The first day and a half of DTS has been even better than I could have imagined! I woke up at 6 to get a shower in (there are about 30 girls sharing 2 showers) and got ready for our first full day. Breakfast was at 6:30 so I went over there with some other people and had a wonderful breakfast of cereal and an apple. At 8:30 we all gathered in the chapel for a short time of worship, after we finished we were directed into lecture room one for the first part of our orientation. It was pretty long but part of what we had to do was learn some of the values of YWAM, so instead of just reading through all of them we split into 6 teams and were each given a value and a song that we had to sing the value to, then we also had to make up a dance for it. My teams value had to do with all of the YWAM bases being different but at the same time they are all one together, and our song was Lord I Lift Your Name on High. Some of the other songs were Baby by Justin Bieber and Gangnam Style, it was hilarious to see what people came up with! At 10:30 we had "morning tea" which is this lovely thing where everyone on the base gets together and has a snack/meal together and just hangs out (this is a wonderful addition to the schedule for someone who is always hungry like me!). After morning tea we went back to orientations till 12:30 when we had lunch. Once lunch was over we had a free afternoon so some of us walked to a nearby thrift store (which is called an Op Shop here which stands for opportunity shop). One of the girls (Bet) found a skateboard for $5 at the op shop! We then walked to the mall, stopping for pizza on the way because Court was hungry, and walked around for a bit. Around 4 we headed back to the base and hung around showing each other pictures of our families and friends until dinner at 5:30. After dinner we had an impromptu game of ninja and another game that is kind of like sharks and minnows, it was great. At 7 we were kicked out of the auditorium because the Pacific DTS had to have a meeting. We left the room and some people decided they wanted to go to the beach so 6 or 7 of us headed down to the strand. It was a 50 minute walk through town and we had some great times.
On the left is Bet my bunk-buddy....yeah...haha just kidding she's awesome!
Below from left to right my mates here are Ami, Court, Suz, and Andrew.
Once made it down to the strand we ran around taking pictures and found a gelato shop still open where a few of them got milkshakes and gelato.
These are some ginormous ants that we found on a pole.
We walked all of the way to the end of the strand and then went down to the water and put our feet in. Somehow the topic of teens killing and hurting themselves came up, it seemed we all knew someone or know someone who had a friend or family member take their own life. After discussing this for a little while we had an awesome impromptu prayer time right there on the beach. It was such a sweet time. A little while later a few other people from our base met us down there with their long boards and we hung out for a while just joking around and riding the boards. I cannot believe that it is possible to feel so close to people that you have only known for a couple of days. It already feels like a family. We were back around 10:45 and then soon headed to our rooms to either go to bed or journal for a little while. It has been an amazing time. Here are some pictures of my bunk-mate Bet...she stole my camera and took these so they are going up on the blog!
I hope you are all having a lovely time!!!
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