Seachain an duine a bhíonn ina thost

I'm just back from looking after 25 teenagers for the weekend at a Quaker youth event in Northern Ireland and I am so tired.

I was the only organiser on the train on the way to Newry and I really wondered what I had let myself in for: they were all shouting and flirting and texting and all sorts of teenage things like that (I kept my head down and pretended not to be with them to avoid suffering the wrath of our fellow passengers).

But the weekend was actually pretty fun once they got over the initial excitement of reuniting with friends (and former flames in some cases -- the hormones were raging). It was lovely to see 14-year-olds slip between 14-year-old worrying about clothes and boys and stuff to talking about religion, politics and values. I did feel very old at times though: I had met some of the teenagers before, when they were 4 or 7 or something really small like that, and it was a bit shocking to see them all grown up with their very own personalities.

I've committed to being an organiser for the next two years, so that's how I'll be spending my next two Easters. As I headed to Ireland last weekend that felt like a big commitment, but I had such a nice time (despite being kept up til 4:30 on Sunday) I'm really quite happy to do it.

I think my focus for next year will be on getting more young people to attend: I didn't get around to going to JYM myself until I was 17, and perhaps I should have gone earlier. So I'm going to work hard to remove all the things that stop young Quakers attending JYM, whether it's announcing the dates too late, not publicising it enough, having it in inaccessible locations or simply not making it sound interesting or fun. Well, I have to find something in my life to fill the void now I don't have Serendipity anymore.