| 4:22p |
Katoomba- The Heart of the Mountains (or something like that)
Whoa. Crazy weekend. My best buddy Meg and I traveled back and forth between Katoomba and Sydney four times. Twice with Oliver (her car), once in separate cars, and once by train. On the way to Katoomba, we whizzed through towns that had signs declaring them "The Jewel of the Mountains", "The First Mountain Town" and "The Heart of the Mountains". I don't remember which was which, though. I had made Meg these super-duper girly road trip tapes, which featured gems like "Love Shack", "My Sharona" and "Holiday", so if you happened to see a blonde and brunette girl dancing like it was an endless weekend (while still staying seated in their car), well, that was probably us!
The main problem was, though, that our destination remained hidden. The roads that were supposed to guide us there proved to be as elusive as Harry Potter's platform nine-and-three-quarters. So after many minutes of Meg and I quite decidedly repeating, "We definitely have to go right...of course, we have to go left..." we finally succumbed to calling Luke. Eventually we made it to the campsite. We were so frazzled that we needed to do more car-dancing to rid ourselves of excess angst, and so The Vines' "Ride" was pumped up. Unfortunately, we soon discovered that a car is never a private place, when Jonathan knocked curiously on Meg's window. Let's just be thankful that Jonathan told us (or at least pretended) that he hadn't seen us dancing.
Meg and I staggered dramatically into the hall where we found the rest of the FEVA (Fellowship for Evangelism in the Visual Arts) gang. I hurled myself onto the floor in exhaustion, and Meg declared, "Guys, we got sooooooooo lost!" We thought that at least a funny story would make all of the misguided struggle worth it; but alas, everyone else got lost too, so we didn't feel that special anymore. So out came my new star-shaped tamourine, and I bopped along to the new song that Luke and Andrew were writing. Hurrah, songwriting- one of my favourite things to do!
The next morning brought many pleasant surprises in the familiar faces I hadn't been expecting to see. Xenia (my old minister's daughter) just keeps growing more mature and beautiful each time I see her...she's fourteen now, oh my goodness! And there were lots of friends to admire the red ladybeetles with. Then we did all the serious stuff...the planning for FEVAmission. It's all very exciting- a whole bunch of us are going down to South Australia (my old home state!) to help run a Christmas program at a church, and in doing that, help people to learn more about Jesus. Yay!
On Saturday night, it was back to Sydney for Meg and me. Meg had to go to what she described as "the Oscars of the tile industry", and I returned to the chaos-and-chocolate-cake of my brother's eighth birthday. At seven a.m. the next day, Meg and I found ourselves at Central Station, clutching styrofoam cups with fortifying liquids in them. Surprisingly, we weren't as hideously exhausted as we expected to be. We zoomed back to Katoomba by train. It was a more than pleasant journey. Although there was no dancing this time, we still had a really great talk. There were bright yellow mountain flowers by the railway track, and I read the end of "Mansfield Park" aloud to Meg (goodness, that Mr Crawford is a scoundrel!).
It was such a lovely weekend. I love seeing my FEVA friends- they are so caring and sweet, and I love playing music with them. Plus, they're all arty types. I'm so excited about mission. Expect more updates soon! I just have to figure out what I'm wearing next weekend... |