The adventures have begun! Yep, that's right! I'm back on campus (3 weeks early for all those fun, official RA duties. Woo!) and the mayhem is rampant. We left Thursday night to camp at Ketchum Woods for 3 days, but plans were changed when the foul weather hit. I had never been camping before (sheltered, I know), so setting up a tent and making mountain pies were new experiences for me. The rain started at 5:30 a.m., and I was awake when it hit. Ugh. By 8, it was pouring outside, but we all got dressed and headed out to the pavilion anyway. By 9, it was almost too wet to do any of the "initiatives" we were supposed to do, so all the RD's had a meeting, and several dorms decided they wanted to go back. Understandably, though, because their tents weren't so hot (unlike the "Kem Quality" tent my staff slept in) and they were all soaking wet when they woke up. We were all floored when the guys from Bowman House decided to leave. Bowman is the all male freshman dorm, and they are notorious for being super hardcore and extreme. Big pansies!! They were the first group to pull out. Kem Hall, however has a reputation for being slightly snitty and condescending (for instance, the dorm shirts the past few years have said "Kem Quality - Extension Not Included" and "Kem Ladies") and my fellow RA's and I felt that the bad rap needed to be changed. So yeah, we put on our ponchos and went marching off, through the forest of Ketchum Woods, determined to be heroes. And heroes we were! Jumping from log to log, blazing trails deep in the foliage, crossing a raging torrent of water on merely a tightrope... ah, the glory of it all. Ok, so the raging torrent was actually only, like, 10 feet wide and 3 feet deep, but still, crossing it on a wire rope, one at a time, in the pouring rain? I was proud of us. All for Evelyn Kem, all for Evelyn Kem. :)

We decided to head back right before lunch, but a minor miscommunication sent a needed set of car keys home in the wrong bag, so 4 of us decided it'd be fun to tough it out and ride home in the back of a pickup truck. Fun? More like freezing and wet. We laughed the whole way back though, except for when Holly forgot we were back there and went full-speed over the rough railroad crossing on 38th. We caught Heather in time. Luckily. Just kidding. I bet we looked really weird though. I'd have laughed at us if I was driving along, minding my own business, and I looked up to see 4 twenty-somethings crouching in the back of a truck, trying to keep a gas grill from toppling onto them. If that's not staff bonding, I don't know what is.

As excited as I am about being back, I'm also really nervous. My fears have been eased somewhat in the past few days. People seem to know exactly what I need to hear when I need to hear it, so I'm pretty encouraged. I've claimed Isaiah 41:9b-10 as my verse for the academic year.

I know I have plenty to say about my summer and all that is going on, plus lots and LOTS of random thoughts and issues I have spent too much time dwelling on, but I'll save those for a later post.