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. =[