Girls Camp 'n such things

Well, I have survived a week at Girls Camp!! Barely, but the important thing is that I survived! I was in charge of the Level One girls, which are the girls age 12-13 who have never been to Girls Camp before. Me neither. :) We stayed up at a state park that is beautiful, only about 45 minutes from our house.

The cabins were... ummm.. rustic at best. They were built in the 1920's and haven't been touched since. The first night we got there we had to sweep out all the mouse poop, suck up all the spiders, crickets, cockroaches and other gross huge bugs. I fummugated the entire 50 foot perimeter around our cabin, didn't want to take any chances. I must admit I didn't get much sleep because I was worried about bugs and spiders. There was a massive spider web with lots of captured insects above my bed and I kept worrying that the spider would be back. I think I felt like I had to stay awake to be on guard and ready for armageddon, just in case! The rusted, squeaky metal frame beds (also from pre-WWII) gently lulled us to sleep at night with their rythmic squeaks and grunts. :)



Griping aside, the girls were fabulous, we had 16 girls from all over the Pittsburgh area. Since my fellow Level One leader and I had never done Girls Camp before, we WAY overscheduled the girls and didn't schedule in any cushion-time for them to run to the bathroom, go grab their scriptures or a jacket. Lesson learned. Another lesson learned is that we needed to schedule "SET UP" time for ourselves. We can't get all the supplies out of our cabin, organized and ready to go in 0 seconds. That created a lot of undue stress on our parts. Our girls did have a lot of fun though, after a couple of our big hikes we had "Spa Time" where we had foot baths and salts, hand massages and nail polish, and a little booklet of spa secrets. The girls loved it. It was so gratifying to see them become friends and hang out together at meals and at our nightly campfire. By the end of the week I felt like their mom and they were coming up for hugs and wanting to talk to me about important things. :) It was very cute and made all the stress and hard work much more forgettable.




My favorite moment was on Thursday when I was with some of the girls and one of them, Kira, mentioned that with my hair in pig-tails I looked really young, "like a 5th or 6th year" which would imply that I was around 17 or 18 (I astounded them with my actual age shortly thereafter-- thank goodness they were astounded). But, before I could say anything back to Kira, or laugh, Montana (another first year) leaned into me and corrected Kira, "a BEAUTIFUL 5th or 6th year". I just about kissed Montana and looked around to see if someone had put her up to saying that. :) Aw, that comment will stay with me for awhile, for sure :)

I got home on Saturday and after unloading the car, ugh... what a task! thank goodness I have a wonderful husband who helped and fussed over me, and promptly fell asleep for 4 hours. Then had another 6 hour nap on Sunday... I have decided that it will probably take me the next couple of weeks to fully recooperate. But, it was a lot of fun and I love that our girls had such a great time with each other and us.

Update with John:

John started his third clinical shift this past week. He is now working at a hospital up in Pittsburgh, called Forbes. His last clinical rotation was here in Greensburg at a hospital called Westmoreland. It was a really tough rotation and such an extremely negative, critical and hostile working environment. Everyone there looks to shirk their responsibilities, catch and embarrass other employees and always are upset about something. My friend Marcy also works there and she has to pray every morning for half an hour before she goes in to work. People are talked about behind their backs and John constantly heard people talking about him once he had passed them, and was teased and criticized. It was hard to watch him deal with that. Several of the other nurses spoke up to the program advisors and as such several coordinators and trainers at Westmoreland were removed from being able to work with the students. Nevertheless, John survived the best he could and is so happy to be working at a hospital where people actually socialize and seem to enjoy their job. His comment about his first day was "Jeanette, I actually saw people SMILE at work today!!?? Crazy" This summer his school schedule has relaxed quite a bit and he has been able to have more free time. His toughest class is a Physics class right now. He's still doing really well academically and is improving his anesthesia skills steadily. His only criticism has been that he is slow. But, John being the perfectionist that he is... wants to make sure that he is doing everything right. I know that his speed will pick up with time, experience and practice. In a couple of weeks, he starts working at the hospital 4 days a week instead of 2 and I imagine that the learning curve will pick up speed once again. For the time being I am happy that he is in a positive learning environment once again.