Adventures On Airplanes Pt. 1

So for my week off I flew down to Texas to visit my sweetheart! On the way back up to Oregon/Washington, I had quite the adventure!! Trav dropped me off at the Amarillo airport (very sad, I bawled!!) then I went on a rickety plane to the Dallas/Fort Worth airport. Lucky for me I had about a 2 1/2 hour lay-over AND guess what?! Bless the heavens!! There was a Mary Kay Cosmetics convention in Dallas so the the whole airport was just buzzing with highly motivated consultants traveling home!! Yay!! I had many a woman come up to me to "consult" with me about my make up situation.....I was an easy target though seeing that I wasn't wearing any make up whatsoever. I now have a lovely collection of pink business cards living in my wallet. Thank you Mary Kay for making the world a more beautiful place, one make-up-less face at a time :)

My Summa!!

Here are just a couple pics of my awesome team that I get to work with for 6 short weeks!!
I LOVE THEM!!

Our Session Director for week 2 was David Palmer!! He's a very skilled photographer and we loved him and his wife, Tia!! We miss them lots!!

Bathroom.

For the past two weeks all I've been using public restrooms. Today I got quite the scare.....when the lady in the stall next to me sat down on the toilet, it shook my toilet. Is that supposed to happen? I don't believe so. All I know is I got myself outta that situation ASAP because I did not want to meet the person capable of shakin all the toilets in the joint!!

Leprosy.

So this week I'm at the University of Puget Sound (UPS) in Tacoma, WA!! I got to come up early with my friend Tyler so we could meet with the campus and set up. When we got to my dorm, Tyler got my big heavy bag and took it to the door where I told him I could take it the rest of the way. My room was on the top floor, 64 steps up. No elevator. I did not realize this. What a joy it was taking my lovely bags to the top!!

After spending the night all by myself in a huge dormitory on a campus that looks like Hogwarts, I was ready for the rest of the counselors to get there! On Saturday we trained all of the new counselors and then partied it up at BC Ryan's house. Sunday was great. We got to the church building to find out that the ward was at a regional conference and we had to hurry and scramble to find another one. But the best part about Sunday was my weekly meeting with Amanda and Tyler. As I was chatting with two of my favorite people, my arms were insanely itchy. Like ridiculously itchy. I couldn't even concentrate and talk because they were so itchy. Tyler and Amanda were laughing at me and we were all just dying - we figured that maybe I had bed bugs in my dorm room. So I changed my sheets and maintenance checked and it wasn't bed bugs, we concluded that I was probably allergic to something and was having a reaction. Well, it's Thursday night....I still have these bumps all over my hands and feet and legs and back!! Oh, and they itch like crazy no matter how much anti-itch cream I put on them! It's so bad that the kids don't want to sit by me in the meetings. They get freaked out when they see my poor hands and arms all covered in my disease. Yes, I'm a leper. I feel like that kid in elementary school who had warts all over his hands and nobody wanted to touch him. Hopefully these bumps go away soon because they be stressin me out!!

Vladmir.

So, my first week of EFY last week was one for the books. I was in charge of "Variety Show" and couldn't be more excited to see what the kids were gonna do! We had a girl perform ASL to Party in the USA, a unicyclist, a magician, and then there was Vladmir. Oh Vlad!! He was hilarious. His family moved to America from Russia when he was pretty little and now they live in Arizona. He is short and stalky and has braces, quite the 14 year old. For Variety Show we got Vlad to do a dance from the movie Hot-Rod. He even got fliers to make it more realistic, except there was one problem. This dance has quite the suggestive moves seeing as all the dance entails is hip-thrusting. I explained to Vlad that he could only move his arms and it took him a while to get the hang of it, but he finally did. Right before the show he got cold feet, but I gave him a pep-talk and he did it. He was the star of the show....and of the week. I miss Vlad.

Old Man.

Greetings loved ones!! Just a little bit of an update....this summer I'm a Building Coordinator for EFY- basically I'm a counselor to the counselors and I plan the activities. Last week me and my team of BC's and the Field Coordinators were in Forest Grove, OR at Pacific University. It was quite the experience. The coordinators, Tyler and Amanda, picked me up from the airport and then we went straight to the University for a meeting with the team. In the middle of our meeting an old man walked into the room asking if we knew where the attic was located....Huh? This man was about 70-80 ish....then he proceeded to tell us that 50 some-odd years ago when he was living and going to school at PU someone stole his sheets and that he wanted to check the attic for them. I nick-named him "Mr. Lost His Sheets." Later that same afternoon we were in another meeting training the counselors when Mr. Losthissheets came in again! He burst through the door and walked right up to the front of the room and proceeded to show us and tell us all about the brand new medal around his neck! Then he swore a few times and left. Wow. Now I wish I could say that this was the last run in with Losthissheets, but it wasn't. As a campus tour was going, the kind sir was up in his dorm room changing his shirt, so naturally he decided to "shake-it" in front of all the EFY counselors. It turns out Losthissheets was there for an alumni ceremony and the building where we were at was where the "nap rooms" were. Yep. They had nap rooms for the alumni weekend because they knew that the old people would be getting tired and need a little napper....I just knew that this was only the beginning of a fantastic week.