Junior Explorer/Senior Teen Trip 1

Well our first full week of camp is over. And what a doozy. To be honest, Junior Explorer is one of my least favorite age groups. They're usually the worst listeners and the most dramatic. We had a pretty good group this week though. It was a long week, but overall, I think it was good.

They all came on Sunday. Sunday was a whirlwind because I had to set up all of the sound equipment by myself, but I couldn't get in there early enough because Midcourse Corrections was having their graduating ceremony in the pavilion. Finallyy, they were out, so I rushed as quick as I could to get everything set up and pick songs. After the two chapels (junior explorer and teen trip)I was a little frustrated. The Junior Explorers were talking too much and the counselors weren't helping them quiet down too much, not to mention one of the SALTs started a mosh pit during one of the transitional from fast to slow songs, so I was freaking out, and the Teen trippers were all too cool for school. Sunday through Tuesday, I had to plan for 4 chapels a day. Junior Explorer improved tremendously after the first night, and chapels went wonderfully after the first night. Teen Trip still had some "too cool for school" going on, but they left Wednesday.

Monday was a LONGGGGG day. We had the normal morning activities, which was actually pretty crazy. Support staff had to completely move the inflates and that was a pain. They're still backwards, but no one seems to care except for me. After lunch, we had to lifeguard from 12:30 straight til 5. Our kids did fine, but we had Romanians after that, and that was insane. I don't know what it is about the Romanians. The fact that there's over 150 of them, or the fact that there's around a 17:1 ratio of kids to their counselors. Perhaps its the fact that they don't listen worth anything and don't have the same manners. I just don't know. Either way, when we have to do waterfront for Romanians, it is highly stressful and frustrating. And we did so for 3 hours on Monday. Not to mention their counselors don't really listen either, and one of their counselors decided to go blobbing with his glasses on, so of course, they fell off, so then they were trying to dive and look for them while their kids were complaining in line because they couldn't blob. It was great... Then after dinner we had PM Games. I was the shark when we played sardines, so I had to put on a shark helmet and find somehwere to hide. I chose the trash can. Very good hiding spot. Also very smelly. We finished out that day rather exhausted.

Tuesday was better. The morning started out rough, but after a talk with Kim and Angel, things went much better. We didn't have Romanians at waterfront til around 4, so that was nice. After dinner was another story, though. I finished Junior Explorer chapel and things went great. Then I finished the last chapel with the Teen Trip camp, and things were pretty good with them too, and then the sirens went off and Rudy told us that there was a tornado warning. Olivia and Marissa and I ran to my car and went to find our kids. The girls were running to the basement of the log church, so Liv and I grabbed our guitars and went in and played worship songs for over an hour. It really helped to distract the kids from being scared of the storm. The Romanians and Teen Trip kids ended up down there too, so it was actually kind of cool. Three separate parts were brought together by the storm. I tell you what, though, playing guitar straight for over an hour is quite taxing. My fingers were vibrating for at least half an hour afterwards, and my voice was nearly shot. Singing and playing over 150+ kids without any amplification is hard work. I was DRIPPING with sweat too. They finally brought a bus to take the girls to their cabins, and we had to go and make sure everybody was okay. So what was supposed to a be 10:00 bedtime turned into a 11:30 bedtime. God was amazing though and managed to keep all of my sound equipment dry, despite the fact that it was all right up by the walls which happen to be made out of screens.

The next few days consisted of a lot of rain and plan B's and C's. It was the worst week weather-wise I've ever experienced at CHC. We usually have one or two rainy days, but it was almost the whole week. It was torrential downpour after torrential downpour. (There was one night where we had two rainbows though!) Every time I changed my clothes, they got wet again. I gave up on being dry after awhile. I also managed to fix our pathetic docks. Well more like I assisted Kenny. I did what I could. He's just super buff. But that was a pretty killer day. Docks and cement cinderblocks are heavy. We also managed to put in the totter and Olivia became an officially official lifeguard by peeing in the lake. It took a lot of convincing, but she finally did after she laughed because Kenny flipped me off the top of the totter on accident. We also had water carnival in the rain, but this was probably my favorite water carnival ever. Half the counselors didn't show up, which was irritating, but that left some of the competitions up to be against the lifeguard teams. So we actually got to PLAY this time. And it was really fun :) And Rachel was a riot. *through clenched teeth while clenching both my arms with all her strength* "I LOVE MY JOB! I LOVE THIS CAMP SO MUCH I CAN HARDLY STAND IT!!!" It was really pretty fun. I never get to play.

Overall, it was quite the week. Good overall, I would say. The weather was frustrating, but chapels just kept getting better and better. It was so wonderful to get to lead the kids in worship and open my eyes and look around and see God's presence in the room. I don't know if I remembered to say in my staff training blog. The band has switched up a bit. Well I guess only drummers switched. Tekiele put forth a valiant effort, but drums is a big responsibility and is a pretty noticeable part of a band. He wasn't feeling confident enough to feel confident on drums while also focusing on his campers, so he decided to step down, and Otto, a 17-year-old kid who is 96% blind, stepped in. Otto is A-MAZING!!! I don't even have to practice songs with him. He picks them right up, and knows when to build and everything like that. Huge blessing. And he has a big ole' heart and the kids love him. God works in the craziest of ways.

After staff meeting, I had a doctor's appointment. I was dreading this and was not looking forward to stressing out about whether or not I had cancer again, or blood tests or biopsies while also trying to focus on my job and responsibility at camp. I took the long way home, driving slow, with less than a 1/4 tank of gas, hoping that I would arrive too late or would run out of gas. But God wanted me there. So I made it home in record timing (still doesn't make sense) with my gas gauge below empty, and went to my appt. Livia and my mom went with me. The receptionist was the grumpiest woman in all of the earth, and I sat in the waiting room with this huge aquarium complete with gross stingrays. I forgot my license, but they accepted my camp nametag as picture ID. I thought that was pretty funny. After forever, I finally got in a room, and after another forever, the doctor came in. He shook my hand, told me his name, and went straight for my throat. I was freaking out, and asking what everything was. There was lots of scary-looking stuff in there. It turned out to only be a mirror and a nostril-spreader. After roughly 45 seconds of observation, he concluded that I had a thyroglossal duct cyst, which was what I had originally thought. PRAISE GOD!!! I'll eventually have to get surgery on it, but not any time soon. It was SO good to have a real diagnosis and to not have this threat of cancer wavering over my head. Things could not have turned out better. It was much better than I had anticipated. God is good.

The rest of the weekend consisted of 2 weddings and our family directory picture, as well as sushi (with my first piece of actual raw sushi) and Riverview church with my best frand. Much better weekend than I anticipated :) And now I'm in teen challenge.

Once again, sorry for all the details. Just how I work I guess.

I'm off to set up for chapel!

Skeedily ba ba ba dolphin

And We're Off...

I have officially made it through all of staff training without getting sick for the first time ever. All two weeks. This is exciting to me. And oh what a two weeks it has been.

I made it to camp at some point on Sunday evening and me, Liv, Stacey, Marissa, and Lauren managed to scare the newb Stephanie sufficiently on the first night, including me singing and doing motions to Father Abraham in the shower. I don't know. Then we had a meeting for returners, where we all had to scale a wall together pretty much. I managed to somehow take part of my toe nail off and smear my blood on the wall. It's still there. Makes me feel hardcore.

After that, all the new people came and we started the fun process of awkward get-to-know-each-other and are-you-sure-you-know-what-your-getting-yourself-into stuff. We left for staff trip, which was just at another camp. A less nice camp, to be honest. So whatever. The first day, it was hotter than nylons. Soooo ridiculously hot. The next day was better. We went to Lake Michigan. They told us it was a 30 minute trip. 2 hours later, we arrived, and found out the the "beach" was actually all rocks. But I was grumpy and determined enough at the time to go swimming anyways. I figured if I had had to ride a bus for 2 hours, I was going to go swimming in Lake Michigan, no matter the circumstances. It was cold and rocky. But fun nonetheless. Lizzi and I had a good time being naturalists together. We then decided to go to an actual beach, which was indeed less rocky, but unfortunately kinda gross. It had a TON of dead fish on it. Gross. We went back to our camp the next day. Oh. After that, we had all the rest of training. Lost camper drill, bonding, lost swimmer drill, testimonies. OOOH! And also, I went off the zipline! It took a little convincing, but it was so fun!

Ooooh I forgot. I experienced every guitarists worst nightmare. I opened Olivia's guitar case, and there her guitar lay, the headstock completely broken off. Awful. I freaked out. Kim immediately offered to buy me a new one, and then I told her it was Liv's, and then Liv started to walk over cuz of all the commotion, and before Liv even reached the guitar, Kim was like "WE'LL BUY YOU A NEW ONE!!!" before she even saw that is was broken. So on the way back from Camp B to Camp A, we, as in all 28 of us, stopped at Guitar Center to "help" Olivia pick out a guitar. I banned everyone from the acoustic room so Olivia wasn't under pressure. So she picked one, and we left. It was rather crazy.

So overall, staff training went well. I really like this year's staff. A lot of awesome people. A lot of broken people. But I really really like them. Lots of good and fun people. Possibly my favorite staff yet? I don't know. Too early to tell perhaps. But seriously a bunch of great people. And that, is staff training.

We are now in Junior Explorer....

Information pending....