We had one more week in Logan, in which not very much happened that I distinctly remember. We only had 2 hospital visits for fairly minor things, it was terrific! I don't remember if I mentioned about all the sick people we had during Logan 1, besides the ones who went to the hospital. We had at least 10 kids get sick during the week and spend one or more days sleeping in their room. That first overnight week was just so special. But the problems seem to have used themselves all up and Logan 2 was just swell. That week during registration Braden, my co, and our health counselors came up with a plot to sneak out and go to the midnight showing of Harry Potter 7 part 2. I volunteered to remain behind in case something did happen and we began plotting. I told them we needed a name for our secret operation and Braden said "Operation Robot Unicorn Attack". Turns out this is an actual, really simple, ridiculous, fun, stupid, time wasting, addicting game. This game went on to take over our office for a week, then we all got better. But we even got our session director playing it during down time. We had a high scorer list on the board that we kept updated.
During the course of the week I happened to discover the way into the attic of the institute that had a door to the roof of the institute. It was one of those ceiling drop down ladder doors and the first time we tried it I was lifted up by 2 guys on my team and pulled the little ring they had to open it with. As they were lowering me I had the thought that we didn't actually know what kind of ladder it was, and I had this image of a sliding ladder coming flying out and whacking me in the face. So my finger of my right hand was stuck in the ring to open it, I was being lowered down by these boys, and I was trying to keep my face from being smashed in by a possibly sliding ladder... I wish I had a picture of it. It would be really funny. But the ladder unfolds and no damage was done. During the week we even got to use it once cuz someone lost their volleyball on the roof. The best part though is that when we told our session director about it he wanted to come up with us and see the roof! on Friday after all the kids had left we took him up there, and he took lots of pictures of our team. = ) An example is given below.
So, Logan was good, but it was time to move south. We started in SLC with a bang and had, again, 4 medical trips that week. #1. broken wire on braces. Had to call a bundle of orthodontists to find one that could fix it immediately and for free... these requirements resulted in them driving clear to the south side of SLC for it to get fixed. #2. At games night a boy with a heart condition pushes himself to hard and his heart beats like it's going to explode. Eric and Braden rush him to the hospital. #3 During pizza night (same night as games) a boy who had been sick gets worse and they think he might have appendicitis and Laurie and Jay rush him to the hospital. (I spend the evening dealing with all the fun of stupid counselors letting their kids run around like loonies by myself cuz half of my team is at the hospital. It was an eventful evening. Boys in togas, sick kids... such fun) #4 was much less impressive and I can't even remember what it was. Maybe it was pink eye kid who we had to take to get diagnosed and get meds, but it turns out he just had really bad allergies in his eyes and it wasn't contagious... hmm...
Besides the hospital visits and the toga boys I had to get mad at during pizza night (this was our wild week...) we had troubles all week with counselors letting their kids do whatever they wanted. We literally had kids climbing the buildings. And on Friday the counselors allowed their kids to go running through the sprinklers and do a 200+ person bridge jump (We cross the Legacy Bridge on our route to and from the institute from the dorms. It was built for the Olympics, and it's cool. If you get about 30 or so people to jump in unison on it once you can feel it wiggle and it's cool. You get 200+ kids jumping on it a lot and you get really concerned, scared drivers going underneath it.) On the one hand (the 'I am the one that's in charge...' one) it was really bad and we were super frustrated with the counselors and the way things went. On the other hand, it was really really funny. One counselor sent us a video of the madness of all the kids running through the sprinklers (in an effort to alert us to the chaos) and I have to admit I laughed a lot at it. But it certainly was our wild week of the summer. It was craziness all week long.
On a good note, we did have tons of fun babysitting the session director's daughter a lot. The rule is that if the kid is under 2 (I think) they can bring their child with them to EFY. I actually had this session director last year in Ephriam when their baby girl was something like 3 weeks old. Her birthday was on the Saturday of this session, so that was fun.
Then we got a week off where I went to Bear Lake for the 4th of July with Alycen and Kandi and played in the lake in wet suits and little 2 man sail boats,
When we got back to EFY things kinda normal-ed out. We didn't have very many more hospital visits or crazy kids. We impressed on the counselors the importance of being responsible adults and things improved. The last 3 weeks were pretty laid back and we just got to enjoy being at EFY, without all the emergencies and chaos. The 3rd week in SLC one of the girl BCs got the start of pneumonia, but insisted that she was on meds and would be better by Tuesday. So we didn't hire a different BC and I did her duties anticipating her return... She didn't return till the next week. But it was fine that we didn't hire a different person. I had so much fun being a BC and everyone else on the team helped when my BC and coordinator duties overlapped. It was one of the best weeks.
On the day that HP7.2 came out Braden and the HCs came up with a sneaky plan to escape without anyone knowing they were going to the movie. They all left their dorms at different times and 2 of them went and waited at predetermined locations on campus. The 3rd then drove the car to each location and picked them up. We thought we were so funny and sneaky. When we finally revealed to the BCs that they went we were expecting some sort of reaction, but they didn't really care. So much for all the sneaky-ness...
Um, what else interesting happened... I had a dad call and yell at me because his son didn't make it into the variety show (the son refused to change the song he was playing on the guitar, but the words to the song have profanity. EFY rules don't allow this in the variety show so he didn't make it in) for about 15 minutes straight (I mean, he talked for 15 minutes straight, I couldn't get 3 words in) until I broke and told him he was offensive and (in not so few a words) a big jerk and the session director took the phone away... That was special.
I'm sure there's more interesting stories, I just can't think of them right now so y'all are spared.
Finally, I ended up working in Sacramento my last week, as a counselor. I was excited to see the coordinators out there who I'm really good friends with. I was not excited to drive to California. But that's where the job was, I had 3 other girls carpooling with me, so I borrowed Mom and Dad's van and we drove to Sacramento. It was great. The kids that week were so nice and great and funny. It's so nice to get to just focus on a group of the youth instead of everything. We walked all over campus, crammed ourselves into the tiny-est institute building you've ever seen, and waited in the longest meal lines you've ever seen but the cafeteria staff were the nicest of anywhere I've ever been. They were so cool. Because of these things our schedule was always in flux and we never quite knew when anything was or where, but it was kinda fun that way. It was more of an adventure = )
At the end of the week we slept most of Saturday and then drove down to San Francisco to eat dinner and see some sights with some other counselors. When we set the GPS for San Fran we said 'Yes, let's avoid toll roads'. Turns out that was a bad choice. We discovered, after about 2 hours in the car driving to who-knows-where, that you can't actually get to San Fran in a reasonable time without going over toll roads... Ha. So we changed the GPS and got there an hour later. We ate at the sourdough bread place, went to Ghiradelli square and enjoyed wandering around Pier 39. It was a fun evening, and I learned that even in the summer, take a jacket to SF. I thankfully had mine in the car, but the other girls all bought new SF sweatshirts. Actually, they all bought matching SF sweatshirts (mostly on accident) and 3 of the boys bought the same pattern but in t-shirt form completely by coincidence. So half our group was walking around with matching sweatshirts/shirts.
Sunday we went to sacrament meeting at 10 (yes, they didn't have a 9 am ward, how weird) and then drove home. We listened to an audio book that one of the girls had on her ipod the whole trip, but the problem was it wasn't the only audiobook, and the tracks weren't labeled in any particular manner so the whole trip home my job, as the one in shotgun, was to find the next chapter of the book. At one point we skipped 10 chapters of the book without realizing it, but we didn't really miss anything so we just kept going from there. As we neared Utah we almost met with catastrophe. I couldn't find the rest of the book! We had about 5 or 6 chapters left and I couldn't find the next track! It was very distressing. But at last the track was found and we continued on. As we neared SLC we realized we wouldn't have time to finish the book so we skipped to the second to last chapter. Then as we got into SLC we realized we had to drop off the girl who owned the ipod first! We skipped to the last chapter and made her parents wait while we finished it. Ha. We had to know what happened with the main character and his girl! Anyway, it was a fun trip, but I don't think I'll be driving anywhere far away for a while. That was enough to satisfy for a while.
Well, there you go. The abridged (yes, it was abridged) history of my EFY summer. Whew! If you just read all of that you deserve a pat on the back and a cookie. Congratulations! Thanks for reading!
