Day 40 something: Back in the DRG

I will never catch up this time. After a week of playing with, ministering to, and loving on over 500 "Third Culture" kids from all over Europe, I have so much to say I will never catch up. As my last post previewed, this last week was spent in the Slovak Republic. With MCYM, over 500 American Service men and women along with dependents spent the week building playgrounds and showing Jesus's love to the town folk of Liptovsky Mikulás. It was great. In fact, great does not even come close to describing the breadth and width of the situation. It was stupendous; it was uber cool (uber is super in German, I think).

First, let me explain "Third Culture" kids. Dr Ruth Hill Useem, http://www.tckworld.com/, coined that phrase when describing children that grow up in military, missionary, preacher, foreign services or the other similar families. They are third culture because they do not have a culture of their own, or they are a culture of their own. They don't fit into the culture of their home country because they don't live there and they don't fit into the culture of their host country because they aren't from there. They are of a "third" culture, their own culture. I don't know that much about it. I only heard the term a few days ago, but it makes sense. I am sort of a "third culture" kid myself. When people ask me where I am from, I say, the United States of America, because that is the best way to describe it. Washington is the state that I hold a residence of, but I hold no address, so it is hard to say I am from there. I was born in TX, but I don't call myself a Texan, unless I am trying to piss a liberal off. (I met a guy, Jack Roberts, this last week. He is a lawyer in the Army stationed here in Germany. He is a year younger than I, but we were both born in the same city, Houston, the same suburb, Spring Branch, on the same street, Westview. So halfway across the world, I meet a guy that I could have been friends with if had I not moved away from Houston at 2 years of age. Small world) So I am not really from anywhere, I have no home. Or as they say, home is where the Army sends me.

Back to Slovakia. It was awesome. Me and the other 500 TCKs had a blast. I will have to go into more detail over the next few days, but just believe me when I say it was great. I will tell you a few stories to give you the picture of what the week was like.

Arriving the first day after a marathon bus ride is meant to impress the kids. They step off the bus to a sensory overload of music and cheering. Our bus was one of the last so the festivities had died down a bit for our arrival. The video camera rolled; the kids stammered off the bus and were directed to there home for the next six days. The leaders, myself being one, were pulled aside for a quick terrain orientation. Like the kids, I was in a daze and found it hard to pay attention to John, who turned out to be the head director dude. His briefing was where I received my first Stern Talking To (STT). You will see that a pattern was set early. The youth and I moved to our cabin. The plan was for the students to pick their living arrangements and the leaders would fall in on a group. I was initially given the key to the best cabin there, Little Pink. I decided that regardless of which kids picked it, I was not changing. It turned out that six of the guys wanted also to be in Little Pink so we squeezed seven guys into the room built for six.

That wasn't a problem because two of the guys sacrificed and slept on the floor all week. There were beds for six, as mentioned earlier, but all the guys wanted to be upstairs so I claimed the pull out double bed for myself and enjoyed relative peace all week. (I do believe I slept to best out of all the leaders. To my detriment though because more than one STT was delivered because of what my guys did after I had drifted into unconsciousness.) Seven guys in a cabin, one shower, one toilet. We lived like kings.

The first day ended with Club and cabin time. I discussed the rules, both mine and the camps. Camp rules were long and cumbersome. Things like, don't walk on the grass, be on time, and other stupid things like that. My rules are simple. I have only two and the second one is rarely enforced. 1. No dying. That includes both yourself and others. 2. Have fun. I told my guys that I will enforce all the rules placed on me by others. Their rules are non-negotiable. My rules too, are strickly enforced, well the first one at least. If anyone was to break rule #1, serious consequences would follow. With the rules established, we headed to bed, all of us. It had been a long day and everyone was tired. I fell asleep quickly and so did my guys, according to them. (STT #2 awaited me in the morning.)

My computer time is up so I will continue this another time.

Until then and tomorrow.

Jason