Let's get up to speed on what's been happening. I've been here now for what I've just realized is something over three weeks. Besides staff training, I've gone on two trips, both four-days. The first one was just awesome. The counselor I went with was Walter, and over the course of the trip we discovered that we had just about everything in common. Such as: Edward Gorey books, Calvin and Hobbes, linguistics (he's majoring in it; I'm concentrating in it), XKCD, and an odd sense of humor. I also believe he's one of the only people in the world that I could have a "Revolution 9" sing-along with. We didn't remember all of it, but we did sing together: "Industrial output. Financial imbalance. The Watusi. The Twist. …El Dorado." We had campers on that trip too, most of whom were pretty reasonable. They were all fiends for fishing, it seemed. One of them really wanted to catch lots of animals and then kill and eat them. Or just kill them. Another one was this very short guy who said his r's as w's, but managed to carry out an Italian-influenced accent from his Italian upbringing. The effect was that he sounded like a tiny mob boss - which is terribly stereotypical, but in the movies that is what all the mob bosses sound like. Incidentally, a weird number of the kids in Walter's cabin (cabins have 10 kids, and half of them go on each canoe trip) had odd names. Names like Strange, Quaintance, Zak, and Wisdom. I would give you the first names that connect with those, but that seems like a bad thing to do on the internet.
-The second trip, a few days later, was miserable. The weather was the main reason: it was overcast for six straight days here, starting the day before we left, and keeping up for a day after we got back. Also it was unseasonably and unreasonably cold all and every day and night. So the kids definitely had low morale, and we were all wet and cold. Also, the counselor was Jason, who wasn't as interesting as Walter, and seemed not to care a huge amount about the kids or trip. He cared some, but to some extent he seemed along for the ride. I was glad to finish that trip.
-I haven't had much time to myself until today. I had one day off, which I used for reading and walking around. Today I had another day off, and it was one of my favorite days in quite a while. First I read my journal for a while, but then I got really hungry, so I went to town and looked for a restaurant. One wasn't open yet, one didn't serve food (only coffee), and one had a 45-minute wait for food bcause of the Independence Day crowd. Finally, I found a restaurant that I'm really glad I ended up at. I had my first pasty (that's "păsty") ever, and it was delicious. It reminded me that I want to learn to cook; I think I'll look up a recipe when I get home, and make some. Not only do I want to know how to cook so I can make food on my own, but I also keep remembering when I went to Aaron's house (this is Cincinnati Aaron) a few days before I left for camp. His dad was cooking, and he told me, "The reaction of a woman to a man who can cook is just amazing." He illustrated with a dialog:
-" '[Guy voice.] Do you want to have some dinner sometime?'
-" '[Excellent, sort of timid falsetto for the woman's voice.] Uh, sure...... where do you want to go?'
-" 'Well, I thought I would cook.'
-" 'Reeeally? [His eyes light up.] For meeeeee??' "
-I remember these things. Anyhow, after I had that pasty and a cinnamon twist for dessert, I went up to see the parade. That was kinda fun. They had some cool old cars, including one with a horn that went "AHWOOGA", and some Santa Clauses and a fireman on a unicycle. I also found a man selling fruits and vegetables from his pickup truck, and had a dollar's worth of the most delicious strawberries I've ever had. I don't know if I'll ever be able to go back to store-bought.
-Then I drove back up to camp and got ready to go on a wog. That means a trip where I jog sometimes and walk sometimes. I wanted to go find a geocache at Nichols Lake, and then swim in said lake. So I did that, and what's more, I did it barefoot. It was nice to feel the ground under me for the first appreciable time in weeks. The swimming was nice, and I tried to offset some of the farmer's tan that I've gotten recently. I don't go barefoot in forests too often, though, so on the return trip my feet were a bit tender, and I was happy to get to camp and stop walking. I drove into town and got an Italian beef sandwich at the Ice Shanty, which is one of those places with a walk-up counter that you order from and then you eat outside. An Italian beef sandwich, apprently, is just like the girl at the counter said: it's like an Arby's sandwich, "only better." It had some pepper and spices on it, and I got it with jalapeños. I had dessert, and then came back to camp. Then I watched the fireworks across the lake with a bunch of other people on the waterfront steps. And finally, since it's my day off and I hadn't done it for a while, I came to the computers and wrote a blog for you all. And now it's over.
