facial hair

hey all!

Yesterday concluded the two week training for the staff of the Lake Okoboji United Methodist camp. This is my home for the summer.

I came to this camp for three summers as a kid and always looked up to the counselors. They were so hip! So sophisticated! They had facial hair! I always wanted to be like them. It's weird to think that now I am that counselor. I don't feel very hip or sophisticated. If anything, the only perceivable thing I have in common with my old counselors is the facial hair.

I started this experience knowing no one. It was the first time I walked into something completely blind. My first minutes arriving on site, I walked into the guest house to a living room full of strangers laughing and talking. Seventeen heads turned at the same time. I said hello and was shown to my room, then left the seventeen new faces and walked to grab my suitcases from my car. What my new housemates didn't know was that I was muttering to myself the entire time:

"Holy shit. Holy shit. Be brave. Be brave. Play it cool. Whew. Yep. Okay. Dammit."

Thus began my summer. I couldn't have guessed at that moment how quickly I would feel comfortable here and how soon I would look at the seventeen faces and recognize them as if I had known them my whole life. (Yuck, I'm sounding so Hallmark card-y, aren't I? /working on a screenplay for my Lifetime movie as we speak)

Since that first day, it's been a non-stop flurry of reading and singing and cleaning and learning. I've kissed blue babies* and Mulan'd my way up a pole.** But the biggest discovery for me so far is how little it takes to become a family. Human beings seem to have much more in common then we tend to acknowledge. On the basest of levels, we are incredibly similar. And like, yeah, sure, we've all heard that before, but as someone who tends to feel isolated (by no one's fault but my own) I had never truly believed it. Maybe I just got lucky this time. Maybe I am in the right place at the right moment. At least that's what it feels like.

Anyway, this post was pretty much emotional psycho-babble, but I wanted to check in with you guys and preface my experience this summer before the campers arrive on Monday. We've only just started. There will be a lot more stories to tell.

I pray that we will all be equipped to the best of our abilities for the kids that will come here this summer. And that we will grow along with them. And that if I have to touch fecal matter, I will not vomit on myself. Amen.

Love Always,
Bailey Rose

*For CPR training. No actual blue babies were violated.
**Without the inspirational musical number and complaining the whole way up.