Tag: drama

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I’m sitting in the dining room, typing this, after a children’s programme this morning. We went to visit the school at 11.30, and were told we had a 45 minute or an hour long cultural programme, they wanted. No problems. One of the other team members is a teacher from oz, and so she was voted to “MC” the time.

The kids enjoyed it a lot, as did the teachers, but one of the teachers _kept_ coming into the room, like, every 2 minutes, and calling for another kid to come because their parents were there. We should have really started the programme at about 11 o’clock, or 10 thirty. Eventually the whole thing dissolved at about 12 o clock when pretty much all the kids left as their parents were there to collect them. Oh well.

We taught them some (fairly) silly songs, performed a drama about friendship (they gave me the main character, which was fun), did a song about Doulos work (also quite silly, but impressive. Basically a short chorus about “if I was not upon the stage of the Doulos, I would be…” and then each “verse”, one of the people stands forward and pretends to be some job; captain, carpenter, laundry, etc, with a short chant, and actions. and each time through the song another person stands forward.

So it starts off with one person standing forward, next verse two people, the verse after that 3 people, until all of us stand forward. and the actions to each persons chant include standing up, bending down, stretching arms up and down, etc, which are choreographed so that each person ducks out of the way of the next person just as they do something. IE, the carpenter stretches out a measurement, just as the painter ducks down to stir paint, and so on.

The last character to stand forward is… a ballerina. and they are supposed to be a really strong masculine macho deckie, and so guess who that was? yes! me! wearing my deckie clothes (really grubby looking and “work” ish) and also a ballet skirt thingy on top. it always makes the kids laugh, seeing someone so tough and manly pirouette and leap across the stage… yeah. pretty fun anyway. this evening we are going to help up at the bookshop, and give tours and chat to people. but until then is time off, which is quite nice.

Yesterday was my off-day, and I went out to see the town with some of the others. we visited the souk, I wanted to try and find a new watch (analogue, with alarm and backlight, but not big and heavy, and nice looking. I’ll be using it on deck, so just simple and stuff.

heh.. anyway, I didn’t find a good one. I found lots which were almost right, but none I really wanted to get. the guys at the shops always started off prices of about 8 to 12 dinar, but by the time i’d looked at them all and decided I didn’t want to buy, were all talking off special offers, me being their friend, and 3 dinars only.

oh well. Perhaps I’ll see one in India or Oman.

We then went and had lunch at a place called “Hardees”, which is an American style fast food resurant. I had a salad burger. Then we walked to one of the malls about, walked around it for a while, went to a Haagen Daaz icecream place, each had an icecream thingy (v. nice. I had a waffle with icecream on top) and then walked a bit more, and went home. Over all, fairly relaxed day not doing very much. Then in the evening I played Rummikub with some others, and then hung out in one of the families’ cabins with them and just chatted and looked at photos and such. They are a really friendly family, and have people drop round many evenings, and have their door open. They were making a sign to put on their door, with “hi! come in!”,”we’re busy, sorry”,”not in!”,”go away we’re sleeping” or something like that on it, which they can then put a blue-tacked arrow at the approp. label, on the computer. So I helped with the design of that for a while as well. v. friendly.

anyway. I’m off now. It’s nice to have had these two not so busy days after the last 7 days of watch. Normal day deck work tomorrow, we’ll probably be starting to get ready to sail in 2 days, so finishing off paint jobs, perhaps loading some of the vans and stuff…I don’t know.

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We had three containers arrive yesterday! Almost all foodstuffs.

In the morning we went and did a presentation about the ship at a local Indian school, about 300 kids were there. We did a drama about being friends with others, no matter how different they are, taught the kids some silly songs, and so on. It went quite well, I think. Afterwards, they generously decided to feed us, lovely Indian food. I enjoyed it very much.

In the afternoon, I thought we were off until 4.45, but then the team leader came and told me I had to give a tour of the ship for some people on for a programme, and then do “parade of nations” in their programme at 3 o clock. Parade of Nations is something they put in many programmes, basically you get a whole bunch of people to walk up, say where they are from, and smile. So I quickly went and met the people, chatted for a while, gave them the tour, ran and got changed into my moderately smart clothes, ran back, did the parade thingy.

Then I ran back to my cabin, grabbed my mug and a tea bag, ran back up to the dining room for our meeting at 4.45. We were going to visit a group in the evening, and had to plan for it. So we planned for it, half the group of us to do a kids programme, and the other 3 of us to talk a bit about the ship, and how we joined, and so on. Once we’d done planning, we found that we were supposed to be at the port gate at 5, to meet them, so we managed to find a Doulos driver to shuttle us there.

When we got there, no one was there to meet us, so we drove to the parking lot (about 5 minutes away), drove around there a bit, met no one, drove back, and still no one. So we thought we should try phoning.

None of us had a phone.

So one of the guys went to try and get the port security officer to lend us his mobile. He succeeded, and was just dialing, when a big red land cruiser drove up, and it was our hosts. So we left with them (after giving back the phone, I think). They apparently had only asked for a kids’ programme… So we said OK. Then they said since we were there anyway, we might as well show a slideshow and stuff as well. So we did that, and a drama.

Now, about the containers…

They had been working on unloading them, and getting the foods into the holds since about 9am when they arrived. At about 9pm, when we got back, they were still going. So I offered to help, and was sent down into the dry food store.

I love when containers arrive. The atmosphere is wonderful to work in. It’s great.

You work like mad tossing boxes of noodles or cereal around, or push heavy ol’ bags of flour around, getting the lift empty, and then send it up again, and try and get it all packed away into some part of the hold. Everyone is tired, but working togeather. I arrived at about 9.30, after getting changed and all, and started working. We finished work at 1.15 AM. I loved it. I wouldn’t miss it for anything. Well, I would, depending on what the anything was. But it would take quite a lot.

The people who had been working since 9am were a lot more tired, of course, but still many of them would not take up the offer to let us work for them, but were determined to carry on til the end. At the end you feel great.

We have various different spreads to put on bread, but somehow I guess the order got confused, and instead of “enough jam for every day, and chocolate spread once a week”, we got mountains of chocolate spread, and virtually no jam… Odd. So I guess we will now have a lot of chocolate spread on bread. yummy. Not so very healthy though. Jam isn’t either.

Today is my off-day, so that’s cool. Next week I am on 4-8 watch, from tomorrow (saturday) morning, until the next saturday evening, I will be working from 4 til 8 in the morning, eating breakfast, doing drills, etc, sleeping for an hour, or perhaps working out, or playing clarinet, depending how I feel, and then eating lunch, sleeping for a few more hours, working again from 4 until 8 in the evening, and then sleeping until 3.30 the next morning when I get ready to start work again. Work is security duty. Mostly gangway watch, but also sea-watch (lookout and being at the helm) for 2 days, occasional fire-rounds (walking about the ship checking for fires, problems, intruders, etc). So not too strenuous, but not very fun hours.

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I’m on fire-watch in 10 minutes (making sure no fires start from welder), and probably i’ll do some needle-gunning (heavy duty rust chipping) too. auditions went ok, i think. dunno if am in group til some time next week.

Today was more training, I’m on the fire-support team, and so have to know where spare aqua-film-foam- forming fluid is kept, how to help teams get their fire fighting breathing suits checked and set up, etc.

Went to visit the American run hospital here, 2 days ago. I did a drama, and then an application mixed with story. Afterwards, some young school teachers invited us out, and we went (about 25 of us) to the seafront, played frizzbee, they brought us pizza, and a local ice- cream sales man made friends with some of us, and then gave us ALL free icecreams! So generous 🙂

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I’ve been on board for 3 weeks now. Last week I was involved in quite a few dramas, which is really exciting for me.

In my day work, I have been working on doing a lot of painting and wire-brushing, on the aft mooring-line cleats, and also the last 2 days on the “paint raft”, which is a rather ugly floating box which is used for going around the water around the side of the ship, and painting and working on the hull. I’m making a lot of mistakes though in the deck work, forgetting to put on a coat of thinner before painting on bare metal, breaking a drill bit, and so on. Nothing major, but kind of wearying. This week I’m quite tired, perhaps trying to get involved in too many things at once.

In about a week there will be auditions for the official Doulos drama team. I’m really excited about it, and in some ways it would make it a lot easier to do dramas and stuff, as I would then get proper times to do it, rather than having to try and get personal time off work for it.

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It snowed! Germany is so beautiful, and snow makes everything look
lovely.

Conference is going well. It is amazing meeting all these people, and learning so much about what God is doing around the world. Meeting people from every continent going to every other continent.

Had a time today looking at all the different places where they need workers, seeing what they do, and met up with some people from a training centre in the UK who are praying for a drama person to come along and start doing full time drama ministry, teaching sessions with their students, but also putting together professional level productions, and taking them to schools and churches around the country.

It’s a place we visited in October, and I didn’t really feel very inspired by them then, as it seemed to be training all just by lectures, but speaking with the guys today, they said they are slowing trying to revise the system there and make it more interactive, not so lecture oriented, and really want to make the arts a priority. That could be interesting to do in a few years time, after the ship, maybe. I have their contact information, and will be praying about it. We shall see.

The group from Germany had a whole load of juggling equipment and stuff lying around too at this time, everyone was milling around, looking at different places like a market. Many people were playing with the juggling stuff, so I picked up a set of balls, and did a bit of practice, and then the German rep asked if I could be bribed not to go to the ship, and if they gave me lots of German chocolate, would I stay in Germany! Rather cool….

This evening we had a long session looking at the history of the organisation, seeing how it all began, and had phone-calls with some of the longest working people. Amazing.

God has used and is using so many people to do so many things, it is kind of mind-blowing.

Anyway, it is a very busy schedule, so I do not know if I will get time to post much during the conference. The first session starts at 8:45am, and the day ends at about 9:30pm. Although there are breaks, there is not enough time to get back to the hostel and back.

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It snowed! Germany is so beautiful, and snow makes everything look
lovely.

Conference is going well. It is amazing meeting all these people, and learning so much about what God is doing around the world. Meeting people from every continent going to every other continent.

Had a time today looking at all the different places where they need workers, seeing what they do, and met up with some people from a training centre in the UK who are praying for a drama person to come along and start doing full time drama ministry, teaching sessions with their students, but also putting together professional level productions, and taking them to schools and churches around the country.

It’s a place we visited in October, and I didn’t really feel very inspired by them then, as it seemed to be training all just by lectures, but speaking with the guys today, they said they are slowing trying to revise the system there and make it more interactive, not so lecture oriented, and really want to make the arts a priority. That could be interesting to do in a few years time, after the ship, maybe. I have their contact information, and will be praying about it. We shall see.

The group from Germany had a whole load of juggling equipment and stuff lying around too at this time, everyone was milling around, looking at different places like a market. Many people were playing with the juggling stuff, so I picked up a set of balls, and did a bit of practice, and then the German rep asked if I could be bribed not to go to the ship, and if they gave me lots of German chocolate, would I stay in Germany! Rather cool….

This evening we had a long session looking at the history of the organisation, seeing how it all began, and had phone-calls with some of the longest working people. Amazing.

God has used and is using so many people to do so many things, it is kind of mind-blowing.

Anyway, it is a very busy schedule, so I do not know if I will get time to post much during the conference. The first session starts at 8:45am, and the day ends at about 9:30pm. Although there are breaks, there is not enough time to get back to the hostel and back.