July 21st

So, the middle school and the high school camp:
Even though both of these groups were there during the same week, for the most part we kept them separate during planned activities - this was for safety purposes for the middle schoolers as there have been problems in the past. The groups were together however for lunch and dinner, evening worship music time, and then during afternoon free time they could be together depending on what activity they wanted to do. There were about 35 high schoolers and 45 middle schoolers.
I was with the high school group - myself and another guy had a cabin with the oldest boys - so primarily juniors (most of the seniors who would have attended camp were there as staff/middle school counselors). I had some of the same guys that I had the week before as OFWs, so that made things a little easier as far as learning names and knowing what to expect.
We didn't do a whole lot of games with the high schoolers, we took them on a couple different trips during the morning. Monday morning all of the high schoolers and hgh school counselors took a couple jeepney to a place about a half hour away to go on a hike. We hiked up a mountain for about an hour and a half, and had the option to go further, but when we asked the campers if the wanted to continue, the answer was a resounding "no." Kind of unfortunate, but what we did get to hike was fun!
Then Tuesday morning we loaded up the jeepney again and headed off to a waterfall nearby. We spent a couple hours there jumping off, or for some, watching people jump off. It was about a 30 foot drop, which from the ground didn't look too big, but once at the edge and getting ready to jump, seemed a lot higher. But I think almost everyone who went up with the intentions of jumping followed through and did it, at least once - myself included, I ended up doing it a couple times. I was nervous everytime, but it was quite exhilarating. (I have a picture of this when if I can get those pics onto here.)
Some of you may have seen the picture on facebook of me in girls clothing - not my most masculine moment, but here is the explanation for that: the last night each cabin was to prepare a skit which would be judged against all the others to determine a winner. Our cabin planned on doing a dance to the song "Be a Man," from the movie Mulan. This was a good idea, but what made it great was when we decided to asked the girls cabin to borrow som clothes so that we could dress like girls for it as well. The girls were more than willing to rovide us with a few articles of clothing, primarily just tops, but one guy had a dress. Was it worth it? Well, we won the contest...
Also during skit night, all of the counselors helped EJ, the co-director (and boyfirend) of Miriam for these two weeks of camps with a special dance/skit - at which the end of he proposed to Miriam. So that was fun and exciting to be a part of as well!
This second week of camp seemed to go by a whole lot faster than the first week - I think partially due to the "field trips" we got to go on with the high schoolers.
The campers and almost all of the counselors left that Thursday, and there were only a handful of us left who were planning on going into Tanza to help out and be a part of theministry that Miriam is a part of there. The people who stayed were Miriam and EJ, a group of about a half dozen people that came from Maryland for the three weeks, and myself. A couple them left Friday to help out with a health clinic, the rest of us stayed at RRC until Saturday morning and then we went in as well. But, I will go into more details about that in my next post, probably tomorrow.