And now, a special guest post by Bentley!
I've been asked to speak on FSY. So now I will do that.
This will be long because, when given the time to think about what I want to say, I can talk for a long time. Apologies. But not really, because who do you think you are being upset by reading when you voluntarily opened this blog. What did you expect to do when you look at someone's blog? NAP?! I don't think so.
FSY was really fun. I got to meet new people and had lots of spiritual experiences. I went to two dances and danced with multiple people at each of them (!). I had cheeseburgers at least twice a day and for the first time in my life felt a little tired of them. Mostly because they weren't exactly Five Guys quality, if they were then I wouldn't get sick of them. Five Guys is the best.
Anyway, I'm just gonna start from the beginning. So usually when I'm about to go off on something like this or a camping trip I try to have low expectations so if it's not horrible then by comparison, it's great. I will admit though, I was pretty excited. I was imagining mostly hanging out with friends, eating food, going to dances, staying in dorms and maybe having the occasional fireside or morning devotional. A few days before we left, I discovered that in the packing list it specifically said for boys to bring fans for the dorms. It looked like there wasn't going to be air conditioning.
So finally it's time to go. We ended up driving all the boys in our ward in the van all the way to W&M. We got out of the car and stood in a line for maybe an hour. We didn't move except when the whole line kinda got closer. No actual process. At one point a worker ran by and said something about not having the keys for the dorms. That seems like something they should've thought of before we all arrived. We arrived at around 11:30, I got my key at 12:30, and after eating lunch and driving around William and Mary campus and dropping all the other young men off we got to my dorm. Also, me and the person I wanted to dorm with ended up not being in the same dorm which was disappointing.
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| Waiting in line. If we look slightly unhappy, its cause we were |
At around 2 in the afternoon I had finally gotten to my dorm building and gotten into the correct room (there were two staircases that went to different parts of the building with no connection between them so I had to drag my suitcase down and back up a different staircase).
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| Here's me and my roommate Ivan |
For the rest of the day we did get to know each other games and went over the rules of FSY. Then we had a welcome assembly and a devotional. Before the devotional, we had dinner at the cafeteria, which was pretty nice but had the same three, mediocre, options for every meal. At dinner I spoke to two of my friends that went to a different dorm and found out they didn't even have dorms yet. So that made me feel better about not being with them.
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| This is Andon, who we hung out with a lot |
Also! Our dorm had AC! It was very loud and felt like the AC units you see in hotels but smaller. Still, better than using a small box fan in the middle of July.
Before I go on, I would like to explain how FSY works for anyone that didn't go to the FSY at W&M this year. I don't know if it has changed at all but basically, you would be in a group that would usually be one floor of a dorm building and we would have a counselor in charge (around 12-15 boys in a group). My groups counselor was Jared. Jared would be paired with a girl counselor who would have her own group of girls. Those two groups together would be called a 'company.' Our company was called 'go and do.'
We went to bed at around 11:30 and woke up at 5:30 to shower and get ready. We had a morning lesson with our company and then went to the main area, where we had meals, devotionals, and classes. We had our morning classes which were really good. I like the speakers, I think they do this as a job, I heard most of them had been flown out from Utah. Very cool. After morning classes we had lunch and two more afternoon classes. Then we had free time and dinner. Dinner was a little stressful and reminded me of school lunch which is one of the more stressful moments of the first few days of school.
Then we had a dance. This dance was pretty fun but I was still getting situated and got in my head so I only asked a few people to dance. I danced for maybe half the (slow) songs (I danced for all the not slow ones). Also, the building we were in was incredibly loud and echoey. If people even whispered it would build up until it sounded like we were screaming. Because of this, the music was kinda drowned out and I could only tell what song was playing if everyone started singing it.
The next day was about the same with a morning and evening devotional and morning and afternoon classes. That night we had a game night where about half the kids in FSY went to where we had devotionals and the other half went to where we have dances. To put into perspective, there was a total of around 500 kids and since we were spilt that meant 250 in each place. So, imagine 250 kids running around playing 'dragon tag' (you form a line and the person in the front tries to tag the back of other lines to grow, like conga line but tag). After the games we had a 'pizza night'. Then it was bed time.
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| Here's my company, 'Go and Do' (I'm in the top right area) |
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This kid that carried a giant spoon with him everywhere (and from what I hear, didn't shower or change his pants at all the whole time) got up and just listed every African country.
A kid from our ward beatboxed but because of the mic whenever he tried to do low bass sounds it just sounded like he was breathing heavily, he complained about this on the way back home.
Some kids sang 'I want it that way' and, if you know my mom, then you know the only thing I was thinking of was this.
One guy played a game of clash royale (multiplayer mobile game) in front of everyone and WON. It would've been very awkward if he lost.
Those are all the talents I can think of off the top of my head. Then we had a devotional and testimony meeting in groups of 3 or so companies. I'll be honest, one of the less great testimony meetings I've been to. Some kids only got up to be stand up comedians, other kids testimonies went like "I don't really believe in this church and I don't like it, but I felt a little happy at some points this week and that might've been the spirit idk." I just think some of the kids weren't told what a testimony is supposed to be.
Finally, it was Friday, the last day. We did some fun family history stuff and I found out there was a girl at FSY who I was third cousins with. Quite random. We had a final dance, which was fun, but pretty short. I danced for what I thought was every slow song, but Kendra said there was more than that. She's definitely wrong though. Then we had devotional and final testimony meeting.
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| You can't really see it because of the low quality, but there's the hoard of kids coming to the dance |
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| Me and my friend, Aaron at the dance |
I got home, and the next day, dad made me bear my testimony during sacrament meeting.
My biggest take away form this was that at church activities, people that would be considered 'cool' in normal life, aren't. There were some kids who I know and I also know that they are popular in school. At FSY they sat in the corner of the room and stared at their phones. They thought FSY was below them, and didn't have fun.
I sat with them once during lunch, and didn't sit with them again because they just looked at their phones the whole time.
If you don't try to have fun, you won't. So try to have fun.
1 comment:
Congratulations to the guest blogger! I really enjoyed hearing about FSY! I also was very impressed by some of your insights! Good job and thank you for sharing!
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