Like a Hurricane...Just Coastin' Along.

Alright alright alright...soo it's day 3ish at camp...but I have to rewind and get you updated to this moment.

After I left you in Carmel, I went out to the beach to practice a little pass-time of mine...it's a little thing I like to call people-watching...also known as stalking, or creeping. I prefer people-watching.

Some boys were playing baseball with a hollow bat and a tennis ball and so I watched them for a bit, because quite honestly, kids talk about the most amazing things and they sing and dance and are absolutely wonderful to observe. I also watched a really old couple for awhile. If you don't already know it, I love old people. I someday aspire to work at an assisted living home and practice functional fitness with the elderly. So I watched this old man sitting at the edge of the breaking waves while his wife stood next to him with her cane and all her precious glory.

After leaving Carmel, I very spur of the moment, decided to pop into San Francisco before heading to Walnut Creek. Sort of a bad decision. I can't stand driving in SF. I got lost, and had to turn around multiple times, and seriously ended up on a street that wouldn't let me turn left or right for like 4 stoplights. It was absurd. I finally made it to my friend Tiara's house and she had ordered a pizza for me and so we walked to go pick it up...and guess what, I ate the whole thing. All 6 pieces. Girl can grub.

After SF, I shot over to Walnut Creek where I got to see one of my greatest friends Miss Casey. She is one of the sweetest most joyful people I know and we got to sit and share about our summer travel experiences. She went to China. I went to India. Together, the countries we visited, populate half the earth. Wild, huh?

After spending the night in Walnut Creek and indulging in a fat ham and cheese omelet the next morning, I headed out on my three hour excursion to South Lake Tahoe. The drive was transcendental. I had my window rolled down while I drove through the beautiful forests of central cali and listened to Bon Iver and Aimee Mann, while making waves in the air with my hand, the wind swirling through the car, the sun shining, ricocheting off the branches of the trees. I really do love driving.

So I made it to Tahoe and my cousin Jason wasn't home..so I took a nap on his couch and waited for him to arrive. He took me to Jalisco's and bought me a Super Burrito. He gave me some great painting tips since he's an aspiring artist and he let me import his copy of Adobe Photoshop. He also burned me three underground hip hop cds. Score.

I left for Reno at about 4 and arrived a little after 5. I got to see my brother for the first time in 6 months. I almost cried. I also got to see his two little half brothers that I haven't seen since they were tiny. The younger one, Erik, was an infant, and the older one, Nikolas, was 2. They are now 5 and 7 and they came out and hugged me. It was so amazing. I asked Nik if he remembered me and he said, "Yeah, cuz brother Robert reminded me. " My heart melted.

My brother and I cruised the streets of downtown Reno. Pretty life-changing. We took pictures with the "biggest little city in the world" sign and played by the river and got harassed by several homeless people. It really was quite grand. Then we got dessert at Sonic where all the really good roller-skaters work. Then we watched the sunset together and I cried as I drove away from his house. I love that boy so much and it hurts me to see him hurting the way he does because of the wonderful parents we were blessed with. That was unnecessary sarcasm but seriously, sometimes I have to ask God why.

Anyway, after praying for my brother and for the wild expedition I was about to embark upon, I turned the music up really loud and rolled down my window again. I was already exhausted, barely keeping my head raised enough to see over the steering wheel. I made a very very smart decision and decided to drive from Reno to Corvallis, OR (a 9 hr drive) overnight. I left Reno a little after 7 and drove 85mph as long as I could. Then I made it to the 89. The treacherous 89. There are deer crossing signs every two seconds and I was sincerely paranoid that I was going to die in a freak deer accident..so I drove the speed limit...65.mph..for the majority of the 89. I finally made it to the 5 and thought I was home free...or deer free. I was terribly mistaken.

I was driving about 85 again and I'm in the fast lane racing along when all of a sudden, there's a FAT piece of roadkill. I tried to swerve but it was so fat I hit it anyway. And right after I hit it, the song Somewhere Over the Rainbow comes on. Not the one by the big Hawaiian guy. The old one by Judy Garland. I seriously felt like I was at the end of a horror movie, you know when the main characters are driving away from the bloody gore, but the killer is still at large. It was perfectly eerie. I have to fastforward for a minute to the morning I was leaving Corvallis to head to camp. Sooo I went to go get my oil changed as I was leaving town and the guy at Oil Can Henry's asked me "So...umm..are you on a road trip by any chance?" I said "uhh...yeah" and he goes on to ask "did you by any chance, hit anything, on your road trip?" and I said..."yeah, ummm..I think I hit a dead deer on the 5." He goes, "Yeah, it's lookin' pretty burly under there...all the guys are coming out to look at it...it's like nothing I've ever seen before....you might want to go to the car wash down the road because it's splattered all underneath your undercarriage and if you don't take there of that it's going to start smelling reeeal bad."BAhahahahaha...I hit a dead deer.

Ok rewind. So after I hit the dead deer, I was amped for a little while, exhilarated, I got a second wind, but then I crashed again. And I decided I should be smart for once and pull over to take a nap. I decided to sleep in a Best Western parking lot in Ashland Oregon. Classy. It rained and it was frigid and I was using a beach towel as a blanket and my car was so packed that I couldn't scoot the seat back so I slept in the upright position. To call it sleep is an overstatement.

I got up at 3am and popped over to the Chevron next door...picked up some hot cocoa and a banana nut muffin and hit the open road again. David told me it would take me 4 1/2 hours to get from Ashland to Corvallis. It took me 3 hrs and some change. Let's just say I have this condition that makes my right foot a little heavy.

I made it to Corvallis at 6:30am and crashed on David's couch. We spent the whole next day sleeping and lounging because David had food poisoning from a dirty grilled cheese sandwich. Tuesday night I slept at David's ex-girlfriend/best friend/ almost a sister Leann's house. The bed was phenomenal and the hospitality was again, overwhelming. She even brought me ear plugs and a glass of ice water before I went to bed.

I meant to leave Corvallis by noon but got stuck at Mr. Oil Can Henry's for two hours...when I was finally able to leave, I had another transcendental experience driving the empty highways of central Oregon...the central parts of our states are really something you know that? It's like, because they're in the middle, no one takes initiative to dig in and enjoy them, so they're serene and blissful and for lack of a better word, magical.

I got to Madras, which is the closest city to camp, and filled up my gas tank. So in Oregon, it's against the law to pump your own gas. So this woman comes up to my window and I ask her to fill up the tank and she proceeds to look in all my windows and says, "You movin?" And of course, I reply "Yes." And then she looks into my windows some more and makes a comment about one of my purses in the backseat. When I don't reply, she badgers me asks me why I didn't immediately tell her how much it cost and where I got it from. I didn't know how to respond so I just smiled and nodded. I'm pretty sure she was on drugs of some sort. I think gas station employees are fascinating. I was just telling David the other day that I really want to write a novel about the secret lives of graveyard shifters...you know, the people that work all night and sleep all day. They lead such terribly interesting lives. I would love to travel the country interviewing various truckdrivers and gas station attendants and 7-11 employees. Wouldn't you buy my book?

So I finally made it to camp 1 minute before dinner. I was the last intern to arrive and I was frazzled and complete with knitted brow and damp armpits. I stuttered over my name. Who does that?

So camp. It's wondrous. Gorgeous. Immaculate and astounding. I'm every bit as nervous and anxious as I was before I arrived but somewhere deep inside me I feel a little seed of peace trying to grow. So I'm the kitchen intern right. And we all know I don't cook. So there's a moment of stretching right there. You're so funny God. But I really am unbelievably enamored by the depth and majesty of His love. Today was one of my hardest days in a long time. There are only three of us in the kitchen right now and there were only two of us for most of today. We are preparing food for 230 campers this weekend. I baked poppy seed bread, boxed sandwich bread, pokey cake, and banana bread today...and that was all before lunch. I scooped 350 snickerdoodles and my thumbs felt like there were shards of glass trying to fight their way out of them. I panned potatoes and cracked eggs...by the way, I'm perfecting the art of cracking four eggs at a time...since I've been warned there will be times during the summer where I will have to crack 500 eggs for one meal. And Alpha and Omega have become my best friends. A and O are our sanitizing cleaners that we use at least 74 times a day. One right after the other. My feet hurt. I was covered head to toe in flour. And I could feel myself sliding to the end of my rope. But then I got off work and Jesus grabbed my chin and looked me in the face and said "you can do this girl." Ok ok that didn't really happen, but I felt like it did. A pastor at a church we went to in India said something that has stuck with me these past couple weeks...God's will will not take us where His grace will not sustain us. Hmm...I would love to use some Christiany jargon and say that statement just spoke such truth and really spoke volumes into my life, but I really can't stand that, so I'm just gonna say that I liked it and I am reminded of it right now as I lay in my bed, trying to psych myself up to go in and meet my weekend work crew tonight at 8:15. Yes, I have to go back to work. And I'm soooo excited ;) God is good all the time and all the time God is good.

Ps. I went for the weakest run ever last night. I endured about 13 minutes and then I was done. How pathetic is that. I'd like to say that I would have continued running if the sun hadn't gone down, but even if it hadn't I probably couldn't have made it much longer. And oh yeah, I got to ride The Screamer, this big giant swing, three times last night. My throat was a little sore this morning.

I'm almost finished decorating my new room. It's pretty fantastic. It's much larger than I thought it would be and I have my very own book nook!! Ecstatic about that one. So there are only four of us living in this seven bedroom condo. It's absolutely amazing. We have plenty of guest beds because there are bunk beds in two of the spare rooms...so feel free to come visit!!

And about my new roomies..There's Sonia from Wisconsin who has this phenomenal sense of humor. She has me rolling all the time. She's my bathroom buddy which sounds sort of inappropriate but the way the building is designed has two rooms sharing a bathroom on each side of the house. Funny story...Sonia is about 5'2'' on a good day and so she had a little mishap in the shower last night because I forgot to put the shower head back down after I used it. Apparently the water shot straight over her head and ricocheted off the back wall and onto the bathroom floor. Epic. Sonia got the job I wanted. She's the dining hall intern and I'm definitely not jealous at all. Not even a little bit.

Then there's Krista who's 5'10'' and 3/4 she insists. She pretends to be a basketball player with her gangster apparel but she apparently never played. But because everyone assumes that she plays, she goes along with it. I like her style. She's from Spokane and is a WFR native. She did the summer internship in 08 and knows everyone out here really well so we all sort of feel a little inferior but we'll get over it. Krista's the house-keeping guest services intern.

Then there's Ashley and she's about 5'2'' also. She's from Georgia and is the cutest little thing. She hates the fact that her car is a two door and her parents road-tripped all the way out her with her. So precious. She's the store intern and she wanted the dining hall position too.

The boys are pretty funny. There are three of them and they are from Michigan, Florida, and Alabama. Quite the dynamic. Then we have The Marrieds. There are two married couples and theirs condos are at the back of ours so I almost feel like they're in another neighborhood, whereas the single boys live right next door to us. There's Deanna and Darren Driscoll, married in May and Stacy and Nick Graves, married on Saturday!

So let's just say this is going to be an epic year. The cold is already beyond my comfort level and it's only October 1st. :)

I have this really ambitious goal to run up Communication Hill every morning before work but I doubt that's going to happen...but I can pretend.

That's all for now. I have to go back to work. I'll be back for more later. Love love.