Viva La Revolucion!!!!

That's right... Camp is over (well... one camp) and I am now throwing the last few details together for our trip to Hungary. OVS ended as crazy as it began (almost worse... there was a lot going on and I am surprised we made it through the end). Our end of summer party was pretty wild (some people had a few too many Mojitos), but it was a great end of the summer.

Tomorrow morning we (Ryan, Darren, Kate, Sammy, and myself) will be loading all of our gear into Dave Gonzales' van and heading down to LAX. Please pray for travel mercies to and from Hungary. Pray that we will all remain healthy throughout the entire trip. Pray that God will not only work in the kid's lives but in our lives as well. Pray for a stress free LAX visit... And pray for just an all around great time. I will be trying to keep my blog as updated as possible. Feel free to email or leave comments as I will be checking my mail as often as possible. Thank you for all of your great support and I love you all.

PS: that is the logo for out shirts compliments of Ryan.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!!!!!!!!

In addition to my lovely sister's birthday (Happy Birthday Sarah Belle!!!), We get to welcome a new person into this world. Yesterday, July 24, 2007 Caden Fuller Billy (not sure on all of that spelling, but it's something like that) came into this world. Yes, Sam (the lady I babysit for) had another baby boy; 8lbs 4oz I think. I didn't quite get all of the details because I only got to talk to the other babysitter who really doesn't know that much in the first place, but from what I hear, he is a healthy baby boy. Praise God for new babies, Praise God that Mason is a big brother, and Praise God that everything (I am kinda assuming) went well!

One Week to Go!!!

That's right, one week to go!!!! One week until OVS is over and one week until we leave for Hungary! OVS is winding down. Chaos is starting to set in. Last night I had weekend duty which was really crazy. The scheduling got all messed up because certain dorm parents wanted the afternoons off. To make a very long story short, I was in charge of the girls dorm which is fine because that's going to be my job this fall. But it was really chaotic because I couldn't get or do any of the stuff that the regular dorm parents could do... It's tough to explain, but the bottom line is it was another crazy weekend duty.

Camp will end on Friday which gives me four days of trying to get everything together to fly over to Sopron, Hungary. I was getting a little nervous about a week ago. The finances weren't quite there yet (well, not even close)... I didn't realize how soon I would be leaving... I hadn't talked to anyone from the team in about four weeks... I was getting a little stressed. But God is good and has provided my with A LOT of last minute financial support... He put it on my Mom's heart to make sure I have everything I needed for the trip... He reminded me that the internet is a great tool of communication (I forgot I could email Ryan all of my questions and get a quick answer). I am so blessed to have such a great group of family and friends supporting me through everything I do. Please pray that I will make it through this last week of OVS. Also pray that everything gets pulled together for my trip. I know God has great plans for me during the month of August.

PS: Please also pray for Sam. She is scheduled for her C-section on Tuesday, but the doctor said that he would be surprised if she made it that long. Please pray that I can be as helpful as possible this last week... Helpful to Sam as she prepares for two infants... Helpful to Sam's sister as she prepares to hold down the fort with her own three kids, Mason, and all of Mason's appointments... Please pray that everything goes smoothly with the new baby's delivery. Please pray that Sam and the new baby are safe and healthy and that Sam can recover from surgery quickly to get back to taking care of Mason and the new baby.

2 More Weeks

That is right, two more weeks left at OVS and I think these are going to be the hardest two weeks yet. The last four weeks have gone by very well (very few problems and all fairly manageable), but after check in today, I have a feeling we are in it for the long haul!!! I would love to explain more but pretty much, we got some really difficult kids (well... actually, the kids are great... it's the parents that are totally crazy and over-protective to the point that they don't even want to leave their kids). We got a couple of celebrity's children which is kinda exciting. Definitely pray that I don't lose my patience these last two weeks. Pray that I don't have to deal with any crazy parents. Pray that we have a great last two weeks of camp. I have so much to write about, but it's all really confusing and no one would understand if I typed it all out.

I had a rough night last night at work (basically, I get really territorial with my work and when someone comes in and steps all over my toes, I get really REALLY irritated!) Plus it doesn't help when I am at work from 7:30am - 10:30pm. It was a rough day with James' funeral and trying to end a session and helping kids pack up to go home. But work has been really fun and funny lately. Every night we get to run around locking doors, praying that we don't get sprayed by the family of skunks that seem to be living on campus. Rough stuff... but it's been fun and I hope these next two weeks go just as well (if not better) then these last four.

The Twilight Zone

Do you ever feel that you are in the Twilight Zone? I have had that feeling for the last four days... Let me explain.

1st: Wednesday was the 4th which is always crazy by itself, but then we also had the death of James Street (which we didn't know about until Thursday, but it happened on Wednesday).

2nd: Thursday we found out about James' death which sent us all into a tail spin. While dealing with that, we also had to deal with preparing for Fear Factor the next day. I drove down to Ventura to pick up supplies... Ok, so we kinda go all out on Fear Factor and one of our events was going to be bobbing for apples amongst live gold fish. This was not one of my ideas which is probably why it wasn't fully thought out. I bought the gold fish last and drove home (ok, so we might have gone kinda overboard on the gold fish. We wanted to fill a 50 gal tub to look like it had a lot of gold fish so we bought 60 goldfish, but the guy was really lazy and didn't count them and we ended up getting around 100 gold fish). In the 20 minutes that it took me to drive home over half of the goldfish were dead. We let them sit in the bags and adjust to the temp but then we let them out to swim and over half of them were floating on the top of the tub and 40 or so were sideways on the bottom of the tub... Long story short I suggested we dump the fish into one of the ponds at OVS (I figured that they would get eaten and no one would have to know). So we dumped them into the pond Thursday night after all of the kids went to bed and swore not to tell a sole... Ooops!

3rd: So that whole gold fish thing... gets better... I got to OVS on Friday morning and see that there are no dead gold fish in the pond. In fact, there were MORE live ones then there were the day before. Not too many people noticed and we played dumb if anyone asked about it. So the rest of the day went like normal. It was really busy because of the Fear Factor prep (cooking cow tongue is not a whole lot of fun). Fear Factor ran well and we cleaned everything up. As we were cleaning in the kitchen, one of our dorm parents (Nick Stelzer, was helping us with Fear Factor) walked up and said "I just got sprayed by a skunk!" We didn't really believe him and he told us what happened, but as he was telling us, this wave of stench came flying into the kitchen and I thought I was going to be sick! We helped him clean up but it still smelt BAD!! He had also spent about 5 minutes in our office which infected it with the terrible stench. I ran in to get my bag and ran back out and still smelt like skunk spray when I got home.

4th: Saturday I actually had a day off, but I had a lot of work at home I had to do. Sunday I did have to work which kinda was really really rough! First of all, back to that gold fish thing, there are like, 5 of them left now which means that about 50 of them disappeared over night. The day started out wonderfully. I got all my activities inputted into the computer. I also checked my box for the first time all week and in it was an envelope that had my name on it with the word CONFIDENTIAL on it. I figured it was a new confidential list (every session we get a new confidential list that has a list of all of the kid's allergies, meds they take, any diagnoses they have like ADHD or ADD... all the good stuff that we should know about the kids) but considering I already got one, I didn't know what it was. I opened it to find a letter saying congratulations... we would love for you to work for us this school year... yadda yadda yadda. There was also a contract for this 2007/08 school year as Assistant Weekend Coordinator at Ojai Valley School Lower Campus (in case, you aren't getting my hints, I got the job and I will be signing the contract probably tomorrow!!). That was a big plus to the day which quickly got put out by an outburst by one of our campers (he has anger issues and it just got really really bad really really quickly), but everything cooled down and I made it down to the beach. The rest of the afternoon/evening was pretty mellow (Dillon, Katie, and I just kinda hung out around campus after the kids went to the park... we just relaxed and talked the whole time so it was really cool).

So that was my super exciting week/end. I hope you enjoyed the look into my twilight zone.

There is So Much More

After my post last night, I feel I didn't give enough attention and respect to James Street. When I got up this morning my dad showed me the article announcing his death. It reads as follows:

"13-year-old killed in skateboarding accident

A 13-year-oldThousand Oaks boy died Wednesday after a skateboarding accident, authorities said.

"James Street was riding a skateboard hown an incline on the 1100 block of Calle Pecos in Thousand Oaks at 7:15 pm when he lost control of his board and fel, hitting his head on the pavement, said Senior Deputy Medical Examiner Armando Chaves.

"Street, who was not wearing a helmet, was transported to Los Robles Hospital & Medical Center in Thousand Oaks. He was pronounced head during surgery there about 10:30 pm, Chaves said."

That's all the newspaper had time to say about the life of James Street (I'm sure there will be an obituary... but still) They didn't say anything about James' love for life and his extreme sense of adventure. They didn't say how many people are going to miss seeing his huge grin every day at school. Instead, the papers worry about who is the new "Richest Man in the World" and how Paris Hilton is doing now that she is out of jail. There is so much more then this!

A song popped into my head when I woke up and started thinking about James and the accident. The song is by Brett Dennen (he is an amazing musician and if you haven't heard of him, you are missing out) and it is called There is So Much More.

When I heard the news,
My heart fell on the floor
I was on a plane on my way to Baltimore
In these trouble times its hard enough as it is
My soul has a known a better life than this

I wonder how so many can be in so much pain,
While others don't seem to feel a thing
Then I curse my whiteness,
and I get so damn depressed,
In a world with suffering,
Why should I be so blessed?

I heard about a women who lives in Colorado,
She built a monument of sorts behind the garage door
Where everyday she prays for all whom are born
And all whose souls have passed on

Sometimes my trouble gets so thick
I can't see how I'm gonna get through it
but then I'd rather be stuck up in a tree
Then be tied to it

There is so much more.

I don't feel comfortable with the way my clothes fit
I cant get used to my body's limits
I got some fancy shoes to try and giggle away these blues
They cost a lot of money but they aren't worth a thing

I wanna free my feet from the broken glass and concrete
I need to get out of this city
Lay upon the ground stare a hole in the sky
Wondering where I go when I die
When I die.

Long Day + Extra Long Day = LONG WEEK

Well, like the title of this post says, this week has been very long and it's not even over yet. Let's start at the very beginning (a very good place to start). Monday was rough because it was the first day where all of our new kids (around 50 of them) had to follow our normal schedule. While they were all finding all of their classes in the morning, I had to run around and find all of the kids I missed coming through the line (it's kinda complicated to explain but yeah). So Monday was full of whining children saying "I wanted to change my activities" which is never really fun.

Tuesday was another long day. We had a staff meeting in the morning which went pretty well. The rest of the day went according to plan. We had one kid who is kinda a turkey and is trying to manipulate all of us, but little does he realize that we are a whole lot smarter then he thinks.

Wednesday (yesterday I guess) was absolute chaos! We had to take the kids to the parade, which in and of itself is a lot of work. After the parade we all ate lunch and then I had to run the quad games all by myself! Another 3 hours standing in the sun, yelling directions to 80 kids; not my idea of a great 4th. If that wasn't enough, we then we had to open the pool (I had to lifeguard because our normal lifeguards didn't show up) for another hour which was really rough. Towards the end of lifeguarding, Dillon and Katie (Dillon and Katie are my two closest coworkers) came down to the pool and filled me in on the latest gossip about some of our unruly counselors (one of the girls is hooking up with one of our lifeguards and one of the other counselors... at the same time... crazy stuff). After OVS I went to a BBQ at the Smiths house (thanks again Amber, Ryan, and Martha). I was going to stay and watch the fireworks, but I was soooooo wiped out from the day that I went home and went to bed.

Today was probably the longest day this summer. Last night before I fell asleep, I realized that I had forgotten to prepare Activity Ballots for the kids to sign up for new activities (like I said before, it's a complicated process and it's hard to explain over the internet). Since I didn't prepare them, I had to wake up a half hour earlier (I had to be at Mason's at 7:30) and go into OVS to make copies and collate all of them for each class and each student. So that was rough and then I went in to see Mason. Poor guy is still teething and nothing seems to help very long. After three hours with Mason, I went back to OVS where I soon found out that one of our fall students (who just graduated and was not at summer camp) passed away last night. James Street just graduated from OVS lower about a month ago and after a skateboarding accident and complications in the hospital, he passed away. It is super sad and while dealing with our own personal emotions on the death, we also had to deal with breaking the news to the fall kids who knew him while not upsetting the rest of the campers with this tragedy. It was a long day and I would love to tell you more of the details about what happened, but I have another long day ahead of me and I should get some sleep. Please be in prayer for James Street's family, his friends, his classmates, and his teachers. It's one thing to lose a high schooler in a class of 500, but to lose an 8th grader in a class of 50 is a whole different story.