NYC (Not the city...)

Hey, everybody- if there still is an everybody. I seriously doubt any of you are still reading my stuff, since I've been in Kentucky for almost a week. To bad. I'm writing this anyway. HA HA.

When I was in Louisville, I wasn't there to play baseball (sadly) or to eat cheeseburgers (which were invented there). No, I was there with a bunch of other Nazarene teenagers from around the country at a little get together we like to call NYC. No, I'm not talking about the geographical NYC. I'm talking about Nazarene Youth Conference.

To you laymen (who don't know what this is) and to you Lame-O's (who already knew about it but didn't go), NYC is an event for high schoolers every four years. You must, of course, be a thorough Nazaraniac, and anywhere from entering freshman year to leaving high school for good (you stickin' lucky Seniors!). Basically, we all gather in one city, usually in the U.S. (but we have Canadian buddies, too) to hang out, talk about God, eat really greasy food that would make a lesser teen barf, and occasionally jump up and down at TobyMac concerts.

I know what you're thinking. (Yes, I am psychic, MWAHAHAHA!) Either you're thinking, "Awesome! Summer camp on steroids!" or something more along the lines of, "You mean 6,000+ Christian teens all in one city being hyper and talking about God? Yuck! Bring me a bucket, I'm going to be sick!"

To the positive thought group- that's exactly what it was.

To the negative thought group- I'll give you a whole list of reasons why you should have gone.

1) TobyMac and the David Crowder Band both gave awesome concerts, and Starfield lead the worship every night. Oh yeah, BE JEALOUS! I got to rock out to TobyMac, see one of the last concerts the David Crowder Band will ever give, and worship with hot Canadian guys! Seriously, though, it was great music, and kind of cool to find a bunch of other kids who know all the words to those songs.

2) Hot Canadian Starfield Band taught us to dance. There were two dances: The Hockey Mom and The Eighties Mom. I'll spare you the details of how weird we all looked doing that, but trust me, at the time we were having TONS of fun, and we (meaning me) didn't think that those memories would ever come back to haunt us...

3) Ice Parties. Let me give you the story on that one, because it's pretty good. So, I was in a hotel room with five other girls, meaning that we were all basically crammed into whatever corner of the room was most comfy to us. I was sleeping on a tiny corner of the couch with a squishy pillow that my head always sunk right through, but I was usually too tired to notice all of that.

Anyway, next door to my roommates and me, there were a bunch of guys from Ponca City, and all the girls in my room were pretty happy about that, to say the least. Before curfew, just to get out of the hotel room for a while, we (along with Ponca City Boys Next Door) would mount an exhibition to go down to the sixth floor and get ice. Why? Because: a) Water bottles are three bucks apiece, and ice is free, and b) HELLO?? Think about it. Five hyper teenage girls+five cute boys who have no objection to chillin' with us (pun intended)= Boy Stalking Time.

Now, I personally didn't do much boy stalking. I was kinda busy with the whole At-NYC-God-Will-Change-Your-Life thing, but that doesn't mean I didn't pass up the opportunity to hang out with said group of crazy girls and cutie-pie boys. And even though the Knock-on-the-Wall language they invented was annoying at two a.m., at least it yielded results. No naming names, but I know that at least one of my roommates got a Prince Charming kiss, though whether they will live Happily Ever After remains to be seen.

4) The Gummy Bear Story. This was the talk of the hotel for days after it was told. One of our speakers, Brooklyn Lindsey, was telling the story of her NYC experience- namely, meeting her husband at NYC when she was seventeen.

The way she tells it, she had her eye on a Smokin' Hot Guy pretty much since she got on the airplane. One day, she leaves something at the hotel, and her friends (naturally) ditch her. (This is sounding more and more like a situation I would wind up in- *coughcough* MILLIE *coughcough*) So, who should rescue her from the perilous, lonely walk back to the hotel but Smokin' Hot Guy? He offers to walk back with her, and naturally she accepts.

So they're on an elevator, and it's all awkward because they're the only ones in it. And then Brooklyn sees something on the floor.

See, at NYC, our teenage brains get fried. Between meeting our future husbands, going to TobyMac concerts, and eating super greasy food, it's no wonder we go slightly insane. Case in point: Brooklyn's youth group had a Gummy Bear Fight. They just bought a ton of gummy bears and pelted them at each other. (This definitely sounds like something my youth group would do, especially after what happens next.)

You see, as Brooklyn is staring down her sneakers, begging God to give her something brilliant to say, God catches her eye with something. It's a smashed, dusty, bacteria-infested gummy bear. Yep, folks, a red gummy bear on the elevator floor.

Naturally, Brooklyn looks up at Smokin' Hot Guy and says, "Dude, I dare you to eat that!"

And Smokin' Hot Guy, not being stupid, says, "Sure- if you eat half!"

And now, many moons later, they are happily married with a two-year-old girl.

I personally, if I'd had money to spare, would have loved to buy a jumbo bag of gummy bears and leave them random places, just to see what happens. And apparently, as Brooklyn told us the day after this story was told, we cleared out the entire city of Louisville of its gummy bears, so I'm not the only one. I guess we know now why God invented those. :)

5) Workshops. You know, classes that you take, but only for about a day. I went to two pretty good ones that were talking about writing, and everyone else I talked to had fun with their workshops too. I got nothing but good reviews from everyone on all the different topics and teachers.

6) Meeting people while you're in line at Starbucks. Everyone here- okay, maybe not everyone, but most of you- enjoys a good old fashioned grande frappuccino to round off a particularly moving service. I myself needed a good sized Mocha Coconut after Reggie Dabbs said his piece. Fortunately for me, and the other thousands of kids who completely lost their cool during Reggie's session, there was a handily placed Starbucks in the building we hung out in during the day. Whenever you needed a pick-me-up, all you had to do was jog down two flights of escalators and be prepared to stand in a line roughly the length of a football field.

Easier said than done.

While the line was ridiculous, I have always been a people watcher at heart. And there were some pretty interesting people to drop some eaves on in the Starbucks line. A lot of Californians (no surprise there), a couple of New Yorkers (not really surprising, either), some Canadians, and even a guy from Hawaii named Genesis! You can have some pretty interesting conversations with those folks... I know I did.

7) Extracurriculars with your Church Buddies. Okay, so our district didn't want to just stay couped up in the hotel all the time. Sue us for wanting to have fun! We went to Merango Caves in Indiana, which was pretty dad-gum cool. There were lots of stalactites and stalagmites that were bigger than I was, which is cool, considering every cubic inch that a stalactite or stalagmite grows is equivalent to one hundred years! And for those of you wondering the difference between a stalactite and a stalagmite- stalagmite's got an "m" in it, people. ;)

Then there was King's Island, a really awesome amusement park that tons of great rides, even if its pizza is like trying to chew cheesy leather. I road a bungie ride called the Slingshot with another kid from my church. Basically, it was this steel sphere thing. We were strapped in, and then there was a click and POW! we shoot two hundred some-odd feet into the air! It was pretty cool. The kid I was with? Bradley Baker. If you know him, you probably peed your pants laughing at him screaming his head off (which you could hear all the way from the ground). If you don't know him, I'm very sorry. You're missing out on one heck of a dude. And if you didn't hear Bradley's screams, think of what a monkey being squished by a rhino would sound like.

8) College Opportunities. There are eight Nazarene Universities in this particular country, and all eight of them were well represented at NYC. There was some serious SNU pride, not to mention the other universities with their various "commercials" and chants. Olivet had a dance. At Northwest (we found out), there is an official coffee drink called a Brick (diabetics beware), a talent show called Fresheree (no talent required), and an ongoing scavenger hunt to collect as many professor cell phone numbers as possible. Point Loma started a rumor that Miley Cyrus attended their college. The point is, Nazaraniacs sure know how to market.

9) Inside jokes and Buddies 4 Life. I don't know about the others, but I made lots of new friends and reconnected with people that I haven't really hung out with since elementary school. Leanne always knows everyone's name and exactly what they're going through. My roommates, Becca, Emily, Julianna, and Sara all had some pretty rockin' dance moves and were always in a good mood. I'm serious- no grouchy girls in our room. I learned how to play a lot of new card games with some of the older girls.

Oh yeah, and there were the guys too. The bus captain for my bus was a pastor from Shawnee named Micheal, but everyone called him Princess Honey Bear. I have no clue how he got saddled with that nickname, and no desire to learn the reasoning behind it. Bradley slept through the entire Sunday morning service- even communion. Brady has a Louisville Slugger (the lucky stinker) named- what else?- Babe. Even the Ponca City dudes from next door were fun to hang out with, and they really knew how to party.

10) Unbroken. When I found out what the theme was- Unbroken- I looked up the word for an exact definition, because I'm like that. Here's what I got:

un-bro-ken- adj. 1. not broken, fractures, or damaged 2. not interrupted or disturbed; continuous

That was the theme that was picked. It makes me smile every time I see it, because this experience wasn't all sunshine and daisies. Oh yeah, it was fun and great, and I would do it again in a heartbeat. But guys, this NYC was a process, not just a get-together for 6,000 teenagers. There were seven sessions, seven speakers, and seven different steps we had to learn.

The sessions were called Create, Broken, Promise, Presence, Satisfied, Mission, and Restored. Let me tell you, it was an emotional roller coaster. There was laughter and tears in equal abundance- I even cried. I, the Heart of Stone, the girl who watched Steel Magnolias without showing any form of emotion, cried like a little baby two whole times. There were times when all of us were sitting there busting up, or totally amazed, or so excited that the bleachers were shaking, or so deeply moved that the room was ringing with silence. And my favorite part of NYC was how God totally came into my little corner of the world and went nuts. He rocked my face off, rearranged it, and put it back on upside down, and I'll never ever be the same. Ever.

You'll here people say that nobody ever went to NYC and had a crappy time. In fact, they told us that on the bus at five a.m. when we were driving up. At the time, I didn't believe them, because it was five o'clock in the morning and not a coffee maker in sight. But here I am now, the cynical, misanthropic, reclusive Sarah who hated voluntarily socializing with anyone- especially kids from church. And I'm telling you right now that that was the best thing I ever did in my life, I had fun, and actually acted like a kid and not a New Jersey doctor with a cane and a chip on her shoulder.