i'm so behind. in everything. like school. I thought that after IB exams, I could chill until after grad. But then I just realized that the next two weeks after grad are hell on earth. Everyone has at least one exam or essay everyday. SICK. And the exams are practice diplomas. Fortunately, Bio and Math are replacement exams, so if I bomb those, then I don't have to use those marks. But still, I hate not getting good marks...OSA indoctrination.


Anyways, I was lazy and didn't bother getting up early on Sunday morning to blog about my YC weekend, so I will do that now. Fasten your seat belts. It's going to be a looooong one. So Saturday was a really tiring day. YC is amazing and fun and all, but I'm getting old, and I don't have the same energy that I did as a hyper 13 yr old. And after 4 consecutive years of going to YC, you kind of get used to it, so it's a little harder to stay excited about it. It's that been there, done that kind of feeling. Sad, but true.


This is the dance crew EPO, they did a short routine before we started the main session. They weren't very good this year (usually they're amazing), but I cheered my loudest for them anyways. NO ONE was cheering them on- the crowd was SO DEAD. I know they're not as good as the likes of Quest crew and Beat Freaks, but I understand what it's like to perform onstage in front of a huge crowd. And with live performances, the performers rely on the cheers and the applause from the audience to boost their performance. I feel like it's just courtesy to show support- if you want to watch the performance, you have to also do your part as a member of the audience. But anyways, enough scolding.


Anyways, we had worship with Bluetree- a worship band from Northern Ireland. Their accents are SO COOL. HAHA. Anyways, I had never heard of them before, except for their song "God Of This City", but they are a really great worship team. I hope my worship team can become as cool as them one day. My favorite guy in the band is their DJ (YES A DJ- EPIC TO THE MAX), and he's so pro with all the technology. But their arrangements of other people's worship songs are so good. Very different and original. Like they revamped "Shine Jesus Shine" and it didn't sound 90s at all. Amazing. And we learned an old school Sunday School song and did actions. So much fun.


I really enjoyed worship this year at YC. One thing I've noticed is that ever since last year at YC, I haven't been afraid to lift my arms or hands in worship, I don't care if I'm singing in tune or not, I don't care what the people around me are doing. Which I guess is just a sign of how far I've come in my spiritual journey. I'm no longer self conscious, but am really focusing my attention on God.


So our speaker that morning was Judah Smith, and he was really great. He's a really young pastor, but he definitely has a gift for speaking. I hope he comes back next year. His message was themed "Embrace Grace" and it was all about how we need to accept God's grace. Some people think that if they're not worthy of God's grace, they can't accept it. But the truth is, we're not worthy anyways. None of us are perfect. But that's the beauty of GRACE- it's UNDESERVED, and it's a GIFT. It doesn't mean abuse it or take advantage of it, but we humble ourselves and we surrender to it.


Anyways, after the main session, Kris, Steph, Aaron and I went to watch Panic Squad (a comedy trio). It took a while, but I warmed up to their performance and found myself laughing really hard by the end. After that we went merching and Kris and Steph left to go back to their hotel (I didn't stay in the hotel...costs too much money), leaving me all by my lonesome. But God is funny sometimes, he made sure I had a really great time by myself. I went to Matt Maher's concert- which turned into a worship session, which I really liked. After the concert I met him and got his autograph. He was really nice, kind of quiet, but he asked me for my name so he could personalize the autograph- that was thoughtful. When I asked KJ-52 and Lincoln Brewster for their autographs a few years back, they just scribbled their name than walked away.



After I went to EPO's real performance. Like before, not much support. So I was just really loud to make up for everyone else. OMGSH. K, so I watched the first season of SYTYCD Canada and I saw this popper/locker dancer girl during the audition episode. Her name is Katie Lee and I LOVED the way she dances. Anyways, guess what? SHE'S PART OF THE EPO CREW. She must have just joined recently, cuz I don't remember her from the EPO crews from the past few years. But I just was watching EPO, and all of a sudden, she gets a solo, and her dance style is so unique and original that I literally went like *SHOCK* "IT'S KATIE LEE FROM SYTYCD!!!". She is my dance hero. She didn't make top 20 of SYTYCD, which REALLY BUGGED ME, but they didn't even show her getting cut from top 20 or anything. But I saw her. And stood like 2 feet away from her during the dance battle (will talk about that later).


AAAH KATIE LEE!!!


her youtube channel is sox1227...if you want to stalk her like I already have.


Went back to Rexall for another main session. Started with a concert with Red. Those guys kind of scare me...with the darkened eyes and the intense full-upper-body headbanging. At least the kids enjoyed it. Everyone was headbanging (minus me...because I was scared to get whiplash, or hit my head on the person in front of me)...LOL this row of guys organized it so every other guy would headbang on one beat, then the others on the next beat...it was amusing. Oh boys.



Bluetree came out and did worship again. Reggie Dabbs gave his second message of the weekend. LOVE THIS GUY. No words can express YC's love for Reggie. Plus he helped my friend find Jesus in three days. I had been trying to do that for 7 years. I am forever thankful for him.


Aaron and me before the TFK concert



Thousand Foot Krutch closed the night with an awesome concert. They played ones I was actually familiar with- and I haven't listened to any of their stuff since The Art of Breaking album. Yes I know I fail. But they played Rawkfist and This Is A Call (my alltime fav song of theirs) so I went home happy. You know what's freaking awesome? 17000 people waving their cellphones in a dark arena to This Is A Call. I will post a vid on youtube sometime.



Sidney and John showing off their LED mouthpieces (I know- INTENSE). Too bad we can't see the flashing lights. I saw Sidney for the first time in like a year...his voice changed, and I felt the familiar pangs of a jie jie watching her little brothers growing up. Like Matthew and Darren. They are both half a head taller than me now. And they have post-pubescent voices. Which scares me, because the last time I saw them, their voices were like 10 pitches higher than mine.



K, we're halfway done guys. Just one more day to cover. Sunday. The best day of the week. We opened with EPO again. Then we had worship with Matt Maher- YAY. I had never heard of him, but I'm a huge fan now. Lol, I changed my blog music playlist to include all the bands I listened to at YC. Reggie gave his third message.



We kind of chilled that afternoon. I was really exhausted. So we went to EPO (I went to all their performances...cuz I'm THAT cool) again. Camwhored. Watched two dance battles- one before EPO and one after, when EPO actually came out and dance battled some YCers!!! EPIC.


so we tried to make a heart. It ended up looking like a butt. fail.


we sort of fixed the heart. at least it doesn't look like a bum bum.



EPO


dance battle!!!

i was THAT CLOSE to katie. I'm such a creeper




so after that, I went home- I know, LAME. I skipped the last main session with Bluetree and Reggie and TOBYMAC. At least I've seen tobyMac twice before. But still. His concerts are always fun. Instead I met up with Naushin and Susanna to practice our grad song. So we were told to come to Paul's house at 6 to practice. So Susanna drove us and we were about 20 mins late. And we hadn't practiced together. So we practiced in the car. And got lost because we don't know how to use GPS.


Anyways, so we get to Paul's house and we want to go through the song a couple times before we go in. So we call Cieran to tell the guys not to worry, that we're here, but we're not coming in yet blah blah blah. You know what Cieran said? "Oh no worries, we're watching a movie." FACE PALM.


Yeah. I can't say we were surprised. I mean, they are guys. So we went in and wasted an hour watching Casino Royale with them. Oh yeah, and we didn't get to et cuz we went to Paul's room to practice (we don't like wasting time) and by the time we went down, the guys had devoured all the chicken wings and 3/4 of the pizza. We didn't start practicing as a group until like 8:30. We went through Cieran's song and didn't write anything down, so we kept forgetting what we were supposed to do. So that took forever. Then we took a brownie/watermelon break. I had one brownie and half a slice of watermelon. I think Naushin and Susanna managed to grab a slice or two of watermelon before the guys devoured that too.


So we worked on our song, but David was a bum and decided he didn't want to play during our song because he said he felt like he was playing too much. Then he turned around and started playing Halo 3 on Paul's Xbox. yup. he was playing too much. Anyways, practice didn't end till like 10:30, but we did manage to go through everything. We just need to make sure we don't speed up, and that we remember everything, and we should be good for Friday. I hope.