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We always knew it would be a challenge forming a Shnat year group for my year: no Israel tour group materialised, just 9 came on Shorashim and there was basically very little interest shown in taking a year out in the Promised Land on the whole. Even with the extremely sizeable collection of current Shnatties expressing their overwhelming exhilaration regarding the gap year, it still seemed like we weren‚t going to have a Shnat group at all, let alone a small one. But with all things considered, the movement workers still managed to encourage (not force) fifteen chanichim to the Weekend of Dreams (or Shnat weekend, as we unexciting people like to call it).
We were joined by four Habo dutchies, whom some of us had already met on Europe Tour, who, despite (and quite understandably) being somewhat intimidated by the introduction game of Donkey (please everyone, enforce the new 'socialist' rule of Donkey - it's just so embarrassing for us shy people otherwise!!) settled brilliantly into the group.
We were pleasantly reminded that we were, once again, CHANICHIM, and this went down probably better than expected, as we took full advantage of this sorely missed title by showing the world just how Chanichim-like we could be. It was as though Dugma Ishit had never been ever so socialistically drilled into our brains. We had almost - but not quite - forgotten just how fun it is to be a chanich/a after, oh, a whole year of madrichim-ness! Oh, the immaturity...
And so, (come on guys just listen for a second, yeah?) we were extremely surprised when we realised that the peulot in which we were participating did not feature the expected indoctrinating element of "Shnat's amazing guys, if you don't go you‚ll be sorry for the rest of your life/have no friends left/be thrown out of the movement" (delete as applicable). No, we were told the hard (grrr) facts - it was going to be tough, but it was definitely worth it and it was also amazing-blazing(squad) fun. We were also introduced to the tochnit, and reassured of the improvements made on the apparently slightly faulty one of this year.
Oh, I nearly forgot, there was one small fragment of INDOCTRINATION as we were played the 'alleged' Shnattie version of "Have you ever seen a zombie come to tea", which went along the? err? imaginative lines of "Have you ever seen a Shnattie come to tea, just look at me, a Shnattie I will be?" I mean? come on!!
Anyway, getting back to business, so far we have a concrete group of about seven, but it‚s getting bigger - and it feels great, after our year's wilderness period. Overall, we're aiming for about fifteen, and I have faith that we'll make it. The weekend was valuable in that it gave a chance for our year to re-form, because we were seriously in danger of disintegrating (for want of a better word) out of the movement altogether.
And so, on Sunday morning, we contemplatively and pensively (yes, I just used a thesaurus) departed from Scammonden in cars, because we‚re nearly Shnatties, and all grown up now, don't you know?
But not before us crazy cats played one hell of a zany prank on the madrichim by driving away before the sikkum? and then umm? driving back again? because it wasn't even worth a small laugh apparently?
Thanks to Hannah, Waggy, Dan, Morav (stop the gossip!) and Rik for a tremendous weekend,
Gabs xxx
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