Another kid from my cabin got kicked out the day after the last camper left because of his sickness, so I have six left, and only five until the one kid gets back from his thing. That's been interesting.

Today is pretty much the halfway point of the camp. It's hard to believe I've only been here for twenty-two days, but it's also hard to believe that so much time has gone by already. I might have written this before, but every day feels like two days and every morning I wonder where the time has gone. Those things seem antithetical, but there we are.

One thing that's weird about being here is how little I know about what's going on in the world. Usually Google Reader keeps me abreast of world and sporting events, but I'm almost totally sheltered from all that here. That's why I didn't know until a couple days ago that Nebraska joined the Big Ten, leaving us with twelve teams and leaving the Big XII with eleven teams. Cuhrazy. I wonder how the divisions will be, er, divided.

Some of the recent night programs have been pretty good. We played Capture the Flag, boys v. girls, with a human flag, which was a lot of fun. There was Renegade Rebel, wherein the staff get numbers 1 through 10 and then hide, and the campers have to find them in order. It could have been fun, but the campers mostly just gave up early and went back to the conservatory. We also had a Gong Show, which was amusing for the most part. One of my campers and another guy went up with a pocket watch and lasted twenty-five seconds doing nothing before getting gonged. Sigh.

Kayla--one of the other counselors--Emily, and I went to a Chinese buffet in town before lunch so as to have some real, non-camp food for once. It felt like we were parents getting away from the kids for a day; we just talked about the kids in conservatory.

Experiences like this remind me of how weird I am, haha. Let me explain. I have probably gotten to know most of the kids better than I've gotten to know the rest of the staff. Like, while they sit all at one place at one table, I'm out with the kids. They hang around in one group during sealed orders--a 15-minute period of devotions plus mandatory silence each day before dinner--and I basically sit quietly somewhere else. How do other people make friends so fast?

In a week and a half we're going to Six Flags Hurricane Harbor, a water park in Texas. I'm told this is fun. However, I'm a little anxious. We have eighty (well, less than that now) kids to take down to a water park. We're staying overnight at a Salvation Army corps on the way. How is this not going to be the most stressful thing of all time? I feel like I'm being lied to.

Okay, so...more later? Adios!

Two Weeks (Almost) Down

Almost at the end of week 2 (out of 5); still pretty exhausted. The weekends are especially exhausting, because I'm one of only three conservatory lifeguards; that means that I have to be on duty from 3-5 PM or so on Saturday--I get one day off per week from afternoon free time, instead of two--plus I'll be on duty Sunday 3-5 PM and 6-8 PM. Hopefully this week I can get the campers to be quiet during the mandatory Sunday afternoon nap time. We'll see...

The camper that I had to take in to get tested and treated in town did his solo at the weekly recital last night and then his mom took him home. That reduces my cabin to 7 people--the capacity is 10, and some other cabins have that many--and another one is supposed to leave for three days, starting today. Another camper who has really bad attention-seeking behavior had a bout of shaking last night; the nurse's assistant and the camp director came and calmed him down and have him some Benadryl to knock him out. If his behavior gets worse, or maybe even just continues, I might even lose another one. This is kinda crazy. The conservatory director asked me if I was discouraged, and I'm really not. It's just disconcerting and disappointing.

I've realized that I can read during some things, like "circle time," when I'm supposed to be supervising the kids (as long as I check on them periodically). I've gotten a lot of Latin reading done; almost finished Book 1 of Ovid, and I think I'm going to dive right into Book 2 after that.

My first night program, the "sport" part of "Sport and Spa," got thunderstormed out, and we had a movie night instead. Shame; I was looking forward to playing kickball. Tonight is "Capture the Flag," and they use human flags. That should be fun; there are a few night programs the kids always talk about: mission impossible, messy night, capture the flag. I'M looking forward to "Mission Impossible," largely because, in addition to the water balloons with which the staff gets to pelt campers, we're also bringing out...wait for it...a fire hose. That is the epitome of stress reduction.

Prayer requests:

• Strength/energy for each new day.
• Discernment and wisdom in how to reach out to the kids, especially those in my cabin.

Seeya!

I would've posted earlier, but it's been an exciting last few days (in a bad way). I had to ask; apparently the medical issues going on at camp right now are a good deal worse than in recent years. One of the other counselors told me it was because they're allowing younger kids into camp. Today, though, I had to take one of my campers to get treated at the medical facilities in town. There's been sort of a spate of asthma attacks and heat issues. I teach a sports elective, and I have to find things for them to do indoors; today was cards, for the person who sat in for me while I was in Tahlequah. Sigh.

The heat itself is seeming more normal to me all the time. Not that it doesn't feel hot; it does. I just expect it more now. I may have mentioned this previously, but 70 degrees Fahrenheit has never felt so cold before.

Apparently my cabin is traditionally one of the worst--the kids come back to the same cabin, usually. I've been giving my campers speeches to motivate them to earn some points, which they can gain mostly by practicing. I told them that the hole they've dug means they all have to practice during all 1.5 hours of free time for four days per week. To this, they agreed. The practice sign in/sign out sheets tell a different story. Sigh. I've always been a competitive person, and sometimes overly so. I don't really understand why people can't motivate themselves to, you know, prove everyone wrong, see the shocked look on the camp director's face, beat the kids who are mocking you for being one of the last-place cabins. Guess some people will just always be content with losing--and possibly having to clean the conservatory each week--as long as they can avoid doing anything that looks suspiciously like work.

I learned a new word in Korean from Songheui: "pigonae," is how I'm choosing to transliterate that one. I don't think I (or, apparently, she, or probably any of us) have gotten a good night's sleep in two weeks. However, I have found time recently to read about 350 lines of Ovid's Metamorphoses, Book 1. It's much more enjoyable to read Latin at the level that a 3rd year Latin Master's student does than the level of a college senior.

God's really teaching me a lot this summer about having faith. I'm running out of time here, so I'll give that some detail later, but I'm trying to do devotions with my cabin and I have a number of kids who are...well, uninterested in spiritual things. They go to church and call themselves Christians, but that's often not what their words and actions tell me. Plus, I'm going without so many of the things I normally have around me all the time, and I'm not getting the amount of sleep I'm used to--I'm just trying to rely on God for all things. Oh, and not worry about the things I have to do when I get back.

My intention is to update this again on Saturday, but that intention might be thwarted. (Hopefully not.) The fact that I'm one of only three conservatory lifeguards means that I'm on duty in some way or other, pretty much, from noon Saturday through Monday at around 10 AM. If you don't hear from me before then, that's why!

Okay, I know it's been a long time, but things have been a little crazy during the first week of camp. I "have" lots of free time during the day, technically, but recently it's been taken up by dealing with camper issues. We've had what must be a record number of minor-ish health issues that we've had to go to the nurse with, lots of behavior issues that have had to be dealt with. Sigh. I got switched on the first night of camp with the adjacent cabin, and I went from having lots of first-year kids to having veterans...who have a reputation already for making trouble. And they've made plenty of trouble. We have a sort of Hogwarts-esque house cup thing, and our cabin is already well behind in points. They can earn it back by practicing a lot and doing lots of music theory worksheets, but....well. That seems to be problematic.

I think my Northern accent is gradually being replaced by a more communicative Southern one. I have now already told someone to "put up" something, rather than "put" it "away." As far as accents go, this camp is an interesting place. Some people come from Arkansas and have a distinctive accent from there, others of the staff are from Louisiana, plenty are from Oklahoma, which is sort of divided between Midwestern and Southern.

I think I mentioned that I've been super busy here. Normally the kids have an elective class--I teach sports--at 1:45, then they get canteen (1 drink + 1 snack from the canteen) at 2:45, then free time at 3. The regular summer camp staff get weekends off, so I had to teach sports, run down and staff canteen, then go over to the pool and lifeguard for a couple hours. Needless to say, I'm pretty beat. Fortunately, the camp has a mandatory 2-hour nap on Sunday afternoons...it's going to be soo nice...

Prayer requests:
--Energy to keep on going despite lack of sleep and sometimes not really having time to eat and drink enough.
--Faith that God is working in these kids' lives even when they're being very difficult.

Keep me updated on what's going on with y'all! (<-- see that?) Hopefully I'll get to update again within a few days...

Hey guys, trying to upload another video and hopefully that works...the Internet connection isn't the fastest or most reliable. I'm typing this from my cabin, and I'll have to walk a couple minutes over to the dining hall area to pick up a wireless signal, so I don't know if the video I took will actually load. If it doesn't, there won't be a video at the end of this :P.

I have a few interesting stories from the beginning of camp so far. A lot of the folks who work here over the summer go to Oklahoma Central University, and one is an international student from South Korea named Seonghi Lee. My sister is her bathroom-mate (counselors share a separate bathroom with the adjacent cabin's counselor), so she found pretty quickly that I knew a LITTLE bit of Korean. She said my pronunciation was pretty good, so that's good to hear, haha. Also, when we were doing introductions, she shared that she was from Korea and that pronouncing English is hard, especially the word “beach.” Yeah, she's pretty much hilarious.

No one here knows how to play Euchre...except myself, my sisters, Rachel Veltkamp (the secretary, who grew up in my hometown), and another guy counselor who has family from Michigan. He and Rachel were pretty excited to play, so I've been playing quite a bit of that recently. It'd been so long...

The food here is, well, a lot. And on top of that, they give you a hefty evening snack. Now, I'm certainly not complaining, but I'm starting to watch what I eat. And it's ME watching what I eat, so that should tell you how obviously too much it is, haha. Fortunately, my bathroom-mate and his wife (the Buckeyes) are going to run in the mornings while our campers are at their electives, so I'm going to get in on that and hopefully actually get myself into shape here rather than blow up.

Spent all day yesterday—pretty much—training for lifeguarding. The regular lifeguard staff are off on weekends when conservatory students can use the pool, so if some of us conservatory counselors get trained, they can swim. That was definitely, well, a mix of interesting and incredibly boring. We watched a four hour long video about lifeguarding. But we also did a 300 yard swim, which was strenuous, and a few hours of training for different rescues—distressed swimmer, passive drowning victim, unconscious submerged, spinal, deep water spinal...it was a lot to get through. But apparently we did okay, so it looks like we'll get certified! Definitely a praise, because it's apparently a 32-hour course that we “did” in maybe a total of six hours. OH yes, and I got to do CPR on a dummy for the first time.

I've been having really good times with God lately, which is a huge praise. I'm looking forward to being tested this summer and just beginning to obey when God asks me to jump off what look like cliffs—breaking my habit of always being safe and secure. I can't wait to see what God does this summer! Please pray that I'll continue to pursue those times and that God will strengthen my faith as the campers come in that He can do great things even through me, lowly as I am.

That's all for now! If things worked out right, there should be a video below this. Otherwise...till next time, dear readers.

Day the First

Accessing the Internet for the remainder of the summer is going to be a bit easier than expected, but for the next few days—orientation stuff—could be a little difficult. That's why you, dear readers, are getting two posts at the same time today; I'm making full use of my brief window of opportunity.

I'm not totally sure, given my daily schedule, how exactly I'm going to write or say here everything I'd want to, so I'll try just to give the highlights; if you want deeper examination, you'll have to get that some other way or just wait!

We played a lot of those sort of icebreaker/teamwork type games, which was actually surprisingly fun. Did you know I'm one of the oldest people at this camp? I didn't. Also, there are two big Ohio State fans (at least one of them is an alumna), so God's giving me challenges already. Sigh. :P But a lot of the counselors and staff are from Oklahoma, Texas, and Arkansas and went to places like the University of Arkansas, Oklahoma Wesleyan, Oral Roberts, and even Northeastern State University, rahtcheer in Tahlequah.

After that we had a talk from Andrew Barrington, who runs the conservatory portion of the camp. He read Hebews 11 and talked about the importance and the difficulty of having and acting in faith. That really blessed me, because it's something that I've been thinking about a lot lately. I'm not exactly one for taking a lot of risks, and I'm really trying to break out of that. For example, today in the car I suggested to Emily and Laura that we pray for the summer and what God's going to do. They got pretty awesomely uncomfortable—since we never do stuff like that—but they thought it was a good idea, so we did! Might sound like a small thing, but it meant a lot to me.

Then, naturally, an awesome guy named Bobby (mostly awesome by reputation, so far) felt burdened to speak to us briefly about the importance of being really here while we're here. He told us that God didn't call us to do anything this summer but be here, and I think that's so important for me to remember. I miss everyone in Ann Arbor, GR, anywhere you guys are...but God wanted me to be here for a reason. It's something I'd been thinking about already with regards to some stuff, and this was a great reminder.

Once again, let me know how you guys are doing...and tell me what you need prayer for! I'm not kidding about that, yo.

Catch you later.

The Last Leg and Arrival

We had a pretty interesting day in the car today, but not in any of the truly terrible ways. Left the Casa de Borton around 6 AM fake time and faced some pretty intense rain driving through Des Moines on our way south. Even with the windshield wipers going full speed, visibility was pretty low. Thankfully, we got out of that safely and made our way south out of Iowa and then along the Missouri side of that state's border with Kansas with a good rainfall chasing us the whole way.

We stopped for gas and coffee in a little town in Missouri called Peculiar, which was awesome. That's why I wanted to stop there. I switched out driving with my sister there, and as she was getting back onto the road back to I-35, a truck honked at us. The guy pulls up alongside us, and I'm thinking, Ah, great. We're going to get yelled at by someone. He rolls down the window and shouts, “Where in Michigan are you guys from!?” Turns out he was a Lansing man, born and raised. Awesome.

Finally got down into Oklahoma, and it's...really not what I expected, at least not at the camp itself. Lots of trees, lakes...it's pretty good stuff. I have to go to dinner soon (I'm writing this at 4:45 PM fake time), but hopefully I can update this again before I go to bed.

See you!

Giving Iowa a Try

Jotting down a quick post from Des Moines, where my good friends James and Katie Borton have graciously put us up for the night. Meant to leave at 10 this morning, but a few separate incidents set us back a couple hours. That was a frustrating time--tense time in the car, too--but things improved and it was smooth sailing after that. I made good on my desire to have some more serious conversation time, and we had some good talks about our family and things we're dealing with. That wasn't always perfectly pleasant, but definitely a blessing; I'm excited for how God's going to work this summer with me and my sisters.

We also got a chance to sing together a bit, which is something I'd definitely been looking forward to. We're a pretty musical family, but we don't get a lot of chances to be musical together. So we chose a few songs and practiced them. It sounded pretty good, if I don't say so myself, and I might just see fit to post that at some point. :)

Got to the Casa de Borton around 8:30 local time and had some delicious food cooked by our excellent hostess, and consumed it while watching recent episodes of Big Bang Theory, Glee, and (of course) Mythbusters. They rammed two cars together, and it was good.

Hopefully I'll get a video up tomorrow, in addition to easier-to-access print. Until then, dear readers!

Last Update Before Leaving

I recorded a video for this, but I didn't like it. So it's a written one today. I'm not sure that I myself would watch a video blog all that much--maybe once a week, so I don't forget what the person looks like--but with written content you can access it whenever you want! So I may end up writing on here more than uploading videos. We'll see. I DO like my webcam, though...and I might still post that video...

Anyway, it's flipping 80-some degrees in Welling, OK, and the humidity is around 50%. That, dear readers, is un-awesome. I seemed to hear something about a tornado touching down near-ish Ann Arbor, though, so maybe things could be worse. Anyway, I purchased my first-ever pairs both of sandals and flip-flops (ow....), as well as a new pair of sunglasses and some shorts, so I'm prepared a bit better than I was before. Yikes.

I have a long car ride ahead of me with Emily and Laura, and it's going to be important for me to see that as an opportunity. Usually, the only time we're serious with each other is if we're also upset with each other, so I'm definitely going to try to initiate some more serious conversations, especially about kingdom stuff and just stuff I'm going through. I feel that we often, in our family, try to give the impression of being in control of everything rather than ever admit something is wrong. It's a tradition that's tough to break out of, but it's worth the effort.

Prayer requests:

• Safety on the car ride down to Oklahoma.
• Productive conversations with my sisters.
• Increased faith that God will use this summer, both to grow me and to build His kingdom.

Let me know what's going on in your lives, and any prayer requests you might have!

Oh, and, here's the short video, that has some extra details about our trip down and other unnecessary things I apparently felt strongly about sharing with everyone. Enjoy! (Pronounced "en-JWAH." I insist on this.)

Title of Blog

In case you, dear readers, were wondering: the title of this blog comes from the second most famous (I think) poem by Robert Frost, "Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening." Here it is in full:

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.

My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.

He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I love this poem, both for its imagery and because I, too, feel like I'd found a nice place to stop but couldn't. (Does anyone know of any good poems about focusing on where you're at, rather than looking ahead to the future? Because that's another issue right now, but you don't find much poetry about that kind of thing.)

It Begins