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
thatstrangegirlsblog 