Accident Prone

So life is treating my team and I very well, our celebrity status just keeps going up in the small world of Emerald. It seems that where ever we go there is always someone there to shout "HI NET!" ... as a collective we all share the same name, NET. In fact even when we are out on our own, which is rare as NET teams all up spend more time together than the average married couple, we still get the name NET.

We were supposed to be heading out to a place called Carnarvon (I think that's how you spell it) Gorge this week to attend the year 8 camp, unfortunately the rain called it off so we are still hanging out in Emerald, preparing for the busy weekend ahead. It would have been nice to have a change in scenery but that will have to wait till our next camp, which is the beginning of next month with the year 12's. We will, however, still get to attend year 8 camp in the upcoming months, not sure when yet.

Our schedule was quickly filled up this week by our awesome contact person, Loy, with mingling at Marist College and preparing for R.E lessons and our 3 youth groups and the possibility of taking a group of young people to a massive Catholic Youth conference called Ignite, in Brisbane. So we still had a lot to do, but we were lucky enough to get TWO sleep-ins to the amazing time of 8am (we all took advantage of that)

It does seem that over the slightly busy week I have still managed to find my way in to hospital ... again. I'm not sure what it is about Australia but I seem to have become quite accident prone. When we go to Marist College we wear a badge, just like the staff but with 'Katrina Jackson, NET Team' written on. It makes us feel special. Now you are probably wondering how a badge landed me in hospital. Well Mateo, my brother on team, his magnet on his badge decided to fall off, so I felt the need to fix it with superglue, so there i am standing in the kitchen with magnet and superglue, when the superglue, not sure how, thinks it would be funny to flick up and land in my eye. So there I am standing in the kitchen with glue in my eye, Mateo is freaking out and Ruth runs out of the spare bedroom, next minute I'm at hospital. So after that event I had a litre of saline solution poured through my eye, local anesthetic, yellow dye, three doctors examining my eye, cotton bud being wiped over my eye, THEN they, they being a collective group of doctors, decide to scrape the glue off my eye with a needle. I'm sure doctors page each other with all the funny accidents to let them know to come down and have a look. So over the past few days I have been enjoying life with one eye, whilst the sick eye, enjoys a nice rest behind an eye patch. Luckily my 'private doctor', Doctor Odyn, who actually refers to himself as 'The Doctor' (hint, he owns a sonic screwdriver) would put my eye medicine goo stuff in my eye every three hours. Thank you Odyn. I no longer have an eye patch and I have now nearly perfect vision in my left eye. On the first day it happened I had what they called 18/6 vision, which means I can see at 6 meters what everyone else can see at 18 meters, now it's back to normal. YAY! They were thinking of referring me to Brisbane hospital to see the specialist but thank God I don't need to go, because I am all better now.

So that is my life so far! Yay, oh and congratulations to the Sealy's, I can't tell you how excited I am!!!

Celebrity Status

It's been getting busier over the past few days with work, more ministry, more ministry prep time, more drama practice, more testimony writing, more talk writing, more mingling.

I have come to the conclusion, with the help of my sister, Ruth, that I hate mingling. Okay so hate is a bit of a strong word but, i do, however, dislike it with a passion. Just hanging out at both High School and Primary, we have to make conversation, about anything really. Now you're thinking, 'yeah easy, you can talk about anything' but it's a lot easier to say than to do. What do you talk to kids about when you know nothing about them ... 'So do you do any sport? ... no. What's your favourite subject ... don't have one. What do you do in your spare time? ... nothing.' This begins the awkward silence. I must admit I have improved greatly over the course of the past few weeks, but it's still not fun. But mingling is where we can start to build relationships with the youth here and get them to start opening up and being genuine with us.

I do however much prefer mingling at the primary school, as we seem to have some form of celebrity status. We run Encounter Days for the primary school each Wednesday and we are offered Tuck shop food (canteen) so we collect our amazing lunches and head out to the crazy onslaught of kids screaming our names, pleading for us to sit with them. It;s a tough decision where to sit as once you have picked a table, you get kids feeling sad they weren't picked. So we feel we have an obligation to share to love. Yes this is probably one of the harder decisions to make throughout most of days and we have to suffer the consequences of the kids. My team seems to have taken up saying 'ACTION STATIONS' as the oncoming craziness begins. Random team inside news fact for you there :) . Mingling at the High School however, is hard! Students just don't want to know the crazy Jesus Freaks ... but that's okay, because persistence is key, and that is what we shall do ... good luck :).

Other than mingling, team life is sweet, Ruth and I get on like two peas in a pod, sitting in our room watching chick flicks whilst the boys sit in the lounge watching crazy action, blowy up scene action movie things ... yeah. There will be videos to come of our very random team life .... really weird, but awesome :) Yeah, so that's just a little of life at the moment :)

Mateo is hungry I think

This is what Odyn does in his spare time

Team randomness

We are yet to get a mop

Yeah

This is our nice team photo