To the Top Of The World...And Back Again

I decided that I should probably post my last bit of Camp Hope writings before the new year...lol. Enjoy :-)


August 1 2008

I woke up extra early that morning...Well, a half hour earlier than I did on all the other mornings, which would put me at 5:00 AM. I even surprised myself by waking up before my watch alarm went... I wanted to make sure and wake up at 5 so I had set an alarm. So I got dressed started to head out of the cabin at the break of dawn. Before I made it out the door though, my watch started beeping. Needless to say I jumped and shoved my arm under my sweat shirt to muffle the sound. There is nothing more startling than having the perfect silence of the early morning broken by an alarm that you'd forgotten that you'd set. One thing about it, I certainly got a good adrenaline rush.


After that though, I made it out of my cabin without the slightest noise, well, aside from that squeaky door that I have to go through to get out of the girl's cabin. Once out in the open of the early morning, I headed towards the pathway to the basketball court where I met up with Jacob. From there the two of us set out on the hike that we had planned the previous day. He'd tried to get more people to join us, but I was the only person who wanted to get up at 5 in the morning to go hiking. Everybody had no idea what they missed out on. The hike was awesome and the scenery was beautiful. First off we stopped by a stream with a small waterfall, where I took some photos and Jacob checked the time to see how long we had before we needed to be back for breakfast. Then we headed off on a tiny trail that he lead me on. All went pretty well, aside from the fact that I had to take frequent breaks to recharge my energy to keep from passing out. In all my hurry to get out of the cabin before waking the others, it had slipped my mind to bring any snack foods with me, which was a bad mistake. I always need to have something to get my blood sugar level up in the mornings before doing a lot of moving around because if I don't, I start to feel sick and if things go too far I can pass out. Not good. But fortunately nothing like that happened, although I felt a little wimpy at times. Bo was real nice about stopping for breaks though, and that was much appreciated.


Around 45 minutes later we arrived at a nice stopping place on the mountain side above Clover Field. The view was amazing! Oh, and seeing the rising sun shine over all the pine trees...it was just beautiful. Spectacular. One of those things that words just can't do justice to when it comes to describing. So we sat there and took in the scenery and the fresh cool morning air (and some drinks of water) and talked. Actually, thinking back on it, it kind of seems like it could have been a scene from a movie. Although if it was, Hollywood probably would have thrown in some unneeded romance. You can almost always count on the movie producers to do that. But here? Nah, just two friends enjoying God's creation together. No more, no less, and that is perfectly fine by me.


Funny, I recall last year Pastor Harris laying down a rule that a guy and a girl couldn't be off alone together without another person along. I guess it's a good thing nobody made that announcement this year or we would have been breaking the rules.


After probably half an hour Jacob checked his watch and we decided that the two of us had better head back to camp before morning exercises with Ruben started up. The two of us kinda laughed about that piece of the morning routine when we got back... Morning exercise? Ha! We had spent like the past two hours doing our morning exercise and it was far more of a workout. But you can't skip out on the morning exercise, so we joined in and stretched our tired muscles a bit more before we finally got to eat.


That day was quite a bit different than the others... instead of our usual cabin cleanup contest we were packing up our things and cleaning out the entire camp. I couldn't believe the week had come to an end so fast. I could hardly believe that this would be the last morning that I'd be tiptoeing out of a cabin of sleeping girls at 5:30 in the morning...The last day of Ruben's morning exercises... and the last time this year that I could see Anna, Bo, Zak, and the others as more than just words on my computer screen.


With all that in mind, I made sure to take advantage of the last few hours I would have with my friends there. I got the group photo with my fellow stooges that I had been dying to get ever since our first van ride together and had everyone I knew sign my hat and signature book. And I got to sing Viva La Vida with Anna & Zak while I signed Anna’s shoe... oh yeah, good times :-)


As I was talking to Zak while he emptied the trash, Dexter decided to take his last chance to be random at camp and ran up behind me and gave me a good poke in the back and ran off. A little shocked, I stood there and said "DUDE! Talk about random..." Then Nick, who was standing off to the side grinned and said "Hmm, well maybe I should do something random too." "Random such as...?" I wondered aloud...but before I finished, he answered... "NOOGIE!!!!!!!" and with that being announced, he grabbed me and did a noogie. Seconds later Zak turned around and pulled out his kendo sword and yelled at Nick telling him, "HEY! Back off of Sarah!!" So Nick quickly released me and I retreated and stood next to Zak, who at the moment reminded me somewhat of a knight, standing there with his sword out and looking like he wanted to bash Nick's head in. I think Nick got a bit lucky that time, 'cause I know Zak desperately wanted to clobber him.


An hour or two later, the saddest time came... rides started leaving and taking campers away. Jacob, Nick, and the McFauls were among the first to depart. Then a little while later the Juanita van pulled away. I nearly burst into tears at that...watching as the Boyds headed back to Seattle and Joy got closer to where she would take her plane back to Florida. It was just so sad knowing that I wouldn't get to hang with these people outside of the computer for a whole year...And that's assuming they made it back to camp. Or that I did. There's always that fear in the back of my mind that something will happen and either them or I won't make it to camp the next year.


So live like there's no tomorrow. Take some chances. Enjoy the time you have with each other while you have it because you may never have another opportunity to again. You just don’t know. So if you’ve got something to say, let it be known and don’t put it off because you might never get a chance to say it otherwise.


As far as my ride home goes, it was pretty good. Not as joyful and fun as the ride up, but hey, what do you expect? Everybody’s tired and sad to leave. One highlight of my trip back though was when we stopped at the airport in Spokane to pick up Lindy & Lucy Butler’s sister-in-law, Sara. It was the first time I’d ever been to a big airport before, so I was just happy to be along for a ride and taking in the scene. Airports are SO cool!! All the little shops and that weird looking glass room that people come out of when they get back from their trips... And my favorite thing- the spinning luggage rack dealie. That thing is awesome. The whole time I had this insane urge to hop on it and go for a ride. But I restrained myself, because I have the feeling that most people wouldn’t think it as fun as I would. I swear, if I ever get to ride an airplane, you will be able to recognize me quite well because I will be that weird girl who is going through airport security going “Wow, this is AWESOME!” I’d probably get my camera confiscated for trying to photograph the airport security dues...hehehe. Am I a small town hick or what?


Anyway, my trip ended when I got home around 10:00 that night. I was slightly surprised by the house color when we pulled up... I had completely forgotten that we were getting our house painted blue while I was gone. Haha. But that's pretty much the end there.... The end of the most amazingly awesome week of my entire life. Will next year manage to somehow top it? Guess I won't find out until it happens!



“Talking to you in real life is weird...but fun. Sincerely, Alexander”

A New Year? AGAIN?

I love this time of year... All the joy going around, last minute shoppers, Christmas songs, lights, decorations...Knowing it's one more aniversary of the birthday of the Savior of the world!

Things had been a little hectic in November and I'd felt kind of down...but ever since December's come, I've just had this strange sense of peace & contentment. Like there's nowhere I'd rather be and nothing I'd rather be doing at the moment and I wouldn't change it all for the world. It's kind of a hard thing to capture with words and make it for people to understand. It's some thing you've just got to feel for yourself, I suppose. It's like that happy feeling you get when the movie finishes with a happy ending...Only it lasts past the ending credits and bonus features.

I can hardly believe it's almost Christmas though! It seems so insane... I mean, it feels like just a couple weeks ago that I returned home from my second visit to Camp Hope. It doesn't feel that long since last Christmast...Or that awesome New Year's party where I hung out with all my youth group friends until midnight and watched fireworks blasting over the river.

It's far but it's near
like it's gone but it's here
Flown away
But with me to stay
An explaination for time?
So very hard to say...

Haha, poet moment. What can I say? It just came to me.

But although the year's gone by so fast, I'm very happy with how it's all worked out. A lot has happened... a friendship that looked beyond gone has been once again repaired, my brother and I have grown a lot closer and I would go so far as to actually consider him a friend now, I've made some amazing new friends and gotten to know the new people of last year better. I finally broke my mental block and created a song that has both music and words together (though I have yet to perfect playing it). Even gotten to be friends with some people who I never pictured myself ever hanging out with and they turned out to be awesome. It's been an amazing year. Now this I wonder: What will my 2009 bring? ...And more than that, how long will it take me after the new year to stop writing 2008 on my journal entries? Heck, I've still written '07 on a few things by mistake...LOL!

What will our new year bring with it? I guess that's for God to know and us to find out.
Until then, in case I don't have time to make a new post before the end of next week... Merry Christmas! Love you all <3

...Yeah, I've not forgotten the rest of the camp posts!

July 31 2008

-Thursday-

Thursday was absolutely the busiest day of all the days at camp, but none the less great.

I awoke for the 4th day in a row at 5:30 and headed out...though not silently I must admit. There was a bump or two that caused a few people to stir in their sleeping bags a bit, but nobody sat up or told me to go back to bed, so I continued on.

It was getting to just be a regular habit by that point to meet Bo in the basket ball court, so once out of my cabin I headed up there again. We just sat around for a short while and then decided to give the volleyball a new sport to involve itself in and brought it up and used it to shoot hoops. After making a few baskets (and missing even more) teenage curiosity overtook and Bo decided that he would go throw the ball at the hoop that was rumored to have a hornets nest in it. Brilliant idea. But it turned out that the nest must have either died or just wasn't there because nothing happened. So we started shooting hoops over there instead.

A little bit later Dexter showed up and joined our game. It started out that we were counting up how many misses in between each basket we made and then whenever we made it we'd start over counting. Eventually though we found ourselves trying to get a lot of misses! We got our count up to about 40-something and then Pastor Harris and Peter showed up and joined in the fun. Eventually we got our score up to about 72 then after that we (well mostly Bo, Dexter, and I) decided that we should try and get our count up to 100! It took us probably 15 or 20 minutes, but we made it to 98. Then the ball was on Pastor Harris...he shoots...and NOOOOO!!!!!!!!! He makes a basket! I don't think I've ever seen anybody so dissapointed that a person got the ball into the basket. Haha! So we started over on our count, but this time we decided that so we can get our "points" up faster, we would count the amount of points a person would get from standing at each of the various lines in the court...we even added our own! If you made a miss shot from behind the hoop on the other side of the court it would gain 7 points. Soon after this new mission started up, Lucy and Suzy showed up as well. After explaining to them that it was quite the opposite of a competetive sport, they joined in our game. Before too long we made our goal- 100 points for misses! Um...yay? Yeah...YAY!!!! For the rest of the day we were laughing and telling everyone how we got 100 points in a row in basket ball. Ohhhhh yeah!

After our game ended Suzy and I headed down for a game of gutter ball before it got taken up by everyone else. Believe it or not, that was the first time this year I had gotten a chance to play! It was really fun, as always. I won against Suzy but then Dexter took me on and I lost that round.

The schedule for the rest of that day was a bit switched around again, because we had another hike in store for us... It was back to the top of Goat Peak for the Camp Hopies! It was, as like last year, a very tiring hike, but very much worth it once you got to the top of the mountain. I was in group number 2 this year, which was one of the medium groups. I was happy- I had a lot of friends on my group. Joy, Zak, Michaela, Lucy, Ellen, Elizabeth, Abby, Raeshelle, Jessica, and more! Plus our group was headed up by Ruben...what fun!

The seating arrangements for the rides to and from were the same as the day before, so that meant yet another mega fun trip in the big white van of Juanita Community Church with Laurel, Joy, and Zak in the seats beside me. I would have never imagined that I could possibly have a more fun car ride than the one of last year with Ruben, Sam, Carolyn, Mandy, Dexter, Laurel, and Jacob C., and I all singing silly songs together for an hour, but it apparently was possible! After our little car trip, I have declared the nickname of "The Four Stooges" upon Joy, Zak, Laurel, and I because I swear we must have been the most random goofy people in the whole van. I think Zak probably used up half of my camera space taking crazy photos and videos of himself on the way! It was quite amusing though...You can tell we all thought so from the steady stream of laughter that you hear in the background of every one of those videos he took :-)

I got many great photos from the hiking trip (um yeah...besides Zak's insane self-photography. Haha). The views you get on the mountain are breathtakingly incredible! I cannot even begin to describe it all... I said the same thing last year as well. I guess some things never change! For the most part the hike looked pretty much the same as before, but I swear I'll never tire of doing this every year. The one thing that was different though was the fact that there was no snow this year. There had been some large icy patches on the mountain last year, but since we were having camp later by a month, I guess it gave time enough for all the snow to melt away.

Once at the top of the mountain we had quite a fun time. Everyone got to have their pictures taken up in the fire watchtower thingy and choose out a Smokey The Bear souvenir to take back. During our brief stay at the top, we all went crazy with taking photographs... I could completely max out my camera’s memory card if I wanted to! I even have a video of Eric jumping off the top of the mountain. Well, kind of! He was messing around on this one rock, and when you stood at a certain angle it looked like the edge of the mountain. So he calls out “Hey Sarah! Video me jumping off Goat Peak!” I got myself a dramatic little movie out of that one! Eric’s yelling out “Goodbye cruel world!” and falls to his death....but no, wait! Suddenly Zak runs down and pulls him back up! Such a rescue! You can hear somebody in the background yelling “Don’t let go Eric, don’t let go!!” Oh my. And of course while on the way up to the mountain, there had to be the famous “Lewis & Clark pose” photographs. It started out as a photo of me kneeling near the edge pointing...then Ellen & Zak rushed to my side going “you can’t do the Lewis & Clark pose alone you know!” What a fun picture that was!

On the way back down the mountain, my group became “Team Flower Power”, as every single person in it had flowers in their hair. Yup, even the guys- Ruben, Zak & Mr. Bates! I even got a picture up on top of the mountain of the culprits who started it (Yeah, I was included).

It was such a very fun hike back down the mountain! Talking & tripping... singing & pop history tests... Who’d have guessed there would’ve been someone in the group who carries a miniature copy of the Constitution wherever they go? Yeah, time flies when you’re having fun- before I knew it we were back to the bottom of the mountain being cheered on and high-fived by the team ahead of us.

Once the last of the 4 teams was back down, we were all welcomed back to non-slanted ground by packages with snack foods. It’s always nice to have a little energy boost after a hike like that. After a bathroom break, we were all back to our designated motor vehicles and I was off on another mega-fun trip in the big white Juanita van! Yahoo! More hilarious videos, self photography and laughs were in store on that ride. Not to mention filming a music video of the four stooges singing “All Star”, which yet again seemed to have become the theme song of Camp Hope.

I swear, I could have gone on like that in the car with my stooge homeys forever, but I guess it's got to end some time, sadly. On the other hand, my face was totally sore from laughing so much, so maybe it was good to have a break. Ah, but how many times in your life do you get placed in the back of a van with 3 of the coolest people ever whom you only get to see like once a year? Not often enough, I'd say.

Shortly after we all got back and ditched our stuff in our cabins, Pastor Harris passed out some ice cream bars and then my team nabbed the little chapel to practice our skit some more. I still could hardly believe that we were running this through for only like the 2nd time and it was merely a few hours before we were to perform in front of the entire camp. But hey, what the heck? This method seemed to work nicely for the guys in years past.

Being the notoriously slow eater that I am, several of my lines during rehearsal were said between (er, and sometimes during...) mouthfuls of half melted ice cream. Hehe. Oh well. We had a very fun time rehearsing, as always. I really love acting! I got more variety in character this year too since I had several different rolls. That was cool. I got to be the prim & proper host of a tea party, a crazy Egyptian, and a rather distraught Jedi who later accidentally gets pulled into the mad scientist's time machine and transported to the land of the ancient Aztecs. How fun! We really had a very productive rehearsal that time around... I especially liked choreographing my light saber duel scene with Ellen :-) Though I must admit that after running through that scene and shouting my “NOOooooOOOOOoooooooo!” several times, I was pretty hoarse. Dang cold...why did it have to come the week of camp? *sigh* One good thing about it though was that when I shouted out my no line, it made my voice go all crazy which made it all the funnier. I really loved doing that!

Later that evening after dinner and the Cabin Inspectors notes, my group threw in another rehearsal before we went to Chapel. That I swear was the most fun one that we had! Definitely more laughing hystarically than rehearsing if you ask me...

“Elizabeth! What on earth did you put in this tea!?” “Oh well I only added a couple tablespoons of chili powder...” “Would you like some spinach cookies?” “You know Sarah, you really need to do something about this servant of yours!”

Hahaha, ohhhhhh yeah. Good times! The second time in one day that I hurt from laughing. But hey, if I’m gonna hurt myself, that’s the way to go! Certainly more fun than falling down a flight of stairs.

After that on the way to chapel I was still going on skit mode and decided to do my “Egyptian dance” all the way to the chapel building. Man I wish I had that on video. LOL! It was awesome. Not that I’m a good dancer...I mean more along the lines of awesomely hilarious looking. It was like ginormous bouncing steps with the goofy “Egyptian” arm movement part of the dance. Suzy found it to be quite entertaining and kept asking me to do it again... Laurel on the other hand I think was half embarrassed to claim she knew me and kept saying “Will you cut that out already?” Then I suppose anybody who didn’t happen to be a part of my skit probably was just thinking “Oh yeah, leave it to Sarah...what the heck is she doing anyway?” But hey, what can I say? It was fun! That's something I love so much at Camp Hope... I can just go crazy and have a blast and not worry about what people will think- everybody seems to just accept one another for who and what they are, and that's really cool.

When chapel let out, my fellow CIA agents and I headed back to our cabin to gather our props for the skit and had a short quickie rehearsal before we had to head off to perform it for everybody else.

Soon as we ran through a few scenes once more we went down to deposit our props...and hide a glass of water...Mwahahhaha! There were just a few more minutes until our last night of Fun ‘n Stuff would begin, and in that time I was rushing around like mad trying to find somebody who could video my group’s skit for me. I asked Pastor Harris, his wife, Mr. Busby, Pastor McFaul....all of which said they couldn’t. *Sigh*. Finally I decided to ask Libby Walker, who agreed to do it for me. Thank goodness! I was really running out of time by that point so I was very grateful to have somebody who would do it for me.

Minutes later, Pastor Harris came up and announced the beginning of Fun ‘n Stuff to the camp and introduced the first contestants in the skit competition-- The Shooting Stars! All was going well... for the first 10 seconds. Then a message popped up on my camera screen, “Low Batteries”. AHHH!!! Luckily I’d thought ahead to pack extra batteries for such a situation as this... unfortunately these batteries were in the front pocket of my backpack in the downstairs of the girl’s cabin. Uh oh. Let’s just say I’ve never ran so fast in my whole entire life. I dashed out of there in a flash, ran through the rain shower that had just started up, dug the batteries outa my backpack and was back to the skits with new batteries in my camera within 30 seconds. Whew! Amazing what a good adrenaline rush can do for a person, no?

Other than that slight problem, it all went quite well and the skits were terrific! I was SO glad that I’d brought my video camera. Of course, it is more enjoyable to watch the skits when you can laugh out loud and clap and not have to worry about not getting some one in the screen of your camera...but hey, it’s a sacrifice I was willing to make! After all, it would definitely be worth the trouble to be able to watch them again and again throughout the year.

Anyway, our lineup of the evening was The Shooting Stars who hosted the first ever Camp Hope Olympics... “I CAN’T HEAR YOU SNORING!!!”

“...And now it’s time for a new event-- WATER OLYMPICS!”

Then the CIA did a skit on time travel...

“Hey what does this button do!?” “We need a sacrifice who is old and slow, so that it will not escape like past sacrifices have.”

“ ‘Come to the Dark Side, Lily Skywalker’ // ‘NEVER!...You killed my mother’ // ‘Well...that is true, but I am your second cousin twice removed from your brother’s aunt’ // ‘NOoooOOOooooooOOO!!!!!!!!!’ ”

Then the Unknowns did the Mazama Talk Show of the Century...

“So...Bob. What’s it like being a mentally insane person?” “Ohhhh we get to shoot Dalmatians now!” “Jeff doesn’t know this, but you have won a very special contest, Jeff! We are selling Jeff, on national TV!” “ ‘So, what’s your favorite flavor of vanilla ice cream? // ‘Chocolate.’ ”

And last but not least, the Storm Troopers performed a show of movie parodies with the help of their warp machine...

“This child is very sad...he goes to public school.” “How do we stop that lunatic Darth Vader??” “You have reached the Death Star Operating System.” “Do you want fries with that?”

Oh yeah, gotta love the Camp Hope skits! We even got a bonus skit this year that nobody had counted on-- while the judges were deciding upon the winners, several of the camp staff performed their own skit with a mock presidential speech and an attack of the Dark Knight.

“This will be an era of change!” “And I promise that every camper shall have an ice cream bar in each hand.” “STAY ON YOUR BOTTOM!” “I’LL GET YOU NEXT TIME!”

That was an awesome skit, especially with Ruben as the villain and all. He does the most awesome evil voice ever.

At the end of it all, my group’s skit was voted for funniest-- I was truly amazed. I totally thought that the Mazama Talk Show would be voted funniest. Those guys were absolutely HILARIOUS! You have no idea how insanely hard it was to keep from cracking up and ruining my video recording. Their costumes were really awesome too... Actually they were the only group who had actual costumes.

It was quite funny to see Mr. Pederson dressed like a rapper...and the costume for Sushi The Samurai was great.

After the skits and all, we didn’t get to do the usual tradition of a big camp fire because of two reasons... One would be because it was raining and two would be because since it’s August, there was a burning ban ‘cause of all the dry weather. But despite the fact, we had a good time. We all went to the dinning hall and ate microwave s’mores and still carried out our tradition of playing Volleyball in the dark. I gotta say that my two favorite things that happened after the skits though were signing everybody’s books and having a duel with Zak. Don’t ask me why, but I had totally been dying to have a duel with him for some reason. It was my light-saber VS. his kendo sword...Awesomeness. I’m not completely sure who won the duel though...I thought that I did but then he thought that he did. Hmm. Oh well. Whatever the outcome was, it was totally fun!

Thursday nights at Camp Hope...they’re the best!

“You can OWN your very own Boy Scout!”