YSA Conference Day Day 3 morning: Dressing Down and Dressing up

I was awake a long time before my alarm went off. Only having one pillow was really starting to get uncomfortable and it wasn’t helping my shoulder pain in the slightest. But on the plus side whilst laying that (As it was too early for Breakfast) I was able to reflect on my own time at university and feel immensely grateful that my rooms in my Uni’s halls of residence were much nicer and bigger. The room I was in was okay for three days but I think I would probably go mental if I had to live in them for a whole year.

I wondered across to breakfast in some ‘smart clothes’ i.e a polo shirt, trousers and shoes rather then Jeans and t-shirt as it was Sunday morning after all. I wondered if I show wear my suit but decided against it as I would be wearing it for the rest of the day plus wearing it whilst trying to eat a cooked breakfast with ketchup and beans would have been asking for trouble of the highest order.

Of course when I arrived in the Dining Hall I felt a little underdressed as lots of guys were already in there wearing suits and ties. Fortunately a group came in just behind me which included several girls wearing sweat shirts over their pyjamas and you can’t get more underdressed then that.

Oh right well you can but lets not go there shall we.

After Breakfast I had yet more free time as there was no Priesthood session this year, so the conference session didn’t start until 10am. When I wondered across to the centre for the session I took great pains to keep an eye out for our Stake President so I could try to avoid him before the session as I didn’t want to get caught out like CP did last year.

It was a interesting conference session as rather then two or three ‘long talks’ there were several ‘short talks’ instead. I also noticed that without Elder Johnson there, the Manchester Stake President was presiding.

Halfway through the session the hall started to reverberate with the very loud sound of rain hitting the halls roof. It had been turning cloudy earlier but it now looked like the weather had definitely taken a turn for the worse!

After the session finished it was time for Lunch. Most of the guys in the hall mindful of the problems with queuing the previous day legged it outside as fast as possible. It was almost a case of, *Blink* and every priesthood holder in the room vanished.

Now you have to admit that would be one heck of a magic trick.

It seemed the organisers had learned from the previous days lunch and spilt the boxes into several ‘smaller tables’ which meant everyone wasn’t having to queue in the same place, which meant things went a lot more smoothly. I looked outside to see that the rain had stopped as soon as it had started and blue skies were once more overhead. The Grass was too wet to sit on but you could lean against the wall and have your lunch that way.

It was at this point I met another next acquaintance. R who was attending his last conference as it was ‘retiring’ from the YSA ( he’s 31). We had quite a pleasant Lunch chatting and when he noticed I was from Loughborough asked after Sian . I found this quite amusing as I don’t know what it is about Loughborough but lots of people seem to know the other YSA (or former YSA) from the ward. So I seemed to be rapidly turning into the “ Do you know guy” which was a least a better thing to be known as opposed to say “ Geeky looser in the corner by himself” I’m sure you’ll agree.

With Lunch finished it was time for the Afternoons activities.