It was not all work on the Diakonos trip – every night most of us had some free time (while the lunch crew made lunch for the next day), followed by a more or less organized entertaining activity.

The Habitat headquarters where we were staying had an older (1980ish?) pinball game (called “Truckin'” or “Haulin'” or some such) that was a surprising hit among the Sega/Nintendo/X-Box generation. For extra fun, the pinball machine was missing the left-hand ball rail, so if the ball went down either ball-lane on the left-hand side, you lost the ball. It is fair for everyone playing, but I could never remember that the railing was missing – I’d make a mini-ramp out of the left flipper so that I could “trap” the ball against the railing and control it. It never ceased to surprise me as I watched the ball roll down my flipper and into the void. Habitat also had foosball, but that was a slightly rickety game, and so was not played much.

Free time was spent by most people just hanging out in one form or another. You could write notes of encouragement or of thanks to people, and every evening some people took advantage of the pre-made paper cards to do just that. Other people just talked, or they played games. You had to be careful not to get so involved in a game that you would miss your shower slot.

Here is the day-to-day breakdown of entertainment:

Sunday: As we were waiting for supper, the students got a group together and played a large game of Catch Phrase. I chatted with a couple of the chaperons. After supper, I was introduced to my first experience with pogs. Pogs, for those over 30, are small discs with pictures on them, about the size of a milk cap. You pile some pogs in a stack (with other people’s pogs), and you take turns throwing a heavy disk on the pile. All the pogs that land face up you keep. All the others go back in the pile for the next player. To add interest, each of us received a bag of about 20 pogs, one of which had our picture on it (taken off of the internet – mine was the Dr.-Who-wearing picture from my blog entry on “White and Nerdy”). It is not a game of great intellectual demands, but it was fun to try it.

Monday: I used free time to introduce Ami and Craig to the wonderful world of Fluxx. Fluxx is a card game where the rules and goals change based on the cards that are played. This game created quite a bit of curiosity, and it turned out to be immensely popular among the students. After the first game or two, most Fluxx games were played with six people, with more wanting to play. Oh, on Monday, Craig won.

After supper, the kids played a HUGE game of Mafia. I think the townspeople won by a sight margin.  I used that time to talk to Mer on the phone.

Tuesday:
When we got back to Habitat HQ, I walked the .75 miles down the street to take pictures of the outside of Cereal City, a shameless self-promotion for Kellogg’s cereal. Still, since Mer is a big cereal fan, and it was a nice day, it was worth the walk to take a few photos.

The official entertaiment of the evening was to be game night. We had Fluxx, but I decided I needed to go out and get another game that Sonotmu introduced me to, Blokus. I told Craig I was headed to Target to look for it, and he requested the game Pit as well. Target was only about 15 minutes away, and it took me almost that long just to get the lock off of the Habitat gate (Ami had 3000 keys on her key ring, and they all looked the same in the semi-dark). I was sad when I got to Target that they did not have Blokus or Pit, but I picked up SkipBo in honor of Mer’s grandparents; I figured I could introduce some people to team SkipBo if all else failed. There was a mall across the street from Target, so I took a chance that Barnes and Noble might have Blokus, which they did. So, after a mere 45 minutes or so, I returned with Blokus and SkipBo. SkipBo never did get played, but I introduced Craig and two students to the game. We played a couple of times, and I did not win. Blokus became another popular game for the rest of the week. I know there were other games going on, but I am not sure which ones they were, because I was not playing them. I know Catch Phrase was being played because of the shouted clues.

Wednesday: I tried vainly for about 20 minutes to get Craig’s laptop to hook up to the local wireless base station. The laptop could see the signal, but could not connect. I’m assuming we did not have the correct encryption and/or the correct password, because I could not get it to work.

I spent some time looking at the pictures a student was taking of the trip (about 1000 at that point), which was fun. Seeing the pictures other people took of the trip is a good thing.

The exciting entertainment of the evening for most people was going to a local department store called Meiers or something like that. I say most went, because Craig, nine students, and I stayed behind to practice our murder mystery, Murder at Dunmore Lodge. We were going to “perform” it on Thursday, so we had to practice. I was coordinating the onstage action (as well as getting to be the guy who figures things out), and Craig was going to coordinate the crowd. Anyway, we had to run through it, especially where one or two had not even had a chance to read the script. The run-through was much fun, and went okay. We were not going to win any awards for production value (especially where we needed to have our scripts on stage with us), but it looked like it would work for entertainment.

The rest of the group got back from the store, with Nate and a student sporting new hats. They also brought us a dart gun as a prop for the mystery, but they had not been able to find handcuffs that we had wanted. Craig said we might find them on the job site.

Thursday: Craig was right – we actually DID find a pair of toy handcuffs on the job site on Thursday during the day. That was bizarre. Back at Habitat HQ, I played a (losing) game of Fluxx, and then a (winning) game of Blokus. After supper and lunch crew, we had the big murder mystery. I don’t have any pictures since I was actually in the play. It was fun. The audience seemed into it. Craig divided the room into groups of four or five, and we took time between each scene to let the teams discuss what they thought was going on. The teams were pretty sharp. They picked up on things I thought they would never catch. No one completely guessed what was going on, but everyone picked up on some of the things, and one or two teams were very very close. The students I was with on stage did a great job. We had a few actors in the group, but mostly we were just game souls. I was particularly impressed with the chambermaid yelling at me about “he had a KNIFE IN HIS CHEST!” and the supermodel screaming off stage (that made several people in the audience jump).

Friday: Friday was the seventh-annual Diakonos talent contest. We had something like eleven acts in it this year. These included:

The five-minute Music Man performed by the cast of the Music Man.

A short round sung about not putting garbage in my back yard.

A demonstration of Judo, with the help of a very game volunteer.

A new twist on fusion dance, where one student was the upper half of the dancer, and one student was the lower half. This resulted in the occational kicking of the upper dancer in the face.

   
A joke told about a lawn mower, with a willing volunteer.

A student and I danced part of a ceili (Irish socal) dance. Sorry, no pictures – I was dancing.

A funny folk song about “Railroad Bill” and the power a songwriter has over a subject.

A student-led small teaching session on belly dancing. Many kudos to the four students who were learning it as they went!

The dance group “Two Daisies in an Autumn Mist” performed their interpretive dance to MC Hammer’s “Can’t Touch This.”

We had two students do a duet rap of “Fresh Prince of Bel Aire.”

We finished the night with Nate doing his second annual reading of a carefully edited romance novel. Nate would read the novel, and two students would act out the drama. Another student was on stage to play all the props. My favorite prop moment was when Nate read something like “She woke up and the basket was gone”; the prop ran out of the room because he was, well, gone. Brilliant. Nice way to end the evening. I have not laughed that hard in a long time.