Well, I'm finally back from Winter Blitz 2010 in Louisville, Kentucky. And it was really fun and quite an experience for me. It was mostly a Methodist conference, but there was a Baptist group there, too. lol XD
So, to start off, I woke up early in the morning on Friday, got packed, and then me and my Mom drove over to our local K-Mart to meet up with the rest of the church. After chatting for about 5 minutes, we headed straight for Louisville, listening to Lady Gaga and random Christian songs along the way.
And then I think we stopped at Wendy's in Corydon, IN. Wow, I had no idea Wendy's burgers were so good. 😱
But here comes the <s>bad</s> good part...So my mom and I were driving to Louisville and I was barking off directions to her from the papers that she handed to me and we were doing totally fine until a freakin' WRECK stopped us!
It was down the ramp headed to Nashville that we needed to take to get to the Hampton Inn. It didn't even look bad, but those idiots had to call just about every service vehicle to check it out! 
The police, the ambulance, the fire department, the tow trucks...
And since my mom only printed out one way to the Hampton Inn, we were forced to sit there and wait for them to clean up the mess. We asked the guy in front of us what was up and he told us that apparently a truck had spilled some diesel fuel on the ramp and they were bringing a sand truck to absorb the liquid. They not only brought a sand truck, but a CONE truck, as well! O__O And they took their sweet time, too. >.> The guys in the cone truck weren't even laying down cones, they were just sitting on their asses...possibly deciding on whether or not the cones were needed. We wouldn't have minded waiting if we actually saw some progress take place. There was a guy kicking rocks, a guy with a broom who would sweep a little every few minutes, but other than that they weren't doing a damn thing. And by that time we had sat in our car for an hour...ONE FULL HOUR!!! And we would've been the first ones to arrive at the hotel cuz we were on a roll. We usually get lost in Louisville, but for once we were doing really good. lol Anyway, my mom had to go to the bathroom and didn't have any more patience to wait it out so we backed up the long line of traffic down the ramp and took the exit to Indianapolis. We stopped at a McDonalds to use the restroom and ask for directions and Alan, one of the youth ministers of the church, told us the interstate we needed to get on. So after that little fiasco we FINALLY arrived at the hotel...cold, miserable, tired, and hungry. And no one from the church even sympathized with our situation. A few were sitting in the lobby when we got our luggage out and were staring at us like we were crazy. >.< So we went to our room and Brooke, one of the little girls from the church, wanted me to go to the fitness center with her since you had to be accompanied by someone 14 years or older if you were under the age limit. She and Jacob, a kid who sorta reminds me of the boy from the Pixar movie "Up!", tried just about every exercise machine while I supervised them. Crazy kids actually think exercise is fun! O___o
After about two hours had passed, we all crammed into the vans (8 of us in each vehicle) like sardines and took the 2 minute ride to the Exposition Center where the activities were taking place. It reminded me of the circus since they were selling concessions like popcorn and cotton candy. XD
So our church group went inside the main hall with the stage. It was pretty fun once everyone was crammed into the seats. I sat next to Brooke and Kara, another one of the little kids that tagged along for the trip because of an older sibling. They blew up about 6 of the free balloons from the room that sold the souvenirs. They were having fun rubbing the balloons against their own hair and putting them above my own lion's mane to watch it stand on end due to the static electricity. lol The things I put up with. 😛
Here was the opening video that played on two of the four overhead screens on the walls:
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LMAO! Funny and slightly disturbing.
God, I love old people. 😀
This band called Addison Road played and they sounded all right. But they sound even better now that I'm sitting at my computer, listening to the studio versions of their songs.
This was the first song they played on Friday night:
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It was cute watching the kids at the front of the stage hit all these balloons up in the air while the band was playing. It added a bit of color and festive atmosphere.
A comedic duo named Bean & Bailey took the stage after that. They sang some random songs like "Wal-Mart Greeter" and a ballad version of "Pants on the Ground". But their best performance was when they dressed up as Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.
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LOL Awesome!
And I was seriously thinking about getting one of their shirts that said "have you had your meds today?" on the front and then in the back it had the verse from Proverbs 17:22 that states that laughter is good medicine. They also had a blue Wal-Mart shirt that said "How May I Help You? 🙂 " on the back. XD
And this motivational speaker/comedian named Justin Lookadoo was the speaker for the weekend. I thought he was pretty funny, but when he started to get serious, I wasn't digging it so much. I hate it when these speakers on these retreats are so patronizing, saying that we haven't gone deep into the faith. They just assume that everyone in the room is on the same spiritual level, I guess. I thought it was bullshit. But I completely made a 180 by the time Saturday night rolled around, but I'll get to that later. He told a lot of cute and funny stories, too. The following video of him isn't from Winter Blitz 2010, but it does capture the essence of his comedic style:
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It was hilarious when he said "my name is Justin Lookadoo like See-a-poo-poo" and this woman who was doing sign language near the stage to interpret for the deaf folks that were there did the sign for "poo poo". The Lookadoo guy apparently thought that was hilarious and kept saying it over and over just to watch her sign it. lol XD
But that about sums up Friday night. When it was all over, my church group headed over to Denny's to eat and I had my usual grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich with fries, being a woman of simple tastes. 🙂 I also played some I-spy with Brooke and Kara while we were waiting for our food. lol And it snowed pretty hard outside while we were eating, too. It really set the mood for the whole weekend.
The mattresses and pillows of the hotel beds were pretty stiff, though. That's one thing I didn't like about our room. XD
So I only had about 4 hours of sleep Friday night, but I still got up at 5:30 am, grabbed my history textbook and a coke from the vending machine in the hall, and creeped into the bathroom to read and say a few prayers and meditations. It felt really really good and oddly enough, I felt wide awake. Hmm...maybe it's because I forgot to pack my sleeping pill (well...anti-depressant with a strong side effect of drowsiness to be precise).
Anyway, I woke my mom up at around 6:30 am and we ate a huge breakfast in the hotel cafe (those waffle makers were so amazing!!). Then we all headed over to the Expo Center for the morning session in the main hall. All the usual people were there: Addison Road (the lead singer, Jenny, looked so cute in hip-hop attire), Justin Lookadoo, Bean & Bailey...it was all right, I just couldn't enjoy it as much since the sleepiness kicked in and I could hardly keep my eyes open. It was hilarious when Bean & Bailey were singing a song about Krispy Kreme donuts and placed one of those flimsy paper hats on the sign language woman's head. XD And when Lookadoo was talking about pirates and ninjas, he creeped up behind the sing language lady and said ninja just so that she'd do the fast hand motions for the word while he did them at the same time. LOL! After that, we all went to the flea market that was held inside the Center. My flat feet were killing me thanks to those stupid custom inserts rubbing against the calluses I got from the inserts in the first place. But the puppies I saw in the far corner of the market were sooooo cute.
They had a mess of Jack Russell Terrier puppies along with two baby Dachsunds. And OMG I swear I saw a woman that looked exactly Xena! O__O So, naturally...I started to stalk her. 😈 Too bad she went out the door to the Center, though. 🙁 And the weird thing was that a few minutes before I saw the Xena lookalike, a chubby girl who had the exact same face as Gabrielle appeared to admire the puppies. I swear her face was identical. 😵 Well, after that excitement was over, I bought a tiny pizza from the Papa John's booth just outside the market and then the first thing I did when I got back to the hotel was take a 30 minute power nap. XD It felt nice, too. And I felt totally energized afterward. >:3 And then it was time for lunch. We went to this really fancy Italian restaurant called The Spaghetti Factory in downtown Louisville. 😀 I expected the place to be sorta like Fazoli's...the Italian version of Applebees, ya know. I did not expect it to be so classy. 😵 The poor redneck boys in our group said that they were used to fast food burgers, not sophisticated affair like that. XD The little boy sitting across from me, Austin, was so paranoid, he kept swearing that the creepy old man in the painting on the far wall kept moving his eyes. And then he thought a spider had bitten him from under the table. I told him it was probably Catholic. 
The food was all right...strangely not as good as Denny's, IMO. lol Their bread was kinda plain, the side salad had too much Iceberg lettuce (if only they had a Caesar side salad), and their baked chicken was pretty good. But the little cup of spumoni ice cream I had at the very end was fantastic. *__* Practically orgasmic. 
So then we headed back to the Expo Center for the night session, which was supposed to be the main event...the event that was building up from the other two sessions.
A very special guest came to the stage named Joe Castillo and...wow, his little sand art performance was the definite highlight of the Blitz. He was able to capture the essence of the whole Passion story with just the way he arranged the grains of sand, transforming one image into another and using color and positives and negatives in such an expert way. You won't be able to see all of the story that we saw in this short video clip, but you'll at least get a general idea of what it looked like:
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Beautiful.
And I must say that the lessons that Justin Lookadoo was teaching tied up very nicely. He asked all the kids in the audience to stand up if they were brave enough to admit that they had let everyone around them feed them spiritually instead of "feeding" themselves and that they were babies in the Christian faith. Quite a few of them stood up. And inevitably, he asked the ones who weren't adopted children of God to stand up, as well as the ones who were 'adopted' but had just strayed off the beaten path. And wow, my heart almost broke when I saw this group of 3 girls standing in front of my seat, crying and hugging each other. Tears started to well up in my own eyes, to be honest. Why is that I always cry when I see someone else cry? =( Those girls reminded me of little lost sheep, it just killed me seeing them so sad. I just wanted to reach out and embrace the poor things. So yeah, that was a very powerful altar call and it made me realize that that Lookadoo fellow wasn't so patronizing after all because he wasn't even speaking to me in the first place...his target audience was the hundreds of kids who had stood up, thirsty for God's love. And it was especially moving when every person in the room stood up and sang "It Is Well":
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The next morning, on Sunday, was the final session at the Expo Center and Addison Road and Justin Lookadoo were back once again. And one of the funniest songs I've ever heard was playing on one of the big screens called "The Mom Song":
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LOL Probably everyone can relate in some way to what's being said here.
OH, and Joe Castillo, the sand-man, came back and did the story of the Prodigal Son along with a short performance about the Invisible Children charity. I practically SCREAMED when I heard the 1-minute orchestral song "Solitaire" by one of my all-time favorite bands, Kamelot play in the beginning of the Prodigal story.
:
And we participated in probably the largest and most confusing communion I've ever had. 😵 They gave us the wafer and the little cup of grape juice, but since the Bishop dude that was there was so vague as to when we had to eat and drink them, I consumed them both before we were supposed to. XD I kept kicking myself for that one, but at least it's not strict like the Catholic church where they believe that the bread and juice actually turn into the body and blood of Christ. Anyway, here's the video that was playing during the ritual:
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Good thing my mom and I made it smoothly out of Louisville to Corydon, IN to eat at Cracker Barrel with the rest of the church. The journey back home was really beautiful because we could see little patches of snow on the ground and on the cliffs.
So I had a really great time and it's good to be back, buuuuut I have to go and write a journal entry on a few stories for Brit Lit class. Yuck. Maybe I'll just cheat and Google the stories since the professor doesn't even read the notes. XD
Bye, everyone!
:
Current Mood: affectionate
So, to start off, I woke up early in the morning on Friday, got packed, and then me and my Mom drove over to our local K-Mart to meet up with the rest of the church. After chatting for about 5 minutes, we headed straight for Louisville, listening to Lady Gaga and random Christian songs along the way.
And then I think we stopped at Wendy's in Corydon, IN. Wow, I had no idea Wendy's burgers were so good. 😱 But here comes the <s>bad</s> good part...So my mom and I were driving to Louisville and I was barking off directions to her from the papers that she handed to me and we were doing totally fine until a freakin' WRECK stopped us!
It was down the ramp headed to Nashville that we needed to take to get to the Hampton Inn. It didn't even look bad, but those idiots had to call just about every service vehicle to check it out! The police, the ambulance, the fire department, the tow trucks... And since my mom only printed out one way to the Hampton Inn, we were forced to sit there and wait for them to clean up the mess. We asked the guy in front of us what was up and he told us that apparently a truck had spilled some diesel fuel on the ramp and they were bringing a sand truck to absorb the liquid. They not only brought a sand truck, but a CONE truck, as well! O__O And they took their sweet time, too. >.> The guys in the cone truck weren't even laying down cones, they were just sitting on their asses...possibly deciding on whether or not the cones were needed. We wouldn't have minded waiting if we actually saw some progress take place. There was a guy kicking rocks, a guy with a broom who would sweep a little every few minutes, but other than that they weren't doing a damn thing. And by that time we had sat in our car for an hour...ONE FULL HOUR!!! And we would've been the first ones to arrive at the hotel cuz we were on a roll. We usually get lost in Louisville, but for once we were doing really good. lol Anyway, my mom had to go to the bathroom and didn't have any more patience to wait it out so we backed up the long line of traffic down the ramp and took the exit to Indianapolis. We stopped at a McDonalds to use the restroom and ask for directions and Alan, one of the youth ministers of the church, told us the interstate we needed to get on. So after that little fiasco we FINALLY arrived at the hotel...cold, miserable, tired, and hungry. And no one from the church even sympathized with our situation. A few were sitting in the lobby when we got our luggage out and were staring at us like we were crazy. >.< So we went to our room and Brooke, one of the little girls from the church, wanted me to go to the fitness center with her since you had to be accompanied by someone 14 years or older if you were under the age limit. She and Jacob, a kid who sorta reminds me of the boy from the Pixar movie "Up!", tried just about every exercise machine while I supervised them. Crazy kids actually think exercise is fun! O___o After about two hours had passed, we all crammed into the vans (8 of us in each vehicle) like sardines and took the 2 minute ride to the Exposition Center where the activities were taking place. It reminded me of the circus since they were selling concessions like popcorn and cotton candy. XD
So our church group went inside the main hall with the stage. It was pretty fun once everyone was crammed into the seats. I sat next to Brooke and Kara, another one of the little kids that tagged along for the trip because of an older sibling. They blew up about 6 of the free balloons from the room that sold the souvenirs. They were having fun rubbing the balloons against their own hair and putting them above my own lion's mane to watch it stand on end due to the static electricity. lol The things I put up with. 😛
Here was the opening video that played on two of the four overhead screens on the walls:
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LMAO! Funny and slightly disturbing.
God, I love old people. 😀
This band called Addison Road played and they sounded all right. But they sound even better now that I'm sitting at my computer, listening to the studio versions of their songs.
This was the first song they played on Friday night:
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It was cute watching the kids at the front of the stage hit all these balloons up in the air while the band was playing. It added a bit of color and festive atmosphere.
A comedic duo named Bean & Bailey took the stage after that. They sang some random songs like "Wal-Mart Greeter" and a ballad version of "Pants on the Ground". But their best performance was when they dressed up as Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley.
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LOL Awesome!
And I was seriously thinking about getting one of their shirts that said "have you had your meds today?" on the front and then in the back it had the verse from Proverbs 17:22 that states that laughter is good medicine. They also had a blue Wal-Mart shirt that said "How May I Help You? 🙂 " on the back. XD
And this motivational speaker/comedian named Justin Lookadoo was the speaker for the weekend. I thought he was pretty funny, but when he started to get serious, I wasn't digging it so much. I hate it when these speakers on these retreats are so patronizing, saying that we haven't gone deep into the faith. They just assume that everyone in the room is on the same spiritual level, I guess. I thought it was bullshit. But I completely made a 180 by the time Saturday night rolled around, but I'll get to that later. He told a lot of cute and funny stories, too. The following video of him isn't from Winter Blitz 2010, but it does capture the essence of his comedic style:
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It was hilarious when he said "my name is Justin Lookadoo like See-a-poo-poo" and this woman who was doing sign language near the stage to interpret for the deaf folks that were there did the sign for "poo poo". The Lookadoo guy apparently thought that was hilarious and kept saying it over and over just to watch her sign it. lol XD
But that about sums up Friday night. When it was all over, my church group headed over to Denny's to eat and I had my usual grilled ham-and-cheese sandwich with fries, being a woman of simple tastes. 🙂 I also played some I-spy with Brooke and Kara while we were waiting for our food. lol And it snowed pretty hard outside while we were eating, too. It really set the mood for the whole weekend.
The mattresses and pillows of the hotel beds were pretty stiff, though. That's one thing I didn't like about our room. XD
So I only had about 4 hours of sleep Friday night, but I still got up at 5:30 am, grabbed my history textbook and a coke from the vending machine in the hall, and creeped into the bathroom to read and say a few prayers and meditations. It felt really really good and oddly enough, I felt wide awake. Hmm...maybe it's because I forgot to pack my sleeping pill (well...anti-depressant with a strong side effect of drowsiness to be precise).
Anyway, I woke my mom up at around 6:30 am and we ate a huge breakfast in the hotel cafe (those waffle makers were so amazing!!). Then we all headed over to the Expo Center for the morning session in the main hall. All the usual people were there: Addison Road (the lead singer, Jenny, looked so cute in hip-hop attire), Justin Lookadoo, Bean & Bailey...it was all right, I just couldn't enjoy it as much since the sleepiness kicked in and I could hardly keep my eyes open. It was hilarious when Bean & Bailey were singing a song about Krispy Kreme donuts and placed one of those flimsy paper hats on the sign language woman's head. XD And when Lookadoo was talking about pirates and ninjas, he creeped up behind the sing language lady and said ninja just so that she'd do the fast hand motions for the word while he did them at the same time. LOL! After that, we all went to the flea market that was held inside the Center. My flat feet were killing me thanks to those stupid custom inserts rubbing against the calluses I got from the inserts in the first place. But the puppies I saw in the far corner of the market were sooooo cute.
They had a mess of Jack Russell Terrier puppies along with two baby Dachsunds. And OMG I swear I saw a woman that looked exactly Xena! O__O So, naturally...I started to stalk her. 😈 Too bad she went out the door to the Center, though. 🙁 And the weird thing was that a few minutes before I saw the Xena lookalike, a chubby girl who had the exact same face as Gabrielle appeared to admire the puppies. I swear her face was identical. 😵 Well, after that excitement was over, I bought a tiny pizza from the Papa John's booth just outside the market and then the first thing I did when I got back to the hotel was take a 30 minute power nap. XD It felt nice, too. And I felt totally energized afterward. >:3 And then it was time for lunch. We went to this really fancy Italian restaurant called The Spaghetti Factory in downtown Louisville. 😀 I expected the place to be sorta like Fazoli's...the Italian version of Applebees, ya know. I did not expect it to be so classy. 😵 The poor redneck boys in our group said that they were used to fast food burgers, not sophisticated affair like that. XD The little boy sitting across from me, Austin, was so paranoid, he kept swearing that the creepy old man in the painting on the far wall kept moving his eyes. And then he thought a spider had bitten him from under the table. I told him it was probably Catholic. The food was all right...strangely not as good as Denny's, IMO. lol Their bread was kinda plain, the side salad had too much Iceberg lettuce (if only they had a Caesar side salad), and their baked chicken was pretty good. But the little cup of spumoni ice cream I had at the very end was fantastic. *__* Practically orgasmic. So then we headed back to the Expo Center for the night session, which was supposed to be the main event...the event that was building up from the other two sessions.
A very special guest came to the stage named Joe Castillo and...wow, his little sand art performance was the definite highlight of the Blitz. He was able to capture the essence of the whole Passion story with just the way he arranged the grains of sand, transforming one image into another and using color and positives and negatives in such an expert way. You won't be able to see all of the story that we saw in this short video clip, but you'll at least get a general idea of what it looked like:
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Beautiful.
And I must say that the lessons that Justin Lookadoo was teaching tied up very nicely. He asked all the kids in the audience to stand up if they were brave enough to admit that they had let everyone around them feed them spiritually instead of "feeding" themselves and that they were babies in the Christian faith. Quite a few of them stood up. And inevitably, he asked the ones who weren't adopted children of God to stand up, as well as the ones who were 'adopted' but had just strayed off the beaten path. And wow, my heart almost broke when I saw this group of 3 girls standing in front of my seat, crying and hugging each other. Tears started to well up in my own eyes, to be honest. Why is that I always cry when I see someone else cry? =( Those girls reminded me of little lost sheep, it just killed me seeing them so sad. I just wanted to reach out and embrace the poor things. So yeah, that was a very powerful altar call and it made me realize that that Lookadoo fellow wasn't so patronizing after all because he wasn't even speaking to me in the first place...his target audience was the hundreds of kids who had stood up, thirsty for God's love. And it was especially moving when every person in the room stood up and sang "It Is Well":
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The next morning, on Sunday, was the final session at the Expo Center and Addison Road and Justin Lookadoo were back once again. And one of the funniest songs I've ever heard was playing on one of the big screens called "The Mom Song":
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LOL Probably everyone can relate in some way to what's being said here.
OH, and Joe Castillo, the sand-man, came back and did the story of the Prodigal Son along with a short performance about the Invisible Children charity. I practically SCREAMED when I heard the 1-minute orchestral song "Solitaire" by one of my all-time favorite bands, Kamelot play in the beginning of the Prodigal story.
: And we participated in probably the largest and most confusing communion I've ever had. 😵 They gave us the wafer and the little cup of grape juice, but since the Bishop dude that was there was so vague as to when we had to eat and drink them, I consumed them both before we were supposed to. XD I kept kicking myself for that one, but at least it's not strict like the Catholic church where they believe that the bread and juice actually turn into the body and blood of Christ. Anyway, here's the video that was playing during the ritual:
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Good thing my mom and I made it smoothly out of Louisville to Corydon, IN to eat at Cracker Barrel with the rest of the church. The journey back home was really beautiful because we could see little patches of snow on the ground and on the cliffs.
So I had a really great time and it's good to be back, buuuuut I have to go and write a journal entry on a few stories for Brit Lit class. Yuck.
Maybe I'll just cheat and Google the stories since the professor doesn't even read the notes. XDBye, everyone!
:Current Mood: affectionate
And it also...