The day I became a Christian

Anyone who lives or lived in New Zealand who was between about 14 and 20 knew about Easter Camp. It was like England's Leeds Festival. Except everyone who went had to be part of a Christian youth group kind of thing. It was a pretty awesome few days. I joined my friend Emma's youth group so I could go, and although I've never really got the whole idea of Christianity (slavery good, gays bad, snakes talk....?) I was open to seeing what it was all about. So by the end of the camp I was mad for the Christian bands and singing along to it all, and going to all the speeches, but can't say I was even near to converting. In fact, if anything I thought they went a bit heavy on and I couldn't have wanted to be more atheist.

On the last night we were in the massive tent where loads of the speechers were, and it was filled with every person who went. So around two to three thousand people. This last speech was the biggie; it was seeing if Easter Camp had converted anyone who wasn't a Christian before they came, to becoming one. It was quite a long speech, and my attention span is pretty bad at the best of times, so I zoned out for a while. The guy next to me nudged my arm and ask if I wanted to stand up when the room had gone silent, and I gathered we were leaving, so I stood up with him. I think this is probably the exact point when I became a Christian.

Bit of an error of judgment being one of about six people out of three thousand standing up after accidentally silently proclaiming myself a Christian. Everyone else said that they felt an outside force (don't know if they meant God or like the wind or something) making them stand up. I really didn't know what to say when I was asked why I became a Christian and how did I feel after this new stage of my life. It was a bit late to say that I hadn't been listening and stood up cause I thought everyone else was. It was definately up there with the most embarassing moments of my life, and to make things even worse, I had to go along with it for the rest of the night and then hope people would stop mentioning it a few weeks later. People were crying, and I was given at least two bibles, I had to pray in front of everyone and pretend to be all emotional. Felt a bit of a twat really.

My (second) marriage

My first marriage was in the playground to a little ginger boy called George. He used to chase my brother around the playground, but it was all good, we were pretty on-off anyway. I don't think we even had a wedding to be honest, I think it was just a mutual agreement. So yeah, thats why i'm writing about the second marriage, about four years or so later, when I was in year 5, to Jack who was about half my height. And no shit, the entire school watched our wedding. It was quite an event.... We actually had bridesmaids and a priest (well, some boy in my class) and rings. Made of tinfoil and highlighters. The crowd of school kids made a little aisle and everything, I felt pretty cool. It was in the playground again, but this time was totally more serious than the fling marriage with George. Our marriage lasted at least half a school year, until I moved away and Jack forgot all about me and went out with one of my friends (what a slut). But whatever, I always fancied the boy in the year above anyway who played guitar and used to tease me on the swingy ropes.

Anyway, heres to hoping my boyfriend Ben's planning a wedding that will top off the last one.. it will definitely be a challenge.

First days on Al Nakheel

Well for a start this was a place unlike anything I could remember. I was about ten, and couldn't really remember the last time I lived in Saudi Arabia, so I guess it seemed more like a holiday. It was night, so I didn't take any notice of the guards, tanks and the big concrete walls with barbed wire. I was just loving the fact that it was really hot, that you could stand on the roof of our new house and that we were going to the pool at night, and would be going every day for the next eighteen months. We went over and met someone my dad knew, and he had a daughter my age, so I was chuffed. She turned out to be a total psycho bitch, but obviously I didn't know that then, so it was chilled. She was moving away soon anyway, but we still went out and bought matching dresses in the enormous mall, Kingdom Tower, for our welcoming barbeque. Living on the compound was a total novelty back then. In fact, it was a novelty the whole time. I was too young to want to go out any further, so living somewhere which literally had houses, a little grocery shop, a clubhouse with squash courts and a restaurant bar, too many pools to count, a skate park and a library was pretty much all I wanted or needed. Which was pretty handy, cause the only other places we could really go was school, our friend's compounds, Kingdom Tower to shop and then far away to Dahran beach. Once we drove ten hours to where we used to live, Khamis Mushayt, but that was about all. Saudi Arabia isn't really the place you wander round the streets if you're a family of RAF or BAE working for the Saudi's nowadays, and it certainly wasn't then. At the start though, I didn't go to school cause we were too late to start the school term (or something like that) so mum homeschooled me and my brothers for a while, then we'd spend the rest of the day chilling. It was the most relaxed lifestyle ever. And I loved it. As a kid, I had absolutely nothing to worry about, all the children as far as I know were relatively oblivious to what happened outside the walls, and we never saw any of the alert letters that were posted through the door. I would love to go back to Al Nakheel now, just see everyone again and take ten minutes to walk around the entire place. But hardly anyone in the RAF stays anywhere for more than a couple of years, so hardly anyone I used to know still lives in Riyadh. And any of them that do don't live on Al Nakheel anymore, cause it got demolished and every compound moved to one huge compound further into the desert. So I guess this post isn't even something I can go back and remind myself about. Theres practically no photos, so just contacts and memories.