Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Last Youth Group and a Glimpse of My Future

Tonight was my last youth group. I love my youth group. It would be hard to find a better batch of people anywhere. I'll probably be back at some point in the future, I'm not sure when, next Christmas is the soonest possibility I think. At any rate, they gave me a shirt that they had all signed, a card, and a certificate of commissioning. Somehow, all this is worth far more to me than my diploma and dunce hat & superman cape and all that.

At the moment I am importing all my lost cds that have been sitting in a drawer somewhere for eons past now. I know this sounds funny, but there is a solid logical reason they went missing, and another reason I found them again. They disappeared, because we had them all on our previous computer, and on my iPod (or so I thought). I found them all again when I went looking for a certain song: Thrive by Newsboys. An awesome song which I haven't heard to the best of my knowledge for more than a year. Don't ask how I remembered it. I did, went looking, and found this rack of cds that I don't have on me iPod. So I have some great new/old music, including the stuff I went looking for in the first place.

Tomorrow looks like it will be a full day. The plan is to wake up sometime about 11 am and head off to the old city with Jason and maybe Hannah. We'll see. The old city is something like exploring a well populated heated and lighted cave. There is little air to breathe, but there are many things to see and do as you wander between piles of exotic spices, raisins in 50 gallon barrels, sculptures of Yemeni houses, traditional clothing and knives, guns, gold, silver, paintings, camels, donkeys, salt, carefully piled on squares of cloth on the cobbled pavement. The best thing at the old city remains the firework section. I am a hopeless pyro. I haven't actually burned anything down yet, blown any fingers off, or burnt my fingers in the process, and I have enjoyed countless explosions.

After the trip to the old city, I come home to my open house. Apparently, no aspect of my past life will remain secret after this. I think mom is trying to do some sort of slide show of my life, and all the certificates of success or participation or anything else, medals for races or field events will be heaped in a great pile on my table some where for the world to see. Oh well. I'm leaving. It can't hurt anything at this stage... I hope.

Things I want to do before I go to America include going shooting. Shooting what you say? well, guns. Not at anything in particular, just for the experience. I hear tell its good fun. Lighting off a grenade or two would be fun as well for that matter. By the way: Thrive is fantastic. I'm listening to it as I write. Amazing song. I'll try to post it sometime in the near future. Being graduated does give you a little more time to do things.

8 comments:

Jeffrey said...

Have fun at the old city...rather surprised at your companions, but you should have a good time of it. Hannah might even be able to find her way around. Get your fill of cheap fireworks now, they're pretty expensive in America.
Maybe I can sign your shirt when I come back in July...

Unknown said...

I want to sign your shirt too! And yeah, shoot as much as you can, light as many fireworks as you can, because you ain't never doing that in the States. Sadly. Fireworks in Yemen, Guild Wars, cinemas and waterparks in the States. You can't have both, that would be unfair. =)

Graham said...

Actually I'm flying on the twenty fifth of June, which is 8 days away as I type this, so a July signing is a little late, except for Talle. Hannah didn't actually decide to turn up, which was fine. Fireworks store was closed... and we got lost 3 times or so, ran into some helpless appearing american chichs, bought worthless junk and had a blast. I'm gonna miss mango smoothies and shwarmas. I am looking forwards to some of that good American entertainment...

Christina said...

LOL!

Jeffrey said...

Shoot...I thought you were leaving in July...I misread the chat log. Oh well, have fun getting packed and ready to go.

Jasmine said...

mango smoothies and shwarmas. . .hey, I KNEW there was something good in Yemen. Man, those are good things to miss.
Good luck dude. I feel like I ought to sign your shirt too. I was there from the beginning. . .

Graham said...

2 bad dude, I wish u could sign it 2...

Yeah. Thanks. You should be on this shirt I think... after all you went through all 6 years of yg... I only did 5 cause we took a year out in the States.

Unknown said...

You're coming to the States, na na na, you're coming to the States, la la la, la la la la la LA! I'm psyched.