Saturday, October 4, 2008
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
Holdplacer
I am so busy- I can't wait to tell you about it, but I'm too busy.
It's another day here in paradise- the last of Junior High #4. Highlights of the week include getting up at 6:30 in the morning to move 400 or so chairs in order to sweep and then carefully placing them back in perfectly straight rows, as well as spraying down and wiping a ton of bathrooms with hydroxy (a sanitizer). Thus my mother's prophecy has been fulfilled- I did indeed have to clean toilets at Q.
More highlights include taking a group of 4 kids mountain biking up 2 different mountains, made possible only by this week's amazing speaker. Allow me to explain:
He is a mountain biker. I knew it within a few seconds of looking at him. He just had that look about him; the "I'm wearing a Kona hat look". Yeah. Sweet. It get's better. He talked to me, and I told him that I was the mountain bike leader, and that I hadn't done much biking in a while because I'd been at Briercrest.
I didn't think he was that hardcore though until I saw him give his first talk to the campers... about mountain biking! He talked about how he was teaching his 6 year old son to ride skinnies at a mountain bike park. He used it as an example, he said that he's teaching his son how to take risks, because when he grows up he wants him to not hesitate to do what he knows is right. That's a hardcore mountain biker.
It still get's better though. Let me tell you a bit about my job as the mountain bike leader first though: I take kids mountain biking- all kinds of them. I have this group of kids who come biking with me every day, and I have some that only come once because they have to, and I have some that beg me to take them to the jumps during a time section when I am clearly not allowed to. My hardcore group, the "Peak Experience" campers, are the ones who bike every day. The brochure is very clear that it is for "people who want to ride up one side of maple mountain and down the other" however there are always at least 2 girls who have never ridden a mountain bike before (I believe this situation exists because the Peak Experience option is one of the last options to fill up, and the girls waiting list for camp is always longer than the dudes) This phenomenon was visitted in a previous blog post. Which you should keep in mind as you read this one.
Ever since the day of that previous blog post I have been somewhat less merciful on little girls who have never mountain biked, simply because I wanted to discourage them from coming with us up a mountain. There are other things they can do, and I've been telling them that. Due to the fact that I was planning to continue getting up at 6:00AM all this week, I was not planning on being especially enthusiastic as a mountain bike leader this week. I really didn't have any high hopes.
However, on the second day of Mountain biking with my "Peakers" Sid, the speaker came along. At the time, I was very glad about this because my assistant was out with a broken toe and his replacement was complaining about the concusion he thought he'd gotten that morning and about how hungry he was, and how his head hurt and... ugh! So Sid (the speaker) came, it was great, he was super enthusiastic so I didn't have to be, he helped the little girls by holding onto thir seats while they road the skinnies in the bike park, just like he talked about doing for his 6 year old son. Then we just went to the jumps I think because the four other guys were into them. They were good friends, but hard on eachother- rough around the edges you might say.
Sid was enthusastic while they were jumping, and the girls were content to watch. ...I forgot to mention that I had been planning to do a really difficult ride in order to discourage the girls, what I thought was "being honest" about how difficult it "would be" for them later. Sid dashed that plan though- he's the speaker, you can't drag little girls all over the forest when the speaker is with you, it's unchivalrous, it's unidealistic, it's mean.
When the ride was over and the kids left, Sid talked to me. He said I did a good job, and I have a cool gig here. We talked about Briercrest, and he said he'd been their too. He did that thing adults do where they ask you what your career plans are.
But then he said some amazing things. He more or less said "Evan, you've got to love on these kids, especially the girls. Don't worry about the guys, they already think you're awesome, but you've got to love the girls. Tomorrow (day 3 of 4 days of biking) we have these kids for 2 hours, and if after 2 hours of mountain biking these girls say that they've had a good time, then we will have accomplished something amazing. Let's make those 2 hours the best time ever for these girls, I'll come with you."
I agreed.
The next day a 5th guy showed up for the first time that week. I thought he'd be ok because he's a guy and he signed up for mountain biking. As we got ready to ride that day, everyone was asking me where we were going, and I kept saying I didn't know. I felt dumb, I felt like I wasn't leading, I felt like I should know what to do, where to go. I didn't know though. I didn't know how to give those girls the best time ever. I didn't know if it meant I should forget about the guys and just do easy stuff, or if it meant I should make the girls do something really hard, but just enocurage them and wait for them so much that they would be able to do it, to help them get over obstacles they couldn't get their bikes over, to be chivalrous- Maybe then they'll have a good time, and a sense of accomplishment as well. So in the end I said "we're going to head up the mountain, but I don't know how far we're going to go" and we went.
It was slow going. I knew it would be, I had to be in the front as always so I couldn't help the girls that much. Sid was in the back and doing a great job as usual. I had an assigned assistant who was hanging with the guys, and was doing a great job of joking with them and generally being cool. It soon became clear that the one knew boy was slow, and he was wearing pants on a hot day, and he fell into a hole and got dirt down his pants, and he wasn't wearing any socks.
This is going to be anticlimactic. Sid talked to me, and he said that me and my assistant should keep going up the mountain and that him and the girls and the slow boy should go at their own pace. I said that there was a trail that we would have been going down that they could take, but that since we were now able, the rest of us were going to push up to the top of the mountain.
So we did. Me and the 4 rough guys and my cool assistant went up to the top of the mountain- the same mountain from my other blog post 6 weeks ago. We did it on day 3, not day 4. We did it in 2 hours as though it was just a normal thing, and while we were up, the girls and the boy and Sid went back down to the bike park and rode skinnies, and Sid did his regular amazing encouraging thing and they had a great time, they even did some of the hard stuff that most of the boys don't do, because Sid helped them learn and get confidence to do it. Later on, their counselor came up and told me how much fun they had had, and she thanked me. Last night, the 2 girls wanted to get their picture taken with me. Sid and I shook hands and congratulated eachother, and then the next day, Sid and I both individually went out of our way to make sure the girls were signed up for a different activity, because they choose not to come on our final ride, of their own volition, because they knew it wasn't really for them.
So we climbed another mountain, a mountain I climbed last week with the boys of my last group. It was hard. It was crazy. It was intense. It was mountain biking, and this time I wasn't sick so it was actually fun. We had a good time and the kids did great. It took all afternoon and the guy with the broken toe ended up coming and doing it, which made me happy because he's a super great guy and just perfect for anything with kids.
Yeah so now I'm kindof lost, and staff meeting is starting. That was a long story, I hope I didn't bore you. I guess I should just sum it up by saying that this week was very challenging for me, but that I learned a lot, and now I am very tired. Next week I have decided to counsel the final juniors camp, an oppurtunity which came up suddenly. I had the option of doing something much easier, but it seems like I'm supposed to council. One of the deciding factors was that I saw one of my old campers today because he came with his dad to pick up his older brother from this camp. I know have an oppurtunity to have that kind of bond with 10 more kids, and I'm going to take it, even though the girl I like a lot isn't councilling next week and so I was really hoping to get to know her better. Oh well.
It's another day here in paradise- the last of Junior High #4. Highlights of the week include getting up at 6:30 in the morning to move 400 or so chairs in order to sweep and then carefully placing them back in perfectly straight rows, as well as spraying down and wiping a ton of bathrooms with hydroxy (a sanitizer). Thus my mother's prophecy has been fulfilled- I did indeed have to clean toilets at Q.
More highlights include taking a group of 4 kids mountain biking up 2 different mountains, made possible only by this week's amazing speaker. Allow me to explain:
He is a mountain biker. I knew it within a few seconds of looking at him. He just had that look about him; the "I'm wearing a Kona hat look". Yeah. Sweet. It get's better. He talked to me, and I told him that I was the mountain bike leader, and that I hadn't done much biking in a while because I'd been at Briercrest.
I didn't think he was that hardcore though until I saw him give his first talk to the campers... about mountain biking! He talked about how he was teaching his 6 year old son to ride skinnies at a mountain bike park. He used it as an example, he said that he's teaching his son how to take risks, because when he grows up he wants him to not hesitate to do what he knows is right. That's a hardcore mountain biker.
It still get's better though. Let me tell you a bit about my job as the mountain bike leader first though: I take kids mountain biking- all kinds of them. I have this group of kids who come biking with me every day, and I have some that only come once because they have to, and I have some that beg me to take them to the jumps during a time section when I am clearly not allowed to. My hardcore group, the "Peak Experience" campers, are the ones who bike every day. The brochure is very clear that it is for "people who want to ride up one side of maple mountain and down the other" however there are always at least 2 girls who have never ridden a mountain bike before (I believe this situation exists because the Peak Experience option is one of the last options to fill up, and the girls waiting list for camp is always longer than the dudes) This phenomenon was visitted in a previous blog post. Which you should keep in mind as you read this one.
Ever since the day of that previous blog post I have been somewhat less merciful on little girls who have never mountain biked, simply because I wanted to discourage them from coming with us up a mountain. There are other things they can do, and I've been telling them that. Due to the fact that I was planning to continue getting up at 6:00AM all this week, I was not planning on being especially enthusiastic as a mountain bike leader this week. I really didn't have any high hopes.
However, on the second day of Mountain biking with my "Peakers" Sid, the speaker came along. At the time, I was very glad about this because my assistant was out with a broken toe and his replacement was complaining about the concusion he thought he'd gotten that morning and about how hungry he was, and how his head hurt and... ugh! So Sid (the speaker) came, it was great, he was super enthusiastic so I didn't have to be, he helped the little girls by holding onto thir seats while they road the skinnies in the bike park, just like he talked about doing for his 6 year old son. Then we just went to the jumps I think because the four other guys were into them. They were good friends, but hard on eachother- rough around the edges you might say.
Sid was enthusastic while they were jumping, and the girls were content to watch. ...I forgot to mention that I had been planning to do a really difficult ride in order to discourage the girls, what I thought was "being honest" about how difficult it "would be" for them later. Sid dashed that plan though- he's the speaker, you can't drag little girls all over the forest when the speaker is with you, it's unchivalrous, it's unidealistic, it's mean.
When the ride was over and the kids left, Sid talked to me. He said I did a good job, and I have a cool gig here. We talked about Briercrest, and he said he'd been their too. He did that thing adults do where they ask you what your career plans are.
But then he said some amazing things. He more or less said "Evan, you've got to love on these kids, especially the girls. Don't worry about the guys, they already think you're awesome, but you've got to love the girls. Tomorrow (day 3 of 4 days of biking) we have these kids for 2 hours, and if after 2 hours of mountain biking these girls say that they've had a good time, then we will have accomplished something amazing. Let's make those 2 hours the best time ever for these girls, I'll come with you."
I agreed.
The next day a 5th guy showed up for the first time that week. I thought he'd be ok because he's a guy and he signed up for mountain biking. As we got ready to ride that day, everyone was asking me where we were going, and I kept saying I didn't know. I felt dumb, I felt like I wasn't leading, I felt like I should know what to do, where to go. I didn't know though. I didn't know how to give those girls the best time ever. I didn't know if it meant I should forget about the guys and just do easy stuff, or if it meant I should make the girls do something really hard, but just enocurage them and wait for them so much that they would be able to do it, to help them get over obstacles they couldn't get their bikes over, to be chivalrous- Maybe then they'll have a good time, and a sense of accomplishment as well. So in the end I said "we're going to head up the mountain, but I don't know how far we're going to go" and we went.
It was slow going. I knew it would be, I had to be in the front as always so I couldn't help the girls that much. Sid was in the back and doing a great job as usual. I had an assigned assistant who was hanging with the guys, and was doing a great job of joking with them and generally being cool. It soon became clear that the one knew boy was slow, and he was wearing pants on a hot day, and he fell into a hole and got dirt down his pants, and he wasn't wearing any socks.
This is going to be anticlimactic. Sid talked to me, and he said that me and my assistant should keep going up the mountain and that him and the girls and the slow boy should go at their own pace. I said that there was a trail that we would have been going down that they could take, but that since we were now able, the rest of us were going to push up to the top of the mountain.
So we did. Me and the 4 rough guys and my cool assistant went up to the top of the mountain- the same mountain from my other blog post 6 weeks ago. We did it on day 3, not day 4. We did it in 2 hours as though it was just a normal thing, and while we were up, the girls and the boy and Sid went back down to the bike park and rode skinnies, and Sid did his regular amazing encouraging thing and they had a great time, they even did some of the hard stuff that most of the boys don't do, because Sid helped them learn and get confidence to do it. Later on, their counselor came up and told me how much fun they had had, and she thanked me. Last night, the 2 girls wanted to get their picture taken with me. Sid and I shook hands and congratulated eachother, and then the next day, Sid and I both individually went out of our way to make sure the girls were signed up for a different activity, because they choose not to come on our final ride, of their own volition, because they knew it wasn't really for them.
So we climbed another mountain, a mountain I climbed last week with the boys of my last group. It was hard. It was crazy. It was intense. It was mountain biking, and this time I wasn't sick so it was actually fun. We had a good time and the kids did great. It took all afternoon and the guy with the broken toe ended up coming and doing it, which made me happy because he's a super great guy and just perfect for anything with kids.
Yeah so now I'm kindof lost, and staff meeting is starting. That was a long story, I hope I didn't bore you. I guess I should just sum it up by saying that this week was very challenging for me, but that I learned a lot, and now I am very tired. Next week I have decided to counsel the final juniors camp, an oppurtunity which came up suddenly. I had the option of doing something much easier, but it seems like I'm supposed to council. One of the deciding factors was that I saw one of my old campers today because he came with his dad to pick up his older brother from this camp. I know have an oppurtunity to have that kind of bond with 10 more kids, and I'm going to take it, even though the girl I like a lot isn't councilling next week and so I was really hoping to get to know her better. Oh well.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Topical Moisturizer
One of the bikes has a flat tire, I already fixed it once today, but I must not have done a good enough job. Today has been the first full day of Junior High #3, which brings me back to my old routine, the routine where I feel like I'm most doing my job as mountain bike leader. It means that I do three group rides a day, each about an hour, including the time it takes to get all the kids ready. Groups vary in size from 5 to 11, (the amount, not the age) both guys and girls. I like it when the girls get into biking, sometimes I have groups of girls who are super-hardcore, and that makes me happy. Sometimes little girls scare me though, like when they ride through trails sitting on their seats and with their feet dragging on the ground- it's just not safe, they can hit their shins on the pedals and they don't have their weight centered very well for maneuvering. So, in conclusion, girls who come mountain biking provide a mostly pleasant challenge.
Today we had some crazy dudes. Most of the crazies come out in open activities, not in the scheduled blocks. They can be scary to, and they're kindof hard on eachother. Often there will be one who thinks he's bigger, stronger, older, tougher, or better than some of the others, and who likes to criticize.
It's all fun though- It's just taking kids mountain biking. Some of them have never tried it before, and some of them speak broken English; other kids remind me more of myself. It's special.
Bed time.
Today we had some crazy dudes. Most of the crazies come out in open activities, not in the scheduled blocks. They can be scary to, and they're kindof hard on eachother. Often there will be one who thinks he's bigger, stronger, older, tougher, or better than some of the others, and who likes to criticize.
It's all fun though- It's just taking kids mountain biking. Some of them have never tried it before, and some of them speak broken English; other kids remind me more of myself. It's special.
Bed time.
Thursday, July 24, 2008
What I think I know
Mountain biking is intrinsically good, materialism is intrinsically bad, therefore: mountain biking is true when it brings contentment, not discontentment.
Sunshine brings happiness; rain a spirit of melancholy.
Heat enables and cold paralyzes.
Mountains hide the sunset while plains leave you with nowhere to hide.
Friends have the power to influence you. If you want to be influenced positively, develop positive relationships.
Negative relationships will necessarily have a negative effect on you. This may come in the form of negative attitudes or the reinforcement of negative behaviour.
It may not always be possible to control your influences, therefore choose your friends carefully and your close friends even more carefully. If you feel certain people are negatively influencing you, concentrate on positively influencing them. Rather than moving down to their level so that you can be with them, set your bar high and show them what you expect of them.
Children depend on their parents to break down logic problems for them. They will often miss hidden premises or the personal implications of what is said. This is evident in the inability of a group of children to respond when told to form a straight line without each individual receiving specific instruction on how to do so.
When an 18 year old demonstrates an apparent inability to understand the implications of the statement “we need to leave by 9:00am tomorrow” it is a mark of his youth, demonstrative that he expects someone else to provide him with more specific instructions. This problem can be easily avoided so long as the instructor does not act like the teenager’s parents. 18 year olds are capable of taking responsibility for themselves but, like children, they will avoid it if they think they don’t have to.
Friday, July 18, 2008
You say goodbye, but I say
Hello. I am not in any way confident that I have anything to say right now. Today marked the end of Juniors 2, and my second week of counseling. My cabin left and I don't miss them. Perhaps I don't form attachments easily, perhaps I am not emotional. perhaps I am only not sentimental, but then again, I think I am all of those things.
Yesterday someone asked me if I love my kids, and I said "I don't know". She said "Will you miss them when they are gone?".
I am supposed to love these kids. The concept is "loving kids to Christ". Do I love them? I think so.
I told her I thought I loved them, and she asked them if I love them like Jesus does. I suppose she was trying to motivate me, she was a head counselor after all.
I don't love them like Jesus does, I love them because Jesus does. I value them because Jesus values them. It makes me sad when I see them hurting eachother because I know it makes God sad. My job is to love these kids, and I do, but I don't miss them. I am genuinely glad that my influence on their life has come to an end, or at least diminished. It is a lot of pressure to know that God is working through you.
Not that I should have to do the work, right? I mean, if God's working through me, what do I have to worry about, right? Yeah, uhuh, whatever.
Now I have to be right with God; now I have to be asking for his help so that I can recieve it, I have to be constantly making sure to ask God for help so that I'm relying on him and not my own adequacy, qualifications, or prerequisites. I have to be sure I'm depending on God otherwise I'm only giving myself, and I'm not enough.
When I think past on the last week, I wish I'd had more chances to rub off on (influence)the kids, but If I could do it again, I wouldn't be more outgoing, I'd be more prayerful.
I want to store up my treasures in heaven, and the last thing I want to do is brag to you, so I'm not going to tell you any stories from the past 2 weeks. I think what I have said so far is very much what I needed to say. Please pray with my during the rest of the summer. If you do not know, I will be counseling a total of three weeks this summer, and other 7 I will be the mountain bike leader. This means that I am not going to be sleeping in a cabin again for another 4 weeks, which will give me plenty of time to prepare myself for my third and final week of counseling this summer, which I'm sure will be altogether different.
Yesterday someone asked me if I love my kids, and I said "I don't know". She said "Will you miss them when they are gone?".
I am supposed to love these kids. The concept is "loving kids to Christ". Do I love them? I think so.
I told her I thought I loved them, and she asked them if I love them like Jesus does. I suppose she was trying to motivate me, she was a head counselor after all.
I don't love them like Jesus does, I love them because Jesus does. I value them because Jesus values them. It makes me sad when I see them hurting eachother because I know it makes God sad. My job is to love these kids, and I do, but I don't miss them. I am genuinely glad that my influence on their life has come to an end, or at least diminished. It is a lot of pressure to know that God is working through you.
Not that I should have to do the work, right? I mean, if God's working through me, what do I have to worry about, right? Yeah, uhuh, whatever.
Now I have to be right with God; now I have to be asking for his help so that I can recieve it, I have to be constantly making sure to ask God for help so that I'm relying on him and not my own adequacy, qualifications, or prerequisites. I have to be sure I'm depending on God otherwise I'm only giving myself, and I'm not enough.
When I think past on the last week, I wish I'd had more chances to rub off on (influence)the kids, but If I could do it again, I wouldn't be more outgoing, I'd be more prayerful.
I want to store up my treasures in heaven, and the last thing I want to do is brag to you, so I'm not going to tell you any stories from the past 2 weeks. I think what I have said so far is very much what I needed to say. Please pray with my during the rest of the summer. If you do not know, I will be counseling a total of three weeks this summer, and other 7 I will be the mountain bike leader. This means that I am not going to be sleeping in a cabin again for another 4 weeks, which will give me plenty of time to prepare myself for my third and final week of counseling this summer, which I'm sure will be altogether different.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
Snarls Darkly
Firstly I wish to state that the title of this blog post has absolutely nothing to do with it's content whatsoever.
So I'm a Junior Counselor or "Cabin Leader" if you don't like the misleading nomenclature of "Counselor". Chris is my Senior Counselor, he does everything and I do everything I can to help. The head counselor just came and told me that he watches everyone, and that he thinks I've been doing a good job. I spilled all my concerns to him, all the things I've had to deal with and am still dealing with. He says that next week he wants to make me a Senior Counselor, with my own Junior Counselor to be mentored by me and to help me. That would shift a lot of responsibility onto myself. Most notably, I would have to actually keep track of whether these kids are wearing sunscreen, drinking enough water, eating enough, taking their medication, etc. - things Chris takes car of. I would feel even more responsible when these kids show absolutely no interest in talking about God, and when it seems impossible to have a serious descussion at all. Hopefully by the end of this week I will have dealt with that, and figured out just what exactly the signs of spiritual growth in a 9 year old are.
There's this one kid who just lays in his bed at night shouting the most ridiculous things- "Potty humour" as my mom would say, and there's no way to control him. It seems to get worse and worse, yesterday I stood right next to him and prayed softly while he shouted, but I eventually just left him alone. There is no way to make this kid sleep when you want him to, there is no way to control him. I'm past the point of being angry at him and now I'm just trying to do my best to love him, and it's getting easier.
They say that at camp the quiet, the darkness, the long nights can force a kid to be alone with his thoughts, and that God can speak to them then. Sometimes I wish we could tie this kid to a tree and come back for him in the morning. I just want something good to take place inside of him, but it's the quiet times that he becomes the most unreasonable. Please pray that God would work in him through us.
So I'm a Junior Counselor or "Cabin Leader" if you don't like the misleading nomenclature of "Counselor". Chris is my Senior Counselor, he does everything and I do everything I can to help. The head counselor just came and told me that he watches everyone, and that he thinks I've been doing a good job. I spilled all my concerns to him, all the things I've had to deal with and am still dealing with. He says that next week he wants to make me a Senior Counselor, with my own Junior Counselor to be mentored by me and to help me. That would shift a lot of responsibility onto myself. Most notably, I would have to actually keep track of whether these kids are wearing sunscreen, drinking enough water, eating enough, taking their medication, etc. - things Chris takes car of. I would feel even more responsible when these kids show absolutely no interest in talking about God, and when it seems impossible to have a serious descussion at all. Hopefully by the end of this week I will have dealt with that, and figured out just what exactly the signs of spiritual growth in a 9 year old are.
There's this one kid who just lays in his bed at night shouting the most ridiculous things- "Potty humour" as my mom would say, and there's no way to control him. It seems to get worse and worse, yesterday I stood right next to him and prayed softly while he shouted, but I eventually just left him alone. There is no way to make this kid sleep when you want him to, there is no way to control him. I'm past the point of being angry at him and now I'm just trying to do my best to love him, and it's getting easier.
They say that at camp the quiet, the darkness, the long nights can force a kid to be alone with his thoughts, and that God can speak to them then. Sometimes I wish we could tie this kid to a tree and come back for him in the morning. I just want something good to take place inside of him, but it's the quiet times that he becomes the most unreasonable. Please pray that God would work in him through us.
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