IC 2022 is done. The first in person IC after two years virtually do to COVID. It was great to be together in person, it was a great success. I’m looking forward to bigger and better things next year.
So it was an early wake up on Sunday morning. I scrambled around getting all my things together and bringing my car over. I managed to get everything packed and loaded in my car with enough time to check out right before I had to head over for the closing ceremony.
The closing ceremony was a closing ceremony, fairly long and only mildly interesting. I think sometimes closing ceremonies can be harder because you know they mean the end of a fun event and you don’t want to celebrate the end. The highlight was probably getting to see the Kambala middle & senior teams perform their action plan presentations – as they both one their divisions they got to perform them at the closing ceremony which was cool.
Australia had some good results, which was great to see. I’ve put a list at the bottom of the post if you’re interested. At the conclusion of the ceremony I hung around a bit, I was down to help backup but I don’t think Was very useful. I chatted to a few people, then decided it was time for me to head to y AirBnB in Boston. After a quick stop at Walmart to make use of the bathrooms I headed off to Boston and arrived without incident, though it did take a few laps to find parking. The rooms was good, it’s occurring to me now that I should have taken pictures of my accommodation, I’ll try and do that from now on. I was hungry, very tired and had a headache (first symptoms even if I didn’t recognise them at the time). So I went for an early dinner of pizza and chicken which I walked down and got. It was good, but I’m still not sold on potato on a pizza… Then it was time for an early night.
The flags leaving at the end of the closing ceremony.
Australia IC Results:
Our Australian students have achieved some incredible results at the FPSP 2022 International Competition. Congratulations to
Shelby Strong, William Clarke College, NSW, 1st Place Junior Division Scenario Performance
Rosie Finley, Illawarra Christian School, NSW, 2nd Place Middle Division Scenario Performance
So we’re up to Saturday night. After the Variety Show I rushed off the find the student union. I was one of the chaperones for the dance. Not long after arriving Paige came up to Andrew and I and said the games haven’t arrived at the games night, does one of you want to walk back to North and deliver them in a golf cart. I said that I as I had a car parked at the variety show I could take that back and do it. I got back to North, was looking for the games and found April who said she had already taken them over. So I headed back to the dance, getting to drive one of the FPS golf carts for the first time! After a few wrong turns I parked it at the back entrance.
The dance was entertaining. The older students only stayed for the first hour and I don’t blame them. I know from my experience as a student at IC the best times were sitting outside at night talking to people from halfway across the world and singing song together with a guitar (also drinking Ale-8, but we were in Kentucky! it’s a mostly Kentucky only drink that I still love.) It was your typical high school social. amazingly they seem not to have changed much since I was in high school.
Turns out this is still a thing:
Watching, sometimes singling along and reminiscing about our lost youth was enjoyable. After my lamenting the lack of Taylor Swift, Paige spoke to the DJ and we did get You Belong to Me. We didn’t love all the song choice, appropriateness wise and Paige vetoed one sone, but overall it was a good night. We finished about half and hour early as there was only a handful of people left. We managed to squeeze 6 people on to the golf cart back to north, but Andrew and I standing up and holding onto the roof. Paige wasn’t too sure, but it went fine. I did a brief bit of organising to pack in the morning and then hit the sack. Final night, sad.
So evaluation done, 2 days to go. I had a great sleep and woke up around 10ish, I think. A good 10+ hours to catchup. I opened my phone and was somewhat bombarded by emails. It turned out that there had been a minor incident involving an Australian team the night before that I had completely missed. But it has been handled and everything was under control. Dylan had been around and able to assist which was helpful.
I showered, which I hadn’t had time to do on Friday and had a breakfast / lunch snack of pop-tart coffee and mussel bar. Healthy, maybe not, but it was great! The I headed over to the variety show auditions. As my share of the evaluating was done I was scheduled to help out with these. The variety show is great fun it has to be made up of teams of people from at least 2 affiliates and they do music, jokes. magic tricks anything entertaining. I was only there for the second half of the auditions, but there were some excellent one and some good ones. In the end everybody who auditioned made it into the show. Lynn worked on the show order and Janet and I got the seating and movement sorted out, then headed back to North as the FPS choir started practicing.
I had a bit of a break and rest before I headed down to the campus centre to buy an early dinner. I had to be back at the variety show for setup at 6 so I had an early dinner before I waited in the lobby to see if there was a lift. There wasn’t but I did run into Dylan. He came with me as I drove to the variety show and filled be in on the details of the minor issue from the night before. It turned out that everything was under control.
The variety shows was fantastic, it was so encouraging to see kids from different affiliates working together to produce acts to entertain each other. The logistics didn’t work quite as we planned, but it was nothing noticeable that affected the show. All the acts were enjoyabel. My second favourite wasn’t really an act, but one of the co-ordinators Lynn did a parody of I’ve Been Everywhere Man on the Ukulele, adapted to IC and the variety show it was funny & very well done. The key refrain being ‘we’re from everywhere man’ and she worked the affiliates in remarkably well. But my hand down favourite was two girls from Connecticut and Illinois. They’ve performed together in the variety show since they met and this year they did a duet of Breaking Free from High School Musical and it almost as good as the original. I don’t have a video of they’re performance but I’ve embedded the original below for you’re viewing please. I’ll leave that there and come back to the rest of Saturday in another post.
