Hello Hello!

Hey, it's me again! It sure has been awhile since I checked in with you guys! Things in Chicago finished up so amazing well! I think it has been one of my most favorite workcamps so far! The youth and advisors that were there are just so amazing and I feel oh so very blessed to have gotten the chance to know each and every one of them! Just to clue you all in on the amazingness here are a few highlights from the week:

- -Hand Hugs!
- runnin' the Sharon Shuttle to showers and volleyball
- sand volleyball and sumo wrestling
- standing like a flamingo and being made fun of for it!
- playing Addiction and Palace and Rage and Apples to Apples
- lying on the floor with my legs and feet resting on the wall
- going to the DuPage County Fair
- walking taco's, one of the most amazing meal ideas EVER!
- being serenaded to while driving the Sharon Shuttle
- amazing singing
- laughing to the point that I couldn't breathe with tears rolling down my cheeks
- rockin' out to the YMCA song at the Northern Illinois Food Bank with my youth
- hammocks!
- loosing my keys or my cell phone twenty million times a day
- taking more than 400 pictures during the week
- hitting my head REALLY hard on an open back door of a car
- playing the hand game and making it to ten!! (no worries, if you're interested, Ill teach you!)
- watching my youth read and do math with the youth from the resource center
- rockin' the van at EVERY red light...total chaos!
- the Shedd Aquarium (on a Saturday = bad idea)
- having a hand washing service the last night we were together
- making 38 new totally awesome friends
- saying goodbye to everyone at least twice!

...that only gives you a glimpse of all the things we did during the week and is only a few of the many memories that I will take away from the week. I was so sad to leave that group that I cried during our circle time Saturday night and then again on Sunday once I dropped off the last group where they needed to be. It was so strange not having three dozen people around me all the time and I didn't quite know what to do with myself!

The youth that I met are so talented and caring and compassionate and on fire for life that it was such a gift for me to be around them for a week. If I could I would have kept them all! As tired as I apparently was, when I was with the group I felt like I could just keep going and going just like the Energizer bunny! Then when I was said and done I realized just how tired I really was.

On Monday I traveled to my next workcamp in Baltimore, MD which is where I am now. I got here Monday and the youth arrived Tuesday afternoon. People are always asking me how I am able to do this job and to always keep on going and going day after day, week after week and I tell them that it's not so bad. From time to time I have a low morning or afternoon where I have no energy to speak of and then I take some time to rest and rejuvenate myself. I also have realized that I get a ton of my energy from the youth that I work with each and every day.

For example, this week, I was totally out of it Monday evening and Tuesday morning, but as soon as Tuesday afternoon came around I came out of the trance-like state that I was in and started acting like my usual outgoing self. The junior highers came and voila, I was cured! I was good for the rest of the evening and then for all day Wednesday and then Thursday rolled around and I realized that I needed to take some time to catch up and rest. So after working the morning with part of the group I came back and fell asleep for the afternoon. Apparently this was a pretty amazing feat considering that the youth were apparently really REALLY loud while I was sleeping, but truth be told, I didn't hear an honest thing! I know that Leanna came in at one point and talked to me and I'm pretty sure that I fell asleep again before she was done...whoops!

My good friend Leanne is here working along side me this week and I am oh so very glad for that. She is such a natural with youth and has such an awesome energy about her that works really well for junior high aged kids. She's kept me sane and keeps me smiling as we figure out what the next step is. Honestly she did so much of the behind the scenes work for this particular workcamp that I feel confident to say that it would be okay if I wasn't even here! But I'm really glad that I am because these youth are really awesome.

I know that I've lucked out with the youth that I've had the opportunity to work with and get to know this summer and it's neat to think that one day they will be doing really amazing things with their lives and I can tell people, 'you know I remember him/her when they were at my workcamp in 2008' and that is such an awesome thing! Leanne was actually the one to point that out to me and it's so incredibly true! I feel so privledged to have these many opportunities to work with these guys and every now and then I always have to remind myself that I made a difference in their lives too. It definitely goes both ways and it's amazing.