Slowly Settling In

These last couple days have been good. I am feeling less insecure, we as staff are bonding more, we actually all went out the other nite to this great little lounge, I have never seen anything like it, though I am sure there are similar places in Portland and Seattle, anyways it was dark, low red lights, comfy couches and chairs grouped through out, it was fabulous. For one of the girls birthdays we all went out for drinks, and talked and hung out, and it was super fun. Side note there are 11 single girls, 3 single guys, and 2 families on the staff of the science camp, a little lopsided, but that is par for the course. There are a ton of other people who work for Mount Hermon and keep things running and make our jobs a lot easier. The last couple days I have sat through hours of orientation about the health center, which I am the manager of. Orientation has been a little frustrating in the fact that each person who comes in, riffles through a bunch of papers, try’s to explain them like they know what they are talking about, and ultimately ends up reading us something that we have already read through ourselves. Nobody really seems to know what they are doing, apparently the health center has been a mess for several years, and I am here to get it organized and running smooth again, wish me luck with that. I will say with each new person we get ¾ review (which is good) and ¼ new stuff, which is also good, so it is not bad, but could be a little more organized for me. As we have time we join the Naturalist (they are the ones who teach the kids while they are at camp, and take them on the hikes), for their training which is far more fun then ours, but that is okay. Today was the first day that actually thought maybe this isn’t so bad after all. My morning started with the usual breakfast and devotions, then we hiked up to an area where we cleared some Portuguese Broom. Portuguese Broom is a foreign “weed” that is growing in the sand hills here, which is disturbing the ecosystem of the sand hills. Not so much a big deal until you know that sand hills only exists in Santa Cruz county, and most of it right here in my back yard. So yeah I spend my morning, saving endangered species and plants, how cool is that. The hike was about a mile total. This afternoon we conquered the inventory of the health center, and got things put away and mostly organized, I think. Tonight we went on a night hike, that they take the kids on, we could not use flashlights, and we had to be quite so we could here all sounds of the forest, it was really fun. We would hike a bit, then stop and learn stuff, usually through a fun activity, I would say that hike was about another mile and it took almost two hours, but is was so fun. Tomorrow, we will finish organizing the health center, get our order together, and start to organize the forms, and I need to make some phone calls to get a couple meetings set up and get a nurse scheduled for the three weeks we don’t have one yet. This weekend is camping in Yosmite, which is exciting, looking forward to that, hopfully I will get to hit the beach too. Oh yeah, my house is starting to grow on me too. Things are starting to look up for me. Stay tuned.