that we really minded!

In the evening we had a bonfire. We all were told to pick up a big stick for the bonfire on the way to the actual fire pit to use but there wasn’t enough. We had to send small groups into the forest-y areas to pick up more fuel for the fire. This was the typical cheesy bonfire – we sang along to the boom box we had, we roasted Haribo marshmallows on sticks and we painted eachothers faces with the charred remains of the bonfire. We even did a quiz – my team got 17 out of 26 which  i don’t think is too bad. The entire evening was fun and I even made some new friends.

Once we got back from the bonfire, I spent the evening in the local lounge drinking tea, watching tv and waiting until half nine, where the pizzas the leaders ordered for us all for being so good turned up. The leaders ordered at least two of every flavour for everyone to share and enjoy out of their own pocket to celebrate us having fun and bonding. The pizza lasted about two minutes before it was completely gone. It was crazy to watch – large groups of teenagers really like piranhas when it comes to food.

Friday

This was the last day of the NCS session at Liddington and there was a definite feeling of mourning in the air as we got ready to leave. We had to strip our beds before breakfast and pack our bags up. We took the remains of the apple hoards and split them between my roommates, our adopted member and I. We then went to breakfast and tried to pretend it wasn’t our last day. I had accidentally referred to the camp as ‘home’ a few times in the few days I had been there because we had been so welcomed and my tight-nit group of teammates truly felt like a family. A highly dysfunctional one, but a family nonetheless.

Tree Top Trial was our first session of the day. It was essentially a tree-top obstacle course that involved us being harnessed in and having to unclip and reclip ourselves to ropes. We had to climb over thin ropes, walk unsteady bridges and jump from platform to platform, before we had to swing down on a zip wire. We had to run midair to make sure we didn’t land on our bottoms. It was a lot of fun.

Sensory Trail was our last ever activity at PGL Liddington. We were blindfolded, had to hold the shoulder of the person in front of you and had to follow a rope to get to the end of the course. You had to climb through certain shapes and navigate the path as a giant group with all your senses besides sight – it was a massive challenge and although we walked very slowly we made it. The leaders tried to make us disorientated by throwing water at us and tickling us with branches. It was sort of a boring note to end the fantastic week on, but oh well.

For lunch the canteen served up pizza and potato wedges. It was a good food to end on.

After lunch, we had to take all our bags and carry them onto the coach, and then leave. However I was suddenly struck by a sick feeling that meant it physically hurt to lift anything. I had to carry my bag in short bursts onto the coach. Luckily, I felt better after a short walk. One of my leaders, Robb, even gave me a free bottle of water to drink on the coach which I thought was sweet.

The journey home was fairly fun – we were hit by the tail end of hurricane Bertha so there was heavy rain. I got the chance to chat to one of the boys opposite my seat (Connor) and found we had a lot in common. Emma teased me later saying he was clearly crushing on me as he apparently hung onto my every word but I don’t think he is. We’re just friends – even if he is super nice.

All in all that week was amazing. Next week i’m off to Sussex University in Falmer for what should be a more chilled out week. I’m covered in so many bruises but it was worth it. I had a fun week and by the end of the week the group of cliquey kids I was with felt like a proper family in five short days. We’ve bonded well.

The staff were lovely, the food great, the weather mostly good… I love it.

I hope next week is just as fun!

Until next time,

Megan

Water fights and picnics

Hey,

Firstly, this is my 100th post! Yay! Doesn’t feel like i’ve made that many.

So yesterday I went to the final NCS meet up before I go away next week to Liddlington PGL camp in Swindon. It was a really fun day that started out with a meet up at an ASDA in Crawley with the other people in my group. We were also given free NCS shirts by one of our leaders, Tracey.

We then headed to the local park and had a picnic – or rather the girls did. We tucked in to the spread of rolls, fruit, biscuits, various meats, crisps, sausage rolls and so on while the majority of the boys in our group threw an american football around and chased each other with the water pistols.

Once everyone was done eating, we played some dorky party games like Wink Murder, Splat and Zip Zap Bounce that ended with us all in laughing fits. We also squirted each other with the water pistols to the point that they had to be refilled! (They were massive)

We also were given some extra information about NCS and stuff we might need to pack – for example, towels.

As we bought far too much food with our 150 pounds, there was lots of leftovers for people to help themselves to. I managed to take two six-packs of rolls which I figured would be handy for a barbecue at home. Free food is always good!

As I live a fair distance away from the meet up point, one of the leaders gave me a lift to the train station. The journey there was fairly uneventful – even pleasant. We discussed books, other members of my group and what i want to do for college. When she pulled outside of Brighton station, she even told me where the ticket office was and said she’d see me next week.

I successfully managed to navigate Brighton train station by myself. This is a real achievement considering a few months ago I didn’t even know what slot the train ticket goes into. Due to somebody apparently jumping off of a platform in front of train, all of the trains were delayed and also meant lots of people were just milling around aimlessly around the station. RIP whoever jumped off, I hope you’re in a better place.

Once the trains started getting ready to go, the previously empty train was suddenly chuck full of people to the point of people literally falling over each other. It was bizarre.

All in all, the day was really fun. We had a water fight, I got free food, I met some potential new friends and I managed to navigate the train station all by myself. I’m definitely excited for next week!

I’ve got a doctors appointment today.. I hate visiting the doctors! I always get the sense that i’m going to be i’m dieing or something equally dramatic and (hopefully) untrue.

Until next time!

-Megan