Last week I had my second group of campers for the summer. They were middle schoolers, and we did a camp called A-5, which basically stands for five different adventures. Everyday we did a different activity but then would come back to camp and sleep there. Middle schoolers are definitely Different from high schoolers. They required a lot more attention and asked a million trillion questions everyday all about the same stuff. But for the most part they were pretty fun. They also didnt go as deep as the high schoolers in devos and what not, but it was still good. Its cool to think that we hopefully helped shape their young years which will greatly influence their up coming high school years. Some of them talked about becoming more “spiritual”, so… they are at a very moldable age. Ben, a great guy, was my co-counselor. We both got frustrated at a times, but for the most part I think we handled it well.
The first day we hiked a 14er, which is a 14000′ mountain… um yea. well. we almost hiked it… but…it was drizzling on us and dreary the whole time until about 13000′ and then it started SNOWING on us! yea on the 7th of july! the kids were freezing and so we kinda unanimously decided that we wanted to head back down. ben and i really wanted to finish and a couple kids did, but for most part they were miserable. we could have def made it if it hadnt been snowing.oh well. Tuesday we did our high rappel on camp. the kids really enjoyed that. you go backwards down about a 150′cliff. it’s got the best view on camp. the hike up to it is a little steep but not unbearable. Wednesday we went kayaking at Lake dillon again. the weather was beautiful for it, nice and sunny and warm. we played swedish fish tag with them and they had a lot of fun that day too. On Thursday we went mt biking, which i was really kinda anxious about. The first 1/2 mi of our trail one of the girls’ backs was really hurting, so i turned around and we walked back to the trailhead site and played games with one other hurt girl and the rest of the group finished the trail with Ben leading. they went around once more and then we had lunch. Ben was going to lead one more time around after lunch but then his back started hurting. i was not too excited about leading since there were a bunch of daring young middle school boys who would want to go faster than me and I was still a little scared about crashing again. but they were all kinda tuckered out from already doing the trail twice, and i never crashed, so it was really good. friday we went rafting with noah’s ark and it was great! the river has dropped some, but it was still great. overall it was a good week, tiring and sometimes seemed long, but good. i am back at camp this week, running the adventure activities and stuff. tomorrow we have the morning off. i am SO excited because we are going horse back riding! i’ve been wanting to go all summer. we have like 25 horses here at camp and tmw we finally get to go.. and on a fun, non-trail staff ride. and then after that we’re going to paint pottery in our little pottery shop. im stoked about that too! so.. yea. sorry no pics yet. i did borrow my friends camera and got a few pics, but havent loaded them yet. good news though!!! my camera will be fixed for free. took me a while to get it sent off and the warranty found etc since i’m out of state, but my good ole sis saved the day again and helped me out. they got the warranty today and i should be getting my camera back in the next week or so. thank you jesus! 
oh, i did post a few pics of the different adventure activities and random stuff on facebook, so… take a peek.
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049044&l=363fb&id=68602654
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2049067&l=028e1&id=68602654
well, til next time… adieu!
dominique
