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
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