Snow day at CSW61

We are five days into this year's CSW experience and I am woefully behind on blogging. It turns out that coordinating a group of 11 teens and young adults and their chaperones at this event can really take it out of you...well me. Perhaps that is why, despite my ongoing distaste for wintry weather, I was actually relieved that we found ourselves expecting a storm on Monday night and Tuesday leading the UN to close and all parallel events to be cancelled for the day. Instead of another early 8:00am start with worship, I got to sleep in and stay in my pyjamas for most of the day. It was wonderful.

But yesterday wasn't a total break for our group as we decided to reschedule the dinner we had planned with the other big group of teens from the Episcopal Church which had been cancelled on Monday. So it fell to me to find a reasonably priced, local restaurant that would accommodate a reservation for 22 people made the same day. After a lot of googling, I found a place that would work for everyone and booked a table at Pershing Square for 6:30pm.

When the groups arrived, we put the teens and younger adults at one table and everyone else at the other in the hopes that this would get people interacting outside their group more quickly. I was also pleased that we were joined by one of my former youth from when I was in Ottawa who is attending CSW with a club he is part of at McGill. It turned out to be a lively dinner with lots of people getting to know one another and just chatting. I was pleased to take some time to talk to the Rev. Carey Chirico who has led the group from Virginia for the past 5 years about the curriculum she has developed to prepare the youth for CSW. I am hoping to get my hands on the program and find a way to run it next year for those in the Diocese of New Westminster.

The day overall seemed to be enjoyable to others in the group who took advantage of the break to visit museums, do laundry and catch up on sleep. This makes the think that maybe snow isn't always terrible...(maybe).