Happy September :) I just returned back from a road trip to Wisconsin with my mom but more on that later! Let's get everyone caught up on the last two months!
The rest of the SSP summer went really smoothly. There were very few major hiccups during the weeks of campers. We did have a bit of some challenges during week 6, which is the last week of campers and when all the projects are supposed to be completed. We had a day and a half of rain.. so one day all the projects had to hang out in the gym.. We had a team help the cooks prepare lots of meals for the week, and another two teams helped do some cleaning at the senior center, but the rest hung out and played games. The next day, most of the teams except roofing and painting were able to do some work. However, this time was essential for finishing our projects in time.. Because of this delay and a few other material delivery delays, we had half a roof to finish, lots of balusters to be placed on a deck, and some touch up painting to complete. All of this needed to be done before we even thought about packing up our trailer containing all of the SSP tools, kitchenware, and SSP life in there. Not to mention cleaning out the facilities and having them approved by our hosts. Needless to say it was a very busy and stressful last weekend and clean up week however everything did get done. The roof mostly by the help of the SSP Headquarters staff!
I learned a lot about leadership this summer as I was in charge of everything for the site. I had some really incredible feedback that I was doing a great job and a quiet and gifted leader. Giving feedback was something I never had to do before, and I definitely got more comfortable with it as the summer went on. I also had to be the time manager and make sure everything was on time so we could get enough sleep for the next day's work! At times I hated being in charge and the one that everyone asked questions to.. However, in other ways it was really cool to be the ultimate decision maker for things. I ended up doing a lot of plumbing work and learning about that this summer due to some old cranky toilets overflowing multiple times even after they were "fixed".
The summer at our site was an incredible success and I'm really proud of myself and my team for that :) They all grew and learned a lot this summer so that was awesome to see!
This picture is from our water day "Splatterfest". Every week we took them to the lake for half a day to enjoy some time in the beautiful water at Weber Resevoir and play some games with shaving cream. I'm on the bottom, second from left with shaving cream all over my face! This was one of our junior high weeks.
After SSP finished I enjoyed some time in Sacramento with some of the office staff and the other site directors. We got to catch up on all the silly stories from the summer. We saw a Sacramento minor league River Cats game. Then two of the site directors who live in Oregon and I road tripped up to Oregon. On the way we checked out the SSP site in Chiloquin, Oregon. It was a cute little town. After that onto Portland. In Portland I got the grand tour and got to visit with a bunch of different people I know living there. Reunions included Roman (worked as teachers in Pohang), Patrick Anderson (a high school friend), Aidan, Riley (two of my summer staffers), Becca, Steven (my SSP campers in 2011), and finally attending Megan Taylor's bridal shower.
The main reason I decided to do this trip to the NW was for a running relay race called Hood to Coast. It is a 200 mile relay race with 12 team members. There are two different vans of people, each runner completes 3 legs, totaling between 12-17 miles and different grades of difficulty. My legs were 5 miles, then 6.8 miles, then 4 miles. The first and last leg were harder than I expected because I was running directly into the sun on a very flat trail. The long run was in the middle of the night, so you have to wear flashers and a head lamp and are running in the beautiful woods staring up at the stars (when possible :P) . It was very cold out, you could see your breath but I was running in shorts and a tshirt. This race is very famous in Oregon, everyone there knows about it. Roads are closed for it and it takes a huge army of volunteers as you can imagine to coordinate everything from Mt. Hood to the Oregon coast! I still haven't decided if I would do it again, (because of the running!) but it was certainly an awesome time! We screen printed out own clothing items, which was super rad!
Hoodies & Coasters (Team 785!) at the finish line!
After HTC, I headed onto Seattle where I met up with a friend who I traveled with in Malaysia, then a friend from South Korea who I played against in Ultimate. I got to attend Spencer's high school ultimate frisbee practice which was awesome.. I'm super jealous they get started so early in life.. Then I got to attend one of his club men's teams practices. Seattle was absolutely beautiful. Got to tour a bit on the back of a motorbike with Tristan, and then all sorts of walking in the Seattle Center, Space Needle, Pike's Place Market, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation visitor's center.. That was so cool. It explained how they decide where to donate their money, and what sort of projects they work on, where, and the progress and how they track the progress.
Finally, I took another Bolt Bus up to Canada, this time to Vancouver to hang out with another travel buddy, Andrew. We traveled pretty much all of SEA together on and off. I stayed with his adorable Canadian family in the suburbs of Vancouver. We did two awesome hikes. One was a smaller ski called the Grouse.. You could hike up and then had to take the gondola down, but it was beautiful.. Unfortunately at the top we were in a cloud but still there was a bird show and lumber jack show and some bears in big exhibits to see. The other hike was called the Grand Chief and was an incredible view from the top.
After that, I flew back to Phoenix for a quick weekend! My mom and I left for our road trip to Wisconsin on Sunday and did all sorts of beautiful stops along the way including Arches, Vail, visiting Grandma Letta & cousin Kathryn, then Mount Rushmore, and onto Wisco! My mom bought a beautiful lake house in Wisco so we had to move a bunch of things up there. We brought the dog along as well. I helped my mom with some landscaping stuff,, using a chainsaw to take some dead branches down, digging out a fire pit, etc, etc!
The next few weeks will be nice to catch up on everything including uploading lots of pictures and make some videos of my trip before my lovely Korean bestie Sunny visits.
During my trip I did a little modes of transport in SEA video... Here is the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DACvBql9KAg&feature=youtube_gdata
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