Chatterbox: Down to Earth

I'M BAAAAAACK!!!! :D:D:D:D:D I miessed everybuggy!!! :D And, umm, in case you were wondering, I was at church camp for a week!! :):) It was SOOOO fun!!!! :D:D:D I will try to [briefly] summarize my week. :)

Sunday: My friend Izzie came to my house at 11:00ish, we ate "breakfast" and left for a teeny, little town near Augusta in Maine.  When we got there, we had our temperatures checked (to make sure we didn't have swine flu!), signed in, and went to our cabins (she was in Algonquin ((the cabin I had last year!)), and I was in Belgrade).  My cabin consisted of J. and L. (both girls who moved here from Africa when they were about six years old), K. (an, umm, unusual girl), M.U. and H. (ehhh, a clique...!), E.R., S., and M.R. (all girls who had been there before), K. and M.V. (wicked awesome girls that I just met, and they live in Gorham!!!!), and lastly, E.B., B., N., C., my youth group. :) My cabin counselers were Shannon and Sally, the sister and mother of my friend, and they were really cool! :D I took the swim test, and got three stripes (the best score).

Monday: We woke up early, ate breakfast, cleaned the cabin (only got a 7 for our score...), went to arts and crafts (while some people did sports/archery/etc. ((we made a REALLY pretty necklace!)) ), ate lunch (mmmm, iceburg lettuce salad for me!!), went to went to Bible lessons/devotions (the speaker was this AWESOME dude, Jim T., that you may have heard of.  He normally speaks for crowds of thousands of people), went to "electives" (drama, info on missionaries, clean-up service, etc. ((I did service, because I HATE drama, and I've done missions before, so I thought this would be fun! And it was, even though it involved getting covered in ashes...)) ), went swimming, did waterfront activities (tubing, kayaking, zipline, etc. ((I just rode the boat for the tubes, like I always do)) ), ate dinner (mmm, more iceburg lettuce salad!!), went to the "evening activity" (I actually skipped out on it ((it was normally a lame game of some sort)) and went back to the arts and crafts building to make hacky sacks), went to the evening service (music and sermon thingy), played the nighttime activity (Find the Wolf!!!!), went back to the cabin, stayed up until 2:00, then FINALLY went to bed! :D That's a long sentence. :)

Tuesday-Friday: Pretty much the same as Monday, just with different games and such. :):) I learned how to make soap!!  It was AMAZING!!! :D:D And, like everyone must at any camp, we played Truth or Dare (haha, we all knew each other's truths, so we changed it to Dare or Dare, much more fun!).  We didn't make the dares waaay too embarassing (or inappropriate at all, since we were at Bible camp :D), but we did the typical, "I dare you to go talk to Ben L." type of things.  My personal favorite was when B. and C. had to run around the entire campground with their feet on their hands and shout, "YAY! YAY! YAY!" non-stop. :):) Oh, and Ben L. saw them. XD

Wildlife we saw: On Thursday night, at about 11:30 (a little after lights-out), we saw to flashlight beams out of the window, and two men walk by and enter the counselors' room!  We freaked out, but Sally came into our room and told us everything was fine, wouldn't tell us why they were there, grabbed a broom, and went back into her room (and closed the door).  In a minute or two, who ever was in the room began slamming furniture against the wall, keeping us awake for another half hour or so.  It wasn't until morning that we learned that there had been a mouse in the room, and there were trying to kill it. :( Fortunately, they didn't, and they decided to keep it and name it Mousey. :):) On Friday night, we were playing Find the Wolf again (it's kinda like Manhunt), and I was walking with my friend Micheala (or, I guess I called her M.V.) along the tennis courts.  We were terrified that we would see a bear or something (hahaha, we're girls, so please, give us some credit), so we were shining our flashlights at anything we heard move.  At one point, I heard something, so I shined the light, and there was a fat, old porcupine, about two feet away from me, along the tennis court fence.  Micheala and I both screamed, "OH, MY GOSH!!!!  A PORCUPINE!!!" at the exact same time, and, of course, dozens of kids came running, and they chased it, wanting to pick it up.  I screamed at them, telling them to go away so the poor thing could leave in peace (I was noisy that night), and they did.  At every corner, Mickey and I checked for porcupine crossings. :):):) Oh, and we saw an osprey and the nest (the camp had a camera set on it).

Anyway, I REALLY liked the speaker, Jim T.  If you've ever heard of him or have seen him, please tell me!!! :):) My youth group (E.B., B., N., C., Izzie, and I) spent all of our free time talking and hanging out with him.  One of the cool things about him, is you can say a word or idea or thought or something (such as writing songs about writing songs about writing songs about writing songs or cheeseburgers or a one-legged dog named Jack Sparrow or a pig named George Lopez with a wooden leg), and he'll sing a really professional song about it (perfect rhyming and timing, always making sense, and NEVER stopping to think about the next verse).  ANYWAY, we were hanging out with him, and he turned to Izzie and said, "Izzie, are you the youngest child in your family?" and when she said yes, he said, "Then here's a song for you, so you can have all the attention you need."  And with that, he wrote a song about how he knew somebuggy named Izzie who liked the fizzy soda Izze. :):):) He also wrote a song about the pathetic beaded door curtain that I attempted to make (it had four strands of beads on it).  I'm his friend on Facebook! :D

The bravest thing I did (and no, it had nothing to do with Dare or Dare): I went on the
"Giant Swing".  Basically, I put on tons of harnesses and things, climbed to the tip top of a ladder (the part that you're only supposed to put a gallon of paint on), and sat down.  The guy in charge of the swing tightly screwed on one rope to my harness, and latched on another.  Then, some of the other girls in my cabin grabbed the end of rope that was screwed onto my harness and pulled me up to the top of the trees (fifty feet!!!!).  Then, they counted down from three, and on one, I pulled a tiny little string thing that was attached to the rope that was latched to my harness (sorry if it's confusing!).  Anyway, when I pulled the string, I went FLYING through the air and came a couple of feet to the trees!!!!  IT WAS WICKED AMAZING!!!!! :D:D:D:D But, the thing was, every single person who had gone before me (esp. E.B.) had issues getting the little string thing to work, and it took them at least five or six tries to get it to unlatch, so when I went, I figured it'd take me a while, but instead, I got it on the first try, and it took me about 40 feet to realize that I was going. :):) I want one in my backyard.

Saturday: woke up at 7:40 (SOOOO early!!!!!), ate breakfast at 8:00, returned to the cabin, packed, said bye to everybuggy, and went home. :):) Now, I've been talking to everybuggy from camp on Facebook and AIM all day, as if I didn't get enough of them within the past week. :):) I kind of miss camp already.

Sorry I typed so much. :):) Anyway, it's good to be back, and I'm going to go to bed EARLY tomorrow!!! :D