This summer has been the best one of my 20 humble years of existence. I learned a whole lot of things, had a whole lot of firsts... it was incredible.
Last night we had our staff banquet at the Commerce Club... absolutely incredible view from the top of the building. I sat there, trying to think of what to say to everyone.. how to put into words the impact the staff had on me. I ended up coming up with something, but it didn't quite do the people I worked with justice. They're incredible.
At the beginning of the summer, I left training week wanting a list of things to do.. how to interract with campers, what was appropriate to say when a camper tried to slap your butt, how to handle a siezure, what to feed a diabetic who really just wanted a cinnamon roll (or in scott's case, fruit loops)... but as the summer progressed, I realized that there was no rhyme or reason to daily life. The old counselors taught me that the only thing to do was to learn from the campers... learn from them how to take care of them, but more importantly.. how to love them. You can't learn how to love them from a form or a lecture... only from experience and prayer. The staff showed me to do that. The campers showed me how to do that.
Randy prayed at the end something that really rang in my heart. Lord, we know you made our campers just the way You wanted them. They're perfect, just the way they are.
So things I learned this summer... the list could go on and on. A few firsts and adventures bear mentioning. I never thought at the beginning of the summer I'd...
- chop off my hair
- live out of my car
- skip a rock
- kiss a frog
- play in water with poisonous snakes
- learn to shag (sort of)
- get in theological debates with BJU-ers
- become really close friends with BJU-ers
- wash a horse
- go to a hippie drum circle
- try to teach a deaf dog to heel
- get kissed by a camper. numerous campers.
- perfect the art of high fives and handshakes
- learn to speak in "HEY PTTH WOOHOOS"
- wear chacos
- like wearing chacos
- learn how to booty dance from campers
- find a camper naked, in my bed, wearing my sunglasses, listening to my ipod
- find a camper's underwear under my pillow. twice.
- cry when a camper went home
- dance in the rain with my cabin
- watch a camper gum a snickers bar. twice a day.
- get tackled by a little person
- get threatened for stealing a boyfriend i'd never met
- get so much "sugar" from ms. emma
- be asked by a 60-yr-old woman with downs if the vending machines gave out beer
- take the backroads across the state
- get a gamecocks hat on the real clemson tiger
- get brainwashed "USC" style
- retrieve a camper who had locked herself in a bus and laid on the horn
- sing mary poppins every day for 3 hours a day
- catch myself falling in love
- spend warm summer nights on a rooftop terrace in charleston
- spend more than one night in a sketchy locals bar
- play pool. and win (with some help).
- get taught how to shag in the middle of a bar
- bring six boys home to mom and dad
- love thunderstorms quite as much as i do now...
- get to the "yes, dear" stage with a camper
- share a boyfriend with a camper
- earn booty-dancing rights
- learn how to use hair grease.
- go through an entire journal
- change all my plans for the fall
- drive all the way to columbia just to go to the zoo
- see a redneck wallabee
- eat oysters.. and like them
- learn sign language (a bit)
- shoot a shotgun in a skirt
- hit something after shooting a shotgun in a skirt
- date a boy who shoots a shotgun (not in a skirt)
- speak spanish with a camper
- get called 34 times in a night by watermelon
- salt watermelon
- pepper cantaloupe
- experience downtown greer
- watch golf. and enjoy it.
- chase a schizophrenic. nightly.
..... or have nearly as much fun as i had. or learn nearly as much as i learned. it's been wonderful.
so the camp part of my summer is done, and it's one more night of greenville, then back to charleston to do who-knows-what for a few weeks.
let summer act two begin :)
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