The Jitty Residential 2006, Aberglaslyn

The residential...jeez, where to start?

Well, it was the first of its kind. In more ways than one, being as it was organised entirely over the forum, and Hunter was holding the reins.

Friday

Hunter had set himself the crazy task of shipping himself, along with thirty site editors and four other youth workers off to Aberglaslyn Hall in Wales for a weekend to work on team building and forging stronger working relationships within the various groups. This involved a stupidly early exit from County Hall on the friday morning to get us there. That was a coach journey and a half in itself, especially as we pulled over the Welsh border, and got further into the countryside. It seemed then all we could see for miles on end were sheep, grass and mountains.

Despite the thoughts of some people, we got there unharmed and bundled into our rooms. And you know something, myself and KrazyKate made ourselves right at home. By that, I do of course mean that the first things we unpacked were our laptops. And had cabling strewn across the room to connect everything together. I pity the people we had to share with... ;)

That all done and dusted, time to take part in the first teambuilding activity. For us, that was a rope assault course. I've never seen so much mud in all my life. Mentioning no names (you know who you are), someone fell into the mud when it wasn't even their turn on the course, some people caused themself pain by taking a rope the wrong way and someone got onto aforementioned rope, having forgotten to pack their sense of balance, and kept swinging round and falling off. Alright, I admit, the last one was me.

That was our practise run. The real work then came into play. We split into two teams, and had to get a bucket full of water round the course without spilling any. Our group did fine, until we got to the eight foot climbing thing. It was there I was treated to a *very* cold shower as the contents of the bucket, and the bucket itself fell on my head. I'm surprised certain individuals didn't burst any veins with the amount they were laughing at me. Humph.

Time to go back into the warmth and change.

Dinnertime was probably one of the most entertaining times over the weekend. On our table, Pudi and The-Legend hit it off almost immediately, Maximus looked like he wished he'd chosen somewhere else to sit, Zombie took the whole thing amazingly in his stride, considering he'd met and started talking to everyone less than eight hours previously, Mojoses wasn't given a word in edgeways by the others and me...well, I'll leave that for you to work out.

And after cleaning up, we were set free for a while (with icebreakers in the middle of all this). The <latd> group immediately took over one corner of the room, there was a television set up in another part playing dvds, people disappeared to play table tennis, people disappeared to find quiet time in their rooms and one group went out on a nightwalk and came back with some tales to tell.

You'd think that after such an early start, people would be glad to get to bed. Not the case at all. People were still sneaking around after lights out, and one group unwittingly went into a room that they weren't supposed to, which turned out to be the room right next door to the staff room that housed James and Tom. Busted!

Saturday

I'm sure I wasn't the only one to have struggled to get out of my warm bed in the morning.

Breakfast followed pretty much the same pattern as the previous dinner. Still sleepy people were given half an hour or so to wake up and take in some fresh air, and our day started again at nine. This time, it was some actual work. After introducing some people to the different areas of the site, we split up into our respective groups.

As Spotlight's chief monkey, I had to oversee the general awesomeness (Sorry Ben, I've stolen your word) that is embodied in my editors. Tom was on hand to make sure our talent didn't get out of hand and overwhelm the other groups, which, is only fair. Honestly, having everyone together in a group and being able to just work was a big boost, ideas were thrown around that might not have occured to people before.

After an hour or so, everyone regrouped to see what had been discussed in the different groups. It was immediately obvious that each section had pulled together as a team and come up with some brilliant ideas to further their area and reap all the potential possible.

Hunter seemed to think that was enough work for the morning, and let us free for lunch and to relax before undertaking the second activity planned for the weekend - rock climbing!

I opted out of this and was all too happy to stand around snapping shots of the surrounding scenery, try and see how the other group were doing on the rope course and get some shots of the climbers in action.

After several hours of watching people climb up rocks, and abseil down them, we trekked off back to Abeglaslyn Hall to have a rest before dinner. As we got back to the equipment shed to drop off boots, helmets, harnesses and the like, who should we find but the other group.

They'd finished the rope course a long time before us and had then gone gorge walking whilst waiting for our group to finish. We had a good few laughs at them all heavily soaked and wrapped in towels, as we, nice and dry, dropped everything off and went inside. Not that we were being remotely vindictive or anything. But then again, we hadn't spent part of our afternoon sliding over rocks and into deep, cold pools of water. Plus, in that weather, would we want to?

Dinnertime...oh god, I'm starting to dread that time of day...why did I sit on that table?!

And then...games.

First up, a game where, if you agreed with a statement, you moved one place to the right, sitting on the person next to you if they hadn't moved. Now, let me start off with this statement; the people about to be mentioned are all either moderators or admin on the forum...you draw your own conclusions about their mentalities from reading on.

It started off simple enough, a few people ended up on someones knee, but it all started to kick off around the time everyone reached myself and J. For the next half circuit (and possibly more) of the room, the order of people sitting was J, with me, Katy, Mojoses, Phill and at one point Ste sitting in the one chair. And that never changed until Hunter split everyone up on the other side of the room.

So what could you hear from those people?

J: "Hang on, hang on...let me get my breath..okay...Sit......URK!"
Me: "I'm too small for this...I can't feel my leeeeeegs..."
Katy: "Heheheheheheh..."
Mojoses:"Alright there Nade?" (My response is best left unsaid)
Phill and Ste just grinned, I think...they were too far forwards for me to be able to see them.

We had people fleeing their seats in fear from us.

After making nearly a full circuit of the room, Hunter stopped the game, and handed over to Sam for "Limit 15".

I won't go into too much detail about the game, but it was fixed from the start, though the teams didn't know this. When the teams found out afterwards, my god, there was uproar. Which eventually lead into a discussion about manipulation, and human rights and so on, with Jonny acting as riot control ("Yes, so I think we should draw this conversation to a close").

The shackles were then slipped and people set free to do what they wanted.

I headed off to our dorm room, intent on settling down and watching Bill Bailey while it was quiet. Eleven o'clock came, and so did the end of the dvd, and there was quite an audience trooping out of our dorm back to their own after sitting there quietly. I hardly noticed they were there, apart from the fact that they munched through all the chocolates Hunter had left in our room. Damn them! lol.

Sunday

Ah, the last day. Also the last time we'd be forced out of bed at 7:30 by a bell. Boarding school was never like that! (Well, okay, I'd take early rises over a fire drill in the middle of the night).

Breakfast, followed by work on internet safety. In which several people were "named and shamed", including people who shouldn't have been. And then of course, you get the classic examples (Joe - "Depending on who's asking, that's classified information!").

Representatives of <latd> were on hand to test the youth workers on their 1337 skillz, much to the amusement of those who could understand it.

And then hometime. Bye bye Aberglaslyn, we're outta here!

Taking an entirely different route to the way we came. We saw more sheep, we seemed to be on a route that went round and round, and up and up...hey, no one told me we were going to be the first group ever to do Mount Snowdon in a coach!

Different people had different ways of coping with the journey home. Some watched films, some compiled lists of the welsh words they saw on the roads, some drew mascots (Boris!), some listened to music, and some slept.

There was, however, one song that springs to mind on a bus...

"The wheels on the bus go round and round...."

Yes, once again, all the people who are old enough to know better and act more mature, were at the back. Starting the singsong. We never learn.

Add that into the compendium of "99 green bottles" and "I know a song that'll get on your nerves", and you can see what we were like.

Sheets of paper for contact details were flying along the seats like wildfire.

The driver was probably never happier to pull into Leicester than he was on that day.

Overall? A brilliant weekend, muchas gracias to James, Tom, Sam, Donna and Vid for putting up with us, and thanks to everyone who went, I think we all got something worthwhile out of it, be it new friends, or just a chance to see the hills o' Wales. For those people that unfortunately couldn't make it...you missed out, guys.

But there's always next time..

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