Soul Music

Today, I miss singing with the Spain kids.

During Interim, we sang 3 or 4 songs every day, sometimes even up to 7. And we were sooooo good at it, even though the songs were in Spanish and we were learning them. But for the most part, they were songs that we already knew the tunes to, so it was just a matter of learning the Spanish words and getting the timing right and all of that.

Anyway, we sang 4 songs tonight in church that we had learned the Spanish words to. I had a few moments of transportation back to our classroom in Denia, where the only music came from a guitar. Our voices meshed perfectly, and it didn't take very long for us to break off into harmonies and counter-melodies. It was so amazing, I can't even describe it. It's that sensation you feel in your chest, like your soul is being filled up and all you want to do is keep that feeling alive, no matter what. 

My heart, O God, is steadfast;
I will sing and make music with all my soul.
-Psalm 108:1

I'm looking forward to the next time that we get that group together to sing, whether that be in this life or after it. :)

You Should Try Playing This Game

So, a bunch of us college staff played a game of Telephone Pictionary in the cottage this afternoon. Everyone gets a stack of papers and you pass them around alternating between interpreting the picture with words and drawing a picture to match the words. For example, we played with 7 people, so we each had 7 pieces of paper. For the first round, we all wrote one sentence, then passed the stack of papers to the person on our left. The next person had to draw the sentence written on the paper, then slide the stack to the left. Then the next person has to interpret the picture into one sentence. It goes around alternating that way until the stacks return to their original owners. Most of the time, the original sentence and the final sentence are COMPLETELY different.

Like this one:

(Lynnae and Matthew walked hand-in-hand through the campground, and the rumor mill on Staff Row ground into action).



(A lovely redneck couple get married at a truck stop, but everyone is crying).



(Man gets hit by a car and leaves his fiance behind and then she can't move into her house).

(A man and woman are driving their car when it breaks down. The man pushes it to their house, but there's no door).

I can't wait to have more fun like this. :D

Epidemic

Did you know:
> 1 in 4 girls and 1 in 6 boys are sexually abused before they turn 18 years old. In a classroom of 24, that's an average of 5 children.
> 70% of ALL sexual assaults happen to children 17 and under.
> More than 90% of child sexual abuse victims know their abuser.
> Young girls who are sexually abused are more likely to develop eating disorders during their teenage years.
> Children who are sexually abused are 4 times more likely to experience depression, anxiety, uncontrollable anger, nightmares, feelings of worthlessness, self-hatred, hopelessness, and thoughts of suicide during adolescence and adulthood.
> It is estimated that 39,000,000 sexual abuse survivors live in the United States.
> 70-80% of rapists report that they were sexually abused during their childhoods.

Does this concern anyone else?
Every year, we have a child sexual abuse awareness training seminar in order to learn about the statistics, effects, and prevention of abuse. It can be kind of tedious and time-consuming, but I've always found it intriguing because of my interest in psychology. The effects of abuse don't stop if/when the victim reports the abuse.

Ever since getting involved with a middle school youth group and doing teacher aiding last fall, I've been wondering if I'll ever have a student that tells me that they have been abused. Even if they don't tell me, it's possible that 20% of my students have been abused (or will be abused) before they graduate, according to statistics. Isn't that wild? That could be up to one person in each row of desks.
At first, it scared me a little bit. But as I dwell on it and think about it more and more, I realize that if I shy away from the responsibility of being their advocate, I help no one. I want to be the person they can talk about their struggles with and I want my classroom to be a safe place for them. It takes only one person that is willing to listen and help in order to restore hope to a broken soul.

Unfortunately, it also takes only one person that won't listen or reacts in the wrong way to devastating news, and that negative reaction has the power to silence a victim forever. No person on this earth enjoys the feeling that someone does not believe them; least of all, children.
This is my request. If anyone, regardless of age, approaches you and admits to you that they are struggling with something, ESPECIALLY if it is abuse or something equally serious, listen to them. Assure them that you will continue to listen to them, believe them, and that you want to help them. It's all about the initial emotional support. You don't have to carry the burden of saving them and providing professional help. But until that person is connected with people that are better equipped to help, you might be the only link they have between hope and despair.

Be brave. They confided in you for a reason.

Ready, Set, Orientate

(I was planning to write this last night, when it made more sense, but the internet wasn't working. So pretend I wrote this yesterday. haha.)

I love Conference Grounds orientation. And not just because all of our meals are provided for 3 straight days. Or the free pie and ice cream. :)
I love orientation because it means that I'm going to get to see all of my favorite people every day again. It's 3 days of meetings and activities and team bonding, not to mention great food, new people, and LOTS of laughter.

We started unofficially tonight with some pizza and Boscos (yum) and a couple of games designed to have people get to know each other. I had to man the store, so I missed most of it, but what I did get to sit in on was hilarious. The end result was that people got into pairs (often inter-generational) and they had to introduce each other to the rest of the staff. The multi-generationalism of the Conference Grounds staff is one of my favorite things here. I haven't held many jobs in my short lifetime, but I'm fairly sure that most places do not employ people of such diverse ages. If they do, the older people are typically in positions of power over the younger people. That's still true here, but I almost never notice it. We are more focused on being a community of equals than on being part of a hierarchy of power, which is something that makes this a perfect environment in which to work.

Wednesday and Thursday are devoted to departmental meetings, training sessions for the new staff members,  preparations, and, of course, more great food. Mealtimes are my favorite because the new members can mix in with the returning members and we all get to know each other a little better.
But I think my most favorite aspect of orientation is when the college staff hangs out at night after we're done with everything. All of us girls got together tonight to play Hot Seat, which, for those that are unfamiliar with it, is a game in which one person poses a question and everyone has to answer it. Technically, we tweaked the rules a bit (normally 1 person answers all the questions and everyone gets to ask), but we figured this way would be easier. Anyway, we talked about all manner of things, a few of which are not fit to print. :) We usually go out to Applebees for half-off appetizers during the week, or we watch a movie, or sometimes we do something totally insane. Last year (but not during orientation), we soaked all the boys' bathing suits and boxers and stuffed them in the freezer as a prank. We know how to have fun. :)

I'm very thankful to have been a part of a staff for the last 3 years that fit together so well and got along almost perfectly. This is especially important when you live in a cottage with 9 other girls. In all my years here, we have never had a problem with girls fighting or creating drama or making the cottage a tense place in which to live. I'll admit that when I saw my roommate assignment for last summer, I was very apprehensive because I was placed with Jessica and Becca and I hardly knew either of them. Things started off perfectly fine, and partway into Week 1, Becca pointed out that the three of us were constantly showing up in the same place at the same time. Whenever this happened, she would yell "CHINK!" like magnets attracting one another and we declared ourselves magnet roommates. From then on, we were somewhat inseparable and these two girls have become some of my closest friends. They even came to pick me up from Calvin the night that I returned from Spain even though Becca had to leave 6 hours later for Costa Rica. :)
I'm really really really hoping that this year will be similar. Jessica and I are roommates again, and our third roommate is a new staff member named Lindsey. People keep telling her to not be scared and not to believe anything that Jessica and I say (we may or may not be the two craziest people here), so hopefully she doesn't run away from us. :)

Part of the reason that Spain was so difficult was the anticipation of being here. That seems kind of backward; as in, it should have been easier to endure the time in Spain because I had something so fantastic to look forward to, but it was the opposite for me. I wanted so badly to be here instead of halfway across the world.

Now, I'm finally here, and I couldn't be happier. Summer 2011 - jankify. :)

The Lost Easter

This morning, I attended church at inSpirit Church instead of my parents' church. Before going to Spain, I went to inSpirit whenever I didn't have a commitment to play in another church. Pastor Randy is on vacation, which means that they had a guest pastor instead. He started the service in the usual way, with greetings and a blessing, and somewhere near the end, he mentioned that it was Ascension Day.

Wait. Ascension Day? Did we have Easter? When was Easter?
-Yeah, Easter was back in April. Where were you?
Um....yeah......where was I.....

As I sat there trying to think of why I had no memory of Easter, it slowly came back to me. I remember it was raining, suuuuper hard, and because I had been coughing and sneezing the last couple of days, my host mamá begged me not to leave the house. All of these circumstances  put me in my bed on Easter morning, instead of walking to church. I tried to tell her that I would just walk to the bus station and catch the van up to the church, but she insisted that I stay in bed because she knew what was better for me. I didn't have the physical or mental strength to argue with her, so I stayed in bed.
Bit of background: My host family is non-religious. Pau, Carol's 9-year-old son, attends a Catholic school, but I think it's more because Carol wanted him to have a good private education as some of the state-run schools don't provide an education that adequately prepares students to succeed in university prep courses. The private schools do a much better job. Basically, the same story as some of America's public schools.
Anyway, my host family doesn't celebrate religious holidays, which meant that for me, Easter became just any other Sunday, which really meant it was like any other Saturday. Consuelo cooked a regular old meal, we sat in front of the tv, and then I went back to my room after a little while to read or watch tv online or something. I don't remember. Everyone else was traveling around on Spring Break, and I stayed in during the whole rest of the day. Easter 2011 passed into history as the Easter that I didn't celebrate with a single other soul.

Normally, my family celebrates Easter by going to church, which always involves something extra Easter-y: songs, a drama, lilies at the front, etc. Then we would usually go to my grandma's house with other family members and we would have a huge meal and tons of candy. When I (and most of my cousins) were younger, Grandma would always prepare little baskets of candy and jellybeans for us to take home. This was always my favorite because I loooooooove candy. Now she just pours the chocolates into my outstretched hands straight from the bag because I'm too old for the little baskets. :)
I guess this is my point: Do I really need all the family-related activities to remember Easter? Did I forget this year's Easter because I didn't go to church or do typically Easter-y things? Or was it kind of a fluke: not going to church, being in Spain, living with a family that doesn't celebrate Easter, no other Americans around, and it all felt like a Saturday - all of these circumstances combined to make me forget it? I kind of hope that this is the reason, because the first reason makes me look kind of bad. :)

It's not as if I forgot the significance of Easter. It's one of my favorite holidays because of all the feeling that is attached to it - hope, renewal, rebirth, life, etc. Which is why it made it extra hard to be away from home during Easter. All of the things that I normally associate with Easter meant nothing to my host family. I think the closest thing I can compare it with is this: They don't celebrate Christian holidays in the same way that my family doesn't celebrate Jewish holidays. It's not an attempt to thumb their noses at God, it's just different. Anyway, seeing all the Facebook statuses about Easter made me feel a little bit closer, but even farther away at the same time.

So back to church this morning. When was Easter, and where was I? Easter was April 24, and I was in Spain. It was an Easter unlike any I had ever celebrated, and not in a good way, but it helped me learn something:

Holidays have to have a personal significance. If the meaning of the holiday is wrapped up in the way that you celebrate it, you'll forget the holiday every year.

Profunda Pena

Today, I miss my Spain classmates.
Almost every Friday, if most people were in town, we would all meet in front of the Mercadona (a Meijer-type grocery store) to buy some junk food (and, in Alyssa's case, bread) and then we would head up to Sarah's host mama's apartment to eat, drink some sangria, and watch a movie.
This was always a highlight of my week, and not just because Ben usually managed to snag us movies that a) were brand-new in the States and b) most of the time, not even released in Spain yet. It wasn't even because of the mountains of Rebuena cookies that we all ate. Or the fresh strawberries, ice cream, or any other manner of junk food we managed to find.
It was always a highlight because I loved spending time with these people, no matter what we were doing. We could have been just lounging around in Sarah's room chatting (and we often did). It wouldn't have mattered to me. I just liked being around everyone.
Lately, I've really been missing that. And not just the thought of "hmm, I miss them." It's more like..."I really want to see these people. There's a place in my heart that only these people can fill." A part of my heart hurts without them.
One of my very good friends told me that a person can grieve anything that has been lost. I think that most of the time we attribute the action (or state of being) of 'grieving' only to the times when a loved one has passed away. Well, none of my Spain classmates have passed away. But I still grieve the "loss" of them. The loss of seeing them every day, being able to talk to them basically whenever I wanted/needed to, being able to go out  with them for cafe con leche, or even being able to simply lay on the beach in the sun with them. I grieve that loss.

I know I'll see them all again. That's a given. But for right now, I wish we were in Sarah's bedroom, laughing and eating and enjoying each other.

Top 8: Favorite Things To Do At The Conference Grounds

Maybe this shouldn't be "Top 8"...more like, "First 8 Things That Came To Mind."

1. Going in the hot tub when it's actually cold out. This doesn't happen very often because it's still so warm by the time we get up there during the summer, but this past weekend was particularly cold, so it was fantastic. 

2. Watching the sunset. Especially when there are clouds and cool colors. Also, watching big storms roll in over the lake.

3. Watching movies (or TV on DVD) with the girls in Amistad, wrapped up in blankets, eating bowls of ice cream and tons of junk food.

4. Pranking the boys. And staying up really late. And giggling like crazies.

5. Seeing all the wonderful kids and families that I've met over the past 3 years when they come out to camp for "their" weeks. I recognize and know more people every year, and it's so much fun to see the kids as they grow up. 

6. Going on "runs." Candy runs, Applebee's Half-Off Apps runs, Subway runs, Family Video runs, Pronto Pups runs (this was more when Stacey was around), Meijer runs...the possibilities are endless. Unfortunately, our gas money is not. Haha.

7. Wandering around, especially at night, and finding people to talk to. The best ones are those that offer you food from their campfire. This is why Nighttime Security is the BEST job here. Basically, you wander around, talk to people, and get offered free food. Oh, and you have to make sure everything is locked up and that there are no people on the beach or vandalizing things. But free food!

8. Spending time with all of the people that work here. They all have such unique stories filled with things that you would never even think of. That's the best part about coming back to work here every summer: already knowing (most) of the people you work with. :)