yes. i pulled what is called a "double" this week at high trails. meaning, i worked a cabin shift AND a field shift. i was originally scheduled to work only a cabin shift and splititng a field group with another instructor. but the other instructor got sick, so i ended up just working the whole week.
my cabin group was alright. i had a super cabin...with 18 girls. i get paid more for that since our normal student:instructor ratio is below 16:1, but i felt a bit like i was herding cattle all week instead of being a cabin instructor. i didn't really connect with the girls, except for the girls who stayed near my bunk. those two were really awesome! i had some high maintenance girls as well as some who just took a long time to do everything...which wasn't ideal.
my field group was also alright. there were some really great students and some students who didn't want to be there. we definitely had our low moments and our high moments, so overall it evened out.
wednesday i had a bad day at work. to start off with, i slept through my alarm in the morning. my cabin group needed to be at breakfast early to help set up. sooo...i had 15 minutes to get them up, dressed, and through the bathrooms before they needed to be at the dining hall. i conquered that AND started the meal early. the rest of the morning was fine...cleaning our cabin (we won the cleanest cabin!) and getting the girls ready for the day.
when i met my field group, however, it got off to an interesting start. one student had to poo right away, but didn't want to go outside. then that same student started to get really, really homesick and was faking being sick in order to try to go home. along the hike, one of the students dropped one of the water jugs and cracked it, so we had to get rid of the water earlier than i wanted. then the homesick student started to get REALLY homesick...crying every 10 minutes, not wanting to eat lunch or drink water. luckily one of his teachers tagged along for the rest of the day so i could continue teaching. right after lunch, the other water jug was dropped and shattered leaving us very limited water supply for the rest of the hike. the day got better though as the students got more and more engaged in the classes. we went down to the creek to wander around, but after i got all of my students across the creek, i slipped and fell in getting my shoes soaked (the one day i didn't wear waterproof shoes...). so i had to spend the rest of the day with no more water and wet shoes. needless to say, i had to have a little cry to let out my emotions from the day...
despite the sweat and tears, the week ended well. we got snow on thursday evening which was fun...but the students weren't quite prepared for the cold weather. a lot of their shoes got wet making the hike a bit miserable and whiny. nothing some fun and energetic camp songs can't fix though!
i'm now heading out on my epic train trip back home. more to post on that later!
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