Well, where do I start. I went to Parachute and had an awesome time. Let’s start with the weather. All sun and very hot, perfect for lazing around during the day. I took my digital camera, but was too busy having fun to take any photos of the goings on… I did take a few photos, a couple of which you will see. I think I’m going to have to go with telling chronologically so I don’t miss stuff out, so hopefully it won’t be too boring.
Friday morning I left home at 7:30 with Dad (he had work), Tony and David. Around 9am we went round to my old school because Tony had to check some problems with his subjects (which turned out to be a printing error). The receptionist remembered my name which was cool. The subject checking was at the careers centre, so I thought I would check out the UOC display. The thing that stood out most was the amount of info on Speech and Language Therapy, considering it is an all boys school and there are very few guys (if any in some years) who actually do it, and the ones that do generally drop out.
Then I got dropped off at Parachute and waited for the gates to open and then the long walk down the hill. While we were waiting for the gates I recognised a few people from Christchurch – Breo and Jess and a couple of others, who I had never really met before. I ended up setting my tent up in a circle with theirs.
I caught up with Eoin and we decided to sleep in the same tent so he didn’t have to set his up. Then we went and by a very circuitous route met up with Megan – She couldn’t be bothered meeting us at our tent and then we went to the H2Go mist tent in the village and stood in the mist for a while and then went and sat down somewhere else just before she got there and finally found her at her tent.
After that Merodie finally started replying to her txts and we ended up shifting my tent all the way throught the village to where they were camped (one person on each corner and someone else carrying the chilly bin.)
I forgot to mention before that on the way to parachute I bought some jandals at the Warehouse. I put them on after I set up my tent, walked to the village to get ice and back and the strap on the left one broke, so I was walking gammy for the rest of the weekend.
Friday night I saw Mumsdollar, Wash, Detour 180 and Grits (basically just hanging out at the mainstage). Then hung out in the cafe for ages eating mini donuts, and eventually went to bed. Just before 6:30 I was rudely awoken by banging and crashing and reversing beepers. Check out this picture I eventually got up and took out the door of my tent:
This went on for about an hour, which was followed by discussions at breakfast about how we were going to get up and tell them to go away if it happened again the following morning – The truck ended up coming at 8 the next morning, so we thought they had been informed to come later, but the following morning it was there at 6 :{
Saturday morning we went to the morning meeting where the president of World Vision in the US was talking about “The 7 Steps to Poverty”, which was trying to help us imagine what it is like to be truly poor, by taking things away step by step (To give you an idea, the first was all your clothes but the ones you were wearing) Others (in no particular order) were water, food, electricity, healthcare, house and the final and most important one was hope. Then we went and met Jo and Helen at the gate – great to see them again, and helped set up a tent for them and then went to a seminar about HIV/AIDS in Africa by the same guy who did the morning talk, except he was followed by an African lady with AIDS telling her story.
Then we had lunch and went to some Ceroc dancing lessons, followed by about 9 of us going to my family’s place for a swim, which was fantastic. Unfortunately Jamie left his cellphone and wallet on the roof of his car when we left and lost his cellphone. (He heard the wallet fall off about 1km down the road). Then Spaghetti Bolognaise for tea (I took a few random photos of my fellow campers at this point – not very good ones, but here are a couple)
Then back to the mainstage for The Lads (I think we made it in time for them – I’m referring to my program),Rapture Ruckus, Day of Fire, Audio Adrenaline and Brooke Fraser, followed by the cafe again for more donuts and then sleep.
Well, it appears to be bedtime, so tune in again tomorrow for the rest of my parachute roundup. I enjoyed Grits the most on Friday and Saturday would be a toss-up between Rapture Ruckus and Brooke Fraser, with a few good songs by Audio Adrenaline. Brooke Fraser is really funny on stage with some really random comments between songs. (While saying something deep about worrying about death) “Don’t worry, you won’t die just yet, unless you drink and drive, which is stupid”. Probably the main down for Audio Adrenaline was that they have been playing/touring for 15 years and the lead singers voice is pretty much shot.