Greetings, dear reader, from the beautiful English countryside.
April begins in less than a week's time and the BLS get closer with every passing day. I'm really looking forwards to the start of the school, though I'm really nervous about it, like I was with the start of the DTS eighteen months ago. I have an idea of what to except but at the same I'm not totally sure what to expect even though I grew up on my parents' stories of when they were part of different BLSs.
Looking back on to March 2013, now twelve months ago. The Classic DTS of 2012 finished in the first week, which was a dramatic event, in and of itself. One thing that I was able to look forwards to, through out the weeks after the DTS ended, was going to visit a dear friend of mine in Latvia. My antics in regards to seeing the snow made my friend laugh quite a bit, as I'd never see so much of it before, whilst she was used to seeing snow a lot. It was the first white Easter I had ever had and I'll never forget it. Easter of 2013 was at the end of March, falling on the weekend when the clocks changed, this year is another matter. Easter Sunday is on April 20 and well into spring, hopefully. I'm hoping that the weather will be nice, but being England, you really never know what might happen a few weeks down the road.
Since I arrived in Broadstairs last week, quite a bit has happened in my life. I've been able to help out with an Easter program. It's called Easter Cracked. English schools all have Easter holidays. The school year is planned that Easter falls between the second and third school terms. However, there aren't a huge number of children who know what Easter is really about. Many think it's about chocolate eggs, rabbits and baby chicks. Easter Cracked is designed to explain what Easter is really about to youngsters who don't know. So on Thursday (20 March), a class of year six students (year six is last year of the British primary school) came to the church, where a number of willing church members, following the Easter Cracked program, explained to the students and their teachers, all about Easter. A lot of the kids had been involved in the Christmas Cracked (a similar program explaining what Christmas is about), so they knew what to expect of the program as, I gathered, the way both programs faun are similar. I think the children and their teachers really enjoyed and got a lot out of it.
I've also been able to get some of things On my check list of items for the BLS. When I left South Africa I made the decision to leave my bedroll and sleeping bag with my brother, Caleb, so that he could use them on his school trips, for sleep overs and the like. Frustratingly, I'm a rather sentimental person, and both those items had been to Brazil with me (which means that I wasn't too keen to part with them because of the memories I have of going to Brazil with my awesome team) but the fact that my weight limit didn't allow me to bring both, I'm glad my brother got them because I know that he'd have something to take with him on his trips. It did mean I'd have to get a bedroll and sleeping bag for outreach. I went to the nearest big shopping centre near where I'm staying to do a little bit of shopping and decided to peak into the outdoors shop, just to give myself an idea of how much they'd cost. Low and behold, both the bedroll and the sleeping bag I liked were on discount (nice big discount too). Not to add, the bedroll had a yellow label on it saying that if I found something cheaper, that item was free. So I got me a one litre water bottle, for free.
Another piece of very important Van de Ruit family news is that my beautiful sister, Hannah, has graduated from the supiriour course from Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School in Paris, France. Seven of the other students from her class didn't make the class and Hannah had to experience being around the other students who were getting phone calls telling them they had failed. However Hannah did amazingly, she ranked fourth, and she had the privalage of having our maternal aunt and great-aunt there along with our parents. You may wonder why I haven't gone. The answer is simple. Hannah only had two tickets and managed to get two extra tickets (as some people didn't have family coming and thus weren't using their two tickets) by going into the gray area. It would have been a bit tricky trying to get another one. I think Hannah was ever so pleased that our aunt and great aunt were able to go as they've never been to one of our awards events, due to us living in Africa. Hannah and I have been to all of each other's awards events, save my DTS graduation (which was strickly our DTS only type of event) and now this. I remember almost crying with pride when Hannah got the achievement award (I think) and was made one of the year 13 prefects at boarding school, just weeks before the end of year 12. A year later Hannah got the achievement awards for all three of her subjects. I'm ever so grateful for my clever sister... And my clever brother (who is still in South Africa)!!!Well, that sums up my news for now. Till next time!