That "California Girls" bullcrap is playing ON REPEAT in this computer lab right now. Its on the 4th round. At the same time that, "Nelly I Love You" song from sometime in the early 2000s is playing. So I'm in a GREAT mood at the moment, thanks for asking!
You know when I really WAS in a great mood? Last night. My sister Nicci came for a visit. It was great to see someone from home since this has been such a stressful time for me and I've been really home sick. We enjoyed some BW's, made a target run, and went to Dairy Queen. It was great, and a ton of fun!
Today I'm trying to finish planning tonight's evening activity, put together my lesson plans for this coming week, and trying to keep my lessons for today going. Its hard keeping my mind straight with all of this stuff to think about, its even harder with this music playing!!!
I feel bad for getting so stressed out. I really don't want it to affect the experience for the kids. I feel like, and really really hope, I have been successful in making this a reality and the kids aren't having their lives ruined by my stress. I don't know.
I have funny stuff to write today too! First of all, I finally started to read some of the booklets for "making a successful nature program" I found and then lost and then found again the other day. Let me tell you.... its awful. I actually got a pencil and started marking all of the spelling, grammar, and structure mistakes in this booklet, written by a past nature director here. Its absolutely horrendous the amount of stupid mistakes this guy made.
My personal favorite problem with this book was one of the activities. Not that the grammar and punctuation was bad in this activity, the activity itself was just.... HORRIBLE! Allow me to explain...
In this activity you ask the kids to draw a pretty picture of the natural landscape on which they would like their dream home to be. They should draw the animals in that area and the plants but no man made features. Then you ask them how they get to their house. Pretty much anything they say other than teleportation requires you to build something on that land, so you are to have them rip the paper with their pretty artwork in half. You keep asking questions and for everything they want to build or include, including sinks, toilets, rooms, furniture, ANYTHING they have to rip the paper again. They goes on until the kids' artwork is a bunch of confetti. You then tell them to put it back together because the government is giving them a crap ton of money to turn their land in to a nature reserve. Obviously, they can't. If they do manage to get it somewhat worked out, it will look crappy and rippy. This is when you tell them that no matter what you do to "restore" the land, it will still be messed up. It is here that the writer of this says that he has many kids, "break down crying during this activity," well DUH! You just told a little kid that they ruined bunnies' and foxes' and deers' lives FOREVER and they killed the earth. Horrible. this person clearly had no friends growing up.
Tonight I was in charge of the evening program. Long story short, it was a near disaster and I almost broke down crying because it got so messed up and a few of the boys (the ones known to have a bad attitude, mind you) were complaining a lot saying, "can we be done now?" and "this is boring."
The day was saved with a campfire and songs. It was really fun and I'm glad the kids enjoyed the campfire despite the lack of smores due to the fact they they're having smores tomorrow.
I over came a lot of challenges this last week and I feel like I'm proving to myself that I do belong here and I am a good worker. Not that anyone has told me otherwise, I'm just kind of hard on myself sometimes, but that's a post for another day. Goodnight.
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