Bible Bowl: Part 2

I would say that we woke up nice and early on Saturday morning, but some of our group never really went to sleep, and in my hotel room, the awakening was neither nice nor early. Trains went by across the street at 30-minute intervals, which was sufficient to keep a lot of us from getting a good night's sleep, I'm afraid.

We had to load up to go to McDonald's for breakfast, because the hotel did not serve breakfast. Although it is fair to say that none of us really wanted to stick around there any longer than we had to, anyway, still it was an additional snag in our weekend. (By "snag" I mean "unplanned expense".)

So after loading up on fats and carbs, we headed for the church where the competition was held. Someone lost her glasses, quite a few children had early-morning grumpiness, and a couple of the girls apparently had their brains reprogrammed overnight so that all they could say was "Stop it!" to one another in really high-pitched, whiny voices. (Another side note here to say, this is probably the worst-behaved I've ever seen this group of children act, so it's not like I have much to complain about.) After a last-minute behaviour pep talk, we sent the children in to their holding area whilst the coaches went to a meeting. When I was a kid at these things, I used to wonder what it was the adults were all talking about. Now I know: Nothing. Although this meeting did give us a funny moment for the weekend. The man running the meeting prayed for us to all have "safe passage" home, so at the end of the prayer, I turned to Rebecca to ask, "Are we going home by ship?"

And the rest of the day went pretty smoothly. So far as I know the lost glasses were never found, one of the spectators took a phone call during the competition (really annoying the moderator, not to mention everyone else), and our scorekeeper thinks Lubbock is spelt "Lubic". We came home with a few ribbons and trophies.

And for some bizarre reason, they let me choose where to eat supper. I haven't worked that one out yet.