NCS EXPERIENCE- Week 2

Let's get week 2 on a roll!

The second week is mainly centered around learning new skills which will be useful for the fourth week of the programme (The Social Action Plan).

We were located at a local university, living the notorious life of uni students-well, only for a week. In comparison to the first week, it was much more chilled and relaxed. The days weren't as jammed packed, there were more time to spend with our groups and I definitely gave a sigh of relief when I saw our en-suite bedrooms.

Cooking is not my forte 
All meals were cooked by our group. We split our team into 3s and each mini group is responsible for a particular day, their duty is to cook 3 meals for 14 people. Admittedly, some meals were better than others. When the day came for my group to cook-well, should I say 'attempt' to cook, it was less than successful. With such a simple menu, you wouldn't believe the struggles we faced.

Menu: 

Breakfast: Pancakes with a variety of toppings

Lunch: Burgers or Chicken Nuggets with a side of fresh salad and chips

Dinner: Pizzas with chips and vegetables 

Breakfast- Imagine our shock when we realised that we forgot to put eggs on our shopping list; we were determined to make pancakes so we got into some eggy business. Sneakily, we creeped into another team's kitchen and slyly opened their fridge, I swear I could hear angels sing because in this ordinary fridge was 5 full boxes of eggs. After some quick calculations, we concluded that they had 60 eggs for 14 people, that's more than enough eggs when there is only 2 meals left for the week. We decided to 'borrow' some eggs and put them to delicious use. Truthfully, I still don't know whether they had realised that some of their eggs had gone walkies but thanks!

Lunch- Time dictates our lives. Maybe we were a bit optimistic or maybe we are just slow or maybe we're just bad at time management because a cooked lunch was laughable. In the short time span we had, we were expected to cook for 14 people as well as eat. Nope.

Dinner- We ordered 5 pizzas but only 4 came. Is my group destined for failure? Even after devouring the meal there were still 14 hungry people lounging in the kitchen.

A group who deserves a notable mention in this section is the group who cooked Chicken Tikka Masala it was truly fantastic. Thanks guys!

Movie Binge
There's nothing better than curling up on your comfortable sofa with a batch of freshly made popcorn and have an endless movie marathons. Since we had so much free time we watched some movies from different genres. We watched horrors like 'The Conjuring' & 'Anabelle' then we switched to more light-hearted comedies like 'Ride Along' & 'Inbetweeners 2'.

Annoyingly, there was a lack of seats in our common area therefore somebody always had to sit on the floor and after a couple of hours by no means is it comfy. I swear some of the people in my group are walking furnaces, they just radiate heat and it got so hot. Despite these minor problems, our movie nights were enjoyable and fun.

'Fun' Lessons
In a day there were around 3 lessons- first lesson starts at 11am then the second starts after lunch and after that, there's a little break before the third lesson. I was absolutely dreading these lessons. I feared that we were going to be sat in a classroom and just listen to the teacher ramble on and on about their life. Thankfully, there was only 1 session like the one I described above, it was mostly interactive and physical which made the lessons much more engaging and fun.

What Team Am I On? 
One evening the leaders decided that all the groups at the uni should go to the local park. It's amazing what you can do with one football and just a piece of land. Initially, we had a playful kick-about within our team, then our competitiveness came in. We split into 2 teams, Rock-Paper-Scissors and let the games begin!

The words  'Can I play?' was hesitantly asked by a guy from another NCS group and we quite happily welcomed him into our match. As the game progressed, more and more people flocked to the rapidly growing game that eventually we just gave up dividing the teams. Occasionally one would ask 'what team am I on?' but I gave them the most basic reply-'choose a side and shoot'  Who knew 3 words would lead to this jam-packed football match?

This week hasn't been as adrenaline filled as the first but none the less it was still as great. The days laced themselves together like it was one big movie about some kids just trying to have fun. That's what we are, kids- who want to have a great summer.