30 Hour Famine

This past weekend, I participated in my youth group's annual thirty hour famine to raise awareness of the poverty in third-world countries. This was my third year in the famine, but our youth group joined up with another. My friend Arianna was there with me (it was her fourth year) and so was my boyfriend Nathan (it was his first year).

The famine took place at a church in town that used to be a movie theater. There were a lot of students who participated in the famine, much more than last year's famine and the year before.

I have to provide a bit of background information before I move into the next part. There is a girl that Arianna and I have known since middle school. She has a mental illness and has a different mind process than most people. I'm not going to give her name out over the internet, but she's been called "crazy" and "creepy".

This girl was at the famine. I'm not particularly fond of her, so I just avoided her. However, she grew quite attached to my boyfriend. He and I didn't arrive at the famine together, so I was there before he showed up. When he showed up, she started to flirt with him and try to hold his hand. When I had a free moment (we were in the middle of a discussion about the famine, I believe), I walked up to him and greeted him with a kiss, just to subtly let this girl know that I was dating him.

He and Arianna told me that I was jealous.

There was a band that agreed to perform for us, and during the middle of the show, this girl starts to cry. She tells us that she had a friend who killed himself two years ago. My boyfriend just so happens to remind her of this friend. Once the band was done playing and we had about an hour of free time, she wanted to talk with Nathan. Another girl who was part of my youth group insisted that I was not in the same room. My friend Brittney knew that upstairs, there were windows that we could see them through because she knew that I was just concerned.

She and I go upstairs, and I see her cuddled up against him. She took his arm and put it around her and with her other hand she grabbed his hand. He had a confused look on her face but I could tell that he didn't want to upset her (she was somewhat emotionally unstable at the time). Brittney told me to notify her if I felt uncomfortable at all and she would run down there and tell them to stop it.

I was very uncomfortable at this point, but I didn't want to be seen as a jealous girlfriend, so I had to keep my mouth shut. The next thing I see is her taking out her phone and handing it to him. I presume that she's asking him for his number. I was incredibly uncomfortable with all of this and I asked Brittney if she could just get her to stop cuddling against him.

An adult walked into the room shortly after, but since I couldn't hear through the window, I didn't know what was going on. They leave and I go downstairs to meet up with Nathan. He was almost freaked out by this situation, but like always, he kept his composure.

Things settled down for a while. We divided up into "tribes". I was in the same tribe as that girl, but the adults were nice and switched out my tribe card with someone else's to make sure that I wasn't uncomfortable. I was in the same tribe as Arianna, so I was happy. We were called "Carrefour" and it was so much fun when we made our banners.

After we made banners, it was time to go to bed. They put on Finding Nemo and you could either watch it or go to bed.

Carrefour Banner

Things started to get psycho freaky. This girl became obsessed to the point where she was threatening to harm herself if she couldn't talk to him. She attempted to pierce her lip and her bridge with a thumb tack. I wanted to confront her at this point and tell her to back off, but I was smarter than that. After all, we were all going to be spending the night together. If she wasn't afraid to go after her own face with a sharp object, what was going to stop her from going after my face with a sharp object in the middle of the night?

However, she left around midnight or one o'clock. I guess she became frustrated that she couldn't talk to Nathan and wanted to go home to be alone or something. I don't know. What she does is none of my business.

The rest of the thirty hour famine was great, though, despite the occasional "I'm hungry! D:" Comparing the activities and games that we played to the ones at the thirty hour famines of the past, they weren't as good. There were three games altogether, I believe. The first one was a riddle. For the second one, we had to put dirt in a sock, dump the dirt into some water, get water into our sock, and then squeeze it into a container. Whoever collected the most water in 5 minutes was the winner. The last game was my favourite. We had a bunch of slips of paper and we had to figure out what they said. It was sort of like the game Mad Gab (right? I've never played it but someone said something like that).

We also did a lot of community service. We helped out at a senior center. There was a man there who was really good at playing pool.

We also helped out at a charity. I didn't care for it that much because they made us pull weeds. Arianna had a mild asthma attack and I was beginning to feel nauseous. (Read Blood Drive to understand the icky feeling I get occasionally.)

At six o'clock Saturday evening, we were allowed to eat. The team that had earned the most points was to get their food first. My team won, but I don't think that it was fair to make everyone else wait while people were starting to eat.

In all honesty, I liked the other thirty hour famines better, but that was also probably because I didn't have issues with a creepy girl at the other famines.

But I liked going home with Nathan (he came over to my house), eating fried rice, and passing out on the couch. (: