Ups and Downs

It's been another couple of long weeks. But as of tomorrow everyone will be in camp! Last week we had some people in the mountains and one on vacation in Hawaii, so we've finally got almost everyone back. :) So nice.

Let's see what's happened lately. Some not so good things...
   I got the Expedition stuck in the mud on the way into Two Harbors
   I was almost the only MSA staff member to stay on the island last weekend (thankfully
   Mary & Marcus stayed too)
   I cleaned a dirty microwave

And some great things..!
   I taught another Vert/Invert lab (and no one collapsed!!!)
   I watched Disney's Peter Pan with Melodie
   I listened to some good choir music and soothed my soul (thank you Eric Whitacre)
   I did laundry with Mary and we sang "Matchmaker" from Fiddler on the Roof
   Fran let me drive Zalophus (MSA's boat) - totally the best part of my week. :)


This place is crazy. And exhausting. And when you are exhausted, it's really easy to be crabby. Toward the end of the week, everyone is dying for the weekend, and Friday lunch is so silent because everyone's energy crashes as soon as the kids leave. Speaking of energy crashing, David took Nyquil or some similar product after dinner tonight and then was trying to get a sugar high so he could make it through the trust walk. I felt bad for laughing, but he was so sadly pathetic (I'm using the word in the best possible sense: that it was evoking pity/sympathetic sadness) that I couldn't help it. I've definitely made that mistake before and it SUCKS. Anyway, back to the subject at hand. We have a high school group coming in this weekend. So some people won't get to rest...and next week is going to be loooonnnnng. I haven't been told if I'm working at all yet or not, but my fingers are crossed. I need the weekend.

Anyway, that's about all I have. Apart from the fact that it's supposed to be 80 degrees tomorrow!! (Don't worry, it goes back to about 65 for the next week.) I miss you all and hope you are doing well. Can't wait to hear from the midwest!!

Another Island Weekend

I suppose it's time to update people on my life since it's been almost two weeks. I probably shouldn't have waited until now, especially since I'm having a hard time remembering exactly what I did last week. And I only know it's Friday today because our kids left on the boat today. It's really hard to keep track of time here. 

Let's see. Last week I spent a couple of days in the office (still trying to get my bearings) and the rest of the time running around camp trying to help out everyone that needed help. I actually spend a lot of time in the camp store when it's open. The more help the better when there's a mob of kids rushing to get candy. Melodie and I also spent a lot of time last week working on the store display. It looked a little dismal before we decorated. We added the sea, sun, Garibaldi and the sea star...plus some birds at the top. (The sun and the sea star were my fabulous handiwork.)

Friday we left on the boat with the kids, and I was at Mary's again. Her sister Sarah was in a play called "The Reluctant Debutante" which was a lot of fun. I also went to see "The Eagle" and "Beastly." Definitely a weekend full of entertainment for me. 

Sunday night we were back in San Pedro and we did some "training" on Monday and Tuesday. I honestly think they were just trying to keep us paid while we didn't have any campers in. We really didn't do a whole lot those days. 

As for the rest of the week, we had two more schools come in, and I had the opportunity to teach my first class - Vertebrate/Invertebrate Lab. It was actually a ton of fun...despite the fact that a kid collapsed because of dehydration. In the middle of the lab, when the kids were looking at fish in a couple different tanks, one came up to me and said "I feel dizzy." So I told him to go sit down, and he didn't even make it to the chair 20 feet away. Once he got onto the chair, I asked him how much water he'd had, and apparently it hadn't been that much. So one of their chaperons went to get water, and I went on with the class. 15 minutes later he was totally fine and back involved for the rest of the class. Between this and the bird lab where I fell in, I'm starting to get a lot of stories. Apparently everything happens when I am part of it. Anyway, the chaperons wanted to get a picture with me and the kids, so I asked if they would take one with my camera too. Here it is. :) They were so much fun!

As for this weekend, I'm planning on reading, sleeping, and playing guitar. It's supposed to rain tomorrow, which stinks since I was planning on kayaking and a possible hike to Parson's, but we'll see. Also, if it's cloudy tomorrow night and I miss the super-moon, I'm gonna be all sorts of upset. :) It's already ridiculously bright. Anyway, I'll close with a couple more pictures. Have a great weekend!

My bed...complete with ridiculously lumpy mattress and towel wind-screens. 

The rest of the Poly. (Short for Polynesian) We haven't had much time to decorate.

Our bathroom!

This is the road to Two Harbors. So much fun when another car comes. 

Another view of the road. You wind around a lot of small harbors, so this is from one side looking over to the other. 

A Perfect Day

Ok, I think it's about time to make you mid-westerners jealous. Just kidding (kind of). It really is unintentional, and I must preface this by saying that God has TOTALLY blessed me with being able to spend my year on Catalina. Without Him, I wouldn't be here and so I am utterly grateful.

In case I haven't mentioned this before, MSA rents out Emerald Bay from the Boy Scouts. So there are people representing the Boy Scouts here all the time (not necessarily Scouts themselves - right now they just come on weekends), but there are staff here all the time. And this weekend, they had a bunch of arborists come out to trim and plant trees. So we had a flurry of activity today.

I slept in (ok, only until 7:30, but it's still a half an hour), got up, and sat in the sunshine ALL MORNING. Melodie and I sat and just watched the activity until lunch. It was so warm and sunny today that it was all I wanted to do. She eventually busted out her ukulele and egg shaker. Lunch was a cookout with amazing watermelon and cookies...it seriously felt like summer! And then there were a bunch of us that kayaked to Sandy Beach and laid out for awhile. I am definitely a lot more pink/reddish than I was this morning.

And if I thought breakfast was a feast, dinner was a banquet. (Is a banquet higher up than a feast? Because dinner blew lunch out of the water...) The kitchen staff started roasting a pig and a goat around 6 this morning, so by 5:30 it was succulent. Here's what was on the menu. Chicken thighs and drumsticks, fish filets with seasonings and lemon, rice, goat, pork, rolls, cookies, and fruit platters with pineapple, strawberries and kiwis. I may have totally overdone my protein limit for today, but it was totally worth it. It was basically a luau on the beach. :)

Anyway - island life on the weekends is incredible. I wish I could share it with you all. But you'll have to be ok with pictures for now. If you ever get a chance to come to Catalina, you should take it. :) Love you all!

The front of camp from the pier

Island Hair

Yes. I have island hair. And yes, it is awesome. For those of you who don't know what island hair is...my hair is starting to curl slightly from the ocean water. Finally, a little body! Although I do feel like I will forever have pruny fingers with the amount of time I've spent in the water over the last few days. I'll give you a little recap of life since Monday.

Mary and I got up on Monday morning at 5 and left Riverside at 6 in order to make sure we made it to the boat at 8:30. And if it hadn't been for the carpool lanes, we would've missed the boat (even with it leaving well over an hour late). Anyway, we enjoyed a breakfast of yogurt and tabbouleh in the car...found my parking spot and made it out to the boat in plenty of time. 

On the way over to Catalina, we saw dolphins swimming on the side of the boat, and we also passed a buoy with a bunch of California Sea Lions around it. And then we got to Catalina. [Commence chaotic afternoon.] Since the boat was so late, we dumped our stuff and jumped into labs. I was shadowing Fran with the other "trainees" and we started Bird lab. This lab includes a kayak around Indian Rock...

 ...which started out great. But, we had a couple stragglers, and so the other trainees and I were sent to help them along. One of the kids I was trying to help got too tired to paddle, and he kept drifting farther and farther away from the group. So after trying to encourage him to paddle and having no way to get anyone to help since I had no radio, I ended up towing him over halfway back to the group. And that is not easy when you are paddling against the current with a huge drag behind you....I had no idea how to lash him to my kayak, so he was just holding on to the back handle, forming a T with our kayaks. Fran finally came over and as he was going to lash the boy to my kayak, mine happened to flip, thus dumping me into 53 degree salty ocean water. Ugh. I spent the rest of the day/night freezing. I seriously felt like an icicle. 

Yesterday was better. We started out with squid dissection, and then headed back into the water for a fish lab snorkel. This was also my first time snorkeling (what a week for firsts...not my fave...) my mask was a little loose and kept getting water in it, which was a total downer. But I did get to see some sweet fish. We then got to stay dry for the rest of the day. We also got a heater in our cabin, so it isn't 40 degrees in there at night anymore. :) These kids were really tough to work with though. We had 107 kids from 5 different schools within a charter system, and they seriously would not shut up. Every time there was a pause in the lesson (and even when there wasn't) they were jabbering away. We yelled at them quite a few times, and they didn't care. They were also pretty disrespectful. I told a couple students to hurry, and they just looked at me and kept walking slowly. Ugh. I wanted to slap them all. Thankfully, there were a couple kids that made it worth it, and they are gone now. Which means I get to start my real job tomorrow!! Although I must say that I did enjoy this week's activities. We went on another snorkel today and I saw a lot more fish. 

Anyway, that's about all I've got. I'll leave you all with a few pictures that I've managed to snap so far on our minimal breaks. Love you all!

View of the courtyard and ocean from the dining hall patio

Beach with the kayaks

Whale's Tale and the ocean

Melodie, Mary and me (wearing David's hat)

Patron Saint of Single Women

We've been learning curriculum all week. Sigh. At least I've been learning a lot of new things. Like some history about Catalina Island today. Thus the title of today's post. Apparently, Catalina has had several names...starting with Pimu after the natives that originally lived there. Then, an explorer named Cabrillo named it San Salvador after his boat. And finally, another explorer (Viscaino) landed there on the eve of St. Catherine's day, thus naming the island Santa Catalina. St. Catherine is, among other things, the patron saint of single women. Maybe my prayers will be better heard from her island....just kidding!

Anyway, I've also learned about birds and fish and marine mammals off the coast of SoCal...did you know that the whale in Finding Nemo is a Mysteceti and not an Odontoceti? I don't even like science and I'm turning into a science nerd! I also can now tell you the difference between seals and sea lions or defining characteristics of Western Gulls, Cormorants, and Brown Pelicans. You might as well just stamp "Science Nerd" onto my forehead.

A quick recap of the end of last week...We headed down to Cabrillo Beach to finish up lifeguard training. It wasn't horrible, but waterfront lifeguard training is a big job...especially swimming in the ocean when it's FREEZING. We went in Thursday, and I couldn't breathe it was so cold. Thankfully we were only in for about half an hour learning how to rescue people with a rescue board. Oh...and we had to do the Baywatch run into the ocean with our rescue tubes. Totally BA. Haha. I felt like such a poser. We then finished our water training in a rinky-dink little RV park pool. 50 laps, swim underwater, learn how to rescue people. It's really hard trying to do a deep water rescue in 5 ft.

And this weekend my parents were out! We didn't do much...just kind of wandered around, but we had fun. Plus, now I have my car, so I'm less tied down than I was. :)

We were going to take a sailboat to Catalina on Saturday, but since it's supposed to rain, we are going in with the camp kids Monday morning. This is SO not ideal. Ah well, it'll work out I guess. I just hate most things that are last-minute.

Anyway, I'll let you all go for now. I miss you all and hope you are doing well. Until next time!

First Aid!

So yesterday we started First Aid/CPR training...not exactly the most exciting thing ever, but we made it fun. Carlyn is certified as a trainer, so it's nice that we don't have to go anywhere to get certified. The Red Cross videos can be a little cheezy, but what else is going to make it entertaining?

So we were learning stuff all day, and let me tell you, it's a lot of information to remember. We made a flow chart of what to do, because there are a lot of variables, and I think I'm getting it down now. We also had to spend 2 minutes each performing CPR on the dummy. 2 minutes is a long time, and the chest compressions are hard work! You also have to count out loud as you do 30 compressions in a row, which just makes you feel out of breath. I'm hoping that I never have to perform CPR on someone. The whole time I kept thinking of the "Office" episode where they learn CPR: Michael sings I Will Survive instead of Stayin' Alive, and Dwight cuts the face off the dummy. Hilarious.

Last night we got the night off, and so we watched a couple episodes of Firefly, and then 7 of us played telephone pictionary. I don't remember the last time I laughed that hard. :) I may be no good at drawing, but it definitely makes the game more interesting. I've never ever claimed to be good at drawing, so its kind of like water off a duck when people make fun of my illustrations. Now we have a whole new passel of inside jokes...I have been thinking of them and chuckling to myself all day.

In other news, every once in awhile I catch a Wisconsin vowel slipping out...I said "toasty" last night with a really Wisconsin "o." And got mocked. Most of the time I sound normal, but every once in awhile...gotta love the midwest.

That's about all I have for now. Lifeguard training starts tomorrow in San Pedro at the Cabrillo facility...hopefully I don't look like a complete weirdo. I think I said this in an earlier post, but I haven't done any legit swimming in awhile...I guess we'll see by this weekend.

Hope you all are having a fantastic week! Until next time!

The Coffee Bean

If my life continues as it has for the past few days, I will soon be good friends with the baristas at the Coffee Bean. I have been here three times in three days. Not that I'm complaining of course...a good caramel latte always has my name written on it.

Tuesday afternoon I came down with Melodie, Marcus, and Carlyn to get some work done using the internet...(and be on facebook, to be quite honest.) Wednesda night, Melodie, Marcus and I came down just to hang out, and I caught up on Community. And yesterday we were back to do more work.

I was on the phone with Annie (my boss) for about 45 minutes, running through how the whole Google Docs thing works. I was then given a small task list, although I feel like I am somewhat over my head. Google Docs is easy enough to use, but it would've been nice to have some time to play around with it before having some things to do. I tried to take some notes on what to do, but now I'm just hoping that I did everything right. If not, it's easily fixable and I'm sure that Annie won't mind, but I like to do things right the first time. All I can do is shake my head and laugh a little at how much I feel like I'm over my head. Doing work over the phone is never fun.

I went home with Mary again this weekend (third in a row) which is nice because it seems like everyone is going home again this weekend and I would hate to be all by myself. We are planning on catching up on Bones...thankfully I've had enough internet access to pretty much keep up on some things, although its difficult. I should probably just give up TV altogether.

Hopefully this weekend is nice. We don't have any plans other than sleep...it's been a long-ish week. Next week is going to be a little more physical since we will be doing CPR/First-Aid and Lifeguard training. Wednesday afternoon we are leaving Forest Home to go to Cabrillo for a bit to take the Lifeguard test and stuff. I'm a little intimidated since there is a pre-test and a final test and I haven't done any legit swimming in years. Fun.

Anyway, that's about it. Know that I am thinking of you all with fondness. Until next time!