Tales of Sketch-a-Etching & Sippy Cups. It's The Portal To Adventure!

Groggily I sat up in bed and popped in my earphones and pump the volume up on the Basshunter song playing on my mp3 player in an attempt to wake myself up. Moving around in a daze as I dragged myself off my comfy little spot, I began to wonder if staying up 'till 2:15 am the night before had been a bad idea after all. Haha, well...It seemed like a good thought at the time. After talking to Laurel on the phone 'till 10:30 the previous night as I'd packed, I then stayed up another few hours talking to Bo and Kacy on chat 'n downloaded summore of the new awesome techno music Bo had emailed to me earlier that evening. Ahh, good times, good times :-) But I now know the hard way that late to bed and early to rise isn't exactly the best policy to live by, as it is exceedingly difficult to drag yourself outa bed at 6 in the morning and be ready to be on the road at 7:30 when you're running on like 3 hours & 45 minutes of sleep, plus have a tylenol PM in your system. Oi.

A few minutes later mom was up poking her head in my door to be sure that I was awake...so much for me being up and dressed at 5:30, as I'd been so sure of the night before. Aw well. I headed downstairs and made the first thing that popped into my head that sounded good. Warm, yellow... ok hm. I think I should throw in the fact that pasta was involved cause otherwise from the first two words quite disgusting ideas could form. lol. I headed for the kraft macaroni and made myself a bowl. Yes, perhaps not everybody's first thought when they think "breakfast food", but hey, I'm not like everybody all the time, so it fits, right? 'Sides, you gotta admit it- it's a heck of a lot more filling than a bowl of honey-nut cherrios (though those are rather tasty also). After downing half the bowl in between space-out moments, I looked up at the clock and realized: I have 45 minutes. And I'm still in my PJ's and havent showered. Great.

Ditching the macaroni, I rushed to get showered and dressed and get the last couple items I needed packed up and out to the drive way, where I sat on the front steps staring at the other half of my bowl of macaroni in my lap while I waited for the Hoffmanns to pick me up to bring me and Tator (fyi:This is what Nathanael Hoffmann will be refered to in all my camp posts. I'm just always used to calling him that, and it confused some people at camp, so I thought I'd just clear that up here incase you're wondering who the heck this "tator" is).

Anywho, after sitting on the front steps half asleep for what felt like an eternity (but it really was only like 10 minutes), the Hoffmanns showed up in the driveway. After quickly shoving my things into the back of their minivan and giving mom a hug (as well as the remains of the maccaroni... I was too sleepy to finish it. lol I have a hard time eating when I'm tired), we headed off. Since I still didn't have a ton in my stomach to manage on, I toted a sippy cup along on the ride up to Pullman, which seemed to completely amuse Mr.Hoffmann. Haha, then, 16 year olds generally are not known as the breed who would be still carrying around sippy cups so...yeah...Hey! At least I can't get yelled at for spilling milk all over the back of the Hoffmann's ride! *grin*

45 minutes later, we were at Ruben's place and I found people yet again being amused by me and my little green sippy cup. Yay... XD This time it was Ruben and his daughters. After giving me a big hug, the oldest, 9-year-old Emily, laughed and said "You brought a sippy cup??" Ha, oh yeah :-) Fine, yes, I am a dork...LOL.

Not too long afterwords, I found myself in the back of Ruben's minivan seated with a window on my left side, Dexter on my right side, and Tator on the other side of Dexter. I was truly wondering how the next 8 hours of the road trip would be. My first thoughts when I had found out the prior week that I'd be sharing a ride with Dexter were "Oh boy. I hope I keep my sanity!" because the first scene that entered my mind's eye was of him driving me nuts and us having poke-fights. Which I generally always take from the guy...Just not for 8 hours at a time. But it didn't happen, and I am quite grateful. I did learn about a talent of his though that I never knew he had- Dexter Jones is AMAZING at using an Etch-A-Sketch. Seriously. I've never seen anything like it. In the first 15 minutes of the ride he created on it a scene consisting of a house, road, and water tower and (ESPECIALLY for being on an etch-a-sketch) was quite artistic.

As for the rest of the ride, there isn't a lot to say, actually. We made the annual snack stop at the same grochery store that Lucy, Lindy, Laurel, and I had made mad dashes up the aisles of the prior year. Ahh good memories :-D Then along the way I watched an episode of Batman that my brother downloaded and had been begging me to try out (it was hilarious), watched Dex & Tator pantomime to random songs on Tator's ipod (that too was also very hilarious), and the three of us all did mad-libs about super chickens, played Indian Poker, and sang so loudly to Linkin Park's "In The End" that Ruben boosted the volume of the piano music he had playing up front. All in all, it was a great time, and sure didn't seem like any 8 hours.

Before I knew it, we were driving past that now-familiar sign that said "Mazama Bible Camp" on it. HORRAY! After waiting anxiously all year, I was finally there at exactly 2 minutes past 2:00 (for the record though, I really only remember that cause Dexter had said it as we pulled into camp). After everyone arrived, we were all called to the little chapel for intro's. Only we didn't do intro's. Huh. That was weird...though on the other hand it prevented me from introducing somebody to the entire camp with the wrong name as I did my first year...haha. I still can replay that moment quite clearly in my head.

Anyways, Pastor Harris welcomed us all and then went on to explain some rules. That and explain about the...Poo- errr... "Mud Puddle". Which was quite amusing :-) Due to some rather annoying insurance issues and city specifications, they were not allowed to have a swimming pool. As Pastor Harris put it... "This is not a swimming pool. It is a man-made lake. Actually no, there are government specifications for those too. We will call it a mud puddle, because in those you ARE allowed to run and splash in. And if anybody questions you, (*german accent*) I know nothing, I see nothing!" *Laughs* I love how he went and threw in the whole Shultz line from Hogan's Heroes... I dunno how many people actually got that, but I found it quite funny =D (yeah, uh, major old TV shows fan here).

Once the intro to camp was done, everybody went up to the sport court for the first Camp Hope game of the year-- a teamed version of cat & mouse. That was... interesting. First they had us line up according to height (I feel good now. There were several people who were shorter than me so I ranked higher than 3rd shortest this year =D ). Then once they lined us up, they had us fold the line in half and the people across from us were who we were to be partners and link arms with for the game. I was paired up with Bo, which he found to be somewhat awkward (well... the whole person-to-person contact thing...you know...). I'm glad we were paired up though cause he kept me from totally hurting myself :-) (my foot was still sore from the giant blister the foot doctor gave me)... That and it was definitely less awkward than the possibility of being paired with some guy who I'd never met or something. We certainly didn't win, but we weren't like the first people out either, which I guess is good.

From the first game... I'm not really sure where we went. Perhaps more free time? Or dinner? I really don't remember. One thing I do know though was that not only had they changed the schedules up for this year, but they also had decided against printing them in the campers books for some bizarre reason, which I found to be rather annoying. *sigh* oh well. It can't all be perfect. Anywho, we did something. Haha and somewhere in there we had dinner too. Then directly from dinner we went to Fun 'n Stuff, which is different from most years cause previously I'm quite certain that it was chapel after dinner, then Fun 'n Stuff, then snacks. But whatever.

So in Fun 'n Stuff we did what we do every year on the first night of camp- the alphabet game. One thing for every letter of the alphabet, all pulled from your cabin's luggage! They did that differently than previous years too this year, so I didn't get to go up on stage and do a big advertising speal for my group's stuff...sad. lol I totally loved getting to be my team's announcer when we'd done that =] In general I just have fun being able to get up on the stage and be goofy and dramatic in front of everybody. But back to the alphabet game... So this year insteada advertising your findings, it was a relay race. Blindfold a person, choose a person to be their partner and tell them what to look for in the pile, then the blind person would find the item and hold it up and hopefully be the first one to do so. And there would be points awarded to each team for the fastest finding of the item and for the most creative item. This year I had come prepared for the game... I brought a wide variety of random items, including a girl scout uniform, giant sunglasses, a skeleton key, a necktie, and a lightsaber (which oddly the younger teen boys had the EXACT same one. Weird). They also borrowed my blanket for letter Z ^_^ In the end, my team won, despite them not having time for us to show off most of my awesomely random items.

As stated before, from there we went to chapel and then to snacks. Snacks was different too... they had us line up according to cabin group like they did at the normal mealtimes...which kinda was annoying cause last year I'd really enjoyed hanging with some of the guys at snacks in the evenings :-/ But the whole lining up by cabins thing is really good for causing segregation, so thats how it went. At least for that evening.

Wanting to enjoy the stars a little before bed, I snuck off to the sport court after snacks, while about half my cabin group lined up downstairs in the girls cabin awaiting the showers. Ahh, the night felt soooo nice! The night air was still warm, but most definitely cooler than it had been that afternoon. As I approached the end of the trail leading to the sport court, I spied a strange floating square light and heard some of the guys bouncing a basket ball around. Well, that and the sound of Linkin Park music...haha. I let the black darkness conceal my presence and walked along the fence line, looking up at the stars and enjoying the faint sound of the rock music playing on the other end of the area. I knew they weren't intending on me being there, so I decided to let the guys go on with the illusion that they were still alone and try not to annoy them.

Its rather strange, ending the first day of camp by feeling invisible. As was it strange not having Laurel by my side in the dark as in previous years. But still, it's Camp Hope and I was just happy to be there.


"Anyone need a rest stop? And if you say 'Not anymore', you're in big trouble!"


Tuesday, July 28, 2009