Directionally Challenged…

Today started out at an ungodly hour. I woke up at about 5:15am and made my way downstairs for my run out to the Terry Fox monument. Sadly, as directionally challenged teenagers do, Natasha and I managed to get completely turned around and likely ran in approximately the opposite direction of the monument. We ran for a nice solid 15km, but our goal of reaching the monument was left unaccomplished. Such is life I suppose, and if we don’t get another shot at it before we head up to our communities, maybe we’ll give it a try when we come back to Thunder Bay for our debrief in August.

Aside from this morning’s debacle, and my resulting exhaustion, today was full of more information about the camps and more brainstorming of ideas. I also had the opportunity to teach the councilors one of the best games from John Dearness music class. I taught the very simple ‘Closet Key’ game. Thanks to Kim Eyre for providing me with the best elementary music teaching resource book!

One of the major topics of today’s session was ‘self-care’. The discussion about this issue made it abundantly clear to me that I will need to be constantly monitoring my physical and mental health throughout the course of the camp program. I think that in many ways (as is usually the case with me) my  mind will be both my best friend and worst enemy and that I will have to pay particular attention to make sure that I keep a level head about me.

Today was also a good day because I got to spend some time with the Fort Hope team making some plans for the beginning of our time in the community and for our camp program. In this discussion I found myself really making an effort to think about what I was going to say before I said it. I did my best not to just jump in whenever felt appropriate. At this point we are planning things a little bit ‘blind’ because we don’t know what kind of kids we are going to get or how how many are going to actually register for the camp. That being said, it was nice to keep moving on real planning.

Lastly, to be honest I am still somewhat apprehensive about the whole luggage weight thing for our flight out on Tuesday. I have significantly more than the limit of 35 pounds total, but I suppose I should just relax and realize that if worse comes to worst I will just leave some stuff behind to be shipped later. Cross your fingers and toes for me!

Tomorrow should be a good day again, and hopefully productive too. A good portion of the day will be spent on team planning and another large part of the day will provide us with the opportunity to purchase any last minute supplies before we ‘ship out’ on Tuesday. If I wasn’t keeping this blog I would have no concept of time right now…All I know is that it is three days AMJ (After Michael Jackson). I haven’t really touched on this sad event yet, but his death really was shocking. Did anyone really see that coming? Despite all of his strange personality disorders, he really was responsible for some of the most extraordinary musical innovation ever.

Alright, well I’m actually unbelievably exhausted right now, even though it is only just a little bit after 8:15pm and my writing is becoming quite laboured, so I am going to cease for now and attempt to make my way to bed in the next hour or two. Wish me luck!

–Be kind to each other and don’t fall down…