Sunburn and Sea Battles

Saturday afternoon was spent at Ben-Hur’s after an extra forty minutes on the rode for OLeif, Collette, Curly, Susie, and Rose, in OLeif’s attempt to find Highway Double D a round-a-bout way. After hitting N, Z, and D, they finally found DD.

Upon arrival, Joe (who had spend the night) and Ben-Hur were already in the pool, and the two dogs were running about. An hour later Augustus, Pablo, Goofy Nickels, and Julia Poach arrived after having been dropped off.

And so they all created inventive ways to jump through the blow-up donuts and to run and fly onto the rafts and surf. Curly made himself a giant target by stuffing donuts inside themselves with a beach ball in the middle for the bulls eye. There was a brief contest for who could jump from one inflatable to the next, like stepping stones, until they wiped out. And some fantastic spills were witnessed, as a result. Collette imagined that the show they put on must have somewhat rivaled Sea World.

And the next hours were spent in pool wars (particularly “the pool” versus Goofy), eating hot dogs, and banging around on Ben-Hur’s drums, guitars, etc. in the once-garage.

Later, they all splashed back out into the tub once again to make a giant whirlpool.

“Oh! It’s cold!” Augustus squealed, as they began to circle the interior.

Various shouts broke the air as the water battles continued while they were swept along with their own motion:

“My belly button fell off!”

“You’re asking for it now, Mr. Chicken!”

“Come on, ya wussies!”

“This raft is now Joe Snicketts-proof!”

All these from Goofy.

Meanwhile, Ben-Hur had claimed the giant donut and would offer rides and protection to any drifting soul who was specifically being attacked from the noodles of other pool attendees.

“Don’t you dare attack my client!” Ben-Hur shouted at the others, whacking them with a noodle, while Goofy caught his breath sitting on the other side of the donut. “He’s paid good money for this position.”

“Goofy, you’re so stupid! Just give up,” Julia scolded him, knocking him in the head with some blow-up thing. “Oh, are you OK? You’re so dumb, Goofy.”

Meanwhile, back in Hungary, it had been the first day of Vacation Bible School. Oddly enough, when Collette had been told what she and the rest of her team were going to be doing for it, she didn’t really ever look poorly on the idea. She had never in her life considered it a grand idea to dress up as a clown and put on a mime. Perhaps it didn’t bother her because she was in another country, and she was only really performing in front of little children, and besides all that, if it taught them about Jesus, how could she have a problem doing it?

And so the hour came later in the afternoon for everything to begin. It took nearly an hour their first time to prepare. For their team, there were just enough team members to comprise the Wordless Book, by color.

Red-Bud Cherithite represented the gold page of Heaven or “God” (despite the fact that she was of the female persuasion), Yulia Puffins as the red page or “Christ” (they obviously didn’t have enough male clowns), Junior Cobble as the maniacal black page or “The Devil Himself”, Ivan Dinev as the white or clean page, Sherrie Barnacles as the green or growing page, and Diana and Collette as Adam and Eve, respectively.

After they had completely greased their faces with clown paint, they fastened on their curly clown wigs. It took Diana a trifle longer to get everything adjusted as she was upset that one of her painted eyebrows had gone on crooked. But they were prepared long before their first skit was acted (they were to put on four a day), and they had worked with their Hungarian narrator to time each part as it should be done. Listening for Hungarian cue words while trying to even manage a simple skit was rather complicated. But somehow it worked, and the children’s faces lit up. They laughed but they listened carefully, every group, from the youngest to the oldest.

Afterward they cleaned up for the first day’s closing ceremonies and Diana went off to purposely snub Andrew Rooseboom, who was beginning to annoy her, by talking to an older Canadian boy whose parents were missionaries in Budapest.

But Diana soon wearied from her escapade and any other for the time being, for the full exhaustion of jet-lag had finally hit her, and so Collette and Bethany escorted her back to the hotel by way of short cut. Diana didn’t say a word on the way back, and fell asleep almost immediately. Later that night after the clowns had rehearsed their skit for the next day, Diana was still asleep. And to Collette’s dismay, she discovered that by the next morning, she and Diana would have to move to another room, on a different story, for some renovation reason. So by the dead of night, with the Germans still carousing in the halls, Collette packed all their bags and every stray item she could find, until the room was clean, from what she could tell in the dark. Then she too, crashed.

And that was Monday in Hungary.