Summertime Gladness

Hello friends!  The blog is back!  I have had an absolutely incredible summer, and I feel so privileged to have had the opportunity to be in such a chaotic, joyful, faith-filled place for eight weeks.  The summer has definitely filled me with excitement and anticipation for the upcoming school year programming season.  I want to try to give you all a taste of the summer, but that might be a pretty big task, especially considering the accidental blogging sabbatical I've been on for the past few months.  I think what I'll try to do is offer some small vignettes, some little stories that occurred over the summer that hopefully can allow you to piece together a little bit of what I did when I went AWOL on this blog.  As some starting information, I was the program coordinator this summer, which at its most basic level means that I make all of the schedules for camp, and I'm also really involved in the evening game and coordinating counselor duties like skit roles and other things like that.  Soooo, here we go:

• I had said goodbye to my buddy group earlier on the last day of the first week of camp because I didn't know if I would see them before I left.  When I popped out of the office for a moment, all of them yelled my name and enveloped me in a huge group hug.  One girl asked me if I would be back next summer, because "if you're there, then I'll be there."
• It rained heavily the second week of camp.  I was part of the group that had to decide what exactly we could do since our entire planned afternoon/evening was a wash (literally).  We decided that we would play the Canada Game for the second time that week, but our summer program director decided to put a new spin on it: campers vs. counselors.  It didn't take long to realize that 50 or so counselors against about 170 campers was not going to end well.  We lost.  Badly.
• During one of our staff dinners after camp ended for the week, we found out the restaurant we were at was hosting a karaoke night.  One counselor decided we would sing one song, just to say that she did.  We all stuck around to cheer her on, which eventually turned into about 40 camp staff doing karaoke for three hours.  The karaoke DJ loved us, the birthday party that we basically crashed did not.  I sang "American Pie" by Don McLean, and the DJ wanted to make sure that I knew it was a 12-minute song.  For some reason it feels a lot shorter when you sing the camp lyrics with 40 other people.
• I made it a point to dance along to "Cotton Eye Joe" every single week.  We host Ranchfest on Thursday, which is usually the same day I transform into a schedule hermit and don't leave my office so I can have everything ready for next week.  However, schedule craziness or no, I made it to every single Cotton Eye Joe this summer, even if it literally meant leaving the office the moment it came on and then slipping away once it ended.  My goal during Thursday of Week 1 was to not have a meltdown and to dance to Cotton Eye Joe, which was successful on both counts.
• I got really into making friendship bracelets this summer.  Like, buy 100 skeins of bracelet thread kind of interest.
• I was a mess of nerves my first week of camp, because I somehow thought that the success of camp hinged on me (it didn't) and that if I messed up then everyone would hate me (they wouldn't).  I confided my fears in a friend, who not only gave me an inspirational sports movie-level pep talk, but got the entire adventure crew to give me a hug.  
• During Fourth of July week, I wore an American flag shirt and Statue of Liberty socks to Ranchfest, and that wasn't the weirdest Ranchfest outfit I witnessed this summer by far.
• Some of my proudest costume elements that I pulled together for evening game skits: a french fry skirt, giant mayor badges for some Mayors of Whoville, British flag patches for my evil Redcoats motorcycle gang, and an Outlaw poster with some of the best portraits I've ever photographed.
• My biggest accomplishment of the summer: during week 8, the last week of camp, there were no corrections or changes to the schedule I had made.  It took me the whole summer, but I had finally made a flawless camp schedule.
• I went creek stomping with my buddy group during the last week of camp.  One boy asked if he could put something on my arm in creek paint.  I said yes, but I was a little hesitant at what one of the oldest boys would put on my arm that I might have to wash off and have a chat about.  He put a cross and wrote "Jesus was here."
• It only took me the whole summer, but I finally learned the lyrics to the Zulu King song.
• During one of our staff outings, we went cliff jumping in the middle of nowhere.  Thirty feet is a long distance to think about terrible decisions in your life, like jumping off of a thirty foot cliff.  Then the adrenaline when you pop out of the water makes you want to do it all over again.  
• I saw a black widow spider for the first time this summer.  It was inside a duct-taped petri dish and I still had to bring moral support with me and I stayed at least three feet away from it at all times.  It looked fake, like a cartoon villain with its jet black body and bright red hourglass.  It did absolutely nothing to ease my fear of spiders.
• During pre-camp training, I lost What are the Odds? and had to walk with crazy legs for the entire day, and I did it.  It's an amazing thigh workout if you don't mind taking three times as long to get to anywhere you want to go.
• I finally got to paint my square in Handies (the handicrafts building), and I was super emotional about it.  I had planned the location for a year and what it was going to say for about four months.  It was one of the many moments this summer when I knew I was making 13-year-old me proud.
• I cried at closing when we sang "Take Me Home Country Roads."

This summer was truly one of the best summers of my life, and I can't wait to continue the tales of being a camp staffer in these next few months.  It's good to be back!