One more week and I will be in the beautiful Northwest. Oh how I have missed thee. As the title of this blog states, I think I am ready to talk about last week. Where to start?
The girls really weren't too crazy, it was more about me feeling completely overwhelmed. Most of the day (and night) I felt like I was doing 10 things at once, plus counseling 10 girls myself. I say night, because I was always having to put logs on the fire in the middle of the night to keep the fire going.
On the subject of the fire in our cabin, I have come to find that our cabin "smokes out" very easily. On Wednesday night I had to fan at the smoke detector for about 15 minutes. On Thursday I came back from my day off (which was actually more like 45 minutes) and our smoke detector was going off again! To say the least, I was completely exhausted at this point because that day my co-counselor was quarantined (had a fever), I had to keep the fire going all by myself, I had to get about 3 wheel-barrels of wood, I had to do laundry for the girls, and do all 10 of the evaluations because my co was sick.
The fire alarm continued to go off about 10 more times on Thursday night, so we just decided to let the fire go off. At this point, my adrenaline was off the charts and I couldn't go to sleep. At every moment I would lay my head down I was afraid the detector would go off. I just wanted to get the girls to sleep because they were so tired from a long week. Every little sound, whether it was a cough or the heater kicking on, my heart would stop for a second. At about midnight I got to bed after the fire was safely out. On a good note, I did get some help from the two other female "rovers" when my co got sick. So, on Wednesday and Thursday night I wasn't trying to deal with it all by myself. And they both gave me hugs as well, which was nice. :) Oh, and I didn't get any of my evaluations sent back to me to correct! I only had to shorten a couple of them because they were too long. I'll take that any day though. The week really did end well though. It was really nice to have Heather and Jennifer helping me and the girls got ready so quickly in the morning that we got to play some games between class and going to lunch. Heather had the brilliant idea to play Statue. Statue is where one person says something like, "Act like a gorilla with fleas." The girls then do that until the leader says "freeze!" Then they have to freeze like a statue until the leader says relax. If they move at all they are out. One of the girls named Aniyah always found a way to freeze on one foot, which was pretty entertaining. I have never seen a group so good at statue!
This third week has started out well so far. I have today off, so it is nice to relax a bit. On Thursday a group called, "Woodsmen of the World" come out to camp and give the kids gifts and buy pizza and soda. It is a big party, and I am so excited. The group has been coming out for about 8 or 9 years and they keep coming back because they know how much it means to camp and to the kids. They probably pay about $1,200 by the end of it, but they keep on coming back to give to the kids. It is truly a blessing.
Even with the tough week last week I know that it is teaching me new things. I am learning to communicate with my co more and am getting much better at group management. Thank you to those of you that let me vent (especially you mom!) I am looking forward to the rest of week, but most of all I am ready to get home to see those people in the Northwest I love so much!
Peace.
