July 28, 2011

Wow. So.Today started out with me getting up an hour late accidentally. And then I get on Skype to talk to my wonderful boyfriend. Who's laptop conveniently doesn't have video that particular morning. Come to find out...oh yes, I am being dumped while I am in an effing different country by the boy I thought I was going to marry. I sure know how to pick winners. The rest of the day consisted of me trying to hold it together while I was watching the kids at this random fun park place, and it was like super hard. I had to go off to the bathroom a couple of times to cry. I also cried literally the entire bus ride there. Mostly, I think I was in shock. I mean seriously who does the exact same thing to someone three times like that. But then again, who lets someone do that to them three times. Fail for sure on my part. I don't think I can ever give a second chance again, because I figure the guy I'm supposed to end up with won't need one. If you love someone you don't leave them for any reason (except like cheating or abuse) period. There is no....when its convenient for me crap. You fight for what you love, not push them away. And I deserve better than that. I think more than anything this time, I am just angry. So angry that he thinks he has the right to lead anyone on like this three times, angry that I let him lead me on, angry for not seeking what I deserved instead of what I wanted, and angry for how much time I have wasted on someone who was not even worth my time to begin with. And Not only did I lose the person I loved more than anyone I ever have before, I lost my best friend, and the potential future I had with him. And I know I'll find someone for me. Someone who would rather die than leave me, and someone who can say, "You are perfect for me" and "I won't live without you." That's what I want. I don't need all the cheesy fairy tale bull. I just want something real, and something that will last, and something that is blessed by God. My own version of a fairy tale. And I will, and I am going to wait for that. It is sad it took me three times with the same person to realize, but I loved him. And I loved who I knew he could be perhaps more than who he actually was. I took all the good times and made excuses for the bad things and the things that irked me. Because when you love someone, you love all of them, not just the pieces you want to. So I guess you could say I have been blinded by love for almost two years. But this time is already different, and that makes me hopeful. I'm not feeling the urge to be friends, and desperately seeking his approval. I'm not hoping one day he will change his mind and want me back. I'm not looking to my future as hopeless and not thinking I will ever love anyone the way I love him like I did last time. I know for sure, that what God has in store for me is going to be so much better. And if I loved Dillon that much, I can't even wait to feel what I will for the man I end up falling in love with and marrying, and starting a family with. And this time, he will feel that and more back for me too. Because that's what I deserve. Someone who will put in as much effort into a relationship as I did. Being in a relationship means you always give 100% of what you have. Of course sometimes you don't have that much to give due to hardships or whatever, but you still give 100% of what you do have. Its about give and take, not pushing away and hiding when things get hard. I really did love him more than I can even say, and each time he looked at me I thought how lucky I was to love someone as handsome as him. But i'd rather be able to say "how lucky am I to be able to love someone as handsome, selfless, and loving as he is." and someday I will.

Before we left for the field trip, when we first got to the center, I dazily walked up to the center and saw Aiden running towards me to cuddle with me and give me a hug. At that moment, i started to tear up, and all I could think is, Thank God for kids. Two summers in a row they have helped me deal with a breakup by just being there. I gave Aiden the biggest bear hug and thanked him for being so excited to see me. At the field trip, we were at another indoor fun park thing called Jump Inn. There was this huge blow up slide and trampolines, and everything else was basically like Fun Park. After lunch Emily and I sat at the top of the huge slide and watched kids go down it, and sometimes went ourselves. Juan kept stealing our walkie talkies. he is like a pick pocket in the making, it was soooo impressive.

July 27, 2011

So, today was an ok day. Just meh altogether. Another average day. I guess it has kind of been an average week. Maybe I need to do an attitude check tonight. So again we had like kids in the low twenties, so there weren't so many. But again, they were nuts. It wasn't that bad though I guess. I was just kind of exhausted. But I don't know why the kids wouldn't listen. It was really rainy, so the kids didn't get to go outside that much. This was disappointing because the kids needed to go outside and run out their energy and they couldn't. It caused a lot of problems. Ok. So today Franci, he made me this card during the day. It was a very creepy card. He made a maze on the outside of it, and then he drew a heart in the middle. He said, this is my heart, and this is the maze you have to go through to get to it. Then he drew stick figures of us in the middle. He said it was his kingdom, and he was the king and I was the queen. Then he said that the little thing that I saw in my hand of the stick figure was a little baby. Oh joy of all joys, Franci drew our baby. I was like...oh.....thanks franci.....thats just awesome. soooooo creepy. Another kid, Aaron, came up to Ms. Emily, and he said.... "Ms. Emily, look at my eyes, now look at my feet. You just checked me out." Ms. Emily was like. wtf. That is so weird. Our kids have such odd personalities. The rest of the day was pretty blah. I am really tired. We had the bbq for the new camp A people. they seem really nice, and it was good to get grilled food. woo.

July 26, 2011

So, there were only about 20 kids again, but they were monsters! I have no idea what has been going on with them this week, but it has been crazy. lol. We only got 1/2 hour lunch breaks today, which kind of sucked because I am way behind on reading my book. My reading has slowed down a lot in the last two weeks because I have been a lot busier. But regardless, it was a pretty good day. The highlight was probably taking a mini field trip to the PX. We walked there and they gave us pizza while we listened to a presentation on theft. Who knew that would be a problem on a military base. I guess alot of it is like the teens and stuff though. The kids thought it was the coolest thing ever that there were cameras all over the PX. lol. it was cute. I thought it was soo cool that I got a free slice of pizza. woo! Especially since it was pizza hut and that is my favorite. The low point of the day was probably doing cooking club. Which sounds fun in itself, but it in reality was certainly not. It was like.....not cooking. It was a lesson about fad diets. What kind of child care worker thought that this was a good idea. The children were whining, why aren't we done yet...this is so boring...and Ms. Emily and I were like, we know, lets just get through it fast so that we can do something else! Gr. Of course it was Ms. B who came up with this lesson. I don't know why we can't just do more of our own. Oh well. After work, Emily and I went to the PX to buy food for the welcome dinner for the camp A people that are coming tomorrow. It was a lot of food. I hope that everyone pays me back because I put a lot of my own money into this. If not, I'm sure that Sam will. Then Mr. Mike picked us up and took us to his house to hang out. We made pasta and rice crispy treats and ate outside. Then we watched a movie called Red Baron and just talked. it was a movie about planes. i'm not quite sure what went on because we were talking and I fell asleep lol. But it seemed like it would be good. Overall, pretty good day.

July 25, 2011

So today is the first day of the seventh week. Wow. I can't believe I have been here for this long. The day was ok. The kids were medium good, and there were only 22 of them. Which is way lower in numbers than there were last week. Mike, Eric and Wesley are in training this entire week, so the center brought in staff from elsewhere. Cody from the teen center and Clay from sports Camp A are helping out. They are great, but it kind of threw off Emily and my groove and I'm just not fond of change in general. I want our boys back! Well....not much more to say for today. average day, good times

AMSTERDAM AND BRUSSELS aka: July 23-24, 2011

This weekend was amazing to say the least. I had such a blast the entire way through. I will say that Amsterdam did beat Brussels, but I enjoyed both of them immensely. So after getting to bed Friday night around 12:30 am, I went to sleep for three hours and then got up to get ready for Amsterdam. I had to get up so early because we had to leave for the train station at 4:40, and I had to run to the ATM to get money first as well sigh. To say the least, I was extremely tired lol. But everything got off without a hitch, and it was all great. We got to the train station, and then ended up finding two of the only open seats we could see on the train going to Koln, which was where we were supposed to transfer. It was nice sitting in an awesome seat. The ICE trains are way nicer than most of the other ones. They have like head pillows attached to the seats. How amazing is that. I slept the whole way to our transfer. We ended up having to run to our next train, but we made it in good time. The trains when we were actually in Holland were way better. Like so incredibly nice. And all the people were WAY nicer too. German people in general seem more cold, while Dutch people were way friendly and awesome. We got there, and we started walking around town. I love Amsterdam. It was so....quaint. I think that is a perfect word to describe it. I loved seeing everything there. The houses were really tall and thin or different colors. Then there were canals everywhere. It kind of reminded me of venice, except that the canals are far less winding, and they make more sense. There are tons of floating houses on the canals that look like motor homes that float. it is quite hilarious and adorable. A lot of them have like gardens and/or tables and chairs on top. Some of the houses were odd because it looked like they were leaning into the house next to them. Like they were falling over and got caught by the other houses. The first thing Mary Beth and I did (we were the only two) was make our way to the Anne Frank House. While we made our way there, we stopped at little shops and just looked around the town. I loved all the blue and white china that they sold everywhere. In the first shop we were in, I of course knocked down a stupid glass thing and broke it. So lame. This is the first time I've had to pay for something I broke though, so I guess I had it coming. I bought lots of stuff though. The Anne Frank house line only took us like an hour or so to get through, so it wasn't that bad. It was like really sad, and emotional to go through that house. I was kind of disappointed that it wasn't furnished, but her father in the 60's didn't want it to be furnished. I think it may have something to do with that it wouldn't be the authentic furniture since that was taken. But it had models of the rooms and what they would have looked like. In each of the rooms of the house, they had quotes from Anne Frank's diary and what each of the rooms was used for. It was really sad. I read Anne Frank's diary when I was very very young, but I had forgotten like that she wanted to be a famous journalist and that she was rewriting pages in her diary with the purpose of future publication. I think it is crazy. I guess her sister Margo wrote a diary too, and they just never found it. i think it would have been interesting if at the end of it all both of their diaries would have been found. it would have been interesting to see the two different perspectives. The coolest part of the Anne Frank house was probably the bookcase that kept the entrance to their annex secret. The bookcase was like not completely covering the entrance of the door, and so the wallpaper was put over the front of the door. It was so cool. I cried at the end, when it showed pictures of them and then what concentration camp they were taken to. I was so sad when I looked at the pictures of Otto Frank and Edith Frank. They were in love, and they were separated at the end of her life. Can you imagine what that would be like? It would be so hopeless and alone. No wonder so many of them died, not just the horrible conditions, but being so completely alone. It would be hard to find something to live for. After the Anne Frank house, we needed something lighter, so we walked along one of the canals and went to the IAmsterdam sign. You know the tourism places are always marked with an i for the information. Well, IAmsterdam is amsterdam's like special slogan for their tourism stuff.The sign is pretty cool. On the way there we saw lots of Coffee shops. Coffee shops in Amsterdam are a lot different than they are in America. Coffee shops in Amsterdam are the only place where weed can be sold really. It is very interesting. They are all decked out in this like hippie stuff, and walking by them, all you could smell was weed. bleh. We even peaked our heads inside of one, and then saw that on the tables they have paper to roll joints with. So interesting that it is allowed like that. The final big thing we did in Amsterdam was go to the Red Light District. Yes, this is kind of weird, but Amsterdam is famous for it so we had to check it out. It wasn't quite dark yet, so it wasn't as gross I guess as it could be, although the street didn't look quite as cool without it being as lit up. There were so many sex shops on the street. Along with this, there were tons of buildings that had women dancing in the windows. If they were occupied, a curtain was pulled over the windows. If not, then the women were dancing with not a lot of clothing so they could attract a male. I can't believe something like that is legal anywhere. Goodness. By the end of this, we were super tired, so we went on our three hour train to Brussels. I slept a lot on the train, although when we got there I figured out that our check in date on our reservation for the hostel wasn't correct. Um.....we were like. wtf. I really hope this print out is wrong. We walked to the hostel when we got there, and right away we walked into the middle of this like huge fair with rides and everything. It took us a while, but we finally got there. It was true sadly. We did book the hostel for the wrong day. Thank goodness they had room, but we had to pay like 10 more euro than we would have, and we lost our 6 euro deposit. I guess all things considering it could have been a lot worse. like not having a place to stay. And this place was really nice. It was called Hotel Van Belle. And best of all.....it included BREAKFAST! And not just any breakfast, this was like the motherload of breakfasts. There was cereal, juice, coffee, bread, cheese, fruit, etc. So many things. I was so excited. I ate quite a bit. Then it was time to explore Brussels! I loved brussels a lot, but Amsterdam was better. Brussels didn't have people that were as nice, and they spoke French which was interesting. We went around the main square, which had all these really old buildings that had gold on them. It was really cool. We also went to like the gardens and the king's living place. Also, the parliament building. The best part of Belgium though by far.....was the Waffles! Omg. I can't even describe how absolutely amazing the waffles were. I had a waffle with strawberries adn chocolate drizzled on top. Amazing. I wasn't aware though that Belgium was such a large place for fine chocolate. But there were basically as many chocolate shops as there were places to get waffles. Which, trust me. I was not complaining. Amsterdam was also more unique than Brussels. A lot of the buildings reminded me of lots of other places in Europe. But still cool. We didn't stay in Brussels long, and then we took a trip back to our lovely home in Stuttgart. It was really nice to get home finally (yes, i have started referring to this as home). We got here in Stuttgart around 8pm, and then we were able to relax for a while before our manditory meeting. At this meeting, we found out that we are getting four new camp adventure staff from somewhere in Germany. They are going to be working at the CDC. They are going to find out withing 48 hours of leaving their site that they are coming. I would be so pissed if I had done camp the first year and been moved so close to the end especially. I don't see why they are moving people who will only be here for three and a half weeks. It seems utterly pointless. But whatever. Had an amazing weekend, got to know Ms. Mary Beth better, and had an amazing time.

July 22, 2011

So today was friday already. Crazy crazy crazy. I can't believe that this week went by so fast! I am glad though at the same time. It was a good friday. The amount of kids went down substantially, and it is back to more of our normal numbers. Which is good. There were about 24 today or something like that. It was amazing. The kids were acting up a little, but nothing too bad. The worst were Anaja and Sebastian, which was surprising, cuz they have been awful this week and they are usually the best. Oh well. I guess all kids have the right to have bad weeks. At least a lot of the new kids Ms. Emily and I don't really like weren't there. Yay! The kids were really good trying to earn last minute tickets for pie the counselor. Also, There was like a fashion show with stuff the kids made this week, and we did our blitz off performance that the cd didn't work for last year. That was really interesting. Cute kids. Oliver has the best robot dance of everyone. Cream the counselor was intense. Mike was lame and didn't wanna be creamed. (would mess up his hair or something...lol....so vain) But Ms. Emily, I, and Eric were creamed. Out of the original 8 creamings.....I recieved six.... Really really.....SIX! I was laughing. At least it is all in good fun and I know it is out of love. The kids always cream someone they like ya know. Then we got ready and dressed in normal people clothes and waited to get off work. Cameron took us to HARRY POTTER! SO now i've seen it twice yay! It was really good the second time too. Cameron's parents are so nice. They bought us each a slice of pizza, small popcorn, candy, and water...plus more candy to share, and they paid for the ticket. We were like, you guys are the best ever! Way after I got back, I realized that I left my camera at the center. That was not fun at all. I was kind of angry because like really...I've only had the thing for a couple of weeks and i already left it somewhere. So thankfully ms. Emily is really nice and she accompanied me to Panzer where Ms. B let us into the building. Unfortunately it took a total of three hours to get there and back, and about 14 euro. SO LAME! I felt awful too that it took so long. Oh well. Now i have it for AMSTERDAM!

July 21, 2011

So...today was basically the exact opposite of yesterday to say the least. The kids were monsters. I mean CRAZYYYYYYYY. But we went of a field trip to Sensapolis, which is a HUGE indoor play place, kind of like Funpark, but way bigger. So I thought, this will be way more fun! Not really. There were some cool slides to be sure. This one was like five stories and went straight down. You are supposed to have your hands crossed across your chest, but this one girl, Z'kiah of course, didn't and she had burns on her arms from where it touched the slide. Yeesh. But this one slide in the middle I thought was going to be slow like shot around a corner and flung me off the end of the padded landing. I screamed bloody murder on the way down and thought I was going to die. OMG. I was done after that lol. Blitz off was disappointing because the cd kept skipping. Which is sad because the dance for it is soooo darn cute. And basically no matter what we did we would look better than Kelly day camp lol. They don't do that much. So it was a bummer, but I think we are doing it for the center tomorrow. Cream the counselor is tomorrow....have to remember to bring everything. Ok. So after work, Anaja's mom and she adopted Emily and I to go to dinner at a Greek restaurant. Yay! Except....duh duh dun! Autumn the evil mouse girl's mom did not come to pick her up because she was stuck in traffic so guess who got to go with us. Emily and I were thinking, you have got to be kidding me. It cannot be possible that we seriously have THIS bad of luck. But sadly it was entirely true. We did have that bad of luck. boo! And so alas we were stuck at dinner with this odd little girl who is extremely rude, makes blatantly obvious statements and does baby talk....for hours. Luckily we came to realize that Anaja's mom did not really care for Autumn either. Autumn would say something, and Anaja's mom would make a very sarcastic comment back that went over her head. Emily and I looked at eachother a lot. This lady said everything we were thinking and sometimes did say at the center. Autumn wanted me to go moniter her outside so she could play tag....while we were all eating dinner. Gosh. I was like, I'm not your babysitter Autumn. And we are all eating. And she would interrupt whenever anyone talked with stupid random comments like "look I can cross my eyes". What are you talking about crazy child! She is one of my two least favorites at camp for sure. Her voice is as bad as nails on a chalkboard to me. grrrrrr. Oh well. It gave Emily and I quite a few more inside jokes. Greek food isn't my favorite I discovered. At all. But Greek dessert wasn't bad I will say,. Night!

July 20, 2011

So today was probably the best day of camp possible that there ever will be. I am so happy it happened. First of all, it was just a really good day with the kids and the were significantly less crazy than the previous two days. Second, I got to go to RITTER SPORT chocolate factory and make chocolate! This was a mini field trip, and since Emily has been on two and me none, it was my turn yay!!!!!!!!!! So we took 14 kids, Ms. B and I. She was a lot nicer when it was just us two, and had a good attitude for her until about the very end. So it wasn't like it could have been, for sure. On this tour, we learned how chocolate was made and then they had us mix our own ingredients in the chocolate sauce and pour it into a chocolate mold. I put stuff in mine that you don't normally put in chocolate like gummy bears, fruit snacks, etc....just because I can never buy an actual candy bar with that kind of stuff in it. Regardless. I poured that chocolate and then made my bars!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We then got to make like a case for them, it was so cool. I made one for dillon and decorated it all cute, although he won't like the chocolate much lol. The extra that we snapped off the bars after we took it out of the mold we got to eat. We also got to eat the leftovers in the bowl after we poured it into the mold. So....I had a tooooon of chocolate that day. At the end we went back to the center and had pretzels for snack. Then Elijah's parents, the Roy's picked me up and we went to HARRY POTTER! It started at 7:30, so we went to ice cream first and that was good. The theater was an English theater in Germany and it was so cute. There are trays in front of you, which is like genius so you don't spill. And then I tried this cola mix called Mezzo, which is like coke and orange fanta mixed together. It was super good. What a great day!

July 19, 2011

Today was SOOOO NUTS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Omg. There were 40 kids, which is ten more than we normally have. And...we were short staffed because they were all late sign ups and it wasn't expected. I was like omg.....this is absolutely CRAZY! Even more new kids. We only got half hour breaks instead of hour also because they couldn't afford to let the staff off for that long. Which I didn't really mind, because I got to eat the kids lunch before I was off. It was like penne pasta and garlic bread and stuff. It was sooo good. I also got to finish my book, which was sooo good! I love reading. I am behind schedule, so I will have to catch up in the next couple of days. Today even with more kids though was not as bad as yesterday by any means. It was a good day. We made robot costumes with the kids for blitz off to Mr. Roboto. All the dance moves I can think to teach the kids for it though are from Dance Central lol, even though that is not one of the Dance Central songs. Ms. B told us yesterday we couldn't use the paper bags because they are so hard to find...um...they are in the stinking craft closet. Why in the world would they have them if not to use. Gosh Ms. B pisses us all off so much. So we waited until she left and then told Corrie we needed them, so she of course was like, oh yeah! That's awesome! Of course you can. After we were done we hid the painted bags. Then today after Ms. B left we took them out and put tin foil buttons and bows and stuff on them. And hid them again lol. At least she doesn't go on field trips with us. Today after work Juan and Gabby's family adopted Ms. Emily and I and made us dinner. The burritos were really really good and their family is hilarious. The mom is Colombian, and then the dad was raised in Puerto Rico. Cool. Gabby at one point meant to say, "you scared the bejezus (sp?) out of me." But she thought it was "you scared the baby jesus out of me!" Omg. We all laughed sooo hard. It was so funny. And then Juan. He was like amazed at my burrito wrapping skills. It was like the funniest thing ever. He looked at me with his jaw dropped and was like, "I have never seen a burrito that big wrapped so perfectly. nothing is going to fall out at all. How did you do that?" We were like what!? Then he was like, "So you must have done this before right? It is so international." We all busted up... what the heck. It was so cute. He was literally seroius and amazed at how I wrapped my burrito in a tortilla. I guess I am like destined to work at Chipotle or something. Tomorrow I might be doing something with the Roys. Hopefully that works out! Til tomorrow!!!!!

July 18, 2011

So today was the first day back since my amazing weekend in Interlaken. Wow, I miss that place so much already. Having tons of trouble uploading my video...hopefully facebook will work better than my blog. Either way, I won't rest until it is up! So....today was absolutely insane. Not a bad day by any means, but the kids were off the wall and it was the first day since being here I was like...ok....when is my break, when is my break! There were a lot more kids than normal, and the new ones weren't the best behaved. Franci....grrr....that kid. He was so adorable at first, and I feel like he keeps getting worse. Definitely not my favorite anymore or anywhere close. Aiden is still my top. I love that kid to death. He kept clinging to me and was like, I love hanging on you. Can I be attached to you? I was like awe, no sweetie, but thanks. So cute. And a hectic day. Til tomorrow then!

INTERLAKEN, SWITZERLAND aka: July 15-17

So Friday at camp went by really really fast. I wish I would have had time before I left that day to write a blog so that everything would have been all caught up. Regardless, I'm going to try and write down what I remember. It was my favorite kid, Aiden's, birthday. He is sooooo cute. He has been telling me about his birthday for weeks, and I told him I would let him hang on me more on his birthday than normal. He is so cuddley and always just wants to hang all over me. So all day long we had like our normal programming stuff. But it was really cold, so we watched a movie instead of playing outside. We watched Labrynth, which I haven't seen since the choir trip to the lake cabin my senior year of high school. It was for sure amazing. Although sitting for that long when I was super tired was not the best thing ever. I was so like out of it. I dozed off a couple of times. Aiden of course sat next to me and had me put my arm around him the whole time. lol....that kid. And then during the day we also did cream the counselor. I made the decision that we are using shaving cream instead of whipped cream this year because whipped cream ends up smelling so so so gross. I don't like smelling rotting milk while on the weekends traveling. So...shaving cream it was. And it smelled really good. Eight kids got to cream us. They were kind of out of control though, and it was really hard for them to stay like in line and paying attention. Which is weird. Kids best be behavin'. But they had a good time creaming ms. Emily and I. Mr. James, the family counselor also let them cream him, which was really nice of him. I don't know if I would if not for camp. Eric leaves before that, and Mike was gone this friday, so It was just the three of us the kids had to choose from. Eight plus pies on people, and we only went through one and a half cans of shaving cream. That stuff just like keeps going....I was seriously impressed. We also had a cake that day for Aiden's birthday. It was a massive cake and the kids were like super bummed they had to wait for him to eat the first bite. The cake was so good, but it had this like black frosting on it. My piece didn't have this, but a lot of them did. So many people's mouths were like completely black from it. It was pretty intense. I laughed super hard at like Aiden, Emily, and Oliver. After work (I had taken the earlier shift so I could get home early), and went to my room to change, grab my stuff, and go to the train station. It was crazy fast I had to get ready. Then we went to the train, had our list of transfers planned out, and were on our way. The ride was long....I got some of my book read, but then I ended up sleeping for quite a bit on the way there. We had two transfers, but we made it without a hitch. We slightly started to freak out when the train we were on stopped at a station and then started heading the way we had just come, but it was just taking a different route. It did that on the way back too. We finally arrived in Switzerland at like one in the morning at Interlaken and had to walk and try to find our hostel. After asking for help from two guys, since there was absolutely nothing helpful in the directions I printed, We made our way there. It was kind of a long walk, but part of that could have just been because we were so tired. We checked in at the main hostel, and then had to walk a bit further to the tents,which is what we were staying in. It is like this permanent tent village with little tents that have like three bunk beds each, and then a common shower, bathroom, and sink area. It was so quaint, and I absolutely loved it. I just remember that walking on the way there, I already knew that i was going to love Switzerland so so much. It was freezing that night, so at least the blankets were good. The canyoning stuff opened early, so we were going to try and leave by like seven the next morning. now almost two, I for sure didn't get that much sleep that night. But oddly enough. Saturday morning, I woke up feeling like I had a ton of sleep and it was super awesome. I got up at about six to take a shower and then got ready. I was ready to leave, but cuz of some people in our group we didn't end up leaving til like seven. Then we get to the main hostel to book stuff at like seven twenty. And we waited in line behind these like two guys for ever. They were booking stuff for the whole week so it was taking forever....then they started to book stuff for their friends. It was like really? Why. But then the main adventure office thing opened so we bailed on the line we were in and went there. It is like five to eight at this point. So Sam and I, who were the only ones wanting to do the longer, more adventurous canyoning trip went first so we could get our spot. Luckily we got in, since the one we wanted left at eight. We rushed over two buildings after we paid so that we could go! The trip was like 159 CHF and Euro is slightly lower than that in the exchange. I mean worth more. But they are close. So Expensive. But worth it. So Sam and I got to this building and our leader guy comes up and there are six other people who are from a group studying abroad in Germany for the semester. The eight of us followed the main guy and this other leader guy to get our wetsuits, helmets, etc. The helmets all had names on them so everyone could be identified inthe videos and while out in the canyon. I was Pusscat, Sam was Goofy, then there was like Rambo, and some others...lol... It was a lot of stuff. And then we piled everything into a van and started to drive. We drove for like ever, but the views on the way to where we were going were breathtaking. I can't even describe how in awe I was of absolutely everything I saw. Everything looked like it was straight out of a photoshopped post card. Wow wow wow. So... We stop on the way up at this bakery and grab some stuff for afterwards. Finally we stop and change into our wetsuits in the middle of a field (we had our swimsuits on so nbd) and then we drove a little bit to our final destination. It was pretty intense. We arrive and step out, and there is just this huge ledge with a guard rail. Our instructors step out of the van and attach ropes to this ledge. I was thinking, oh my gosh oh my gosh i'm going to die, I didn't know I had to repel down something! So they hooked us up and we had to like lean all the way back. Basically we were standing up straight, but it was sideways! and press our legs backwards. We could let go of the rope, but i just couldn't do it! At least I got up on my feet. But at one part, this huge side of a cliff like dipped inward and I lost my footing. Of course I would be the only one in the group that this would happen to...... of course. But then I kept going and one dude at the bottom from the study abroad group helped talk me through standing up again. I made it down in one piece yay! The way to describe what repelling felt like is running backwards through the air. When we were all at the bottom we started on our journey. We had a bunch of slides down these like rocks, and then we had to jump from rocks into the water. It was basically one huge continuous winding waterfall that we were walking down. It was unreal. The scariest slide was this one where the rock cut off and we were like launched into the water. Another one we had to like jump on to another rock sideways and they like shoved us onto the slide. It was crazy. The scariest jump (all of which were recommended we do in a cannon ball style) was this one where you could either jump from 15 feet or 30 feet. To get to the 30 ft I had to like climb up this side of a rock wall with nothing strapped to me. We were just holding a fricken rope. It was so scary! And then standing at the top looking down from that thing. Was just nuts. I thought I was going to die. I was shaking soooooo much. But I did it. I felt sooo accomplished afterwards. I have for sure never jumped from anything that high. That was probably the most scary thing out of everything for me. The next scariest besides the repelling was when we kind of zip lined down this one part of the mountain we were looped through our hook with this rope, but it wasn't tied. We had to hold onto it and let go when they said as this thing is like whizzing downwards. Omg. So scary. My hands were so cold from the frigid water. i've honestly never felt anything like that. I was like....what if my hands let go, what if my arthritis makes me not strong enough to hold it! I was freaking out. But I did it. I did everything. I am so proud of myself for that day. After we were all finished they drove us back to the field we changed and they had bread, cheese, and tomatoes, and beer for us. I had so much cheese and bread. the cheese was some of the best I have had. And the bread everywhere in Europe is just unbelievably amazing. I had such a blast. When we got back, the other group who did the less intense one was back and getting ready to go to the lake. The lake wasn't my favorite to be honest. We didn't end up at a part with a beach, and it took us like an hour to find it. We should have just taken the bus. But the lake with the mountains in the background was amazing, and it was nice to just lay out in the sun for a while. Did for a while on the ground....too rocky...field....too buggy....bench? Perfect! That was nice. Then we walked back and got ready to celebrate Sam's birthday!!!! We went to a market and bought stuff to make pasta and bread and salad! It was awesome. The hostel we are staying at, in the main place, has like a kitchen and cooking stuff you could use. I unfortunately dropped one of the cans of sauce on the way there, but it all ended up working out. The pasta was sooo good, and I think Sam felt nice that we had made something for him. During dinner too, all of us but Sam (since the PC isn't really supposed to drink with us) went down during happy hour, which was during our dinner, and got drinks. We all ended up getting cider which was super cheap because everything was buy one get one free. It was nice because Rebecca and I each paid like two fifty frank for our cider! Woo! After eating we all went down into the bar area to just hang and dance and stuff. The bar is literally the hostel's bar. Crazy part was.....We saw the group from Sam and my canyoning at the hostel!!!!! It was really cool! They were like, where is Goofy! And we had a lot of fun. One of the guys ended up buying me a drink, yay free stuff, because I am soooo poor. We danced for a while and then Molly and I headed back to sleep, and soon everyone else followed. I was so tired. I didn't even hear everyone else come back, even though they weren't far behind us. There were five of us in one tent and I think four or five in the other we had booked. (Also six more camp A's from our camp were in a different hostel in interlaken that weekend and we saw tons of people from other camps. Crazy small town for how much there is to do for reals). The sleep I got that night was like the best I have gotten in so long. I slept til eight, so I got like seven or so hours. Perfect! I got up and just adjusted my hair rather than get ready. Saturday's weather was so perfect and sunny and gorgeous. Sunday not so much. It was really rainy and gross. But oh well. These kind of things happen. We mostly just chilled around and got some souveniers. Our train left at one to go home. So we were back by like seven. That was nice. I sat by Mary Beth on the way back, and it was just nice to talk, although I didn't get my book read at all. Then Mary Beth, Bre and I changed super fast and headed to Patch to watch the Women's world cup final. So glad I went even though we didn't get back til like midnight. I was soooo tired by the end, but the game was soooo intense! It is a bummer we lost. Mary beth and Bre were apart of the group that came Sat from Stuttgart to Interlaken that were staying in a different hostel. I feel like we are kind of clicking, which is nice. They are cool girls. So Mary Beth and Bre, in interlaken, came up with this creature called BerMyth, which is a mix between a Mammoth and a Bear. I think it is hilarious, and they kind of got me into it too. So I came up with the side kick, HornYcorn (Pronounced horn-ih-corn) that is a mix between a hornet and a unicorn. Best thing ever. Its slogan is back it up, bring it forward. We were creating backstories, and arch nemesis (which turned out to be Basel). It was great times. I am soooo tired....I need to sleep. more later!

July 14, 2011

Woo! Another field trip day down and conquered! So... We went to FunPark, since Trampoline land was burned to the ground. But there were still trampolines, yay! But......FunPark wasn't actually that fun at all. Well it for sure was, for maybe like half an hour....and then not so much. It was a lot like a little bit smaller of a kids play. (You spokane people know what that is..) Or maybe it is just that kids play looked a lot bigger when I was really small lol. But the kids were just having a blast and playing and everything. The funnest parts for me were the double slide, which was two yellow slides right next to eachother, and I went so fast down it I got air over the bumps. The trampolines were also quite awesome. They were way way way springy, and there were ten of them all together. That was crazy fun. i had forgotten how much fun those were. It hurt my back after a while while jumping though lol. I guess I'm getting too old for that sort of thing. I had to warn Emily and Mike, who are both 19, that they would probably have as many issues as me when they got to be over the hill as well. lol. The trampoline watching position was definitely the best too because you could jump sometimes and then just sit and talk until telling the kids to switch after five minutes. (only one kid was allowed on each trampoline at a time) So I spent quite a bit of the day there. After like an hour and a half of crawling through the different levels of the indoor play place, I remembered how big and old I am ha ha. I felt like I had been running for miles and miles. And it sure is a lot harder to fit up into those things when you are really big I will say for the record. There were quite a few injuries that occurred. Mostly it was just like a hit face or hurt ankle that a kid cried about for like five minutes, and then was fine after a while. But this one girl from the SAC program on the Kelly base, she was like running on the play place and then ran into a girl. She then lost her balance and went backwards, and this hanging ball thing smashed into her face. So all I see is this sobbing little girl coming down the slanted plush ladder of the play place holding her mouth and crying. When I asked her what happened, she then held out her hand and there was this tooth in it. OMG! That would suck so much! And it was an adult tooth as well.....one of her two front teeth! Sucks so bad. I hope they were able to like keep it and put it back in or something. I will have to find out and keep you posted. The day went by super slow though altogether. Like....the whole day felt like it had gone by and it was not even lunch time yet. So darn slow. All of us were like at first....This is so cool! and then were like.......This was entertaining for one hour, this sucks hard core! But at least the kids were having fun. I was so tired that by the end of the day I was passing out on the bus ride home. And I have been so good about not sleeping on them too. And even Emily fell asleep. I literally like couldn't focus because my eyes were so blurry and stuff. When we got back we did closing, and the kids weren't that excited. They were actually pretty rude to me, so I had a super not fun chat with three of them afterwards. Jalen cried. He is like the big tough guy. But its not like I was yelling at them by any means. I told them that they had hurt my feelings by being disrespectful during closing. I told them that closing was Ms. Emily and my favorite part of the day. We were respectful during their favorite parts of the day to them, so we would want them to be respectful during their favorite parts of the day to us. Jalen doesn't really get in trouble though, so i think he was really embarrassed that he had gotten in trouble, especially since he was pulled out from the group during closing. I felt horrible that he was crying afterwards, but when I looked back at it I really wasn't even like a little harsh in a way that could have invoked that kind of response. Emily and Mike agreed when we talked later. The only explanation could have been embarrassment that I can think of. Tomorrow we are doing cream the counselor! Shaving cream, not whipped cream, so I don't smell rotting milk for days. It is the most unpleasant thing in the world lol. And.....tomorrow night I leave for SWITZERLAND!!!!!!!! Canyoning, Hiking, Swimming, and everything else possibly awesome, here I come!!!!!!!!

July 13, 2011

Can't believe it is like the middle of July. Time is moving so fast! So today was a really cold and pretty rainy day, so I wore long sleeves all day long. It wasn't that bad though. I really am not sure what all went on all day. Days are starting to blur together lol, so its a good thing I keep this blog so I can keep everything straight even for myself lol. Probably my favorite part of the day was making props for blitz off. I feel like every week is consumed with blitz off, and I wish we just didn't have it, but have to make the best of it. Actually, take that back. I do wish we had it, I just wish we did camp songs and skits like they used to do. But anyways, the song this week is We Built this City. And we painted this massive mural of a city (that Emily designed of course) and today the kids make guitars. It was super cute. Shoot. Just remembered I never cut them out today. Darnit! I am going to have to spend all morning finishing these stupid guitars! At least they look really cool. Especially mine :). And then we did normal stuff all day like crafts and games, etc. I took a nap on my lunch break and when I woke up I was more tired. Probably won't do that again. lol. After work today, I went with Emily, Mary Beth, and some other people over to Patch to watch the Semi Finals of the women's world cup with USA versus France. USA WON! I didn't see the end cuz I caught the bus, but we beat them 3 to 1 yeah! How exciting. Well, field trip day tomorrow. I am not sure what we are doing. The schedule says Trampoline land....but I found out from the kids today that Trampoline land burned down..... Just picture my shocked face. And crushed dreams.... ok i'm kidding on that part. But I have no idea where we are going tomorrow now. I guess we will see. Until tomorrow!

July 12, 2011.

I can't believe that one month ago from today is the day that my plane landed in Germany! Crazy crazy. It has gone by really fast at some times and really slow at others. I am hoping that I have made it over the biggest hump and that the rest of it is just going to be smooth sailing. Of course if my moods would stabilize this would be alot easier. As I am writing this, I'm watching the latest shrek on TV. Its way cuter than I thought it would be. Anyways, getting to today. After much more sleep last night I am feeling way way better. This is good because now I can function like a normal person. The entire day was awesome, and it turned out really really well. I am glad that I was able to have a great day. Aiden showed up today and his hair was a curly mess. It was nuts. So darn cute. During PT this morning we did yoga and did relaxation. it was great. I was able to basically fall asleep and relax a lot of my muscles and stuff. I have been so sore since being here. I think all the travel and stuff is wearing on me. It is crazy. I will need a major massage or something when I get back. lol. The rest of the day was fun too. We did splash day today, since it was supposed to be the hottest day of the week. It was nice because it actually was really hot and we didn't have to worry about the kids complaining on friday if it got canceled due to weather. That's about all I can think of about my day, except that the stupid bus took two hours to go home. I can't believe that it took so long to get home. I was so bored. But at least I had my book to read. That was really really nice. Two hours! I have never seen traffic that bad in my ENTIRE life!

July 11, 2011

So today was the first day back since the weekend. I was having trouble sleeping on Sunday night, and for some reason I was just not feeling so good. Because of that, I was just grumpy and not doing too good. I slept for maybe thirty minutes (when I had had plenty of time to get sleep, probably nine hours and was excited to catch up) and then I woke up and was having a ton of trouble actually getting back to sleep. My wrists were hurting really really bad. And then after having some personal issues, I couldn't get back to sleep until like three thirty am. And I got up at six thirty. All that being said, I was definitely very very tired. I got on the bus and instead of reading a book like normal, I slept. And then I felt sick to my stomach all morning. Either from being so tired or because there is some sort of sickness going around amongst the camp A staff. I threw up like three times right before camp. I probably should have gone home, but it wasn't like I was actually like dying sick. I just wasn't doing good. So I ate lunch right after that, and then I was more ok. On my actual lunch break, not the kids break, I took an hour nap. That was the best possible thing that could have happened. Also, one of the girls noticed that I wasn't doing so good, Z'kiah. She made me a card. On the front it says 'hope you feel better ms. Caryssa.' On the inside it says, 'I really hop that you get better Ms. Caryssa and you are so nice to everyone in sas. I hope you get better every day of your life. Love Z'kiah.' I teared up and wanted to start bawling. It was the sweetest thing. I was so glad that she did that. I felt like God was reaching out to me through her. The rest of the day was just kind of normal. After work, Mike had Ms. Emily and I over for dinner, which was really nice. We went to the Patch Commissary and got stuff to make pizza, cinnamon rolls, rootbeer, and ice cream. In all it was pretty much an awesome night. I was able to get my mind off of things, and both Mike and Emily are very humorous, so I laughed a lot. We decided that we are going to make this a weekly thing. And... Mr. Eric should be coming back from his trip soon, so he will be able to join us next time yay! I need to get to bed, so til tomorrow.

Munich and Heidelberg aka July 9-10!

So, this weekend was pretty awesome. Thankfully also, it was a lot more relaxing than last weekend. I feel like this weekend we experienced more of the cultural things in Germany rather than merely sight seeing, which was really good. I also feel it is good that this weekend was more laid back because we only had four days to recover from traveling in Paris, which by the way is still number one on my list of favorite places I have been ever ever ever. So to begin this weekend off, we started out Saturday morning at like seven or so at the Landhaus, Stuttgart station by the base and got on an 8am ec train to go to Munich. Everything was great, the lady checked our "happy weekend" ticket (I'm not sure what the German spelling is, but it is a ticked for 39 euro that up to five people can use on the regional trains for the entire day throughout the entire country, which is really nice. This is way way way cheaper than paying for individual tickets by far, and we were good. So we got into Munich around like ten thirty, which is still pretty early, so there was plenty of time to do everything. The first thing we did was go to Dachau, which is a city right next to Munich that had a concentration camp. That was probably the first and last concentration camp I will go to while I'm here. I mean, it is really cool, but it is so in a super depressing, creepy, not fun to think about too much way. We walked from the train stop near Dachau to the actual concentration camp, which was really interesting because there is a footpath that takes the same path that the captive people who were on their way to the concentration camp took. There were signs every so often that like explained what was happening to the prisoners along the way and everything. It was extremely sad. We didn't take any photos of us with anything, because that just didn't feel right at all. It was awk enough at Hiroshima when we did that, cuz we didn't smile and stuff. hm...But it was really interesting. The most interesting part of it was the quarters that they had to stay in. They had torn most of the original buildings down, but the ones in the front were preserved. They had like their beds, which were just rows and rows of these tiny wooden bunk beds stacked, and the bathrooms were just open urinals with no doors or anything. It was so sad. I wouldn't have wanted to live there for sure, and I think its horrible that people could put another human being through that. Anyways, we only stayed there for like an hour, because one can only take so much of that, and then we took the bus back to the station we had originally walked from. Then we took another train and went to the exact opposite part of Germany's culture, and that was a huge beer house! When we got off at the stop like two from the main station to try and find where we wanted to go, we turn around, and there is this massive building with a huge like clock on it and thousands and thousands of people standing everywhere and a massive stage. And....rainbows? It was a massive lesbian festival. More on that later. This one is a really famous beer house called the Hofbrauhaus is the one we went to first. It is like a huge restaurant where the waiters and waitresses are dressed in traditional garb with traditional food and stuff. There was also live music playing when we were there (traditional of course) and sometimes there are dancers and huge performances. We all got a beer (mine small and the others large. I am not cut out for Germany man) and sat and drank and ate. It was really relaxing and fun. There were these like Beer maids who would come by and sell pretzels too (called bretzels). At the end of it, we very stealthfully and very illegally all took our glasses. Yes, we are very awful people, but we didn't get caught. Plus, karma came back and slapped us in the face later. After we did a little souvenier shopping, we went to the Augustiener, which is another beer house thing. I just got fries there though, cuz I was still feeling the first beer. After we were done with all of this, we went back to the huge lesbian festival, because it is part of the culture here. There were tons of people in drag, and it was really interesting. There were also lots of booths everywhere and stuff. We got lots of free candy like suckers and gummy bears in rainbow colors at the booths (all in closed packages of course), and we also saw a lot of very inappropriate stickers. We didn't know what they meant, because they were in German, but it was a definite teenage giggle moment when a guy who spoke great English tried to explain them all to us. After we were done with this, we were ready to head to Heidelberg for the night to stay with my friend Madeleine, who was an exchange student at Shadle like my sophomore year of high school or so. She lives in a town right next to Heidelberg called Mannheim, where she also goes to college. So we get on the same EC train going to Heidelberg, and we are on our merry way. It is not until we are like an hour from Mannheim that the ticket guy comes to check our ticket. Apparently the lady on our train there didn't know what the heck she was doing and didn't tell us that the EC trains do not count as the regional trains and that we were on it illegally. Thank goodness he did not fine us, I don't think I could have handled that after losing my camera last weekend, and then already not being legal here. Thankfully he just kicked us off at the next stop and told us a regional train to take there. So we make it to the regional stop, and...... the train switched tracks due to maintenance.....and did not show up at the track we were told it switched to....and there was not another train to Mannheim that got us there before one in the morning......and it was only seven pm. No thanks. We took the next train back to Stuttgart and told Madeleine we would be there in the morning. Stuttgart was only like an hour away. It was kind of nice sleeping in my own bed I will say, although I'm sad we missed the free concert that was going on at her college where we were supposed to be staying. Regardless, Molly and I got up in the morning, (Kristina and Lindsay had been with us in Munich, but decided they were too tired to go out to Heidelberg) and made our way to Heidelberg to meet up with Madeleine. We got there at like 10 am, and since it was Sunday, we were literally the only people on the streets for like two hours. It is so interesting to me that Germany completely shuts down on Sundays. Basically everything is closed, and not many people go out. I would say probably 90 % of the people were tourists. Heidelberg is this gorgeous little town that is in the middle of a valley, so each side has a beautiful mountain side covered in green trees. The castle, like the one in Salzburg, was up a little ways and we had to climb to it. The buildings on the way there were amazing, and just beautiful to look at. The steps on the way up were numbered, which I thought was almost worse because at the beginning Madeleine told us there were three hundred and sixty something stairs. We were panting when we made it to the top, partly because at least speaking for myself I am out of shape, and partly because Molly and I had thought that it was going to rain, which the forecast had said, so we had long sleeves, pants, jackets, etc. Whoops. Super sunny and nice. But the castle was really pretty and had a beautiful view of all of the old part of town from the top. There was also this museum of like pharmacy there, which had tons of old jars and stuff in the rooms that they used to use. There was also the largest wine barrel in either Germany or the world, I don't remember. It was massive to say the least. Madeleine said that because of its size the King at the time never had to worry about the wine running low or empty. After we were done with the amazing castle, we headed back down the stair path and went to get food. Starving! I ate pizza, which was nice. While we ate, we just talked and stuff. It was really interesting to hear Madeleine's perspective about certain things. Like their universities are about 500 euro each semester. Even with the exchange rate that is so much better than in America. I guess they are like really big on education. And we talked about cultural differences, like how they rarely pay with credit cards and always pay cash, and how German people don't smile at strangers or ask them how they are. It is too personal to do to a stranger. Americans do this all the time and expect a certain answer. For example, when you are at the store and you ask they clerk, 'hey how are you today?' you don't actually care what the answer is. The correct response it 'fine, how are you?' with a similar answer anticipated. Germans think this is impersonal and superficial, which I guess it kind of is, but its just part of the culture. They can always pick out who the tourists are based on who smiles at strangers and who doesn't. Interesting. Then after we finished eating we went to the most famous bridge that overlooked the castle, and there was this monkey statue that had space for you to put your head in it. Aubrey would have loved it, although it smelled like metal. There was also this shop that sold this like lovers chocolate. It was super cute. We saw one asian couple that was getting married and their limo driver gave them the gift of this special chocolate that is native to Heidelberg that we kept seeing everywhere. Then we just walked around through town and made our way back to the train station. We walked through this like festival type thing for kids where there was like a mechanical bull, blow up obstacles, ponies, etc. It was cute, and very opposite of the lesbian festival the day before. We then sat with Madeleine's friends for a bit on the grass next to the lake until we headed back to the train station to call it a day. I am so glad that we went, and it was awesome seeing Madeleine again! It was also nice getting home rather early. On the train ride home I finished my 8th book, and was bored for like 40 minutes. I should have brought another one. I will start number nine tomorrow. Tomorrow Dr. Edgington, who is like the original founder of camp adventure, is coming to Stuttgart on his annual tour he does of camp where he makes appearances and checks out different sites. Basically because he started it, he gets a free trip to Europe. Could have used that money to send us to director's training in Iowa! (yes, still bitter) Suffice it to say, everything must go perfect tomorrow.

July 8, 2011

Today was a day that made me glad it was Friday lol. But I seem to remember our shorter week after fourth of July in Atsugi being an unusually long one as well. I wonder why that is. I am exhausted to say the least. I'm not sure why. I got nine hours of sleep. I guess it might just be all the travel and work and everything. Each year is making me older and needing more sleep. i've got to snap out of this so I don't turn into an old person. Well, The first half of the day I just wanted to go home. Not like home to the hotel, but home home. I miss my family, Dillon, friends, especially Danilee. I don't know why I am so homesick this time around. I guess if you think about it though, over winter break this would have been it and I'd be on my way home tomorrow. And last summer, I didn't have as much to come back to in my mind I guess. Camp Adventure had kind of been my escape, and I had needed the kids to help mend my broken heart. But this summer I don't have that need for them. I mean, I absolutely love them and enjoy spending time with the kids, but it isn't what is holding me together, and I'm much more capable of standing on my own this time. So anyways, maybe that's why I am a bit homesick. Regardless, the time before lunch was a struggle. A lot of it probably had to do also with the fact that we had a nature walk/savanger hunt this morning. Omg. The forest thing we went to was so gross and we were supposed to like look at leaves and bugs and crap. There was a slug no joke the size of the palm of my hand,and then the spiders were all over the ground. I just felt all crawly after that and wanted to leave, alas the activity continued for like a stinking hour and a half sigh. I was just not in the best of moods. Which was not made any better by the fact that Emily came back early from lunch, and I ended up going on lunch right as the kids were getting theirs, which was spaghetti and meatballs, and garlic bread and smelled soooo good. I was kind of pissed that that happened, which wasn't really even Emily's fault, because she came back to what should have been like 20 minutes into the kid's lunch, and ended up being the beginning because they were so late getting it out. The rules are so dumb compared to last year that Corie is so strict about the food stuff and it being "government property" even though all the uneaten stuff just gets thrown away. So when Corie left for a little bit I got back from my break I went and got food, since the kids had already had thirds and there were mounds left. i'm so glad I did because it made me feel a lot better, and the meatballs were actually good. It was probably also good to get protein from the meat. So after I ate, the kids hung out for a bit and then we did splash day, for the first time since being with the kids, since the weather was actually pretty nice outside. The kids were like nuts about it. Only a few didn't want to go out. Of course they sent all of us younger ones, Mike, Emily, and I outside, while they stayed in, but w/e lol. It was nice to be out in the sun even though I don't particularly like being wet. So we were water fighting with the kids and I snuck up and dumped a bucket of water over all of them while Mike distracted them. I ran back to the "safe zone" (the pavement on the side of the grass area), and then they were all waiting for me, like a massive line of little evil children. They were waiting with loaded water guns, just waiting for me to make a wrong move and step off the safe zone. I couldn't move anywhere! So Emily, Mike, and I sprinted to the other side of the field. I was soaked to the bone by the time I reached the fence. of course I forgot flip flops so I was barefoot. And no towel, but at least the sun was out so I could dry. I was over splash day in like 30 minutes though and it was scheduled for like two hours. I was like ugh. This sucks! Why can't there be no kids like last friday since I put in a 11 hour day yesterday! Then I could be let off early. But whatever. Maybe that's another reason I wasn't in the best of moods in the early morning. Yesterday sure was a loooong day. So after a while I just sat out in the sun and watched the rest of spalsh day. The rest of the day at least went by faster, since we had some awesome lemon bar things for snack and then just played outside. So despite the kids that are a complete pain...cough Josh (who lacks respect for female authority figures. He literally like screams at me sometimes. At least Mike is like uber the macho type who hates the not respecting women thing and goes and puts this kid in his place. And Ms. Corie is definitely not past dealing with him either. I just can't really stand him.) and Destiny (who screams about everything and has a horrible/ creepy attitude) and Angel (who still claims its ok to pout and whine since she still looks little. What in the world does her no older than 20 year old mother tell this kid.).....yes, despite all of this, today was pretty ok. Oh, and Mike saved me some BBQ chips for the bus ride. Yay chips. Munich tomorrow yay! Heidelberg Sunday yay!

July 7, 2011

Today was our LEGOLAND field trip. I will say that it was pretty much amazing, and I loved it tons and tons. Legoland is definitely really cool. It had sculptures made out of legos absolutely everywhere! Which I guess isn't really that surprising since it is called.....legoland! Alright, so I got there this morning at seven and we left around eight thirty. It was super hard to stay awake during the bus ride for some reason this weekend. I am not sure why, that's just the way it was. And then we finally get there yay! It is super rainy in Stuttgart today, but it was super sunny in wherever legoland is (about an hour and a half away). I was in a group with Mr. Mike (yay!) and we had awesome kids, like Z'kiah, Autumn M., Kiara, Jaylen, Anaja (pronounced anasha), Gabby, Juan, Sebastian, Ian, Logan, and Bryce. It was a really fun group, and they are mostly the older kids so they wanted to go on all the rides. Plus Mr. Mike and I get along really well, so it was a pretty good time. We went on this bionicle ride, where you like put in what you want it to do while you're sitting in this arm thing and it does it. Well, I had my nametag on, my walkie talkie attached to my nametag, and my watch also(which Mike convinced me to put on there since I was joking about my awful watch tan line). So.....forgot to take it off on the ride, and it like flies off around my neck when this thing flips me upside down. It felt like slow motion, because I could feel it coming off and I tried to grab it, but then right as I reached for it, the stupid thing slipped out of my grasp. Kind of dramatic, but it actually happened like that. I was like crap! The center's walkie and my watch! I have another nametag, but I need those! So Mike, who conveniently speaks German and like three other languages, asked the lady working the machine what we should do. She said we could file a missing thing and probably get it by the end of the day. We were like, uh that isn't going to work so...., Mike talked to the photo booth guy, and he told us he could get it in like 10 minutes. Good. That was a much more reasonable time. Then I realized that I forgot my backpack on the previous ride. So I took the kids to some lego making video while Mike went and got the backpack and then we all went to get the walkie talkie/nametag/watch combo. All was fine, except I lost the waterproof top to my watch, but hey at least it still works lol. It was a great day overall, and the kids were really sad to see the day end as was I. Although we hit traffic on the way home so we didn't get there til like 6, and we almost missed the bus to take us to the hotel. At least it worked out. I'm exhausted after a 11 hour day though (although I got some reading done on the bus) and I'm off to bed!

July 6, 2011

So today was quite a day. I think that my kids are going insane. Everyone was back from vacation, so we had a full group again. Yeah...... (can't you feel my enthusiasm). The day didn't start too well either because I like woke up at four am and was having massive troubles trying to get back to sleep. I hope that doesn't happen tonight since we have the field trip tomorrow. Anyways, so that was my morning. And then during the day the kids were just not listening and being rude and stuff. And Ms. B was kind of being a B word (which is kind of ironic isn't it, since it is in her name) and kind of just bringing down the energy in the room. You know how its always just one negative person that tens to cause negativity to spread quickly and it is always hard to be the opposing force to that. Oddly enough even with all that is going on, I tend to be quite positive at camp, even though most of the time it is more wearing on me than school. And everyone knows I have my share of struggles with being positive about my school workload. But regardless. That was just not very fun to be around, especially when I was so tired. And the art project ugh. I wanted to like rip paper and light the building on fire after the art project. It was just so awful. I got put in charge of this sun catcher mobile thing, which is like, you sharpen crayons with a pencil sharpener, and then put the shavings between two sheets of wax paper, iron it so it melts, and then cut out circles, and make a mobile. Oh my gosh. Every single step of the entire project went so incredibly wrong. Like I don't even know how this was managed. First of all, shaving the stupid things took forever. Like an hour. I don't know how the kids were actually doing it for that long. And then there was the melting. It melted fine, but there was like too much wax on one of them so when I lifted it this hot crayon wax dripped everywhere. And then proceeded to dry all to quickly. So as the kids were cleaning and cutting the circles out and making the mobile I was on the floor trying to scrape off wax as fast as I could before someone like Ms. B came over and like freaked out or something. After scraping and scraping for like almost an hour while the kids tried to finish it I managed to get most of it off with only a little bit of stain left on like the floor, the chairs, and the table. But as the kids are trying to cut circles out of this thing, it was like breaking, and just looked awful. Sigh. They thought the final result was amazing, even though I could have easily set it on fire and been content. The rest of the day was pretty ok. Half the kids were gone on a mini field trip to the Audi factory or something. Emily went on that one also, and i'm holding out for the chocolate factory woo. Which I think is in two weeks. The kids today dared Mr. Mike to kiss me....I think I need to have a chat with them about what is appropriate to joke about and what is taking it too far. I don't know why they won't let up. At least Ms. Emily is safe this week because Mr. Eric is gone ha ha. Lego Land tomorrow yay!

July 5, 2011

So, today was the first day back from Paris! I should say that I am missing that amazing city quite immensely. There were not many kids, because a lot of them were still gone for the fourth of july weekend. So in all, things were pretty chill. The day was ok, and the kids were just average and stuff. We went on this awful nature walk where I spent like 90 % of the time checking my legs to make sure I wasn't getting a tick or anything. Rebecca got two when she hiked to the castle in Stuttgart that Brigette, Molly, and I just took the bus to. They were little tiny like nasty ones that you could barely see, and they had huge red bumps around them. I don't want lime disease or anything so I was being really really careful. At the end of the day, we played the game Honey if You Love me with the kids. I used to play this all the time when I was little, and it always worked out really well. If you don't remember, it is when the person in the middle is it and says to the people sitting in the circle, "honey if you love me will you please smile" and the person they say this to says back "honey I love you but I just can't smile," without smiling. Braden used to rock at this game and he would make all sorts of weird like turns and accents to get people to smile I remember. So anyways, we are playing this with the kids and it was super fun for like half an hour. And then it just got really weird and the kids were like being inappropriate. And these are little kids. Maybe it is the television or something, but it just got odd and we had to stop playing. Franci said something like, "baby come here and I'll make you hurt so good" or something like that. Mr. Mike and I turned to him with our jaws dropped. I was like, "Franci, did you hear that somewhere or did you just make that up." all confused, he was like "I heard it somewhere." of course he didn't know what it meant and that it had bad connotations. Heck, he doesn't even know what connotations means. We were like, please please don't ever say that again, it is not good. And then Destiny was just like making all these weird shimmys and saying like come on baby. It was actually really creepy. Then we were like, ok break. done done done. Oh these kids. The kids, well the girls who are all absolutely in love with Mr. Mike and think he is like some kind of greek god or something (which is quite adorable), think that Mr. Mike and I would be a perfect couple, and that Ms. Emily and Mr. Eric (who is gone this week) would be a perfect couple. They like won't lay off about it too. We have to keep reminding them that we both have boyfriends, and so does Mr. Eric. I don't think Mike does, he hasn't said anything, but still. 3 out of 4 being already taken isn't making their matchmaking work out too well. Oh my gosh. you will never believe what happened. There was this new kids today named Elijah, and he looked really familiar. I just chalked it up to seeing him around base or something. And then his mom came to get him at the end of the day, and she looked super familiar. Then she came over to Elijah and was like, we have to go pick up Liem. I was like no way, "Roy?" and she turned around and screamed Caryssa! Danette and Kristopher Roy are a couple at my church in Spokane that I babysat for like 4 or 5 years ago when Elijah was about like 3 or something, and Liem was a tiny baby. They just moved here three weeks ago. I completely forgot that he was even in the military. Such a small world. I hope getting together with them for dinner or something works out, it would be nice to catch up. Til Tomorrow!

PARIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! July 2-4

OMG OMG OMG! Paris is the most beautiful amazing romantic wonderful stupendous breathtaking city I have or probably ever will see in my entire life. I cannot even express how blessed I feel to have spent the last three days in such a wonderful city/country. We left on Saturday morning at 6am on a train to go to Paris, and we got in our seats and relaxed, and I ended up reading half of a new murder mystery on the way. Train rides are great for getting reading done. And then we ended up arriving in Paris at like ten thirty or so. We bought metro passes first thing because i had heard that it is the only way to get around Paris, and let me just say that it is one of my two favorite purchases that weekend. Saved us tons of money and trouble. The weekend day passes were only three euro thirty, and the monday was like six euro. We were going to buy this three day metro pass for like twenty four euro and then the really nice train guy told us to get it this way since it was the weekend and saved us almost ten euro. Already, I was loving Paris. Then we hopped on the metro and went to find our hostel. Super easy, and like two blocks from a metro stop. And about a 20 minute walk from the Eiffel Tower!!!!! We dropped off our bags even though we couldn't check in yet, so we didnt' have to carry them. Then we walked to the eiffel tower just so we could see the city and stuff. At a market we bought wine, champagne glasses, cheese and a baguette. Basically the most French lunch ever, and just sat in front of the Eiffel tower eating and talking and toasting our wonderful beginning to our Paris weekend. The Eiffel tower is just breathtaking, and I can't even describe in words how amazing it was to sit in this huge stretch of grass in front of it. Only the souvenir peddlers who would occasionally block our view of the tower were a little bother, but we did buy some, so I guess they came in handy too. Then we walked up to right under the Eiffel tower and just were in awe of it. The second big thing we did in Paris was go to Versailles, which is AMAZING. We get there after our train ride and just see this amazing huge palace with gold all over it. It was so shiny and amazing. We paid 15 euro to take the tour of it, and it was totally worth it. The thing was absolutely massive and they had all of the rooms from like everyone like Louis 14 and Marie Antoinette. The hall of mirrors was as grand as I imagined it would be and then some. Just chandeliers as far as the eye could see. And the ceilings in this place were massive and painted with these intricate murals. I would have loved to have been Marie Antoinette living in luxury, wearing beautiful dresses every day and being royalty like that. Especially after seeing the bed that she slept in. You would not believe how massive it was with this huge canopy over it. OMG! Of course all of this is except for the fact that she gets her head chopped off. ha ha. Anyways, after we did that we took the trains back to the city. Of course to do this we had to sneak past the entrance gate for the trains because we realized that Versailles is basically the only thing outside of the zones of Paris our metro pass covered a little too late. But we all made it, and made it back to the city in one piece. One piece and probably like half a pound lighter since somewhere in that time I managed to lose the camera that was hanging around my wrist the entire time. Yes. It sucked, I was not to thrilled about it. I can't seem to manage to go more than a year with the same camera. Or maybe losing the camera was karma for hopping the train stop in Versailles. Thanks a ton mom for praying bad things happen to me when I sin. I am partly blaming you, just like I did when I got fined in Italy for not validating my ticket on the bus :p. Whatever the case, it was gone, and I had to get over it. Whether lost or stolen, it was no longer in my possession, and thank God I had already uploaded pictures from Salzburg. Thankfully. It took me like ten minutes of kind of thinking about it, and I was like, ok. I am alive, and I still have my Eurail and Passport. Things could be much worse. I also have three friends here, Molly, Lindsay, and Kristina, that are willing to take pictures and share them with me at the end. Much worse things could have happened. And I was pretty much over it right away. I mean I can just go buy one on base thank goodness. Its not like I'm backpacking and don't have the access to get another one. So after that we went to Sacre Coures, which is like this big church. It was gorgeous inside, and I'm glad we went. Outside there was like this huge crowd of people that were watching some guy slide down this massive rail on skates and try to break some record or something. Who knows. It was a little odd. After this, we went to dinner and relaxed for a bit before heading back to our hostel. We had to pay for sheets and a towel which was super lame, but I guess worse things could happen. This will definitely be my most expensive weekend, and I think second will be Interlaken, Switzerland. But totally worth it. Then we changed to go out on the town. Unfortunately my stomach wasn't doing too good and I was hurting. Maybe it was the cheese in the cheese crepe I had for dinner, but I was not feeling good. But they convinced me to go out anyways and see the Moulin Rouge at night. And the Notre Dame. I will say that we went first to what we thought was the Notre Dame at night, and we discovered the next day that it wasn't it at all, embarrassingly. ha ha. It was like some weird building, and we were like why isn't it lighting up!!!!! And it turned out not to be it at all. Then we went to the Moulin Rouge, which I had no idea was this like huge sex district. Who knew. Maybe I am just super sheltered. But we went up to it, and took pictures at it and stuff and it was super pretty. There these three guys that were like part Spanish part French that came up to us and were trying to get us to go dancing with them and stuff, and the one was like singling me out and asking me to like run away with him, and saying we should get married and stuff. I was so embarrassed but they were really nice. I was like of course when I'm feeling like crap this happens lol. But it was fun. I got a picture with him and then we hopped on a metro to go home. On the ride home, another guy like waved at me through the window. so random! Why do guys only do this when I am not feeling good or pretty!!! But nbd. We went back and I like passed the heck out and slept like a rock. The next morning I woke up officially in Paris yay! And we ate "breakfast" which was cereal and bread, but good bread, and then we went to Musee Orsay, which is one of the two museums we wanted to hit. The museums are free on the first sunday of each month, so Yay for us! We waited in line for like an hour almost, which for this museum ended up not really being worth it I think. Although it was amazing, it was nothing compared to the Louvre we went to later in the day. But we saw some awesome paintings and stuff, and then went to the Eiffel tower again. We went and got in line to go up the eiffel tower, which took like forty five minutes or so. Not too bad. And then we walked up the stairs, and more stairs, and more stairs to level one, and then the same thing. More stairs, and more and more to level two. The view was breathtaking, and the sun was so absolutely perfect all weekend long, that it was just absolutely incredible. Molly and I didn't wanna go all the way to the top, so we went straight to the Louvre, and Kristina and Lindsay went to the top. I am so glad we got the the Louvre when we did. The line was like so so so massive, and it took almost an hour to get in, and the thing closes at six. It was like four when we got in. Two hours. Should be enough time for a museum right? Not even close. This place is like four stories big and stretches and stretches of building. It wasn't even possible to hit like all the main things in that amount of time. However, we did get the like Venus de Milo statue (the one with the missing arm) and Mona Lisa, which are by far the two main ones. And many many others also. We actually amazingly got almost all the main ones down. Or at least the ones we had heard of at least. I was so glad. I thought that the trip to the Lourve was so far one of my favorite things. I mean the Building on the outside itself would be worth going to. It was gorgeous. So then we were dead tired by the time the museum closed, and we went to get dinner. I had this like cheese sandwhich, but french style. It was like a slice of bread, a slice of ham, a slice of bread and then cheese on top. It was surprisingly not plain and very very good. Then we headed over to the real Notre Dame, which we only at this point realized we had not actually seen the Notre Dame the night before, and that's why it hadn't been lit up or looked like what we've seen of pictures of it. The actual Notre Dame was breathtaking (I feel like I'm using that word a lot to describe this weekend) and we walked all around it, but it was closed for tours, so we had to come back the next day. And then we went to the Sein river, I think that's what its called, and took a boat tour of the city. It was my favorite thing I spent money on during the weekend. We left at 10pm, which is when the sun was setting (yes, it is super late in Europe!), and we started going around to everything. The pictures of the sunset are unreal beautiful. And then the sun was set and the whole city started lighting up. Everything, I mean everything. And then the Eiffel tower came into view and it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen in my life. Just that view alone of the Eiffel tower would have been worth coming to Paris for. I had tears welling up in my eyes literally from the sheer beauty of the lit up Eiffel tower against the night sky. And if that wasn't enough, there was this little beautiful crecent moon right above the eiffel tower. You can kind of see it in some of the pictures that I will put up on Facebook. Unreal, unreal, unreal. I still don't fully believe it actually happened. And then to make it even better, as we were sailing away from the Eiffel tower, 11pm hit, and the whole tower started to sparkle with alternating lights as our tour was finishing. I can't even describe it. We were so tired after that, but we walked and saw the Notre Dame at night. Beautiful, but nothing compared to the Eiffel tower. Then we took the metro back to our hostel, grabbed a blanket from the bed, bought some wine, and snacks, and walked to the Eiffel tower. We sat in front of it for like almost an hour and just talked and looked at the tower. The only kind of annoying thing was all of the happy couples kissing and stuff. It really made all of us miss our boyfriends. But the tower was so beautiful none of us could take our eyes off of it, and we were mesmerized by it until 1, which is when it started to sparkle again, and this time we were up close. When it started going off, we all yelled "glitter!" like little girls on Christmas who get a new tiara or the dress up gowns with glitter all over them and sat staring with our jaws open wide to the ground. Out of everywhere in the world I could be, I was in Paris on the very beginning of July 4th, 2011, and sitting in front of a glowing Eiffel tower. I can't describe how very blessed I felt at that very moment. Our walk back wasn't so much fun, got a little lost, but came back in one piece and everything was ending up ok. Slept for like four hours, then up again for an early start to the day. That morning, Lindsay and Kristina went to look for a belly ring top and were going to meet us at the Notre Dame, but our phones weren't really working so we didn't see them til the ride home on the train. So Molly and I went on a tour of the inside of the Notre Dame, and it was AMAZING. So much beautiful stained glass and ceilings and stuff. Plus this like huge cross of gold. Wow, wow, wow. And then we went over to the Arc de Triomphe, which was way huger than I thought it would be, and it had these like intricate carvings in it. We got to it and took pictures, then wanted to walk up close. We couldn't figure out how to get from the outside to the actual arc since there was a road surrounding it and no crosswalks. There was an underground bride we found on the other side that had another entrance on our same side we started on, but oh well. It was worth the walk. After this, we went to the Opera Garnier, which is this huge famous opera house. It was so cool. It had like gold angels on the top of it, and then statues of all the famous composers like Beethoven, Mozart, Rossini, etc. So awesome. Also very cool was that we found an H&M next to it since it was this large shopping district. Stopped there for a couple minutes and I got this awesome jacket for like 10 euro. Yay H&M. I haven't done much shopping since being here. And then we found this outside vendor who was selling these gorgeous scarves. Yay for fashion scarves from Paris. Yes! By this time it was getting close to our train time to go home and we headed back to the hostel to get our stuff, and we went to the train station. We were like an hour early, but I was so beat down and possibly the most tired I've ever been. My feet and knees hurt so bad after that. It was like bad news bears. But I got this yummy pasta salad and we waited. The train ride home was kind of awful. We were at a four person table and not the seats in rows so we couldn't stretch out our legs because we would hit the other person. This made the ride very uncomfortable and sleep was impossible. When we got back I was too tired to go to the fireworks on base, and I just had to go to bed. So I'm writing this a day out of context, but the story is still the same. I love Paris, I want to go back someday, and I am never going to forget this magical weekend for as long as I live. Je'taime Paris!

July 1, 2011

Its July!!!! This is totally insane! Already the weeks are going by so fast and there have only been three of them! i can't even believe it. So, today was our friday, but some of the kids were already gone for the weekend since it is fourth of July and stuff, so we didn't really have that many kids. That plus the fact that we now have two more workers meant that it was pretty easy. It was colder again today which was a shame so for the second week in a row they had to cancel splash day for the kids. But I liked it because we got to watch a movie instead. They were watching Sooby Doo and the lightening and thunder started. It was like coming down hard. The lightening was so bright that at first we thought it was a camera flash, and the thunder literally shook the entire building. it was insane to say the least. But then Miss Corie let us go early at like two thirty or so, which was so nice since we had to arrive early and stay late for the field trip the day before. I was so glad to get home early and get everything I needed to get done before leaving that night for Paris. Although a little sad that I didnt' get to see the end of Scooby Doo. I had completely forgotten about that movie and not seen it in forever. I didn't know that Isla Fischer as a blonde was Shagie's girlfriend or whatever. Learn something new everyday. Later that night around like seven thirty or so, the guys, Eric and Mike, met up with us on Kelly and we walked over to the Irish Pub to get a drink and some fries. They have these wedges there that are with sour cream and they are probably the most amazing wedges I have eaten in my entire life, and this is me definitely not exaggerating. Like WOW! Emily and I had a lot of fun with them just talking and stuff, and then we were both in for the night at like nine thirty or so, so that was great. Off to bed now, Paris Tomorrow!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love my life!