Day 4 - July 23: Planning & Prep

Monday was a great day to get started and organized. We didn’t have any scheduled agenda until Noon, so most of us had breakfast and spent the morning shopping and sightseeing in the Swansea Market: fresh Welsh cakes, cochels (a small oyster-ish type seafood), laver bread (basically seaweed, which even the Welsh don’t like) and may other fresh items to sample. After the morning tour, we met at Capel Gomer and brought in some Gregg’s pasties for lunch. Derek then led the Welsh and American team leaders step-by-step through each half-hour time slot and determined who would be doing what. We figured out the supplies we’d need and sent all the teams out to shop for the afternoon. After great fun and successful shopping, we re-grouped for a show-and-tell, and planned out the engineering, arts & crafts, Eisteddfod (cultural festival) and film/media team challenges as well as the sports & games sessions. We ended our planning session with a time of special prayer for Traci (son’s hip injury) and Genia’s home issues (water damage), lifting up these and other team issues to the Lord for peace, health and restoration. After a brief rest, we walked with Derek, Matthew and Tomos to the Swansea city center for dinner which turned out to be more problematic than expected. Two separate pubs (politely) kicked us out because we had students under 18 and the pub cannot accommodate children after 7PM. We finally settled at Pizza Express and had a really nice dinner with one of Tomos’ friends as our waitstaff. Someone had the brilliant idea to take a walk to Joe’s for ice cream, and many tried Derek & Matthew’s recommendation of a strawberry-marshmallow sunday. Another walk led us to the beach where we had a beautiful view of the Mumbles and opening of the Bristol Bay that separates portions of Wales from the southwestern coast of England. After another busy and successful day bonding with our new friends, we trudged home full of both food and blessing (and perhaps some trepidation).Tomorrow is the big day when we pick up the kids and head off to camp!