There and back again

Well all the Oxford diocese Taize group are safely returned. We had an absolutely fabulous time.

I ended up on "night welcome" which means telling peopel to be quiet from 11pm and pretty much ASLEEP from midnight which is somewhat challenging!! but it was FANTASTIC fun as the team were hilarious.

Dovile from Lithuania was just Awesome - an experienced Night welcomer of 7 years and really skilled at chatting to people and persuading them to be quiet and in their OWN rooms, especially the Italian boys.

Mara was just hilarious and quoting Eddie Izzard and Family guy all the time

Simon was a great giggler who insisted the moon was so bright that at midnight we needed moonglasses and moon lotion.

Radik was so calm that he managed to make people quiet just by STANDING there.

and then there was the rest of the team..

Dr Phil was like a police dog specially trained for sniffing out alcohol and bagged so much in the week it made our team look decidedly unskilled! Although when Joanna discovered he was ticklish he did run away like a giggling Homer Simpson.

Vlad (the loud haler) did get the idea of keeping peopel quiet in the end but not really the idea of being quiet himself.

Hans was so loud that he tried to tell ME to go to bed when we were closing Oyak - but they wouldn't let me as I was supposed to be working!!

Niklas (and Lisa who liked him so much she joined the Night team) from Sweden were just "chill" and helped keep me warm and laughing.

Christophe, well what can you say about the man that made all of us stay up until 3am some mornings and some of us until 5.30 am!! Honestly he was a legend... particularly when he lost his German cool and got really frustrated about people but never at them!!

Of course but by no means least was Brother Paolo who went RUNNING to get us more breakfast when there wasn't enough. A Taize brother flying across from the kitchen is a site to see.

The Oxford group did keep a taize diary (though without me nagging them to do it as I was on a different time zone to them most of the time it is a bit short!) which is beautifully and suitably random. I'll pop that up on the Taize blog when I get a sec.

Right now I need to upload some pictures and then get on with sorting our youth holiday out.