Mini-Week: The Pain of the 8yr Old

mini week ended yesterday. i was in cherokee cabin with tyler and we had six kids, steven connor cory robin and the twins, daniel and mattthew. it was pretty fun having 8yr olds though i wouldnt wanna do that for the whole summer. probably 3 days is good enough. boys will be boys, alot of fighting and bickering and crying, but since i was looking so forward to my minibreak, i didn't really let it get to me. ultimately the boys all had a great time. 8yr olds have the shorteest attention spans. they could be fighting one second and hte next they are giving sweets to the kid whol they just had a tussle with so there's really no point bothering about their little conflicts. its all summed up in devotions on monday night when everyone said they wanted to come back to camp next summer because it was so fun.

mini-week is weird because of the schedule. its not the one we're used to, moreover rowdie campfire and opening vespers is on sunday and then monday night is closing vespers liao. quite weird. nonetheless the kids all loved it. among the highlights of mini camp was monday afternoon in the pool where the kids were trying to pile onto me. we had 3 cabins of kids and everyone was playing the 'trying to pile onto chris' game which ended up in alot of flying children(they are so light) and splashing water for a good hour or so. no deaths or major injuries occured. that's what i like.

apart from that the rest of camp was about the same..hmm. i had robin waking me up at 3am monday night to tell me he wanted to call his mom and wanted to go home. then i said its not gonna happen. go back to sleep! and he did. next morning he denied that he ever came into my room before. haha.

i'm starting to develop a very numb mind to the inquisitivity of the 8yr old camper. if the bill cosby-hosted show 'kids say the darndest things'(or that dumb gurmit copy) ever made you laugh, you'd hurl in camp from the things the kids ask.

me: i was in the army for two and a half years...
8yr old camper: wow! did you hold a gun?
me: yes i did, a rifle for that matter...
8yr old camper: did you kill anyone?
me: *nonchalent* no.
8yr old camper: how many enemies did you kill?
me: *nonchalent again* i said no one.
8yr old camper: did you cry?
me: huh?
8yr old camper: did you die?
me: argh. look! *points in vague direction* its a squirrel!

so anyway its mini break now. yesterday andy drove krystle and i down to denver in the night. took us nearly 3 hours of night driving. was quite fun. i didn't expect to be talking so much but krystle was way talkative about her life so we both listened. she was telling us about why she and her boyfriend of 2 years have broken up twice before and blah. she was going to the airport this morning and flying to chicago to surprise her boyfriend while he's thinking she's gonna be in utah backpacking. i thought we were kinda mean when we said that if this whole episode were a movie she'd just go back to chicago to find her boyfriend cheating on her. i think that unsettled her quite abit. then we bitched about some of the staff in camp and then she was telling us about the staff campout last weekend which involved streaking and skinning dipping??! and then we talked politics and why bush won't win the next elections. and then she told us about chicago and what places i shouldn't go to abd then andy was talking about denver and where i shouldn't be aboutat night and blah. along the way we saw a car that was swerving in and out of lanes and was being a menace on the road. so both of them decided to call the police. haha. i don't think i'd ever do that. i'd probably just bochap that since its none of my business. ah see? i am singaporean afterall. anyway they called 911 and the state troopers were pretty efficient and within minutes they called back to say they caught someone of similar identity as described. my, what good citizens they both are.

we had dinner at this greek restaurant called pete's. its pretty good, and krystle paid for andy's dinner for driving her to the airport. i just chipped in abit since he's letting me stay for the night. anyway the plan now is that i'll be moving to the HI youth hostel in downtown denver to stay for the next 3 nights and then i'll come back on saturday to stay with andy again before going back down to camp chief ouray on sunday morning. really nice of him to let us put up for the night last night and i guess i dont want to impose on him with my presence. but he says he wants to bring me to a rockies game some time this week sohopefully that'll work out. his house is like a bloody mansion and its so huge, 3 stories with attic, garden, garage and blah. wow. rich kid.

okie. am all excited about going to the hostel. called the hostel up. the people there seem quite friendly. so hope for the best. ciao.