left-over grilled cheese.

Today is our day off!...and I'm watching boys play modern duty call of warfare, whatever, whatever; it's just like home. :)

Coyote was nice enough to take a few counselors into Salem yesterday to experience like, private showers, and eating out, and video games. It's a nice break, and I'm going shopping with Mango and Rice this afternoon. Turns out I need a watch after all, too bad Spiderman watches don't have alarms. 

If you've been following along, you know that all last week was lots of TRAINING and guest speakers. I don't think I have learned so much, information and about the lives of others and myself, in one week. My favorite aspect by far were the speakers that came in. What I loved about each of them is that they were each close friends with Grasshopper and Muskrat, they weren't well-researched guest speakers that so often bore me to tears. They were deeply faithful and loving people, all with amazing attitudes. The two speakers that touched me the most were Mark and Barb. One of their sons had been a camper at UBC since he was twelve, his first time away from home. They reminded me so much of my own grandparents and uncle, and many of their stories I smiled at because they sounded so much like Uncle Mark's own stories. They talked of their struggles and their blessings through their son; the father spoke of when their son was born (around Christmas time) and how the sermon at church was about baby Jesus and how tiny he was but how much impact he would bring, the whole time tearing up. Of course, I cried my eyes out. It was in that moment I realized one of the reasons why I look up to my own grandparents so much is because of the amount of love they showed Mark (and uh, everyone); it's incredible. That same love those two parents that came to speak shook me. 

Last week I taught my first class, a campfire-making class of all things. I know it went well because we successfully started a fire; here's to hoping my teaching career in the future can be as successful. 

Along with this, watching the movie, "The Woman Who Willed a Miracle", a film about a man who was a musical savant, it made me really excited about my future career in music and helping others. I was reminded of how powerful music is. 

Campers get here Wednesday and I'm so excited!!! Tomorrow we're tying up lose ends for camp preparation. I'm hoping the weather continues being as beautiful as it has been the past few days, it's been like, a week without rain, crazy! 

training (part deux)

Today, highschool volunteers that will be helping out with the Easter Seals camp in July came to receive training and familiarize themselves with the camp. We have done SO MUCH in just one day. Between making a pb and j sandwich blind, learning to save a chocking patient, camp songs, and team-building activities, so so MUCH. I'm learning things, not obvious, about ways to better myself with the population we're working with. I can't think of any right now out of exhaustion, but I always like learning new ways to execute a situation and to make people feel more comfortable.

We've also had speakers come in, and more will tomorrow. These people are amazing. Just amazing. I'm so inspired by their greatness.

Today was SUNNY! I started my day wearing pants, then by late morning I was wearing shorts and a teeshirt, and by 4:30pm, I was back in pants, plus a hoodie and jacket! Welcome to Oregon.

Also today, I took my third CPR class of the year (sure, why not!)

Happy birthday, Dad! (and parents' anniversary...thanks for reminding me, Livie)


Annnnnnd, that's all I got for today. Don't be fooled by the meager size of this blog, if I were to go into detail on everything I did today, it would take me hours. So for now, goodnight!! :)

training (part one of...lots)

This week I have learned about 16 ways to get out of a choke-hold, and received certification in both archery instruction and food handling; and it's only Tuesday. 

It's training week here at camp, and I love it because I'm learning so much. That's been the common theme since first landing here on the mountain, not only am I being certified in many important skills, but also learning more about so many populations and personalities of people. All of our counseling team is finally here. There are five men and seven females, and out of the seven females, Butter and I are the only caucasians. There are three Bolivians, one Arizonian, me (Kansan), one Portlander, and a  Trini (from Trinidad, you know). I LOVE PEOPLE BEING HERE. After being the only person living at camp for a while, it's nice always having people around and something going on. Like, right now there's five people in the respite house and two of them are dancing. 

Yesterday we spent most of the day being trained by Grasshopper to be level one archery-instructor certified. Archery is really popular with the campers, and I'm so excited to improve myself and teach those skills to others. Also yesterday, Baggy educated us on crisis aversion and self-defense. All of us first-time counselors wore huge eyes until about the third story they told of campers acting out when Baggy and Bug reassured us that incidents like that 

Today, so far, a health inspector came in to teach about proper food-handling, and each of us took a test to become certified this morning. However, the greatest lesson I have learned this week definitely came from Retro today. 

Retro was a counselor at camp about 20 years ago. She had been diagnosed with arthritis as a teenager, and began working at camp when she was 21. About 8 years ago, her arthritis became progressively worse, and caused her to be wheelchair-bound. So ultimately, she came to speak about seeing both sides of a disability, from going to working with the population, to being disabled herself. Retro spoke of how many times people would frustrate her by patronizing and speaking down to her, as most people do to individuals that are disabled. She has such an amazing, strong personality and such a witty sense of humor. As she shared, she's definitely not afraid to embarrass people and put them in their place if she feels offended. I thought it was so great inviting her to speak with staff before camp started. She drove the point home that all people are people, and are no less just because they're disabled. I really, really wish society would see this. I can't tell you how much it angers me when people belittle, underestimate, or talk down to those with a disability. There's no faster way to rile me up (sorry, but not sorry, I get it from my mother). 

lighthouses and lemon-sun days

I saw my first lighthouse and touched a wild starfish this weekend!

Saturday was a "day-off" where us chicks just about watched movies and painted nails all day. Butter and I had to explain what a "chick-flick" is to Blueberry. I love explaining things to Bolivians.

BUT SUNDAY: We woke up early and headed towards the coast. I've now been officially assigned to shot-gun every field trip that Bug leads. Luckily this time I didn't have to worry about DJ-ing the radio - Bug brought two CD holders full of CD's from Willie Nelson to 90's hip-hop.

We headed towards Lincoln City first, the beach that was a typical "beach", lots of soft sand and coast. It was one of those rare, sunny days in Oregon; we hit it big. Next, we rolled down I-101 to Newport to visit Yaquina State Park. It was amazing, I was able to see my first lighthouse AND walk to the top. Plus, the beach at Yaquina is all cobble stones, perfectly round, smooth, black stones. We went down to the tide-pools, luckily arriving about 15 minutes before the high tide had fully came in. Tide pools are one of the coolest works of nature I have ever seen. I love love love tide pools. The ocean has so much life, so many creatures, and for a few hours every day we're able to peek under the covers of the ocean and see all the life teeming by the shore. I touched everything I could, and couldn't help but laughing out loud every time an anemone would grip my finger quickly when I touched it.

After Yaquina, we went into Newport and did some crabbing by the docks. I am now an experienced crabber now!

It was a great day, and we packed in every Oregon coast experience in every way that you can think of.

Side note: I'm sorry if the grammar in this post stinks, I'm pretty beat from a day of training that you'll eventually find out about. I know this wasn't very descriptive of my trip to the coast, but many photos are to come, I promise!

tube fish and industrial-sized enchiladas

PAPERWORK. This has been my life as of late.

This week, we have made multiple trips into town to prepare to send out campers their confirmations (did I mention there's like, over 500 of them?) This requires comparing what they still need to send in (balance, physicals, etc), folding and stapling, sealing and putting on a label, and finishing it out by alphabetizing by zip code. Typical office stuff.

However, Wednesday was a great day because I was in the kitchen all day! Yes I am being serious! The job of Muskrat, Copper, and I, was to clean and reorganize the kitchen, a task we quickly found out was more a one and a half person job. When I was admiring a Rubbermaid container of hazelnuts, Muskrat told me that if you saute hazelnuts in cinnamon and sugar then stick them in the oven it's majorly delicious. So, because I wanted/needed something to do, she told me right then that I should do it. Despite that fact I didn't know what I was doing, let alone had just first seen a hazelnut five minutes ago, I gladly accepted her challenge. Move over, Nutella, because those nuts sure were delicious.

Now, people that know me well and my habits in the kitchen understand that when I bake/cook something, the series of events that follow are similar to the story of "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".

Soooo, after fixing hazelnuts, I then proceeded to make brownies, enchiladas in a 19-gallon pan for eight people, and salad. Industrial kitchens are the bomb.

Remember the fish pond we worked on this week? The trout finally arrived about an hour ago, and people, if you have never helped transport 800 fish from the back of a truck to a pond via long tube, let me tell you it is one of the single most hilarious events of your life. The first load, we used a long, blue tube. However, most of the fish got stuck at the end of the line right before exiting into the pond, so we had to squeeze them out like toothpaste. Plus, several fish somehow broke free from the tube, and were slapping around on the ground before we grabbed them and threw them in. Again, imagine this happening with three Bolivian women from the city and already you're smiling.

It is COLD here. I hear/see how hot is is back home and I'm so jealous. Right now it's 53 outside, but probably a good 45 in the respite house. But it's supposed to be lower 70's this week, so let's hope for a warm-front! :)

rivers, rain, and red knitted-hats.

First off: thank you to anyone that has sent me mail in the past two weeks. I love snail-mail and it makes my day whenever I get anything!!! 

Secondly: Sorry I've been seriously slacking as of late. That tends to happen when you're busy, but don't fret! I'm about to tell you all about it! 

We have been very busy on the mountain preparing the camp and all its many activities. This includes, but is not limited to; cleaning up every building, planning activities, organizing and choosing songs (my project yesterday), making up fanny packs and manuals for staff, checking first-aid kits, and our big project lately: the fish pond. For the most part I'm a big fan of this task because I get to play in the water and smell and touch everything. We started on Friday and it was a perfect day to do so, the first day in Oregon that I got to wear shorts! However, it has been raining this whole week, and the fish that will be dumped into this pond are scheduled to arrive Friday, so it's been all forces a-go rain or shine (and it was very cold outside today). 

Fortunately, this weekend was a very fun-filled one. On Saturday, Bug, being the brave man that he is, took us five women up to Seven Falls to go hiking and eat a picnic lunch. We were surprised with it being National State Parks Day, meaning free admission! It was another sunny, beautiful day. We loved to take pictures, so it took us about three hours to hike a mile and a half. :)

On Sunday, we decided to see our friend, Simba, at his church in Portland. I seriously feared going to church wearing the clothes I had brought (t-shirts and jeans, what else, I'm a camp counselor). Especially with the five other beautiful and ever-stylish women that would accompany me there. Fortunately, that morning Blueberry came in with an armful of clothing to borrow and fixed me up right to look very "coqueta" :)  We left a 8am (well, it was a little after 8:00…) and drove TWO hours, the longest Muskrat said she has ever driven to a church service (make that for me as well). The service was good with many nice people. Afterwards, we headed over to the Sunday Market in downtown Portland. I love the Sunday Market. I love just about everything that Portland has to offer, but I really dug the Sunday Market. There were lots of good foods (I got some falafel yuuuuum), and venders selling everything from candles, jewelry, and pottery; to henna, bongs, and skirts. Plus live musicians. All by the river. 

So that's what's been going on as of late! I can't tell you what else is going on this week or even tomorrow, except that it's probably going to rain. :) 

The Bolivians Have Landed!

Happy June! This week has been BUSY!

On Wednesday, Grasshopper, Muskrat and I took off for Portland to stay at Muskrat's mother's house. We stayed in Portland because Grasshopper and his daughter had to fly out of PDX early on Thursday for level two archery training in California, while Muskrat and I would leave later that morning for Newberg to teach a CPR/First Aid/AED/Infant CPR class at a nearby camp. On our way there, Muskrat told shared some experiences she had accumulated over her life. This woman is amazing; I hope I can have half the stories she has someday.

The class was to counselors at a Christian camp, and most were college students. One woman who helped put on the camp talked with me during break, she asked where I was from and told me her husband was from Kansas and his sister taught elementary special education in Hays! Crazy!

After teaching the class, we headed to PDX to pick up the first Bolivian woman that would work at the camp this summer, Ximena. It took us TWO hours to get across Portland because of the traffic (note we left the camp at 3:30 and Ximena's flight was scheduled to arrive at 4:30). When we finally got to the airport at 5:30pm, we looked all over for her, but her flight didn't appear on the arrivals board. We had no idea where she was or where her flight was, luckily, Bug was able to find out her flight had been postponed two hours, so Muskrat and I grabbed some much-conveted supper.

Ximena's flight came in around 7:00pm, and thank goodness her luggage had arrived as well in once piece. We had a few hours to kill (Blueberry and Stephanie's flight wouldn't arrive until 10:30pm), so we drove around Portland and visited all of Muskrat's old hangouts when she was a child. Portland has the largest park within a city (even larger than Central Park) in the world. It's wild. One minute you're driving through upperclass neighborhoods, then you find yourself in heavily wooded forest. Several Oregonian cities have an annual flower festival, and each city is dedicated to a specific flower; for Portland it is the rose. We drove to the rose garden to smell all the flowers and look down on Portland's city lights (well, those lights that weren't blocked by trees). Also, apparently in city parks at night, when the lights are way down low, it's like all the couples in the world come out to make-out. We passed several of these snogging lovers and laughed. Ximena told us in Bolivia when they see people doing that they say, "Don't eat bread in front of the poor!"

After leaving the park, we headed back to PDX. A few days before we went to Portland, I realized I had left my signed copy of "The Fault in Our Stars" on the airplane I had taken from Denver. I checked in with lost and found to see if they had picked it up, but was informed that after like, five hours, they send "useless" objects like that to a giant storehouse in Alabama. Nice.

ANYWAY.

Blueberry and Stephanie arrived safe and sound! We were so happy to see them! We left the airport around 11:30pm, and our amigas were HUNGRY. So we stopped at a 24-hour diner in Salem at midnight, naturally having the waitress take a group picture of us.

I kept Muskrat up on the way home by quoting "Princess Bride" with her to keep her up. We rolled into camp at 2am and crashed HARD. The next morning we ate breakfast at noon.