The second week in June, I volunteered as a counselor for Royal Family Kids Camp, which is a summer camp for abused and neglected children who are now a part of the foster care system. Basically, we just try to provide a weeks worth of happy childhood memories for them and show them the love of Christ through it, because many of them have never gotten to experience much joy in their lives. It was a completely fantastic time spending an entire week hanging out with a bunch of 7 to 11 year olds, but it was also very exhausting, both physically and emotionally. Obviously, they have a HUGE amount of energy, so they definitely wear you out, and sometimes there can be a lot of discipline problems and things like that, and some of their stories are just completely heartbreaking and bring tears to your eyes, but it is always wonderful to see the joy in their eyes during camp, and the hope they have for the future when it finally comes time to say goodbye. Anyways, I just feel completely blessed for the opportunity to reach out to these children, and although there were definitely a lot of challenges during the week, I am very excited to do it all again next year!
Then, the day after
returning from camp, I promptly did all of my laundry and had to get everything packed up again for my first ever international excursion to visit Sophie in England! It was crazy exciting! I had never flown on an airplane before then, never been on holiday by myself, never been out of the country...so yeah, it was both exciting and terrifying at the same time! But it was totally worth it! I finally saw the ocean, built a sandcastle, rode on the "correct" side of the road, ate profiteroles, ate a ginormous pancake, ate an ice cream from a van, went to Hillsong London, posed as Sherlock Holmes and saw and experienced so many other fantastic things that I just don't have the time to list... I took over 900 pictures and went through like four sets of ba
tteries while I was there...hee hee. I'll include all the links to the albums towards the end. And on top of all that stuff was obviously the most wonderful thing of all, getting to spend time with the most amazing girl in the world, which made it INCREDIBLY difficult to say goodbye...yeah, six hour time differences aren't much fun, and 15 hour ones are even worse (she's in Australia at the moment)...but I get to look forward to seeing her again at some point, so all will be alright eventually.And now I'm just back to Manhattan, working and trying to pay off my trip, which is almost done because we had a big conference at work a couple weeks ago and I made twice as much as usual for that, so praise God for that! And I'm the Mactech Manager now, so that will be interesting being the leader this semestre...I guess we'll see how that goes, but everyone at work seems quite confident in me, so that seems pretty good. And I think I've finally gotten my schedule for this semestre sorted out, only after changing it like twelve times...my roommates finally convinced me that taking 20 hours was not only insane, but humanly impossible, so i dropped down to 16. I have a lot of time consuming classes this semestre, and people who have taken the classes before have told me that there is a good chance I'll be spending 60 hours a week on coursework during the semestre once the projects start hitting, so I'm trying to get a head start on some of the other classes by studying for them now. So yeah, last night I started studying Thermodynamics...oh joy...and as soon as I get the books borrowed, I'll be adding Mechanics of Materials and Electric Circuits and Control Systems to that list, but at least it will give me something to do...
And next week I'll be going back to Larned for a few days to see my family and hang out with some friends back home. We Larnedites have an annual camping trip that we take to a pond out in the middle of a field and go kayaking and play paintball and chase cows and crazy sorts of things like that, so that'll be fun and a nice break from boredom. And maybe at some point I'll finish the book I've been reading, Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott. It has been pretty entertaining, yet another about chivalry in England...it has Robin hood in it, so that instantly makes it pretty awesome to me...hee hee. And not quite as insane as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain that I read earlier...the ending of that one was just ridiculous! And at some point I need to finish The Cost of Discipleship by Dietrich Bonhoeffer that I had been reading ealier. Anyways, I guess that's enough babbling for now, I should probably get back to work, here are the links to my albums from England...
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89498&id=686446537&l=35155e5f3c
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=89731&id=686446537&l=dc1afe875e
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90027&id=686446537&l=d581ab376c
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90625&id=686446537&l=1fd061a497
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=90849&id=686446537&l=87bbcc0089
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91010&id=686446537&l=f7a4b2b040
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91228&id=686446537&l=765e19c47b
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91613&id=686446537&l=2798472367
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=91861&id=686446537&l=334f9bc2af
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=92908&id=686446537&l=5ff33a9674
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=92911&id=686446537&l=1f28d0e74b
Enjoy and have a wonderful day!
