Staff Week

Ahhh! It feels as though I have been at camp for an entire summer already. I am not saying time is dragging, it is just that our days are filled from 8 am to 12am or so. This is a schedule that, as evidenced by my previous posts, I am not used to. Last week our internet was down, quite literally the sattelite dish fell over, and so I had no cell service, and no internet. This would not be a problem except that I told everyone to email me if they needed to get a hold of me and I could call them back from the land line at camp. No dice. Obviously internet has been restored, but now I can't access my gmail account from my laptop. Which leaves me filled with a rage that I cannot express with words.
I have been feeling pretty homesick the last couple days, which is hard because the international staff have been in the same boat, so as I talk to them and try to focus on the postives, and make sure they feel supported so that they will stay, I am secretly thinking, "That is a good idea, we should go to the airport together. "I am hoping that this is just a temporary phase, and 16 year old Marni would kill me for saying this, but I really miss Utah. I know that this is going to be a great experience for me, and that I could never learn the things I am going to learn, or meet the people I have met and will meet here if I never left, but I am starting to feel the sting of being away from the people I love most in this world. Not to mention the Mexican food.
The address for the camp is
Camp Livingston4998 Nell Lee Road Bennington, Indiana 47011
(In case the above paragraph inspired enough sympathy from you to motivate you to send me a letter, or a present......)
I actually have some pictures to post, and Seth will be out here this weekend, so he can take them back to Bloomington and upload them there, and then I can type up a narrative. This is a process that is 3 steps longer than should be necessary, but it appears that it will just have to make due for the summer. Well reader, I am off to prepare for another Shabbat. Erev Tov.
(Did I get that one right, hebrew scholars?)

Camp: Arrival

I can only upload pictures from the hours of 2-7 am, so it might be a while before I post any, not that I have had time to take them anyway, but that is besides the point. We have satellite internet here, which is a technologly I didn't know existed, and that is because, no one uses it unless absolutly necessary. But enough about the wonders of the interent, let me tell you about camp! The GPS could not find the address I put in for camp, so we just set it to the town where the camp is located and found our way from there, turns out I typed Neil Lee Road, when I should have typed Nell Lee Road, but I made it here in one peice eventually. I am living in a house with three other staff members, the assistant camp director, the program director, and the arts/music/judaics director. I have my own room, with air conditioning which I promptly kissed upon arrival, because it would have been a loooonnnnggg summer without it. I am typing to you from my very own office, the first of my social work career, although I always pictured it with less Israli flags. We have been in trainings the last few days, and I have been doing my best to remember the few hebrew words that I have learned so far. Boker Tov is wake up, and it was a tough one this morning, I kept jerking awake last night in fear, after hearing tales of a racoon that ATE through two doors in the kitchen, he didn't break the lock with his nimble fingers, he just ate a hole in the door, and then, he ate a bag of pancake mix. The thing is ferocious.

Everyone on the Administration staff is great, and I hope that by the end of the week we will all be buds, I am still homesick, even with things to do, and being at camp makes me miss the fellowship something awful. I am really excited to have campers, and get to work.
UPDATE-
I typed the above entry yesterday, and it feels like a week ago. I am about to experience my first Shabbat, albeit altered for camp. I got into a discussion with Benny the Judaics director last night about the rituals that define Judaism, and in his opinion, you can be Jewish without ever actually professing a belief in God, but just by going through the rituals. I am not suprised by this, as I think it is human nature to be drawn towards familiarity and routine, there is comfort in ritual, it is tangible. I cannot remember the last time where I felt so out of my element than here, and I love it. I am hoping that this experience changes me and helps me grow in more ways than I expected. (and I hope I get plenty of pool time in as well....)

Bloomington Continued

Well, the AC must be working because the sweating has stopped, at least temporarily. We have been in Bloomington a little over a week, and already the concensus from Seth and I (along with every person that finds out where we live) is that Bloomington is better than Lafayette. The downtown area is pretty cute, albeit small, and the IU (Indiana University) campus is quite pretty, There was more thought into the aesthetics of this town, rather than just throwing a Chili's or Red Lobster wherever there was zoning for it.
Last weekend Seth and I saw Macgruber. Don't judge me, there is nothing else to do, it is either watch a movie in our 90+ degree apartment, or pay $9.25 a pop so that we can sit in an air conditioned theater. We chose the latter. Such are the choices you are forced to make when you live in a town where you don't know a single soul (The movie by the way, was not worth seeing). On Saturday we visited a winery just outside of town, and while it was no Sonoma, it was pretty cute. They try to get as many of their grapes as they can from inside the state, and they make and bottle the wine on site. We did a tasting, and of course walked away with a bottle or four, which would have made for a fun evening, if the apartment we are staying in had a bottle opener. I guess you just need a hand to open cheap bottles of vodka. We had dinner downtown, and came home to our sweat lodge. On Sunday we had brunch at a restaurant that I chose based solely on the fact that their champagne cocktails are 1/2 price for brunch. This turned out to be a wise choice, as their french toast was possibly the best I have ever had, thanks to the secret layer of cream-cheese mixed with sugar, cinnamon and nutmeg. Then we had to drive up to Lafayette to gather some items that were inevitably forgotten.
Seth is still enjoying his internship, and it is fulfilling all of his nerdy dreams. He is in hog heaven talking about and working with protons all day, and I am in utter confusion when I pick him up from work and he tells me what he did that day. So far I understand protons=good, cancer=bad.
Next week I am off to camp, and am unsure about when I can post next, which is why you got a two-fer this week. And now, pictures of the weekend!

Bloomington

I have been saving up this post for an afternoon such as this, nothing to do, sweating from every pore of my body while the maintenance guy looks at our air-conditioning. This adventure started when our computer arrived last Wednesday, and we set off for Bloomington. Now I have to preface the rest of this post by cluing you in on a conversation that happened a few months ago. Seth was telling me about a place he found to sublet, but there would be female roommates, although we would have the basement to ourselves. I responded, "I can live anywhere for two weeks, I don't care, just get whatever is cheapest. What I failed to comprehend when I made that statement was, I was going to have to LIVE in whatever rat's nest Seth found for two weeks. I learned this last week that yes, I can live anywhere, but I will have to sacrifice my sense of sanitation, not to mention a decent nights sleep. We ended up in an apartment with only one other roommate (a dude), but what our sub-leaser failed to tell us until our arrival was that the other roommate also had a dog. When Seth asked what kind, the kid said "I don't know, a big one". We signed the last of the paper work, and got our keys and headed off to our summer home in Bloomington. Oh Marni, if only I could go back and warn you what you were about to walk in on. We opened the door to find a Gigantic Black dog, who was terrified of us, and immediately peed on the floor. So my first act in this new place was cleaning up our roommates dog pee. The apartment smelled like every dude apartment that I have ever been to; old food, mildew and sweat. The combination of smells that only occurs through months of never really cleaning anything, and forms a super smell, the likes of which , are unmistakable. There were dishes in the sink and on the stove, stains on the carpet and an unreasonable amount of beard hair in our bathroom. Seth kept saying, "You are going to be humbled when you go to India." The difference is, I signed up to go to India, full on expecting to live in sweaty filth and squalor for three weeks. But while I am in the states, I would like to enjoy a meal without burning my fingers on the one pot in the cupboard, that as it happens has no handle. On the plus side, the apartment in Lafayette started to look like a five star hotel, which is saying a lot considering we are next to the cemetery, up the road from the dump and a waste-water treatment plant. I actually have good things to say about the town of Bloomington, but I have to ration my activities so that I don't spend an entire day watching Lifetime movies on Hulu. So that is a post for tomorrow. As for now, here are some pictures of what I walked in on and promptly sprayed with bleach a week ago. Oh, and the dog, his name... is Achilles.

Only a few weeks out from graduation, and my writing skills are already suffering, as evidenced by this blog.... And my text messages. I pride myself for not using "Text Talk" and still minding my grammar even if it takes five minutes to compose a two second text, but today I used "your" when I should have used "you're" and didn't realize it until it had been sent, and recorded by the NSA for all eternity.
So this will be a text post, not that I have any new pictures anyway, It went from a week of events, to hanging out on the couch eating peanut butter from the jar wondering, "What am I supposed to do with the rest of my adult life?" pretty quick.
Seth and I are in limbo right now, waiting for the United States Postal Service to release our Computer to us. It was supposed to get here today, but as the delivery gods would have it, it is not showing up until tomorrow, or the next day. No Bloomington today, which wouldn't be so bad, except we don't have any food in the house, and we aren't going to buy any, because we will be moving to Bloomington for the summer, hence the peanut butter (Eating directly out of the jar however, is entirely reflective of my character, and you are free to judge me accordingly).
The highlight of my day has been working out in the apartment complex workout room, and watching "Teen Mom" on MTV. What is ironic about this show is that they are all struggling to graduate from High School, and I just graduated from a Masters program, and am equally ill-equipped to raise a child. Hopefully next week I will have some pictures of the place in Bloomington to post, so that you don't have to read my pathetic ramblings.

Graduation Continued

Graduation

To kick off the graduation week right, Alex came in for a weekend visit, we went to the Jazz game, (you know, the one that they actually won... stupid losers) got our nails did, and had tickle fights, the usual girl stuff. The week of actual graduation was a busy one, with family flying in packing and entertaining. We convinced Grandma Haddenhorst to come for the event, and the last week has been a whirl-wind of visits trying to emotionally prepare for the move. Graduation was a little less inspiring than I would have hoped, especially the message about evidence based practice, if it wasn't pounded into our heads over the course of the last two years, their last ditch efforts to get us to subscribe to peer reviewed journals was a weak plug at best. We got to spend Mother's Day with Grandma and Mary (Seth's mom). Chris whipped up twelve omelets as if he had been moonlighting at the Grand America breakfast buffet, and we had a delicious brunch spread at Mom's without the crowds, lines and fifty dollar price tag of the usual Mother's Day brunch. I have been trying to get my daily serving of Mexican food in, as well as getting a healthy dose of friends and family before we take off on Saturday. And now, what you really care about... Pictures!