July 3rd ~ Sunday

Hmm so we had church this morning, but before church a scholar in Biblical Turkey walked around old town and answered our questions. This was really enjoyable, we we ere able to see the harbor that Paul sailed into and then also get dome of my questions about the older buildings answered.

We then had a great service and headed out on our Biblical sites tour with Ismet, Turkish tour guide, and James. We had about a four and a half hour drive, people we still tired from Olive Grove so there was a lot of sleeping people. Ismet was giving us the history of Turkey but we were all so tired that people kept dozing off even though it was really interesting.

The first site we visited was Colossai, which is an un-excavated site. So we were able to climb up on the huge heap of ground and kinda of see the tops of the walls under our feet but you could not see much more. James read from Colossians and brought some of what was said to life and pointed out the geographical locations.

After this we headed to Hierapolis. This was a really amazing ruins that were on top of a calcium mountain, it was all white with pools of hot water. The calcium was cool in itself. This was also the location of the temple of Apollo and a chasm which was known as the entrance to the underworld. It would release poisons gases that would mess with peoples heads and eventually kill people if they stayed to long. It was a part of the temple. There were actually many other places similar in the city where people would go to receive visions and messages. I believe that this was the place Alexander went to and also the place Dr. Rick was telling us about in ancient history class. James was saying that the apostle John knew this place well and he would have thought of it as he wrote Revelation 9:1-12.

There was also tons of tombs, roads, pillars, and fallen buildings. We were rushed through rather fast because it was after seven when we arrived and the light was failing fast.

We then went to our hotel, ate dinner, and crashed...

July 2nd ~ Saturday

I don't have much to say about today... We bussed the kid out (sad day) packed our stuff up, drove to town, unpacked (I am staying at the Eldrid's now), took a nap, Tressa watched my laundry, and went to a staff BBQ.

July 1st~ Friday

So today is the last day of camp and we had a long list of things at our staff meeting to go over. Among them is the high school party that somehow everyone knows about but is never official planned or announced. Well since it always happens we pit it in the schedule and brought a few snacks for it. As a part of this party there is always a talent show and a bunch of the youth have been working hard to get ready. We also discussed the traditional "sneak out" which the youth plan and do even though they are not suppose to. They normal sneak out and go to the beach around one, a little after the party is over, and stay the night on the beach and watch the sunrise. Well last year there was a lot of stupidity involved in the sneak outs so to try and help eliminate this they planned last weeks sneak out at midnight and then a sunrise sneak out Saturday morning from 4-6 for the 11-12 graders. At the meeting we were told that we could use our own discretion about if we would allow the 9-10 graders to participate. We did not want to but throughout the course of the day we decided to let the, as long as they were fully packed before hand. Oh and the other thing was the Turkish youth fütball game which was moved to Friday because we had Bonkers on Thursday. Also we needed to tear down equipment and get it ready to be packed out in the morning.

Anyways after this info filled meeting we had our normal morning routine. Oh wait I forgot something else about the meeting. On Monday one of the sailors sunk their sailboat, because of the strong wind we had been having all week we had been unable to go find and retrieve the boat. Also the marker had been blown away. So a group of us agreed to go out and try and find and retrieve the missing boat.

Okay so instead of going to the Olympus jumping rock, same place as last Friday, I set out with six other people in the zodiac, blow up motor boat, to try and find the sailboat. When we anchored James said that he believed from different landmarks that it should be within 50 meters of where we were. Then as he was saying this a sea turtle came up and I got to see a turtle!

The water was so blue and deep, 25-35 feet that I was normally not sure if I was seeing the bottom or not. Every now and then you would catch a speck of something white and dive down to try and see if it was the boat. So this was slow progress, but eventually Max spotted the boat. When wee got over to where he was the boat was as plain as day! :-) we did not need to have been going so methodical.... James dove down to the boat, it was between 20 - 30 feet and tied a rope to the boat. He then lifted from the zodiac while others pushed from below when it got in range. Then we a bunch of lifting and pushing we got the sail boat laid across the zodiac. But there was then no room for us swimmers in the zodiac so we swam back, and apparently I don't swim a very straight line. I am going to blame my ankle and say because it was hurting I was not kicking as hard with that leg and that is why ;-)

Anyways next came lunch and siesta and free time, which was full of hanging out with different kids. I did a lot of sitting during free time to stay off my ankle which really was hurting. The kids all headed to watch, play, or cheer at the game. Those that did not do one of these options was to be packing. While all this was happening some of us worked on sorting and storing equipment and others worked on bringing the kayaks and sail boats up from the beach.

This was all followed by dinner, then a show from the drama, improv, and guitar electives. Then a normal service followed by a slide show of camp. All of this went later than expected so as soon as it finished all of my girls scattered to get ready for the party.

The party was fun and kinda crazy... Ya all know how high school parties are. The talent show was also good and for the most part everyone that got up had talent.

We sent everyone to to there rooms at midnight and as Cassie, Ruthie, and I were heading to are room, Max told us there was a sneak out planned for 12:30. He wanted us to stay up but we all said no and if he saw our girls to send them back until there bags were packed. Well about ten minutes later we got a knock on our door and Renata said that they needed one of us to go and spend the night at the beach as the awake female councilor. I ended up doing this because I was the most awake person, i did not have the best attitude about this, ya all know how much I just love staying up all night (sarcasm). Anyways it was kind of funny because the youth all started to sneak out of their cabins and then run into us councilors who took them back to their cabin to inspect their bags. Once we verified that they were packed and ready to leave we then escorted them to the beach. There were four or five of the guy councilors and myself. Wants I adjusted my attitude it became a almost enjoyable. I had a few good conversations with some of the youth. Probably my favorite part was when Manny used my iPad to read Winnie the Pooh at one point there was about 15 youth all curled up around on the sand listening. I was relieved at 5ish and went and got about a half hour of sleep.

June 30th ~Thursday

Let's see Thursday started the same as normal... With the exception of Bonkers was moved to today instead of tomorrow because of how busy Friday will be.

I had to do my elective today because Jess was needed with the hiking group. It was nice to be snorkeling again and with the kids. I had one of my girls in the group and it was her birthday so that was special. But we did not see any turtles at all in the whole two weeks and I was hoping to see them today because ot would be our last day of snorkeling. But no such luck, and my ankle really was sore by the end of it :-/

We then had lunch and siesta, oh how I love naps....but before I fell asleep Cassie and Ruthie came in and they were going to walk to one of the Bakaals to try and get something special for the birthday girl. I decided that that sounded like a good plan and went along. (there was a smudge on one of my iPad keys so I was holding it longer and just relived I can type in Turkish! That being the case tea is spelled çay and pronounced chai.) We found some little goodies and made it back in time for the end of free time.

I had a couple of my girls fill out there evaluation forms for me during free time and had some good chats with them. I also hung out with my cripple buddy in the köçh. The talk among the kids was that I was going to be a station or a medic because of my ankle. I was a station but I did not want everyone to be able to just know I was a station. So I decided to paint myself like a bonker.

At the end of free time we all went to get ready, I had one of the ladies put paint on me and the sponge happened to have a really good camo coloring. I went out at the same time as the rest of the bonkers and medics but I did not have a flour sock to hit kids. I then hid in the shrubbery and any time a kid came by where I was I would scream and act like I was about to chase them. I was the hardest station to find and I think maybe twelve kids found me the whole time and most of them were within the last 15 minutes and it was because they noticed other kids doing my station, army crawling under the köçh. So I managed to fool them all and not get hurt!

That evening we had a water related service at the beach followed by a great teaching and a move of God...:-)

We then gathered all of our girls for a bog group cabin time instead of meeting in our smaller groups. We had a birthday party / hang out time with everyone. It w a great time of fellowshipping. Bed time was earlier tonight because of all the "stuff" going on tomorrow.

June 29th ~ Wednesday

This mornings Word study went a bit smoother but it still was not great :-(

It was my goal to be able to go and help with the snorkeling today but on realistically evaluating my ankle I decided it was not really wise, and Jess was still more than willing to fill in. So I agreed to once again cover kayaking for her in exchange for her covering my elective. But as I was helping people find equipment it was decided that the water was just to rough to be taking people sailing, kayaking, or snorkeling. So instead we were going to have a beach bash. Now that was something I could do! We ended up doing lots of relay type stuff on the beach and it was a lot of fun and everyone seemed to enjoy. I ended up joining a team partway through because one of there players was not feeling well. Unfortunately my team lost by two points :-( the real bummer thing is we received a three point penalty because one of our guys decided to break a water balloon over Max's, in charge of it all, head.... They had all agreed that the losing team would buy the winning team ice cream so I ended up buying ice cream. Oh the last thing we did was an endurance thing, we all had to hold a life jacket straight out and keep it up, everyone that dropped lost points. In the end out of the ten people on my team it was four of us girls and one guy, this was funny because when starting all the guys had been telling us girls not to let them drop because we needed this to win...

We then had lunch, which if you guessed it was a sandwich you guessed right!

Following lunch is siesta time when everyone is suppose to take a nap. Well the hiking elective had been working on building these bridges and they wee almost done and really wanted to finish them. So Manny, heading up that elective, received permission to keep some of his kids up to work on them. Quite a few of my ladies were helping so I went and helped as well. It was a fun opportunity to hang out with them.

I then headed to the water to taking care of kayaking checkouts. I ended up helping carry multiple kayaks up and down from the water. Which was unfortunate and not normal...

We then had big group games which I did not attend because my ankle was becoming quite sore again do to the earlier beach fun and carrying the kayaks... But I helped a little in the office and then sat some with one of my ladies who had also hurt herself. We were the two gimps of the group :-)

Next was dinner, service, and cabin time. Cabin time was pretty uneventful, which was nice. We then finished the evening with ice cream and fellowshipping again.