Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Kids These Days

Well I’m locked out of my room so I guess I finally have time to blog again…My team and I just got back from Michigan yesterday and it’s nice to be back at home in Vinton except for it was definitely 0 degrees when I went out for dinner last night which wasn’t very pleasant. These next few days we’ll just be finishing up odds and ends, presenting our project debrief where we talk about the project we just finished and then I’m packing up and flying back to Washington, PRAISE JESUS. All I want to be doing right now is to be curled up by the fire in Sisters, nibbling on some wine bread with my Bing Crosby doll serenading me in the background as I read me some Twilight because ever since I saw New Moon I’ve been dying to read the third book.


So the past two weeks of life have been a whole lot of crazy because someone thought it would be a good idea for me to be a cabin leader to 5th grade boys. After spending two weeks with them I have a new found respect for teachers and a much greater appreciation for Ritalin because seriously that ish should be served to every child by 7 am thus making my life a lot easier.

Starting Nov. 30 my team was assigned the kids that we would have in our cabins and then after that we were given slips of paper detailing medical backgrounds on the kids that might be worth knowing. Most people got maybe one or two sheets and then of course I’m given the mother load of 7 sheets of paper. I was scurred. I found out that my cabin consisted of two asthmatics who couldn’t even power walk without an inhaler, one bed wetter who woke me up at 5 in the morning to tell me he had drunk a lot of water before going to bed but that he had cleaned it all up with paper towels, one sleep walker who I wouldn’t let sleep on the top bunk for obvious safety reason, a kid with ADD who gave me the stink eye for three hours straight on the day he didn’t take his meds, and finally a kid with Aspergers. To put it lightly, I had my hands full.

The week was full of hilarious things because 5th graders are ridiculous and unfortunately as the adult I was forced to try to hide my laughter during certain situations. Some of my fav moments from week are as follows:
1. When a kid named Dorian got stuck on the top bunk because he had an intense fear of heights. Why he picked the top bunk is still a complete mystery. So for ten minutes he couldn’t figure out how to get down and had a panic attack and started crying. This all took place within the first 10 minutes of us moving into the cabin. It took all my strength to keep from dying laughing.
2. When one of the horses farted and coughed at the same time and 30 kids couldn’t stop laughing for 5 minutes. I’ll admit. It was pretty hilarious.
3. When one of my really really hyper kids ran around the cabin in his whitie tighties screaming, “boys just wanna have fun!” over and over.
4. When I tried to convince a group of kids at my dinner table that I was dating Demi Levato and that I had a small part in Camp Rock and then having them tell me that I’m obviously too old for Demi and if I was dating someone famous it would probably be Taylor Swift. I totally went along with it until some smarty-pants blabbed that she’s dating Tayler Laughtner who plays Jacob in Twilight. How could I compete with that???
5.Realizing that the fifth graders that always saved a seat for me at meals were the really popular kids. I’m not gonna lie, it made me feel pretty cool.

Throughout the week that kids attended outdoor environmental classes such as Star Lab where we crawled into a blow up planetarium with a projector that showed us the constellations. It was a great place for naps. The kids also learned how to build fires, look at microscopic organisms under a microscope, how to build a shelter in the wilderness, and how to use a compass. The favorite class for most of the kids was Horse Sense where we learned about horses and then got to ride them. My horse was named Lou and he was the sweetest horse ever. He loved to be petted and he would always put his head against my chest when I’d come up to him. An interesting fact about Lou was that he was known throughout camp as the horse that spontaneously passes out. Once I finally mounted him it was the most stressful horseback ride of my life as I was constantly looking for an emergency exit because if that thing was going down there was no way I could abandon ship fast enough.