Never say that your day couldn't get any worse. Lesson learned. Friday was horrible, like in a novel when the
protagonist keeps running into one problem after another. I get up to bang on doors at 7:15 every morning. Then, after walking the halls yelling, "We're going to breakfast
now" for a while, we walk 15 minutes to the dining hall for breakfast and then another 15 minute walk to the school. We have classes from 9-12 but Friday's class was so chaotic and draining. Instead of walking with the kids to lunch, the teachers had "Professional Development" with the ESL head of a local school board. The food was late, the guy showed up 30 minutes late (for an hour long session) and all the teachers had so much grading and prep to do but no time to do it. All I could think about was my to-do list and being on time to get back to the girls. In the afternoon, we took them to
Wal-Mart. 50 students, 4 teachers, 1 hour. We probably caused the most chaos at the check-outs that
Wal-Mart
Digby has ever seen. After that, I had an hour of grading time before dinner. The teachers had to monitor dinner, and we spent the whole hour policing the girls who had gotten into the habit of signing in for
attendance then going
outside to sit on the grass. They weren't hungry because they'd been eating junk food at free time. They might get away with it when the other staff are on, but not with the teachers. It was hard to enforce, and they had stopped serving dinner by the time we were done. After dinner I went to school to do some quick
internet things and realized that someone had stolen my credit card number to rack up $2,000 of purchases at Victoria's Secret and
Abercrombie in Arizona. Seriously. Thankfully the bank had blocked my card (which was why it hadn't worked the last time I tried to use it). The funny thing is that the number was stolen late June (I'm 99% sure it was a non-secure purchase of a
photobook from Carson
Mosher- WARNING! I'll be telling them too, don't worry) and it was used July 3rd, and I only realized on Friday. That's how caught up I am in camp. After a few minutes of initial panic, I got on the phone to PC Financial, and I think everything will be fine. The investigation department will figure out what happened and I won't have to pay. Anyway, Carole had a rough day too and as we were leaving the school I said "This day couldn't get any worse." After another hour back in our room I decided to go to bed early. A few minutes later Carole came in to get me up and said one of our students was not responsive. Seriously. It was the student who had been taken to the hospital a couple days before with redness, swelling and numbness in her feet. Turns out it was... gout. Seriously. Anyway, so we rushed to the girls room where two other staff are trying to get her to wake up and monitoring her breathing. I was sent to drive to another dorm to pick up a
chaperone (a woman who came with the girls). We raced back and the girl still hadn't woken up and her breathing was fading in and out. Carole was on the phone to 911. Everyone was staying very calm, thankfully. Then I was sent to drive to the school to pick up all the student & camp information for Carole to take to the hospital. Finally the ambulance arrived, and the paramedics sauntered out. I do mean sauntered. They came into the room and proceeded to say "
Wakey-
wakey.
Wakey-
wakey or I'm going to stick you with a big needle" for about five minutes. Seriously. They checked her vitals which were okay, and eventually got her to the ambulance. Carole went with them, and it turned out to be... dehydration and too much junk food! Seriously. (That wasn't our fault, she had been staying the whole day with the
chaperones so they would have been responsible to make sure she had liquids). Carole came back in the middle of the night and filled me in. I also spent a half hour talking with another staff member about one of the girls who has been acting very erratic lately. The staff member was telling me the girl talks about hurting herself, and she keeps having medical issues and fainting. I know it's not a suicide threat, and I don't think she'd ever hurt herself, but it's so hard to know how to give her the attention she needs without rewarding her attention-seeking activities. Anyway, the next morning, I woke up and saw Carole and she said "Did you hear what happened?" Sure enough, another drama. There was a conflict between two staff members, and one ended up quitting. That morning. Gone. So we had to rush to get the activities for the day covered, Carole had to go in and pick up the girl from the hospital. I took over her job in taking half of the girls on a trip to
Keji National Park. The park was fun, but things deteriorated again last night. You probably don't want to hear all that, so let's end on a high note. I have the day off today (YEAH) and Carole and I have a day off together on Tuesday (YEAH, YEAH). Carole's boss & friend, Jess, will come down tomorrow, and I think the last two weeks of camp will be an ice cream sundae compared to this weekend!
And we had a delicious, expensive lunch at her favourite restaurant.
She had lobster risotto, I had a lobster BLT! She had a gift certificate, by the way.
We were dying to see a movie, but Carole underestimated the popularity of Mama Mia on a summer's night in New Minas. Never have two people been so disappointed by a sold out movie! But, as soon as we got in the car to drive back, we got a call saying one of the girls was in hospital and was refusing treatment and needed to be taken by ambulance to Halifax and so on. Our days off always seem to end in drama. The girl had a sickle cell anemia emergency (the main symptom was pain in her elbows) and everything eventually worked out. Yesterday two other girls left camp with a chaperone to meet the girl in Halifax and fly back to the UAE. Anyway, on our ride home we stopped stressing for a minute and jumped out of the car to enjoy the sunset.
These are our "trying-to-relax" faces.
I like this twin picture from another night when we went into Digby for scallops.
And I had to put this picture on. This is me in "Arabian makeup" wearing one of the girls shaylas. They put on a UAE day and there were presentations, food & henna.
The henna wasn't very good quality, but the designs one of my students did on my hands were gorgeous!
The girls loved the campfire! We sang campfire songs and made 
