flying logs and trust walks.

8 weeks down. 96 to go.

I'm sitting in a coffeshop in Chapel Hill, NC. Chapel Hill is a very, very neat town. Home of the UNC Tarheels, the town has a lot of pride in the beautiful school and has a lot of pride in itself. The thing I love about towns like Wilmington, Wrightsville Beach, and Chapel Hill is that they really do try to keep the charm of their cities alive. That's the perfect word for them: charming. I've been charmed by them, at least.

I find that these cities are my safe haven after a hard week of work. This week was hard. My co-counselor went on vacation for two weeks, leaving me alone with my campers. Just writing that sentence made my head hurt. Being alone with my campers is tough, tough, tough. When I'm away from them, I can start thinking about how I can better communicate with them and lead them, but when I'm with them, all of those thoughts go down the drain as it turns from an educactional program to a survival challenge. When I wasn't dodging flying logs and traffic cones or asking someone to sweep the floor for the bajillionth time, I think there were a few small victories. One being a trust walk. I may or may not have forced my campers to walk back to campsite in pairs with one partner blindfolded. They refused to do it until we threatened to pack them out for dinner if they didn't participate. While they didn't quite stay settled or respect the "trust" aspect of the walk, they completed it, survived, and even thought about what they learned for more than 5 seconds.

I have three days off this weekend because I'm working a six-day on, one day off, four days on shift in the next 11 days. Ouch. I'm going to sleep all day tomorrow.

For now, though, I'm enjoying Chapel Hill. I went "contra" dancing last night with counselors from another camp in NC; it's beautiful outside; there's an Ultimate game in 40 minutes; and there are new friends to meet and new experiences to be had. Life is good today.