EFY

So,EFY...it was amazing! Absolutely one of the best experiences of my life!!!!
(My cousin, Brittney, and I on the first day)

I went to the St. Petersburg 1st session (obviously in Fl!) with my cousin. I had such a good time and am already looking forward to going back next year! Just maybe not to Fl because it's so far away and so are all the people I met. boo... :( lol

We had very long, busy days at EFY. Our days started, technically at about 5:30 just so you can shower and get ready, though we didn't have to be anywhere until 7 and then lasted until 11pm, when you had to be in bed, lights out...haha

During the week we had FHE, devotionals, scripture study, (scripture study and devotionals everyday, though we actually had two devotionals, one am and one pm) dances, classes, games and pizza night, testimony meeting, a variety show, a music program, a service project, and lots of other fun activities! But my favorites were the dances, games night, and testimony meeting.

We had 28 youth in our company, 18 girls and 10 boys. Plus we had three councilors, two girls, Lisa and Sara, and one guy, Blake. Blake challenged us all to have everyones names memorized by Friday. But I, being the fabulous socialist I am, had them all memorized on the first day! haha. We spent a lot of time with our company, and made a lot of friends. Our company name was Raised in Incorruption, which wasn't the easiest name, some of us couldn't even say it right! haha

(I'm not actually in this picture, i was in almost the very front, like one row cut off from the pic! haha)

One thing that I found interesting was escorting...haha the boys escorted the girls in our company whenever we went somewhere together, breakfast, devotionals, dances, etc... But since there were more girls than guys, each guy had one girl on each arm, and a few of the guys were pretty shy, so it was pretty quite when we walked...haha. But still, it was fun.

(This wasn't actually MY dorm, just the one next to it. My dorm had trees and other dorms all over so it was kinda hard to get a picture, but this one looks just like it!)

We got to stay in college dorms, which was a lot of fun! Kinda like being off on your own, except for you couldn't get in without a councilor entering a code...so basically we didn't have the freedom to be in there whenever we wanted. lol, but of course most of us learned the code...haha i did too, but i didn't go sneaking off into my room...lol!

DANCES...a pretty new experience for me. There were two dances, a casual dance on Tuesday and a formal dance on Friday. For me those were dances number two and dances number three. I had a lot of fun! I danced almost every slow song at both of them and even asked a lot of guys to dance!!!

(Blake dancing a dance they taught us)

But EFY dances are a lot crazier than normal dances.





Games night was a lot of fun. We played some...interesting games. Like Noah's ark and Pioneer trail. None of us had ever heard of them, but we played the games at girls camp, just different versions, so at least I kinda knew what I was doing. Altogether, our company came in 3rd place for the 14/15 age group...not too bad.


http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=21914476902&subj=1363013210
(Our cheer, can't post it here, so click the linky button!)


At the same time we also had a cheer off. Each company had to come up with a short cheer or skit based on their name (Raised in Incorruption...not so easy to work with...) Our company did pretty good for working on it for only 45 mins. The boys wrote and sang a rap and the girls did some weird dance thing...we didn't win a place for our cheer, but we did win 3rd again for our banner!






Our service activity was knitting baby hats. I'm not so sure if you wanna know how that went, but I'll tell you anyways...We had to do the hats in pairs, and a got this guy who THOUGHT he knew exactly how to do it just from watching a video, so he tried to do most of the hat by himself, which didn't work so well the first three times we had to start over, so he finally let me help him. We would get a few rows going pretty well before we messed up and had to start over again.

So after like the 5th time, we were doing really good and had like half a hat finished. So me and my partner had this thing going, I'd thread and he'd loop. Well he started pulling on each loop after he did them to make it tighter, so when he handed it back to me, there was about two inches of extra yarn hanging off!

Well i didn't know what to do so i asked Blake, who tried to save our poor, helpless hat, but couldn't. So he just started pulling the yarn off the loom without saying anything. When he was finished he told us not to try it again, we didn't have enough time to attempt to make a hat and that we could go (we had free time)

(My amazing second partner, Adam! Amazing dude right there...)



So that was kinda sad, but i didn't have anything to do, so i just stayed in there and talked with people in my group. Then there were these girls who did almost as bad as me and didn't want to try finishing there hat, so me and this other guy in my group, Adam, told them we would do it. And what do ya know? We finished the whole hat in like 20 minutes without messing up! Yay us! So yeah, i think it was just my first partner...




I wanted to be in the music program choir, but when they were announcing it they said that there would be auditions, so that changed my mind quickly! no way was I singing by myself in front of a bunch of people. But the day of the music program I was talking to a guy in my company who was in the choir and asking him about the auditions and he told me...THERE WEREN'T ANY AUDITIONS TO BE IN THE CHOIR!!! ugh! So yeah, I'll be doing the choir next year...

Friday. The last day. The day before we went home. The day we were all sad to leave. The day we all said good bye (and hugged hot guys!) But before all that...we had a banquet! which was actually just like regular dinner time except for we all had to wear church clothes, the tables were set up differently and we sat with our company, and we didn't have to go through these long cafeteria lines! haha yay! And it was fun sitting with our company together for once...



Okay, so maybe not all together...We were spread over four tables...



(Only half of this was our company, the left side, ignore the other people...)

And then after that we went and took a bunch of photos and people exchanged numbers...





The boys in our company: John, Adam, Kevin, Louis, Connor, Garrett, Luke, Jared, and Blake. We were missing two boys, Jamey went home early and Colin refused to be in the picture...Not bad huh? (focus on the blonde!!!)

Jared, me and Luke


A random picture of some of the dudes. haha they were just sitting there, so I started taking their pictures...


Colin is in this one


Brittney found a new boyfriend at EFY! haha jk!


Me and my councilor, Lisa

The girls in our company: Lisa, Sara, Kristen, Ashley, Tiffany, Lacy, Marie, Rebecca, Chrissy, Ashley, Cassie, Gena, Maegan, ME! Maddie, Caroline, Gina, Katie, Becca, and Brittney. See, I told you I knew all the names!

And then a bunch of other random pictures I took!

Me and Maddie

Our company spot, where we met like a gazillion times a day

Garret, Jamey, Jared, and Luke. We called them the flower boys because they kept picking flowers and wearing them...lol


Me and Marie

Me and Adam!

John. He looks like David Archuleta from American Idol. I'm not the only one who thought so. Everyone kept calling him David. John didn't like that. John got mad. Don't call John David. I didn't!

Me taking my own picture wearing my amazing white EFY shirt!

Lisa and the other councilor in our dorm, Josie, at the Tuesday dance

I was bored and on the phone...enough said...

So a week full of fun, friends, and spiritual activities! A lot of fun, but now I miss it! And all I'm left with is pictures, a bunch of phone numbers, a handbook full of notes, a CD, and this orange bracelet that I won't be taking off for a long time...CAN'T WAIT FOR NEXT YEAR!!!!!!!!

(wow, I'm pretty sure this is the longest post I ever have or will do!!!!!)