One Thing I've learned

One thing I’ve learned through my travels, is that every place has it’s beauties. The landscape from town to town and state to state is so different, and so beautiful, unique to its own likeness. I think California is beautiful, but it’s a different sort of beautiful that I’ve always seen in Wisconsin.  They are both equally beautiful places.

One thing I’ve learned through my travels, is that I like traveling a lot. I just traveled from Northern California to Central Wisconsin, making a stop in Illinois all by myself, something not many people can do or have done, and I find myself not alone but surrounded by travelers like myself.

One thing I’ve learned through my travels, is that being from Wisconsin, we always joke about Illinois being so flat. And while Illinois is pretty flat, as I return to Wisconsin from California, I find myself thinking the same thing about Wisconsin; it’s pretty flat compared to the rolling hills of Cali.

One thing I’ve learned through my travels, is that I miss the bright green, lush grass I’m so used to in the Midwest. Lost of the west, at least were I’ve been, is sandy desert, and I miss being able to sit outside in the grass and lay in the sun.  We have a little bit of lawn at Camp Ronald, but it’s not the same, since most of the rest of  camp is sand, laden with small bushes and weeds poking its head out of the ground.

One thing I’ve learned through my travels, is that no matter where we go, there are people just like us. People coming to and fro from work to school; bus to train; conference to job. Everyone’s always going, and sometimes it’s nice to stop and rest for a moment to enjoy the city your in. Besides, before it you know it, you’ll be gone by the morning.

One thing I’ve learned through my travels, is that I’m not the biggest fan of flying, and yet on the other hand it’s a thrilling experience. I’ve gotten nervous at least once on each of my three flights so far this summer. If I wasn’t nervous at take off it was the turbulence. Or the landing. Or the change in pressure. But I take a moment to thing about how many planes come and go from airport to airport each day. So many people do this each day and they’ve survived. And if they can do it, so can I

One thing I’ve learned through my travels, is I’m a traveler.

How I Ended Up In Wisconsin

By the time I am able to post this without ruining this without ruining the surprise, all of what I’m about to say will have happened, and perhaps I have already had the pleasure of telling you this story in person, but in case not, here’s what just happened.

Back in the first week of June at one of our nightly staff meetings, the CRM staff were informed that one of the rental groups had canceled on us and we no longer had a group for the week of July 14^th. This was supposed to be Camp Sign Shine, a group of kids with hearing impairments, mostly deaf. Unfortunately, due to many unforeseen circumstances, they weren’t able to return this summer and we’d have a week with no one at Camp. At some summer camps this could be a good week for the staff to work on special projects and get caught up on housekeeping formalities. However, since CRM is so small there isn’t work for us to do without campers using the facility. And with that we were given a week off. We were given July 13^th -20^th  off. We were encouraged to visit California, rest and spend the time enjoying ourselves to rest up since we’ve worked hard and have hit our mid-summer mark. Upon hearing the dates of our week off, my mind immediately started to spin, and I was almost positive that this would be Family Camp at Sky Lodge and the rest was history. The timing couldn’t have been better.

I kept debating whether or not I should go home for that week. It was family camp, so it was the best week to go home. However, there would be many logistics and expenses to be figured out. I couldn’t decide what to do. For about a week I kept going back and forth, trying to decide whether or not I would  visit home for a week. “Is it really worth it,” I thought. But it was. I would have regretted not coming home for family camp on my week off, and to make things better, I’d make it a surprise. From that point onward I would do my best to keep my traveling plans a secret and try to find my way home without telling any of my friends of family. It’d make a pretty good surprise, if you ask me.

So for the past month I’ve planned and planned trying to figure out how I could pull this off. But in the end, I somehow managed to pull it off, and this is how it went (or how it’s going to go, since as I’m writing this I’m only half way through my journey):

On July 13^th we got done with work at 11:00 am and people started pulling out of camp. Me and my friend Char waited for the rest of the campers to leave camp and then our boss, Vicky, drove us to Reno on her way home. We flew out about the same time, and our week off had begun. From Reno I flew to Phoenix, where I am currently waiting for my connecting flight to Chicago, O’Hare. Once I land in Chicago at 5:30 am (July14th) I will take the blue line downtown and meet one of my roommates (Liz) for coffee. My roommates are one of the only people I told I was coming home because I wanted to meet them in Chicago if at all possible. One of my other roommates, Lauren will also meet us in Chicago later that morning, so my Sunday will be spend hanging around town with two of my lovely roommates. My third roommate, Bri, wasn’t able to join us, but is headed to Chicago next week, unfortunately.

Then at 2:15 pm I will leave by train for Portage. I’m hoping that I can sleep some since I know my sleep will be messed up since I’ve been traveling for a better part of 24 hours. I’ll arrive in Portage where two of my friends from high school, Matt and Peter, will pick me up. We’ll spend some time in Portage before they drop me off at Camp. It’ll be good to catch up, especially since I never know when I’m going to see them next. Our schedules don’t exactly mix very well, and the fact that I currently live on the west coast doesn’t help our situation.

From there, I’ll go home. I’ll probably stop at home first before heading to Sky Lodge, but wither way I cannot wait. And I cannot stress that enough. I can’t wait to see everyone I have been missing very much this summer, and I cannot wait to see their faces when they find out my surprise visit home. If there’s one thing I’ve realized this summer, it’s that my heart belongs to Sky Lodge, but sometimes you have to leave and go to other places as the Lord calls. But it’s still hard leaving familiar faces and places. These are the people I love and cherish the most and getting to spend an extra week with them will be a blessing for sure.

The Week So Far

This week has definitely been on e of my favorite weeks here, for sure. It's the last week of camp ReC and we just have a really good mix of classic campers and great counselors who love what they do with Camp ReC. Also, there's been several counselors from week one who have showed up randomly just to help with this week because they love it so much, so we have extra counselors to help with the campers which is great because sometimes the regular counselors just need a break. Working one-on-one with a special needs child or adult for any length of time can get weary.

Yesterday was BEACH DAY! And it was the first week it really felt like beach day. We actually got to eat down by the beach because it wasn't too cold, plus all the campers seemed to be in a good mood and weren't cranky before lunch! My high light was playing legos with a man named Mark for about an hour. Mark is in a wheelchair and doesn't speak and most of the time he just looks like a grumpy man, but he's joyous at heart. I got to sit with him and talk to him the first day during our game show night, and it was good to see him again at the beach. Right away when he got down to the shade deck near the waterfront he wheeled his chair right up to me, and grabbed my hand, (as I've noticed he's a big hand-holder). For a minute I didn't know what to do because there wasn't a hole lot to do there except sit and talk, and since he can't talk, I wasn't sure what we were going to do for the next hour...until we brought out the leggos. He loved legos. He would grab the pieces he wanted and showed me where to put them and I'd snap them in place. It's been nice getting to know Mark this week since it's normally hard for kitchen interns to get to know the campers as well since we're inside a good chunk of the day. It's weird to me that tomorrow is the last full day of Camp ReC for the rest of the summer, but I'm looking forward to the time we still have left. There's still lots going on in the next 60 hours that they'll be here, so I'm looking forward to all of that.

After this week comes to a close I'll be looking forward to a restful weekend. This week has been tiring to say the least and I'm looking forward to some time of rest!

Camp ReC

Today seemed like a whirlwind of everything.

I woke up extra early to go running. If I wait to go running on my morning break, I'm still full from breakfast and I can't run on a full stomach, so I've found that waking up early is the way to go. Then during my morning break I got to chat with the gorgeous Anna Lovisa and lovely Mariah Phillips. It's good to hear from good friends from time to time, especially when you aren't expecting it (:

The rest of most of the day was spend in the kitchen- from 11 to 7:30. Our supervisor was sick today, so we were short in the kitchen and we definitely felt it, but in the end we pulled through. It'll be nice to have him back tomorrow, though.

The carnival went very smooth tonight, and since I was in the kitchen late, I got to play paparazzi once I was done working. I love walking around and taking pictures of the campers, so I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Here's a few pictures from tonight:

Camp ReC Session Three!!!

Well, here we are. We've begun our last session of Camp ReC. Looking back to the beginning of the summer I remember thinking "There are three sessions of Camp ReC?" It felt like it would be forever before we saw the last session. But here we are, session three. And I can tell you right now, this week is going to fly by way too fast. This is a great group of counselors and campers mixed. They have a lot of returners and high, high energy. They're going to be a really fun group to work with this next week and I cannot wait!

Going back, I spent this past weekend in Reno. My friend Ali had her birthday on the 5th and we celebrated this weekend by taking a trip to Reno. We stayed the night at the Circus Circus hotel and got to see Reno a bit while we were there even though we weren't there but less than 24 hours. There was a festival going on this past weekend there for the fourth of July, so there was lots happening. There was a chicken wings competition, lots of vendors (mostly selling typical touristy things), and live music. We weren't able to listen to the live music very long but what we heard was great! It was great getting to see and hear some good, authentic local music from a bigger city (they were really pretty good). And we went out to an authentic sushi bar for dinner and I had myself a California roll which was more than fantastic- I was thoroughly pleased with my purchase.

Other than that, I'm just looking forward to this next week- it's looking to be a good one, for sure!

July 4th 2013

Happy Independence Day, everyone!!

Here at Camp Ronald, we like to celebrate just a little. We only dress up and parade around camp and a local campsite. We've got the statue of liberty, some cheerleaders, and I had the privilege of becoming Miss America for the day! Lots of red, white, and blue here. I don't think I've celebrated July 4th quite like this before; what an afternoon!

Laundry Day

Wednesdays are my laundry days here at Camp.

And boy, am I thankful for free laundry.

I definitely don't miss paying $3.00 for a single wash and dry at school, that's for sure.

In other news...here's a few pictures I've taken recently: