Unicorns and Colored Pencils.

Oh heyyyy...Tomorrow will be a week here at camp. Feels like a month. So much information. So many new friends. So much ground explored already.

First of all, the most exciting addition to my life...I recruited a new marathon training buddy!! Of course of course. I'm always out recruiting, I just didn't think that I would be so convincing so quickly. Krista Schultz is her name and she has committed to running the ING Georgia marathon with me on March 21st. Today was our second day of training. We went out for about a 4 1/2 mile run. Krista and I also just discovered yesterday while we were standing in an REI outdoor equipment store in Bend that we've had a life long ambition to hike the Pacific Crest Trail. So we decided that we are going to hike it together starting spring of 2011 when I get back from New Zealand. The PCT is a 2600 mile trail that stretches from the border of Canada and Washington to the border of California and Mexico and it takes 4 to 6 months to hike the entire thing. I can't describe the elation that shoots through my body whenever I think about it. Gaahhhhh!!! God is just too good. I've contemplated trekking it alone because I haven't been able to find anyone willing to commit to hike it with me. And then here she is, Miss Krista, with the same dreams as mine.

Ok so those were my most exciting tidbits of the last couple days...let's talk more about the day to day adventure. After I left you last time I had to go to work to meet my weekend work crew that would be in the kitchen with me. So the way it works out here is that during the summer it's all week long younglife camps but during the school year/off season there are various organizations that could be anything from church groups to men's retreats to FCA groups or anything else, that come through and use the camp for weekend slots. They bring their own speakers and program and work crews. So each weekend I get a new work crew in the kitchen to help me prepare the meals.

So Friday night I went to the work crew training and the work crew seriously looked like they wanted to be anywhere but with us. It was a Lutheran youth group that was visiting and the work crew was composed of college students from Concordia University along with some older people that work at the Lutheran Church in Portland. So the college students were unaware that they were actually going to be working at camp. They were told the day before they arrived that they weren't just going on a retreat, but that they would actually be helping to run the retreat. Which explains their lack of enthusiasm. Tim Dillman is my boss in the kitchen and he was giving his little shpiel, informing the work crew about safety and etiquette and all that good stuff involved with food prep and an older man who was basically the work crew boss cuts Tim off and tells him that he needs to hurry up with his talk because they are trying to get to the key note speaker to hear him talk. He didn't say it quite so bluntly but it was basically like that. Tim was stunned for a second and then he tried to cut the training short but there are certain things you just can't go without saying. And all the college students were finicky about whether they were going to AM kitchen, PM kitchen, pits, or dining hall because they had papers and tests to study for...like they're really gonna study at this place. I thought that was quite comical.

Anyway, all that to say that the weekend was pretty interesting. I had three college girls that I was pretty much in charge of for all of saturday. One was a junior and the other two were freshman. The junior girl, Sarah, was great! She fully engaged in conversation and seemed pretty enthusiastic about serving but the other two girls, Wendy and Michelle, were a little lacking in the enthusiasm department. They just didn't really want to talk much and everytime I would ask them if they had preference as to which job they wanted to do they would just stand there frumpy and dejected looking and say "it really doesn't matter" "I don't care" "I mean seriously, it really doesn't matter." And I would come over to check on them after giving them a job and ask how they were doing and how things were going and they would answer "fine" with absolutely no emotion whatsoever. It was sorta sad. I tried real hard to get them to open up. Granted I only get to be with them for a day, but still, I wanted to hear about their lives but they just didn't want anything to do with it.

So that was Saturday. These days are long here. The work, not that it's super physically strenuous or anything, but it still takes a toll on my body. I'm exhausted everyday after work. Just being on my feet from 8 to 5 straight and always moving, my feet hurt and my body is just tired all the time. But I think I will adjust eventually, hopefully. I'm learning to truly love the kitchen though. Everyone I meet here on property says I have the best boss and so far Tim is seriously phenomenal. He's very laid back and completely disorganized but he totally gets the job done. And he's hysterical. For example, the other day we were pulling bowls for hamburger meat for tacos and he pulled out the exact number of bowls that he needed and after counting and realizing that he had pulled the exact number that he needed he got down on his knees thanking God and just made this big extravagant deal out of it and it was epic. I love it. The kitchen is grand. And believe it or not, I'm going to be investing in some Crocs pretty soon, despite how hideous they are. Comfort over glamour.

Sunday was my first day in housekeeping. So I'm in the kitchen two days a week and housekeeping three days a week. Sunday we had to be into work at 7am which was rough but Sundays all the interns get to work together to turnover camp for the next weekend. I learned how to properly clean a bathroom and successfully fold a blanket. YoungLife is a phenomenal thing. Not sure if you knew that. I got to see and learn all the different extremely intricate and borderline insane ways that we serve the campers. We stamp the toilet paper with a YL logo. We fold everything so that the tags and edges of all towels, sheets, bathmats, blankets, pillowcases, toilet paper and everything else, are buried and away from sight.We clean and shine every nook and cranny and we do this thing in the bathrooms called cleaning from the pooper perspective. We have to sit on the toilet and look around and clean all the obscure things that you can't see from above but you can see from the toilet. It's epic. We learned all about the washboard, which is the laundry room. I learned how to fold all types of sheets and towels, bathmats and washcloths. I learned how to grubbercise, which is pretty fantastic. Grubbies are the rags that we use to clean everything. Geronimo is the name of the housekeeping building and sometimes we have to clean the floors of the G-Ro. We grubbercise by putting some grubbies under our feet and sliding around the room, cleaning the floor. Amazing. I learned the proper lunge stance when vacuuming under beds and the proper technique for cleaning several cubbies in cabins at the same time. I learned how to lower the lift on King Tritan, the laundry truck. I learned how to stainblast. My brain was completely and utterly overwhelmed. But I have a whole year to practice.

Yesterday was our first day off. Oh rewind, Sunday night we were invited over to Curtis' house. Curtis is one of the intern leaders and he's the landscaping boss. The intern leaders had a potluck for us. The leadership team is really somethin. There's Jen Milsten, our main coordinator. She's very quirky and wonderful. I told her that she has a good cartoon voice because she has this really amazing dynamic voice that just makes me really happy. She's also a very touchy person, which I'm trying to appreciate. Never really been a toucher. And then there's Kathi and Craig who are married and amazing. Craig hunts and says really inappropriate things sometimes. And Kathi is an amazing artist and phenomenal photographer. Then there's Dina and Bill. Dina is the school teacher out here. All the property staff kids go to a school, that's actually a public school, and Dina teaches all of them all subjects. She's really sweet and Norwegian and fun. Her husband Bill is hysterical. He's the water guy here, who makes aure all the water works everywhere, ya know, safety and stuff. He likes to tell lies a lot and he's insanely full of useless information. For instance, we were playing a game called Partini Sunday night, very similar to Cranium, and he knew that shepherds little cane things are called crooks. There's Curtis who I already talked about and then there's Sarah McCracken but she's on vacation right now so I don't know much about her yet but I do know that she's in the kitchen with me so I'll be getting to know her real well real soon.

But everyone has been providing for us in unimaginable ways. Tim made a fat basket of snacks for all the intern houses. One couple made each of us our own banana bread. Someone else brought us cookies. Someone brought muffins. Another couple invited us over for brownies last night. I guess they think we really like food. Or maybe it's just that something really magical happens when people sit down to eat together. Tim shared a little bit of his vision behind working in the kitchen and why he thinks it's the best place to work and I'm starting to catch the vish.

So yesterday all the interns except for Stacy and Nick, headed into town. It really was a wonderful day. We all started in Bend and had lunch together at Red Robin. We played at REI, the outdoor equipment store, my new favorite place in the world. And then we just hopped around to a bunch of random spots including Bed Bath and Beyond, Michael's, Fred Meyer, Target, Wal-Mart, and Safeway. At Michael's I decided we should all make each other friendship necklaces so we bought these really fun bead bags that were a buck each and we all made them for each other. Of course I got a unicorn one, made by Josh. Sonia also found me a unicorn stained glass project and she painted it for me last night. I bought a bean bag for my book nook at Fred Meyer which is quite possibly the most amazing store ever. I could live there. I'm quite sad they don't exist in California...which reminds me, I think I was meant to be an Oregonian. I'm obsessed with this world up here.

Back to our Monday adventures. At Fred Meyer, Daniel and I decided to buy coloring books. We both got spongebob. I bought colored pencils. He got crayons. And we colored together last night during our movie night. Everyone came over to our house and watched Miracle and ate pizza rolls and just laughed and had fun together.

I really can't describe to you the emotions bubbling in my body right now. There's a jumble of joy and contentment and eagerness and excitement. I'm happy all the time and we really do have a great group of people interning together this year. I did a summer staff at Lost Canyon in '08 and we called ourselves the Super Staff because we had an incredibly compatible group that worked hard and got along really well. I have a feeling this experience is going ot be quite similar. Maybe I will call us the Incredible Interns. Most friendships within YoungLife are pretty instant but there's something different about our group. It's so incredibly easy to just be myself around these people. And be vulnerable and honest and just...myself. Which is something I've really struggled with around my Christian friends in the past.

This year's gonna be good. I spent the last couple months before I got here trying to convince myself of that simple sentence. I would say it at the end of every qualm that I voiced about this year. "But it's gonna be good." There's no cell service, but it's gonna be good. It snows and it rains and it's unbelievably cold, but it's gonna be good. I'm an hour from the closest grocery store, but it's gonna be good.

Now that I'm here, I can't stop exclaiming to the people around me that this year's gonna be good. I think I've said it to all the interns at least once but seriously, this year's gonna be good. God has affirmed me in that and I can't say it enough.

Ya'll gotta get out here and experience the good for yourself.

Peace and rainbows.