holidays... i'm on holidays........

friday was the last day of camp. and wow was i soooo tired. that night i slept 11 hours, woke up at 10 am, and then took a nap an hour later for another 3.5 hours.

this last week was junior high week.... it was so very different. the kids are so much more independent. they only really need us there to tell them to stop doing stupid things. but you wanna hang out with them, so you gotta figure out which kids wouldn't not want you to sit with them for lunch and make friends with them. sometimes you need to try to make friends with the kids that cause the most trouble, so that you don't feel like all you are ever saying is, "okay, that's probably not a good idea.... okay guys, please go back to the gym.... please stop calling her names...." etc. etc.

it was Week 8. i was tired. and still really sick. i went back to the doctor on tuesday morning. he told me my cough was developing into bronchitis... just as i suspected. that afternoon i felt so crappy that the other counsellors and the director all made me go home. they were just going to the pool anyways, so i went home and slept.
the antibiotics started kicking in soon thereafter, but i still felt miserable. it was a very confusing time... i wanted to be with the kids, but i wasn't any fun, i wasn't very cool at all to hang out with, so that made me more miserable... and i was tired.... i wanted to make a good impression on them, because R and i are doing junior high youth this fall (grade 7&8)....all the girls in my small group were going into grade 9 anyways....

we spent all day wednesday at st. malo beach/campground ("please don't go out that far in the water"). we made our suppers over the fire ("please stop playing with the hatchet"). we even played a night game and had a campfire. it went really well overall. R joined us for the day, as an extra leader, and we were so grateful. it was pretty amusing to see that he had more energy than the rest of the staff combined... we looked pretty pathetic.

thursday, things started going better. up until this point in the week, i really hadn't had any fun. but then we went to lilac campground/resort for the day. SO great!! that place is amazing. there's so many water activities to do, 2 racing waterslides, a big waterslide, a kiddie pool, a kids pool with lilypads you can try to walk across, a few hottubs, lots of little slides, and tons of killer whale fountains and other things that shoot out water. if you have kids (of any age) and live in manitoba, i highly recommend it! it's not even 1/2 hour out of the city and it's way better than fun mountain (don't know how much it costs though).
so anyways, on this day, i noticed some gr.7 girls following us around quite a lot, and i realized that if i want to have any fun this week at all, i need to hang out with them. so i challenged them to a few races down the waterslides and the went across the lilypads together. and we all had fun.
friday was rainy and yucky so we went to steinbach aquatic centre (similar to lilac, but indoors). that was good, but by then, i was just counting down the hours.

so.... do i think i'll do this again next year?? now is not the right time to ask me. i'm still sleeping 11 hours a night trying to recouperate, and i'm still tired. oh well.... i'm on holidays till the 6th now....... woooohooooo!