We had songs, dances and sketches (mini dramas) from the kids, counsellors and the translators. We also did a rather silly skit of our own. We had an exercise routine where our participants were constructed from the top half of one person and the bottom half of a second person! Confused? Well take a look.
If you still are a little confused, well don’t worry it was very funny- at least we thought it was.
At the closing ceremony we had gift bags for each of the children which we had prepared earlier. Before we could give these out though we found we had a surprise coming our way. They got us all up on stage and then a child from each of our bedtime story groups came and presented us each in turn with a personalised award and a little gift made out of shells- items very typical of the region. The awards were all Mr this or Miss that and were all tailored to us with awards such as David’s for “Mr Guitar man”, Suzanne for “Miss Paparazzi” and Timothy for “Mr Charm”. It was incredibly cute and certainly made me wish I wasn’t on stage as the tears rolled down my face. It was then our chance to give out our gifts. Each child got a paper lunch bag with small gifts, sweets and toiletries which several members of the team had lovingly put together.
Dinner was rather late due to the length of time of the ceremony & we were all very ready for it.
The evening’s activities composed of a film for the children and communion and fellowship for the adults. We had communion of crackers and grape juice, then fellowship of conversation, presents from the international team to the councillors and translators, awards from Simon… oh no sorry, the award committee to the international team, popcorn and more coke and sprite.
After fellowship it was time for goodnights. It was very hard saying goodbye to the children, who we probably weren’t going to see again due to our early strat time the next day. There were a lot of tears, hugs and signing of people’s friendship books. For our ward (4) it was certainly a case of us needing to leave before everyone got too upset. Our spirits were lifted before bed though by the midnight swim. Armed with torches (flash lights) a fairly good sized group of the adults trudged down the path and navigated the ‘hill of death’. It was then a short run down the beach into the sea. (for anyone who remembers that we weren’t allowed to go to the sea in the morning- we had checked with Sergey the lifeguard that it would be safe for us to go swimming). The black sea is quite shallow, so after a long hot day it is surprisingly warm, and the view of the stars are certainly worth seeing. In London you are lucky to see a few stars, but out there you could see every star available. It was amazing. We all had a great time splashing about, dunking people under and generalling larking about. Then it was a wander up the hill (which in the cool is a very nice little climb) before hanging up the wet swimmers that needed to be packing first thing.
