laughter and tears...

Well, my dear readers, I am currently sitting in my favorite cafe - Mané Café - in žilina, Slovakia. Yep, I'm finally back in the land I grew up in. I'm finally back. I've actually been in Europe for a week now. We flew out from Memphis Monday last week about this time! We arrived in Vienna, Austria the next day, midafternoon. We then drove here to find a crowd of people waiting for us outside our house. About twenty or so people from church had come to meet us. It was great to see everybody. They didn't stay very long because they all knew we were exhausted. They wanted to make sure we got plenty of sleep. The next day we all slept in.
We then packed some smaller bags and took off for Czech and the Spring 2007 Josiah Venture Conference! This was to be our last conference as members of JV, so it was both a very happy and a very sad time for us all. The first day was a happy one. We got there, said hi to everyone we'd been missing for nearly a year, and plunged into a long weekend of fun and learning! Upon arrival we unpacked and headed straight to dinner. It was awesome to see everyone. Huds and I had supper with Hannah, Tyler, Connor, and Corey as the rest of the family was dispursed about the room with their various friends! Those of you not in JV do not know that JV kids are some of the cutest, most amazing kids ever to walk the planet. I've missed them so much. I just thought I'd put that out there...I'll probably repeat myself, but oh well.
After dinner we had Grob. Grob is somethin my dear friend Becca made up. (Becca is the kids' director - i guess that's what you'd call her- for JV and everyone has agreed she has the most amazing job in the world. As Clair Patty very well put, "Becca gets paid for hanging out with US!") Grob is the baby brother of Frob. Frob is something we do every Thanksgiving conference. It stands for Fun Room of Becca. We have Frob in the mornings and evenings while parents have their sessions and it's just a room where we can hang out, read books (Kids book are seriously the most amazing thing ever and Becca somehow knows how and where to find the very best kids books, and she's the most amazing kids' books reader.), talk, paint, do crafts, play XBox, and jsut be with the cutest, most amazing kids on the planet! Well, Frob wasn't available this conference, so he sent his younger brother Grob for us. So the first evening we hung out in Grob and got to know our teachers for the morning programs: Josh and Aubrey - two very awesome people. After this we had desert with the parents and hung out until about eleven or so, when Han and Tyler had to go (JV is getting so big we no longer fit into Malenovice, the hotel JV owns, so some people had to go elsewhere...). So we all ended up going to bed.
Thursday my dear mother woke me up out of a very deap sleep for breakfast. Directly after breakfast we had our "sessions." Spring conferences are always different from Thanksgiving in that we have what i guess you'd call themes. The parents always have a theme and then the kids (I'm a kid in JV...I love it!!!!) have a theme. For instance last year Becca had a team from Chicago come and they helped us put on a play (you're a good man Charlie Brown) then one year we (the older kids) had a computer class, one year we had American history (yay...hehe) and so on. This year we had two: photography and art. It was so much fun...these are two of my favorite things to do (Becca knows me well!). So first on Thursday we had art and basically what we did was get our canvases and stuff ready for the next day, then we did a warm up thing where we started a picture, worked on it for fifteen minutes, then passed it on to the next person and then had fifteen minutes to work on the picturre that had jst been passed to us, and so on...We did this until everyone had worked on everyone else's picture...it was fun! After this we had photography. Josh showed us some of his amazing pictures and kinda gave us some tips for photography. Then we went out and just took pictures for an hour and a half! So much fun. Some of my favorite things to take pictures of are feet, doors, other people taking pictures, moving objects, and random candid shots. Pretty much (with the exception of doors) there was lots of cool stuff like that! After photography we had lunch, then some free time, and then dinner. After dinner we once again had Grob, during which I pretty much just read little kids books the entire time. Once again Tyler and Han had to leave around ten thirty or so, so then after checking some email and chatting, I went to bed.
Firday I got up, had breakfast and headed for art. This time we did something different. We had a huge canvas, which we nailed to a big piece of plywood. Then we had a bunch of balloons filled with paint and we took turns chucking the balloons at the canvas. When we'd used up all the balloons, we took more paint and flicked it onto the canvas with paint brushes for some final touches. Much fun. After that we only had enough time to clean up bit before we headed back up the hill to photography. For photography on friday we took pictures of another group throwing balloons at a canvas. I didn't get very many good pictures of this, so I ended up wandering off a bit and taking some elsewhere. After we were done we had lunch. after lunch we had more free time during which we mostly just hung out. At one point my dad took me out (Hudson, Tyler, Corey, and Connor ended up with us as well...didn't help much.) and refreshed some my memory on driving a stick. (the fact that it was a nine passenger van didn't help mch either.) We all survived, thankfully.
After free time we had dinner and then Grob. This time during Grob Becca took the Journey (my group) aside and we had kinda a "going away meeting" type thing. We basically all just cried together and tlked about our leaving and everything (Connor, one of the guys in our group is also moving back to the states). It was an incredibly sad, hard time. We sat on the balcony and just held eachother and cried for about two hours. After this we all went, blew our noses, and got ready for a murder mystery thing Becca had for us (it's kinda a tradition...sorta). It was a lot of fun...Connor was the murderer, but he ended up winning...it was really good. It went really late so as soon as it was done I went to bed.
Saturday. Saturday was good, but a bit sad because the end of the conference was close and we'd just had our cry meeting the night before. No one talked much all day. However, it was pretty much the best day in art. I did an acrylic paint painting, which didn't turn out all that bad and then i did a watercolor painting that i kinda messed up. It was raining that day and we didn't feel like walking all the way up the hill to the hotel in the rain and we wanted to finish up our paintings, so we stayed in art most of the photography time. however we finally did make it up but didn't take any pictures. Lunch came next and after that free time. Saturda is always family day at conference. This actually doesn't really mean we are with our real families, but just together as a JV family, which is awesome! There's always a theme or there's alwys something planned. Last year we went to this Circus (those of you who were there, this is the time when you burst out laughing along with me!!!) the year before that was this game where we went to all sorts of different stations and did stuff, this year it was a Hoedown Carnival. It was lots of fun! We danced and played games (Christina, my back's been hurting so bad!!) and did all sorts of stuff! After the Hoedown we had dinner and after dinner we had Grob. This time we just hung out in Grob with everyone. We had some singing goign on and more book-reading...Much fun. Then we had what we like to call Midnight Movies. For the younger kids' sake we don't actually watch the movies at midnight, but rather we aim for them to end at midnight! We devided up into our groups (actually Journey and Zteo - the group just younger than us - were together) and we each had a movie! We decided to watch Flushed Away, which turned out to be very funny! after the movie we went to bed once again...
Sunday was a very solem, sad day. Again there wasn't much talking going on. We didn't have art or photography...we kinda just hung out in Grob. We got our JVkids' yearbooks the night before so most of us sat around writing in everyones'. Then came our final meeting during which we thanked the teachers and then had a goodbye time all together. I was feeling really sick so I slept through the thanking part then woke up for the crying part then went back to sleep until lunch time. We all tried to talk and laugh at lunch but we all knew what awaited us when we were done, so we really didn't do much of either. After lunch we packed up then sat around staring at eachother for a while. Then Tyler went off somewhere and Han and Huds did as well and I sat in the restaurant and talked to Becca and Anna for a while, which was great! Then came the part we'd all dreaded since the moment we found out about our leaving. We said goodbye and left. We all cried. It's really hard not to when some of the cutest little kids on the earth come up to you crying and keep hugging you and telling you they don't want to ever let go. It's hard to when the people that have been your family and closest friends for so long have to look you in the eyes and say bye. It was hard.
We did manage to do it though. We drove off and made our way home. I slept the entire way. When I got home I went right to bed, thoroughly exhausted. I am now in Zilina. Today I slept until about nine, then got up, cleaned (some people who are wanting to buy our house came today to look at it and after five guys living in our house for a ear, it definitely needed lots of cleaning!), answered some emails, and walked to the square to meet my friend, Domonika. It's been gret being back. It was great walking to the square, sitting on my favorite bench in the square, and hanging out with Dominika and a few other people later on. And now, like I said I am sitting in my favorite cafe. Now I'm going to walk home like I always used to. It's great being back.