Today I told a 19yr old that she was young

Happy Birthday Dad!

Tuesday June 22

I wish I could tell you more about this day. But because I can remember little about the day I assume it wasn't very interesting because it was not memorable. I will say that it was your average day, eat, class, eat, rest, activity, etc.

I believe our afternoon activity was an outdoor "olympic" games most were ridiculous. It was alright though.

So as this is a weird "French Summer Camp" experience where we are treated like we are in high school, or younger yet, we are having a gala. It is an end of program thing, except that it is happening this Friday and not at the end - due to finals etc. So in good high school form we were required to divide into committees to plan and make happen the gala evening. I signed up for decorations, I figured I could use a little more arts and crafts in my life and I figured it would require little discussion on my behalf.

Tuesday night was our first planning time / creating decorations. I think it went alright. We were doing a masquerade - as required - and they had decorations available from last years group - who did the Phantom of the Opera. As such we wanted to use as many decorations of theirs as we could. We chose A Midsummer Nights Dream, nothing like a prolific English writer theming a French party - loved it.

We spent the next hour or so brainstorming and cutting things out of construction paper.

After the activity I spent most of my night watching the final episodes of the last season of Criminal Minds - they were awesome! And the season finale was crazy. Fabulous. Oh, I also spent some time doing homework.

Wednesday June 23

Some days start slow and end with a bang. The morning, or even most of our regular day was fairly average. We had class, then lunch, our break, our afternoon activity was finishing up our respective committees duties. For me this meant two hours of cutting out silver stars, making large flower decorations, and painting signs while watching 'Hairspray' in French. It was pretty good but the whole time I was eagerly awaiting the arrival of 4pm.

At 4 a group of about 25 of us were meeting at residence, calling cabs, and going to TreeGo!

TreeGo is a zip-lining / high climbing adventure in the tree tops. It involves harnesses, zip-lines, swinging logs, tarzan swings, wobbly bridges, and so much more. It took a bit of organizing but we had a great group of people together to climb trees.

Most went according to plan except for one car that got lost along the way. We arrived, paid, got harnessed up, went through the intro/info, made our way though the training course and we were off. I had planned to take my camera but I had no safe place to stow it so it stayed back out of fear.

It was sooo much fun. There are four courses that get progressively more difficult. The third course is by far the best. It is the longest and I would even say the highest. At some points during the zip-lines on the third course you could not see the landing platform from the start of the line. I would wager that throughout the course the highest you are is 15m? But as mentioned in various different posts here my estimation skills with hights and distances is weak.

It was great. I don't find things that that scary, not even a little. It is more fun than scary. It doesn't even really get me nervous. I'd run through that course if I could. It was just so fun that I wish I could go again. Only problem was the numerous mosquitoes that were served a buffet of fresh blood.

*However it does take a lot of work - and I can definitely feel my sore muscles today, especially my back and abs.

When we finished the course it was around 8pm and none of us had eaten. Some of the people who were at the begining of our group had already headed out but I was the last in the group so I had no such luxury. We came back to res, discussed plans to go out to eat within the hour.

A quick shower and a change of clothes made me feel a little less like a scrubby wood creature. It wasn't long before we were downtown and once again sitting at The Pumphouse for dinner and beers. Most of us ordered 32oz beers that were literally the size of my head. We also had a birthday boy with us for most of the day. It was a very fun night, one I hope to repeat soon.

As it happened I had a test the next morning but because my strict rule to not care (in addition to the fact that it was supposed to be easy) I decided to skip my studying for the night. Although this was great it felt so strange to be an unprepared student.

I didn't get home until around 1am, at which time I felt it was appropriate to look over some things for my test the next day. This didn't last long as I knew I would surely regret it in the morning. I was in bed around 2am. Yikes. Oddly enough it reminded me a great deal of Mexico, late nights, early mornings, neglecting school working and feeling good about it. ha.

Today I learned:

• Heights are not an issue
• I am a disruptive student, always have been, likely always will be
• I might be a little sad to leave this place, but I think it is mostly the people I will be sad to be leaving

I am grateful for:

• Finding people who like to hang out in pubs and not in clubs - yay!
• Michael Bernard Fitzgerald - I've been obsessively listening to his albums as of late

Our TreeGo Group