high school girls

as you might know, i work at alliance redwoods.
i'm a program staff employee, meaning i send kids off ropes courses and take them rock climbing and biking and the like. the cool thing about our camp is that we have the schools and church groups bring their own counselors. this wway the kids get to know people who they will see for more than a week, but still have a naturalist they grow close to at camp. tis means i work with alot of kids and quite a few counselors at my job. usually a group contains 3 cabins and their counselors, so around 20 kids, and three adults. this gets semi challenging, considering that if i have to spend too much time trying to disci0line the kids i lose track of things and people can get seriously injured (cause usually they are hanging on a rope that is only holding them because i am working)all in all we manage, cause the counselors are there to keep their kids in line.

my least favorite part is when the counselors are younger than me.
this week was one of those weeks.
all my counselors were in high school. one of them talked about three years ago when he was a camper. three years meaning he was in sixth grade, and now he's a freshman. and he is supposed to keep sixth graders in line? luckily he was the younger of the two guy counselors, so while the older one was busy flirting with the girl counselor, he was able to keep track of the boys. (at that age girl campers take care of themselves pretty well)

but thats not why i am writing this. that was on thursday. i am writing this to talk about wednesday. my morning and afternoon sessions were spent on the leap of faith.
the morning group i was working with scarlett who is a rather quiet girl and is really gentle hearted. (thatis sometimes a good thing, but not when she is in charge of getting counselors to help with harnesses. )

so scarlett let me go up in the tree and she belayed. that means i was the one who had to convince the children (who had just climbed 75 feet up a tree) to jump for a trapeze bar. easy job. the problem was the counselors. the guy counselors were too busy talking to eachother about how they had pranked their campers the night before. and when they weren't doing that they were trying to impress the girl counselor. from 80 feet above them in a little tree i could easily see them. they really looked pathetic sitting there in their laid back male model poses with their best clothes on sitting on a dirty log trying to swat mosquitoes and look good. if they could have seen themselves they would have been embarrassed. luckily for them the girl counselor didn't seem to notice how stupid they were acting. see, she was busy the whole time checking me out. and before you get all mad and think i'm just being arrogant, scarlett said she heard one of the girls tell a girl from another cabin "my counselor thinks Ohana is hot" (Ohana is my camp name) i realized how sad it was that she was checking me out when all she could see was a silhouette 80 feet above her.

that afternoon i was working the leap by myself. luckily the flirting counselors and their groups were going on an educational hike, and i don't do those. so i was by myself with a new group on the leap of faith, and the counselors were extremely helpful. unfortunately two of the guys walked over and asked me how old i was. so i made them guess, and when they said "20?" i said yes. then one turned to the other and said "see? i told you he wasn't too old for her!" then promptly walked over to one of the girl counselors and talked to her.

so i made up my mind to grow a full beard, stop showering and start telling kids i'm 30 and homeless.

luckily today was an all guys group of paintball.

then again the second girl was kinda cute...
:)