And so it ends.

So, I realized that I never really had a blog to end my summer. I guess I just got so caught up in leaving camp and coming home. First off, I will share how the summer ended. After a crazy week of counseling, the weekend work went well with the exception of my allergic reaction. Sunday arrived and I got my new cabin of 4 girl. And let me say these were the most well behaved girls EVER! God totally gave me a blessing that week after my horrifying week before. I loved getting to hang out with these girls. The last week of camp was a very small week, which I think was good for the last week of summer. Very relaxed and simple. Then summer came to a close. The last weekend was full of cleaning cleaning cleaning. Literally that is all that occurred Friday and Saturday. But it involved more hanging out as a staff as well which is always the best. While cleaning out Big Creek (the biggest place on camp...which took over 8 hours to deep clean) me and Faythe got to people watch out the big windows, which def led for some good times. Saturday closed with a final dinner outing as a staff, which was nice.

My parents and Marc arrived on Saturday which was so amazing to finally get to show them (well my dad saw at the beginning) camp and why I love it so much! It's only been a part of my life for the past 7 years or so. We then hit the road on Sunday, and finally got back to California on Monday night. And now I have been home for over a week, which is weird. But good.

If only one blog post could detail every best part of summer..but that is not even possible. My summer was amazing, and I am so blessed that I got the opportunity to experience it. I got to live in the AMAZING creation the Lord made, work with amazing people I will never forget, and just grow and mature on God's path.  I learned so much about myself and God this summer, way more than I expected. I just feel like I experienced so many things for me! I mean, I met the best people, I am so much more comfortable driving now which is very good for me, I have a bit more confidence and feel that I slowly am not asking as many questions......maybe. I also now enjoy country music a lot, will most likely watch the office on my own terms, and miss the great outdoors. I can tell you that the view of dead grass due to the ridiculous heat of CA is just not as enjoyable as the beautiful greens back in Idaho.

Like I said, one blog really can't sum up the summer, so I tried my best. :)

Allergic Reactions

What a week/weekend! I don’t even know how to find a way to simply sum up the week. Let’s start with the fact that this was my first week of ever being a camp “counselor”. I have technically been program staff all summer which is different than being a counselor. As a counselor, I had a cabin of 5 5^th/6^th grade girls. I was super excited about this and it sounded pretty simple. I love kids and only being responsible for 5 didn’t seem too hard. Boy was I in for a shock. Being in charge of these girls reminded me two things. 1) I don’t want daughters and 2) I don’t miss being in 5^th and 6^th grade. These girls were just so up and down and full of drama! They would whine and hate each other than love each other 5 minutes later. They also just did not want to do anything but sit and talk about or to the boys! Let’s start with the quick story of boys. The campers all arrived around 4 on Sunday.  Monday morning 2 of my girls started “dating” these 2 boys. By the afternoon 1 girl had already broken up with her boyfriend, and by the night they were back together. They then once again broke up Tuesday afternoon, which left the boy heartbroken and crying his eyes out. The other girl broke up with her “boyfriend” by Tuesday night as well because on Monday it had caused a friendship to end because of jealousy issues. This was one of many tear fests I had to control.

To make matters worse, Monday I was hanging out with my girls in the grass when all of a sudden my lip felt swollen. I figured I had bumped it and there was nothing to really worry about. I then realized that it had gotten bigger, and figured I should ice it to get the swelling down. After going through 2 bags of ice within an hour, I realized the swelling had not gone down at all, but my lip had actually gotten a lot bigger. I then showed somebody who had seen it earlier, and they were shocked at how much bigger it had gotten. On my way to getting another bag of ice, I ran into Clint who is an EMT and figured I should show him my lip. He took a look, figured I was having an allergic reaction to something, and decided I should take some Benadryl. I did that as well as got another bag of ice, in hopes I would be fine.  2 hours later, not only had the swelling gotten bigger, but it had spread to the other side of my lip and part of my eye. Things were not looking good. We decided to call an ER nurse who told me to just watch out to make sure it didn’t spread to my throat or tongue, and to hype up the benedril and find some day time allergy stuff for the next day. After consuming 3 Benadryl’s figured I would be completely knocked out for the night, got woken up because a sick camper from another cabin needed to sleep in our house because we had an extra bed. At 2 am, the swelling in my lip had gone down, but not gone, but the swelling in my eye had gone up. The next morning, lip finally was getting better, and the eye was about the same. Luckily, after some zurtec, by the afternoon I was back to normal. Things were looking good.

By Wednesday night, I had hit a wall. I got some new swelling in my eye that day, and my girls were just beyond corrupt. They had turned into to terrors and I had a mental breakdown. I was very disappointed in myself for not being able to do the job I was so excited for as well as I could. To make matters worse, after my mental breakdown, 3 of my girls were ABSOLUTLY convinced there was a ghost in their room. After long discussions about ghosts not being real and them especially not being in the room, girls were having their own breakdowns and refusing to sleep. I lost the battle and had to get another staff member to come save me who ended up sleeping in the room with the girls because I had to sleep in the hall way because I had another room with 2 girls in it. Friday finally came, I was no longer swelling in the face, and I felt some relief. Then my work weekend started. 

Friday went extremely well and the group I was working with was full of awesome kids. Although I was dead tired and burnt out, I knew I could get through the weekend easily. Until this morning…

I thought I was done with these ridiculous allergic reactions, but this morning I had big hives all over my head, and one HUGE hive between my hip and thigh. I didn’t even know what to think. Things felt okay until about an hour after waking up realizing my eye was swollen as well. Deciding to give up on anything, I popped another Zurtec and just went about my day. Luckily someone who is here this weekend is a doctor’s assistant and at she said the bumps on my head were fly bites, but then once I informed here about the one on my leg it came down to the conclusion I am breaking out due to stress. It is the only logical thing to think. As of now my head has lost some bumps, and the thigh is exactly the same.  I can only hope that morning brings me a fresh start of being normal. Tomorrow starts the last week of camp. I have a fresh group of 6 or 7 7^th and 8^th grade girls, so I can only pray for the best. I will give you the update on how it goes on Friday.

=]

The end of ISA

Idaho Servant Adventures has come to an end. And let’s just say we went out with a bang. 143 people in the final week! What an adventure that was. Over the summer each week would vary on being full of really awesome people, to having really immature and ridiculous people. This last week was full of both since there was such a huge group. I really liked a lot of kids, but then there were a lot of kids who really didn’t want to be there and complained and whined the whole time. But I still felt like it was a decent week.

After my stressful Monday, things got better. Well until Wednesday. Every week I usually get the privilege of being the lifeguard for kids as we float down the river. I am pretty sure I am the only staff member who a) doesn’t swim very well, and b) has never been officially lifeguard trained. (I just have the certification to guard our swimming hole and river)We carry a dry bag with our first aid kit, although no one ever gets hurt, which is good considering our dry bag generally fails and our first aid kit gets soaked.  On Wednesday, I didn’t realize the first aid kit was not with us on the bus and so we didn’t have it to take down the river. Me and Eric decided since we never really use it anyways because no one ever gets hurt it wasn’t a big deal. So headed down the river just like a usual tubing adventure. Because it is the end of summer, the river is so shallow you really could walk the whole route we use, and river rocks are pretty sharp. There is one section (which I HATE) that is just rapids and sharp rocks that you hit the whole way through. If I had the choice I would just walk it, but it is dangerous to have a group of people walk through the fast water, so we just hope no one gets a popped tube and head down. Well on Wednesday a girl lost her tube and stumbled through the rapids spraining her ankle. So here I am being the “lifeguard” I am almost going straight into panic mode. As the girl gets to me she is bawling and freaking out because of the pain. I get everyone else out of the water (because luckily there was a beached area next to us) and think of what to do. Long story short I used my guard thing as a way to elevate her ankle and walk her through the rest of the river. Then, once I reached the end, I pushed her to the side of the water kind of like you would dock a boat, sent all the other kids with an adult back to camp, left one adult with the girl, and ran across camp to find help who luckily turned out to be Clint who is an advanced EMT. I survived that one. It was exciting and scary at the same time. But I did what I needed to do and felt good about it.

Now that ISA is over, I get the pleasure of being a camp counselor the rest of summer. I am actually really excited about it. Next week I have 5 girls. They are in the pioneer group which means they are 5^th and 6^th graders. It should be a lot of fun! I can’t wait to hang out with these girls and just have a blast. Things should go well these last two weeks, and then I get to make the venture home and go back to life in California. I really miss my family and friends and love of my life so that is what I am looking forward to enjoying. I will be for sure posting another blog sometime next week to give details of being a camp counselor for the first time. Be on the look out! =]

Questions

Here is a question. Confidence and being sure of something you are doing, are those the same? I know a lot of times I lack confidence in myself, but when I am searching for answers to be sure that what I am doing is okay or correct, is that being unconfident? This may sound confusing, but I am just trying to figure out why I feel the need to ask so many questions. I sort of feel like I am so afraid of failure, that if I ask a question to someone else, if a mistake is made it doesn’t fall completely on me. I have heard many times that asking questions is a good thing, but lately I haven’t been feeling so good about it. It seems ridiculous, but now instead of just asking the question whether it is dumb or not, I sit and ponder inside my head for a while on whether the question is worth asking. Then as I am debating the question forever I just sit there and doubt myself feeling like I will most likely pick the wrong thing or say the wrong thing and just epically fail. I know that is an awful thing to do, but I just never know.  I feel like I am wasting a lot of time doing that. (Although I suppose I am wasting a lot of time asking the questions) People always say you can never ask too many questions or there is no such thing as a dumb question, but lately I just get such negative feedback for asking any sort of question. (even when I am pretty confident that it is a good question.) Maybe I just need more life experience? Or maybe I just need to deal with failure. One day I will figure it out.

On a good note, I got to drive a nice big truck around town today. It was kind of thrilling. Too bad the day was stressful because so much happened. In a nutshell, I couldn’t find the store I needed, turned around 1000 times, finally found it, didn’t have what I needed, sent to a closed store, dealt with ridiculous things at Wal Mart, filled the back of the truck with brush by myself, had to fill up gas jugs for the first time, tipped one over to where gas spilled in the truck, then spilled gas on me, thought the truck was going to blow up, made it back to camp JUST in time (which is technically late) and then finally took a breath and got through the night. I feel like it is just one of those weeks. Maybe it is because there are 143 people on camp! Plus some ranch camp, and oh yeah did I mention there will be 150 japanese foreign exchange students floating around? It is a fun week! I am very excited that God blessed camp with so many people to experience Jesus in the great outdoors. Can’t complain there. Anyways, I feel like my blog is sort of negative..I will try to post a positive one this weekend. Guess it all depends how the rest of my week goes. 

20 more days until my summer in Idaho ends. =[

Retreat Weekend!

Another week down, and another week started. Here I am at week 9 with only 3 more weeks after this one. I can’t believe summer is almost over! Time really flew by. I am excited to be headed home to see friends and family, but I am really not ready to leave camp. It will be so weird (but nice) to having my own room. And a tv? And unlimited internet? So crazy! But back to what’s been happening. Last week was another successful week of Idaho Servant Adventures. A bigger week, but everything seemed to run smoothly. Had some awesome groups! They were great, a little bit slow and got off task quickly, but still a lot of fun.  But the weekend was well needed.

This weekend we had our staff retreat at this big huge rec center. It was nice to see some of the Lutherhaven staff that I have not seen since the beginning of summer and catching up on their summer lives. We also had this huge pool area full of heat and chlorine to hang out in. Went down a waterslide, and swam in the lazy river. They had this like toilet bowl part that I totally got stuck in twice. It was a fun experience though. I worked on my cribbage game as well. (Yes I am learning how to play cribbage. It is all the rage at camp.) I am slowly getting better at it. There was also this really fantastic worship that we had. If I had to have one complaint about the retreat it would only be that it went to long. We did not leave the place until 1 am! Did I mention that I was up at 6 am that day? It was a long night. We headed back to Lutherhaven and me and 2 other staffers decided to sleep on the beach. It was pretty legit. (But kinda cold) The sun woke me up way earlier than I wanted, but that was okay. I got to enjoy the view from the beach and just relax. When we finally headed back to camp we decided to make a very quick pit stop and the local rock jumping spot on the river. ME being the scaredy cat I am jumped off the little one which was like 8 or 10 feet high. But that was thrill enough for me. I tried to watch a movie when we got back, but I was too tired and ended up taking a 3 hour nap. It was well needed.

Funny story about my nap..I woke up all of a sudden, realized I was in an empty room in the middle of the day, freaked out, jumped out of bed, was disoriented in the middle of my room trying to figure out where I was supposed to be because I thought it was a week day and we had stuff to do. I finally realized that it was Saturday, and it was okay I was napping. Thankfully no one was in the room to notice my little freak out. I am sure it would have been hilarious to see though.

I don’t have much to catch you up on. I have intention to post a more though provoking blog sometime this week, I just didn’t want to make this one feel lengthy. Hopefully those of you who are still reading my blog and getting your fill!

Survival

Today finally began another week of ISA. I can honestly say I am sooo happy about that. The Catholic’s were great and all but very exhausting. The schedule was just crazy and all over the place and I just felt on the go constantly. It was very exciting to be off for the weekend. And this weekend was a mix of fun and sadness.

Bear, or Michael, left camp this weekend. =[ It was sad. But before he headed out we had a nice staff dinner at the Snake Pit, and then went into town to see Harry Potter! Not getting back to camp until almost 2 am was not the best, but it was still so much fun! Especially since one of our other staff members, who went on vacation for a week, and then spent another week at our other camp, was there, and it was the perfect place to reunite. Running across the theater in excitement was hilarious.  It was a good last night to spend with Bear. Then, on Saturday, I got to go with him to the airport to send him on his way. David, Leah (2 other staffers) and I got to take a camp van into Spokane and say our final good bye to Bear. To take away our sadness we spent the day doing lots of fun things. We went to the mall which is such a luxury; we then went to a coffee shop to spend a bit of time on the internet that we lack at camp. I got to use Facebook and it was really exciting. After some internet, coffee, and a new phone for David, we headed off to Costco to buy lots of candy for camp. I love shopping for camp because we buy so much stuff that I just feel ridiculous. After a nice little Costco run we stopped for Panda Express which was a nice meal to splurge on. We then finally headed back to camp, and found even more excitement.

At around 9:30 that night, a bunch of us were gathered to head up to the helipad for some bonding time, when a panicked woman runs into the office say that about a mile up the road a RV caught on fire and is starting to spread to the trees. In case you forgot, camp is in the middle of the national forest. Forest fires are no good. As she is panicking, Clint, our camp director, and local EMT, is trying to secretly get his firefighting gear out and ready considering he is the closest one to get to the station. It was really exciting to watch him put on his brand spanking new fire suite (never used) and then peel out of the parking lot to race down the road and get a fire truck and some more crew. Needless to say the fire was put out and no one was hurt. (Except the RV which was burned to the ground) There was a lot of excitement in the night. I also played my first legit cribbage game and kicked butt!! Woooo. I would call it a good night! I am realizing that our staff is such a family, and I really love them all. I don’t know what I am going to do when I have to leave. It will be sad. But I totally miss my friends at home and can’t wait to be back with them.

Speaking of a staff family, we got a new staff member. It is nice, but really weird at the same time. Today was her first day and I will be honest I feel kind of bad. Here is a staff that has totally bonded over the last 8 weeks, and now this girl just has to jump right in. I am kind of thinking of it as a step sister. I mean she is GREAT and nice and so fun, but if I were her I would feel weird not knowing all the inside jokes that everyone is talking about. And a lot of it is hard to explain, but I am hoping that after a week of us she can start to fit right in and be just like us and have a great 5 weeks with us! Let’s see how it goes.

Well now that I have packed my weekend fun into a blog, I can now say I am prepared and excited for another week of God working through 114 campers here! Can’t wait! 

Go Go Go!!

I have been on the go with work since July 3. This is what happens when you have a work weekend. But let me tell you my work weekend was fantastic! I got to be the host for a family reunion that came up to use our camp. We got to do all of our typical camp stuff like zip line, rock wall, and tubing with this family. We also hosted their meals and that kind of stuff. Now as most family reunions go there were 3 generations of family there. One of the original generations there had members in their 70’s. These were some of the coolest old people! One woman, who was 73, climbed our 40 foot zip line and leapt off!! She also attempted to climb our rock wall. Because she did the zip line, it encouraged her siblings to do the same. So seeing people between the ages of 60 -70 flying off our zip line was pretty awesome! I was quite impressed. One of the older generations even went tubing down the river. It was pretty sweet to be involved in that. This family was just pretty legit. I really enjoyed getting to work with them last weekend. (But am ready for a Saturday off.)

This week for camp is totally different from any group this summer. This week is NICYC week which stands for Northern Idaho Catholic Youth Camp. So we have 130 Catholics running around camp. It is pretty intense. They have rosary in the morning, and mass during the day. What does this mean as a staff member? It means I get to:

-eat meals outside as a staff (something that NEVER happens)
-Sleep in an extra hour!
-Do a camp project with another staff member (AKA fill in a giant trench)
- Tube and belay all day.
-Sing ridiculous songs!!
- And enjoy random spurts of down time.

This week is just a huge and different week full of stress. I am dying for the weekend and it is only Tuesday. I feel like it must be because I did not get my normal day off this weekend so I have just been on the go. But the Catholics are so much fun and so nice and constantly say thank you which just makes everything feel so much better. Today was not stressful so I am totally hoping for this to be the trend for the rest of the week. But I am also looking forward to getting back into our normal swing of things.

Things are going pretty well up in Idaho. I have a beautiful watch tan and am starting to get a tan from my Toms.  I finally got some sun on my legs today and now have a shorts tan line! Woo Hoo! What is crazy to me is that I only have 40 days left at camp. It is actually closer to 39. Unbelievable! I am very excited to see the people I love and miss at home, but I will totally miss camp. I really can’t thank God enough for blessing me with the opportunity to work up here. It has been so amazing and I can’t believe it took me so long to do it. Until my next free moment..