Welcome to Texas

Have mercy...

I woke up this morning with the fan on and my eyes feeling particularly dry and sensitive to the light. I could barely open them! I rubbed them a bit and went to the bathroom to look in the mirror. Blood. Red. It was disgusting. I was convinced that they were just irritated and brushed it off, figuring they would be well in a few hours or so. That was not the case.

We left for College Station so I could get my oil changed and go to work. I also had to pick my contacts up at the eye doctor (perfecttt!). About 5 miles down the road, I realized that I could barely keep my eyes open. Imagine driving with your eyes trying to fall asleep, but you aren't tired or walking into a room with super bright lights after you've been in the dark. Needless to say, I stopped at the Wal-Mart and got some eye drops.

By the time I got to College Station, it looked like I had been crying my eyes out for days. So, after denying a box of tissues from the guy at the automotive place and convincing him I really was having a nice day, my mom decided it would be best for me to have the eye doctor check me out since we were going anyway.

After waiting in the lobby for an hour, the doctor worked me in and looked at my eyes with her giant eye laser scope and made noises like "hmmm" "oh my!" and "yikes..". She also seemed to back farther away than normal when she told me, "you have highly contagious viral double pink eye."

Uh. What?

Best part was, there was no co-pay due to a credit on my account and I got steroid drops for my eyes so now they will have big muscles. She also told me that I shouldn't go out in public until Saturday...ha!

Hello Texas!

Linger

Today was my last day at camp.

I have been counting down to this day since my first time on high ropes (haha) and while I'm happy to say it's finally here, the moment is still bittersweet. The staff I have gotten to know at this camp came from all over the world and are some of the most incredible people I have ever met. Those who have worked camp jobs before know how closely and quickly you bond in that type of working environment. It made it especially hard knowing that so many of them live overseas and visiting them often is an unreal possibility.

To all of my dear camp friends: I will miss you all more than you will ever know. I have appreciated each of you and your hard work that made this summer possible. We each stuck it out and supported each other in one way or another at some point over these past 10 weeks. I could not have done it without you all. Thank you so much for the laughs and the experiences. I will think of you often and hope we will stay in touch. If we don't, I wish you all the best in life because you deserve it. Find joy in what you do and always follow your dreams!

On another note, I will be home in Texas on Tuesday morning!! I am so excited to see my family...I have really missed them this summer!

Coming soon will be a summer recap on the adventures I failed to blog about during the month of July. Best wishes to my dear friends Alyse and Gilly who are on their way to the most magical place on Earth: Disney World!


"I want to linger
A little longer
A little longer here with you
It's such a perfect night
It doesn't seem quite right
That it should be my last with you..."

Conowingo Creek

We have had a busy last few weeks! I went to an Orioles game in Baltimore last weekend and got on the jumbotron 8 times, a personal record I might add. We got seats in the nosebleed section, but it was right next to the camera man so I pulled out my best dance moves and entertained the audience. I had a blast!

This past weekend we decided to go tubing on the creek here at camp. We take campers tubing, but I had never been before. The rest of the group had gone to D.C. for the day, so we decided to conquer the creek in style. On Friday, we headed out to Wal-Mart and picked up these fabulous Hello Kitty shoes for $5, best purchase I've ever made!!

After putting on our appropriate tubing gear, we headed down to the creek with two infant sized tubes. Mistake number one. We spent 20 minutes hiking up the creek, only to sit down in our tubes and sink to the ground, which resulted in a 20 minute hike back to inflate new ones. Once we were all settled and ready to go, I decided it would be a good idea to take my homemade cardboard boat down the small waterfall. Unfortunately, it didn't hold up as well as I thought it would and ended up sinking right away. I spent a few minutes flopping around in the water until I gave up on the idea and got back on my tube. RIP Cardboard Boat..

A group of staff had gone tubing a few weeks ago and complained that the water was too low, but since it had rained quite a bit the past week or so, the water was perfect! We had such a great time! We came to a shallow part in the creek and had to stand to carry our tubes past the small rapids. Alyse stood up to walk and had some giant crawfish thing attached to her back. I started screaming "IT'S ON YOUR BACK, IT'S ON YOUR BACK!!" She looked at me like I was joking and made no motion to knock it off. I think she got the clue when I had a meltdown and screamed "GET IT OFF!" repeatedly. We both started panicking and finally got it off, only to immediately initiate a crawfish check. For the rest of the morning I was convinced there was one on my head ready to suck my brains out...

After we made it down the creek, we both decided that our Hello Kitty shoes were no longer meeting our expectations and decided to call it quits early. We got out on the All States trail and made our way back up to the other side of camp. For some reason, every single spider on camp decided to make a web across the trail, face level. So I designated Alyse the spider stick person and watched as spider after spider latched onto her face. After the sixth or seventh one was dangling from her hat, she decided that enough was enough and I became the spider stick holder. I eventually got frustrated and just held my tube in front of my face whilst running as fast as possible. We ended up surviving the trail...barely...and after a vehicle rescue from our German friend Spinelli, we were on our way to the comforts of a house with a washer, a bathtub, and a TV with the Olympics on. We rounded out the weekend with a trip to the Waffle House where I had "Texas biscuits with gravy"...


Speaking of Texas,
8 DAYS UNTIL I'M BACK!