welcome to august

as well as some sort of summary of the summer. (haha. summary, summer, summer-y)

This was pretty much the most jam-packed of any of my previous summers. (I've only been home for 2 out of the 10 weeks of summer so far!) Each activity was different and great in its own way. I had a chance to interact with my different types of friends on all levels. Lets start from the very beginning (a very good place to start) :

Cheerio. What can I say? I love those people so so much. Spending six weeks with them was better than I could've asked for. I was sad to leave them, but my Cheerio family is one that will last for a long time. I will see these people again, and I am sure of it. And I wasn't as sad leaving Cheerio this particular year because I have to get ready to have fun in college, and I can't be sitting there being sad to leave these good friends when I know I'll meet more fun friends and a ton of them are going to be there anyway.

Week after Cheerio (at home). I spent practically every day with my MA friends, which was so much fun. We all know we'll be leaving each other for college, but we know we'll visit each other and keep in touch, and that those are not just empty promises. This hanging out for a week helped me get over Cheerio, too, because I wasn't going from being with fun people 24/7 to being completely void of their presence.

Hawaii. So beautiful and so wonderful to spend it with my extended family. We haven't had a get-together like that in a while, and Hawaii was the perfect setting for such an occasion. Going from such structured and non-stop action at Cheerio for so long to the complete antithesis at Hawaii with no responsibilities at all was a little weird to get used to. As was seeing the entire family there together again. Reestablishing our family dynamic with everybody there at the same time (almost) and all a lot older was a little bit odd for me. I was in a weird mood at the beginning of the trip randomly, but once I got over that mood, that silly reestablishing thing didn't really make sense anymore. But you guys have been with me long enough to know how much I overanalyze things. To a fault. So, yeah. Can I just tell you how beautiful Hawaii was? Our condos were in such a chill environment... you stepped outside of our door to the pool and then a few feet away was a small beach. We didn't have to pack up and make a big trip to the beach all together, we could just wake up whenever we wanted and lie around all day. (lay? lie? who knows.) SCUBA was fun, but I expected to see more sea life than I did. Turtle Town? Come on. I think I heard someone call it Turtle Ghost Town. Eh, whatever. It was fun being under the sea for a while. It just so happened that the dives that us kids decided to opt out of were the best ones. Hawaii was awesome.

Mountain Lodge (Tahoe). I like to make this analogy to people who are familiar with Cheerio-- Cheerio : Cheerio Adventures :: Young Life Camps : Mountain Lodge. They took away our watches and waited until the last possible minute to tell us our activity for the day. I ended up with some sort of minor injury from each day (if you count sunburn as a minor injury). After an obstacle course (kinda) at Donner Lake, we went kayaking on the Truckee. Jill and I managed to stay in our Kayaks the whole time until we reached the second half of the very last rapids. I ended up with three scrape/bruise combinations on one half of my body, one of which made it hard to sit down (if you catch my drift). The second day, hiking, left my feet a bit achey and my muscles a bit sore. But the view from Castle Peak was definitely worth it. The third day, on Tahoe, I don't really count as an injury. My elbows and arm muscles hurt from tubing, but we all know how that goes. The fourth day was definitely the most injury-prone, what with Mountain Biking and Boarding. Just general soreness came from Biking- a result of my low cardiac fitness, I'm sure. Boarding produced minor scrapes all over my body as well as a seemingly bruised tailbone. It definitely hurt a lot that night. The last day, Friday, was the most fun, I think. We jumped off a little cliff into freeeeezing cold water and then walked up the river to this gorgeous natural pool where we jumped off the cliffs some more and tried to dam up the river (which was cold and was probably snow a few days before). We managed to blow the record out of the water. I was so sad to leave Mountain Lodge. I only knew 10 other people (boys, no less) going in, but I became close friends with all of the people by the end. Bonding with the people on such a deep and spiritual level left me so sad when I left. I mean, honestly, what are the chances I'll see these particular people from Arizona and California again? Slim to none. Except for Joe, who's going to App. So. I said I'd summarize Tahoe but it's proving harder and harder to leave things out. It was amazing. I wish I were still there. But I'm excited to keep going with my life, because I know I'll meet cool people like that at more YL things I do in the future. The end of this part of the story.

And now I'm home. I have to unpack and do laundry and weed out all of the clothes I never wear before and move my stuff to the basement and pack for college and all that fun stuff. But it's going to be fun because I'll be in college. Yayy!!

Ok. The end.