Frostbite

So, it has been determined that I have superficial frostbite on two of my fingers. I was kinda retarded on Monday when it was really cold, and was helping to back someone up in one of the vans with no gloves on. So my hands got really cold, and then I helped to pick up one of the seats that go in the vans while my hands were still really cold and still wasn't wearing any gloves. So, the two fingers that touched the metal on the seat that had been sitting outside for awhile, have minor frostbite or cold burns. I talked to Mike about it, and he said that cold burns are just minor or superficial frostbite that will heal. So two of my fingers look like they've been burned, which they have, and hurt pretty bad when I try to pick things up with them or any kind of pressure is put on them. Luckily, this is my only injury up here minus some bruises from playing soccer and other fun physical activities.

Tues I went to meet my teachers and go through training at Salvation Army. It was really nice to be able to meet our teachers, even though it was kind of jumbled and there was some miscommunication at some point along the way. So we only got to really talk to one of the teachers, but we did get to sit through both teachers classes. After that, we went over to the Salvation Army to go through our training and then to actually volunteer after the training. Between the training and when tutoring began, we played a big game of soccer with just the SCA people who were there. That was lots of fun, and really nice to actually do some physical activity. Then we went to do tutoring, only to find out that there were about twice as many tutors as students. So, we ended up just messing around and playing more games until set-up for Kids Cafe started. Kids Cafe was awesome! I sat at a table with eight kids and another SCA member. They talked about a lot of different things, and weren't afraid to talk to us about whatever was on their minds, or to ask us questions about ourselves. I'm really excited to go back there next week, or possibly tomorrow for teen night.

Yesterday, we had a snow storm, and classes were cancelled. So everybody spent the day at camp planning and getting ready for teaching next week. My group has managed to finish everything we need to have to teach our first lesson, and to plan our second lesson. I'm really proud of us, and the work that we do. I'm really excited to get to teach next week. I can't wait!

More Pictures

There are now three new albums posted on facebook, so check it out. There are snowboarding and snowshoeing pictures up. It's pretty awesome!

Pictures

I'm trying to load pictures on facebook at the moment, but it's taking a really long time, and because of bandwidth restrictions, I can't upload pictures at camp. So I'm currently sitting at Pizzareia Uno trying to upload my pictures while trying to not look like an entire mooch, and eating a cup of clam chowder. I currently have 10 more pictures up, and I'm going to try upload as many as I can before I have to go.

Afterschool program

Today we found out that my teaching team is going to be teaching on Thurs and Fridays. We also found out that we're going to be doing the Salvation Army afterschool program. For that we will be doing tutoring, leading a club, and helping with kids cafe every Wed and every other Thurs. Then every other Friday, we will be helping with Teen night. I'm sure that tutoring and leading a club are pretty self explanatory, but I'll explain more about kids cafe and teen night. Kids cafe is a safe place for youth to have dinner and spend early evenings with trusted adults (I am considered an adult in this situation). For this, we have dinner family style, were an adult sits at either end of the table, and then there are about 6 youth eating at the table with us. We're supposed to set a good example for them, and just talk to them and get to know them. I'm pretty excited about that. Then Friday night is teen night, where the Salvation Army hosts a safe place for teens to hang out at night. There they are able to hang out and have fun with friends while not getting into trouble. Some weeks they have a dance, other nights they do other fun things that I haven't been told about. We're going to be learning more about this next week when we go through the training for it. My group and I have finished finializing out syllabus for the nine weeks we'll be teaching. I'm really proud of this, since none of us had ever done this before. It also gave us the freedom to change things within the syllabus if we wanted to, but we didn't really. Just created goals and objectives for each lesson.

MLK day and my birthday!

Monday was my birthday, and it was a pretty good day. We went to Portsmouth, NH (on the coast) to participate in a day of service. At breakfast, Bre gave me a card that she had made for me for my birthday, it was really cool, and she was the first person to say happy birthday to me. The morning we spent listening to speeches and then going on a march through the town of Portsmouth. It was pretty fun. In the afternoon, we went out to the seacoast and did a beach cleanup of a 1/3 of a mile stretch of the beach. We didn't find very much, but we did have a very interesting activity that happened later. Four of the guys I live with decided that they were going to get into the water. So, they stripped down to their boxers and ran into the water, then ran right back out. It was pretty hillarious. Especially since we had some other volunteers with us who didn't know that this was going to happen. Everybody tried to get me to go in too, but I didn't particularly want to have to ride back with wet underwear for the hour and a half drive back to Bear Brook. Some of the girls are talking about taking a trip back there this coming weekend and doing it. But being more prepared than the guys were. I might go with them if they do. After we got back from Portsmouth, we had spaghetti for dinner, and the dirt cake for dessert. Everybody loved the dirt cake. It was awesome! Then, I got a present from the majority of the group, which was a hemp necklace with a purple shell on it that they had found on the beach that day. It's really pretty. I'm also getting a neckie at some point from Phil, but production of those has slown down (neckies are balaklavas, or something like that).

Tuesday, I drove in the snow for the first time ever. We had to move cars so that the spots could be plowed since it snowed this weekend. And Robin was helping Sue in the kitchen making bread and dinner and whatnot, so she gave me her keys and asked me to move her car for her. I did it, and only got stuck in the snow once, but Bear pushed me out of the snow. It was pretty cool. I also fixed a tear in my pants yesterday by sewing up the hole using fireline, and then putting an iron-on patch on the back, using my woodstove as the "iron". Although, I have now managed to tear those pants again, and will be patching them again tonight.

I have now found out my teaching team and what grade I'm going to be teaching. I'm really excited, because I'm going to be teaching 8th grade with two really awesome guys. We're the only 8th grade teaching team, so it's going to be harder for us, but we're all really excited. Now we're just trying to come up with a service-learning project to do with the students. But first, we have to know our curriculum, which we're going to finding out tonight, since we're going over it with Marlee.

Everything is going really great up here! Lots of snow, and lots of playing in the snow. I particularly enjoyed playing line-tag on the lake today. That was lots of fun. Pictures are going to slow going up because of the way our internet works here, but I'm going to do my best since I have lots of cool pictures.

The first major test of Herald

Last night the temperature got down to -21, and Herald worked beautifully. Of course, that was because we finally actually had people getting up during the night to make sure the fire kept going. So our cabin was about 50 this morning, which was kinda cold, but pretty freaking nice. It also helped that the comforter that my mom got for me came yesterday, so I was nice and toasty in bed.

Today, we went to the Massabesic Audobon center to learn about how to use Project Wet and Wild. It was really informative and I had a lot of fun. And I'm crazy glad that it's the weekend. I definitely need a break and more sleep. Mainly more sleep I think. Tomorrow I'm supposed to be going to Portsmouth to hang out and then Sun I'm going going to Andrews farm to do laundry and go sledding. I'm pretty excited!

It's off to watch V for Vendetta by the fire while it's 8 outside.

Sledding and other adventures

This weekend, I got to go sledding, and it was so much fun! We got about a half a foot of snow so that we have about a foot and a half of snow on the ground now. A group of us got together and walked up to the water tower behind our lodge and went sledding for a couple hours. Lots of pictures were taken, and lots of fun things happened. One of the best things that we did, was to attempt to snowboard using one of those orange plastic sleds. Nobody was too successful, but everytime I fell, I managed to fall into the sled and I kept on going down the hill. It was sooo much fun! Afterwards, a group of us made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup, basically from scratch. It was so good.

This week we started education season training. This is making me even more excited to start teaching. I really can't wait, and I can't wait to find out what grade I'm going to be teaching. In about 2 1/2 weeks I'll be in the classroom teaching.

Monday, we did our first community meeting and REAM. REAM is our extreme clean, where every cabin cleans a certain section of the commons area. The different sections that get cleaned are the office, kitchen, dinning hall, and bathrooms. My cabin had the bathrooms, which is apparently the easiest to clean, and so we were finished well before the other cabins were and got to move Herald into our cabin. As we walked him over to our cabin, we sang different songs to honor his moving into our cabin. He definitely kept us warm at night, but we found out that when first lighting him, the fire alarm is going to go off because of all the smoke he releases. He also doesn't last the entire night, but we're warm for most of the night, and then the cold just kinda helps us get up and going faster, I feel like.

Tomorrow we're going to go to the Manchester public library, where we're all being issued library cards for the time that we're here. I've also found a couple of other people who are interested in Antioch, and I think we're going to have a mini roadtrip over there to check it out together.

Anybody whose address I don't have, feel free to send it to me and I'll try to send you a postcard at some point. At the moment I have a lot of cards and am trying to send them out to people, but I only have like 5 people's addresses. I don't even have my dad's, that I know of. So please e-mail or something your addresses to me. My e-mail address is stephd.19@gmail.com