The BIG Update...

FRIDAY, FEB 4

Okay so some of you are still wondering why can't you get my e-mails.........IFYOU HAVE A HOTMAIL ACCOUNT MY E-MAILS FROM MY CAPERNWRAY ADDRESS WILLAUTOMATICALLY SO IN THE JUNK MAIL FOLDER....so you can fix that later on. Yes iknow i haven't been e-mailing many of you, and if i have, you haven't beene-mailing me. Yes, i understand that you may have had final exams and friendsthat you need to hang out with, however you do realize that i am taking my timeto e-mail many of you with the mass e-mails, so i guess it's only fair that youcan at least send me and e-mail saying that you are alive. I definatelyunderstand how Giselle felt when she was away from home...Zelly, i know exactlyhow you feel.

Anyway last night was very interesting. Here at Capernwray they put us into"families", basically many of us students are paired up with a staff member andtheir family and we just spend a few hours a week just hanging out. I'm in theRedwood family and last night we played many games such as...

An eating game-which is where you have to pull out a food item from a bag (humanfood, none of this dog food, sick stuff business) and eat it as fast as youcould to win. Some of the food items include a meat pie, a juice box, a kiwi, anapple, some chips, food like that.

Then we played Actionary, which is like pictionary except you have to act outwhatever that thing is. So me and Steph had to act out Princes Diana for ourteams. I made a crown/tiara motion with my hands then proceeded to act out a carcrash...i think I hit my head on the floor, oh well. My team figured it out.Yay! Another time me and Steph had to act out a video camera however i saw theword "bullfighter" on the card. So was running into the walls and curtains andno one got it because i was supposed to be doing a video camera, ya we all had agood laugh.

We also took some pictures of the sunset because they are very pretty andcolorful that you just have to take pictures whenever you see them.

Then we did Tim Tam Slam. ok a Tim Tam is a cookie. Um, just picture a square Oreo, except with chocolate cream in the middle and then coat the whole thingwith chocolate...that's a Tim Tam. Tim Tam Slam is where you bit oppositecorners of the cookie, dip one end in hot chocolate/coffee and you suck thechocolate creamy center through the other bite mark. Then you put the wholecookie in your mouth cause it's starting to melt. Then you have this meltedchocolate goodness....and it's amazingly good!! I'll bring some home if youe-mail me and ask me nicely ;)

Then we played Water Spoons which is exactly like the card game spoons howeverif you don't get a spoon you have to drink a glass of water. I lost some skin inthat game cause i dove for a spoon and i dove on some carpet, now i have a skidmark on my elbow. Yay for me! There was also some water thrown around but it wasall in good fun. I"m totally excited for the next Family Night in 2 weeks time.

Well Bible school and actual classes officially start next week. It just seemslike alot to take it with all the Life File rules and the getting used tolectures and book studies and bible studies and writing up testimonies andliving with people and other things.

Oh one of the cutest things they have here is "morning tea" which is a littlesnack time after breakfast and before lunch. Usually it's coffee/tea or waterand cookies/cake of some kind. So that's something different, but maybe it's inall Capernwrays cause i asked Trent about it and he said they had it in England.Anyway i really hope some of you guys e-mail me soon, cause I'm kinda missingyou guys. Bye 4 now & God bless!

Well tonight's Friday Night and I"m totally exhausted 'cause i was in the poolplaying a hard core game of water polo this afternoon. *sigh* It was guys vs.girls and trust me, us girls got totally schooled. For those of you who don'tknow what that means, we lost horrible, and i mean HORRIBLY. But it was tons andtons of fun! It was great.

Funny story: I just walked into the student lounge and there's Steve and Lanceblowing up this blue thing. The blue thing was actually a kiddie swimming poolthat the guys bought earlier and they were blowing it up to use in our poolhere. They were able to get it blown up and they did put it in the pool. Stevekept on saying "It's like having pool party in a pool party" Um, actuallythat's not quite the right quote, but it's close enough and I'm sure you get thepoint. Just picture two fairly big guys in a kiddie pool and that kiddie pool isfloating in an outdoor swimming pool. Quite funny.

So tonight I think the plan is that we're going to play Capture the Flag, Kickthe Can, and then a pool party. The good times just never end here atCapernwray. I'm really tired though. Talk to ya l8er.........

Well the plans for capture the flag fell over because it was kinda raining,however there's still a pool party going on as we speak. Yay for them!

Since i really wasn't interested in doing the pool party thing, remember i hadjust gotten out of the pool, i decided to just walk around and see what i could see. i went into the Homestead Lounge and thought "I just might have to brush upon my piano playing skills". Thinking I would find the classic songs like "FurElise" and "Moonlight Sonata" i dug around in the piano bench. What i foundthere was even better than those songs.

After some diging I found words on the the music sheet that read "I am yourangel of music". Now if you know anything about the things that i just love tothe point of obession, you will know that those are part of the lyrics to "AngelOf Music" which is a song from "Phantom of the Opera". I was in complete shock!!How in the world could Capernwray have these notes to the songs that i just lovehearing, and that i heard on my way to Capernwray...how weird is that!! Aftersome digging around some more I was able to find the complete sheet music for"Angel of Music", "Think of Me", and "Phantom of the Opera". I was able to findparts of "Wishing You Were Somehow Here Again" but i think i'm still missing asheet or two.

So finding those notes totally made my night, and now i think some friends ofmine are going into town to get some ice cream. I asked them to get me a fruityflavored kind, which is really quite vague but if i get some weird funky flavor,meh. You all know me...I"ll eat it anyway. if it's totally rank, well then i canat least say that i tried it right? Anyway hoping to add more to this soon....

SATURDAY FEB 5

hey! Well last night we finished off on a good note because about 10 of uswatched "Napoleon Dynamite". If you haven't seen it get some friends togetherand make a weekend out of it. I"m serious! You gotta watch it.

Today was Saturday and every weekend is like our free times. It's pretty sweet.So a bunch of us headed out to Waihi (pronounced Wah-he) Beach which is about anhour and a half from Capernwray. I was kinda feeling light headed on the waythere cause it was on a winding road and i can't really deal with those toowell. No i didn't get sick, just a little dizzy.

On the way there, all of us in the Susan's car were listening to Dan's Epicsoundtrack CD, which was as compilation of a bunch of sweet soundtrack songsfrom "Master and Commander", "The Passion of the Christ", "Black Hawk Down" andof course a bit of "Lord of the Rings". It was pretty sweet listening to the"LOTR"'s soundtrack while driving down the New Zealand country side. Great experience.

Fun fact: J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S Lewis were really good friends back in the day.Actually Tolkien was the one who led Lewis to Christ. How cool is that??

Once we got to Waihi it was raining. Plus I saw a bunch of dead jelly fish onthe beach. Kinda cool. We had to make a little 40 minute long hike to a secludedbeach. The hike itself was, um, interesting. And some thought that the trails atcamp were bad in the rain, not compared to what i dealt with today.There was mud and trunk roots and lots of fun stuff like that. I'd do it again except not inflip flops. Don't ask why i didn't bring my runners. Anyway it was still fun andthere were tons of great views.

Once we actually got to the secluded beach the 1st thing i did was pull a"Chariots of Fire". If you dont' know what I'm talking about there's a scene inthe movie where there's a race on the edge of a beach. So i did that, i ranalong the beach with the waves crashing at my feet. I even got a sweet pictureof me and my friend Ben running along the beach (we call him Ben-German causehe's from Germany).

After some lunch me, Becky, Ronaele, Dan, and the two Eric S's went, what icall, wave jumping. It's where you stand in the water and wait to a wave to hityou except you try to jump up before it gets you. Really fun especially when thewave is pushing you one way and the under tow is pulling you the other way. Someof the waves were about 10ft high but of course they went down once they hit us.We had tons of fun. Then we tried sitting on the beach as the waves hit ushowever we ended up getting a whole lot of sand up our swimsuits which was quiteuncomfortable. LoL!

After hiking all the way back to the main beach we hit a cafe and as soon as wewalked in Simon and Nick started raving about the mochacinnos and blueberriemuffins and Simon gave us the sales pitch for it. Those two guys were thereahead of us that's why they knew what we should get. So we ordered some ofthose, and i really liked it. The mocha was really good cause you got to putsome marshmallows in it too, and trust me i know my mochas ;)

On the way home i automatically fell asleep cause i really didn't want to dealwith the winding roads again. But we were still listening to the epic sountrackmix CD and i woke up at a really cool song from "Master and Commander" where aviolin sounds like it's skipping over the strings.

Once we got back to Capernwray the first thing i did was take a shower cause ijust needed to get rid of all the sand that i had accumulated on me today. LoL!Anyway i gotta go now. But I'll let you know what happens later!

P.S. Just so you know i usually put the song that I'm listening to and who it'sby as the subject lines as on most of my e-mails so I thought I'd just do thesame for my blogs because then i dont' have to think of a creative subject line.

SUNDAY FEB 6

Well here I am again. What I'm gonna do it just write a really huge account ofwhat I've been up to, send it to my hotmail account then post it on my blog.Because i don't know if i can post blogs from my Capernwray e-mail address, soI'll probably update the blog about once a week and that'll be the account of myadventures from the week. If you want to know more that's easy...E-MAIL ME! ifyou haven't caught on to what my e-mail address is yet it's earleneulrich@capernwray.org.nz

What we're doing here at Capernwray, well at least for the first 3 Sundays, ischurch shopping. Basically you can just go the church that you choose after 3weeks of shopping. The one that went to today was called Raleigh ChristianCentre. It reminds me alot of the Ebenezzer and Emmanuel Baptist churches inSaskatoon. Anyway the music was really sweet and the people were really nice andfriendly. I really don't wanna shop around for another church cause i reallylike that one.

Oh so i told a few people about the story of my name. If you don't know it it's:Since i was born early in May my mom named me Earlene May. Get It? I'm serious!The funny part is is that i heard that story from Shelby who heard from Glenna(her mom) who heard it from my mom. So in a sense, that may not be entirelytrue, but knowing my mom i wouldn't be surprised ;) So i told David & Marsha(the married couple @ school) and Graham that story. Graham just can't get overit, he thinks it's hilarious. LoL! oh well, at least people are having fun withit! Oh i also gave Graham a Tim Tam and now he's obsessed with it. And he's onlyhad one cookie!! And not even with hot chocolate!! *sigh* Oh the characters youwill meet in Bible School.......

So now i"m back at school, just killing some time. Oh another funny this idiscovered today was that i can talk to the people next door to us through thewall. I guess it doesn't really help that it's Graham, Matt, Adrian and Eric S.Me and Graham were talking through the wall. Hey doesn't that sound familiar??Remember when me and Kevin used to do that at camp? We'd talk to the walls andwe could hear each other from across the dining hall (our dining hall wasrounded a bit to the sound bounced off the walls). Good times. I guess I'll justhave to find something to entertain myself with for now....

MONDAY FEB 7

Right now I'm "supposed" to be studying because it's our 2 hour study period inthe afternoon. But do i feel like studying?? Of course not! LoL! Anyway, we haveweekly ministries here which last from now until July. We haven' t reallystarted them yet but we got notice of what groups we're in. I'm supposed to meworking with the youth group at Bridges Church. The Youth group is called"Extreme Team" or something like that. Now can you picture me doing somethinwith and "extreme team". I know many of you are laughing because you really cansee me doing something like that. HA HA! Oh well, it'll be fun, I'll be sure ofit.

Oh kinda of a sad story : remember how I auditioned for Music Education at U ofS?? And remember how i send that Prof. McNeil said that he knew someone inAuckland who might be willing to give me lessons on saxophone when I'm in NewZealand? Remember that? Well i contacted the U of S asking for this guy'scontact info, like the guy in Auckland. A few days later Prof. McNeil e-mails meback saying that the guy from Auckland quit working at the university there andmoved back to Canada. So that kinda sucks. *shrug* can't do anything about it though.

There's a music meeting here at school in a couple hours so see when each of us will be leading music during the day. Hopefully I can find some piano notes orsomething then i can transpose those notes to fit my Eb alto sax. *sigh* oh the joys!

Well I'll update with more info later (yes i know this is getting kinda long butjust bear with me because i don't think i can update my blog from my Capernwraye-mail and this seems like the easiest thing to do...as in just make one bige-mail and send that to my hotmail then send that to my blog. I know that I'm doing ;) )

Back again. some of the students here at school have laptops, but they can onlyuse e-mail like everyone else. This is kinda sad, me and my friend Graham arejust e-mailing each other back and forth. *sighs and shakes head*. Well it keepsme out of boredom. LoL!

TUESDAY FEB 8

Last night our ministry leader Hadassah, has us split into groups to make up adrama from scripture. My group chose to do Psalm 23 except we had two guyssinging the psalm. As in real singing! I was totally pumped because this wasgonna be awesome. Once we got back to the whole group of us, Hadassah had a few"curve balls" up her sleeve. She told some groups to act out their skits inballet/opera style and in western style. Believe me, seeing the scene of whenJesus walking on water in ballet style is definately someting else to see!!!LoL! Oh oh! And watching Shadrach, Meshach and Abednago in a western style!!! Ohman! so when it was our turn we were told to act out in Opera style. We kinda already had that covered cause ours was already narrated in a singing style. Ohya! Ours totally rocked! Remind me to show you the video. By the way we had Graham and Matt singing our version of Psalm 23 and at the end the word"forever" came out VERY high both or them. Quite comical!!

Um, today wasn' t really interesting. Last night we(as in my roomies and me) also found out that if you climb into our closet you can hear the guys in thenext room a whole lot better. However they don't talk about anything thatcatches my interest. But when they told us to be quite, that was when theystarted chatting 'er up! *sigh* That's guys for you! ;)

Today i ended up telling Graham pretty much the whole story of my "non-existent"love life, really weird cause i just met him yet he reminds me SO much of Scottthat i feel like i can trust him and tell him stuff like that. Maybe it's just abible school friend thing. But it's cool. And if you're wondering.....NO i don'tlike him, in that way. C'mon now!

Oh me and Nikki (one of my roomies) were plunking away on the student piano,just playing our different versions of "chopsticks" and i thought it soundedreally bad but we were still laughing at it. Then the door opened and Charlie come in and starts raving about how good we were playing. Huh??!! Oh well atleast he's having a good time with it.

Me and Stacey (another roomie of mine) spend about 10 minutes star gazing before i went on the computers to write this. It was fun just laying down and lookingat the stars. Still haven't seen the Southern Cross but i will eventually. Matteven showed me where Orion's head was and the club and the lion that go alongwith Orion. Man I'm tired...and I need a shower. LoL! Bye 4 now ;)