The Walmart Challenge

Challenge: To wear 2 items of clothes and travel around Walmart not using my feet!

Clothes selected: A 3 XL Night dress and a red summer hat.

Transport: A Trolly.

Challenge complete!!!

Spring

All is well and life is good at Muskoka Woods. Winter is over, spring is here and the sun is out! We got about 10 new staff which I was able to help train which was pretty good. Lindsay, Mike and Patrick left which was very sad.
Thankfully I don’t have to do ropes training again so I’m off for 3 days.

Here’s to missing Lindsay, getting sun burnt, Maneater, almost winning bump, to Tom being to scared to fly back to Toronto from Philadelphia, taking a 17 hour bus journey instead!, playing touch rugby, new foreigners for the Canadians to make fun of and our road trip to Barrie.

Picture: Lindsay and I before she left.

Summer plans

Well I thought it was about time I brought you all up to date with my future plans. I have decided to stay until the end of the summer. I signed a spring contract this week and have been offered a leadership position for the summer in form of supervising the store on camp [The Woods even has its own clothing line!]. Weighing up the pros and cons I know its best for me to stay longer. My role in the Spring doesn’t change too much from what I’m doing now, however The woods may send me on a course to become a canoe instructor which would be pretty cool so that would be an added extra to my job and ill still lead a closing team same as winter but the team will be bigger.
In the summer myself and another girl will be managing the shop. I will look after 8-10 employees, over see the daily running of the store and I’ve been asked to organise the rotas. If I came home at the start of summer I would probably get a shop job as a stop gap so staying here and getting managerial experience is definitely the way to go. Also I’ve been told the store is the place to be in the summer! I’m also going to be involved in organising bible studies, church services and one on ones with the rest of the 300 summer staff. I really see being here as an experience builder and character development. Reflecting on the past 7.5 months I’ve spent here, I’ve realised how much I have learnt and experienced- I’ve lead a lot of diverse groups of people and kids, developed my teaching and instructing skills, dealt with conflicts, working in an office as well as getting to use the climbing wall, zip line, skate park whenever I want and learning to ski!! I think the hardest part of my decision was that if I stay I would not be able to go to Ukraine this summer it will be very weird as I have gone for the past 8 summers! But change is good and it doesn’t mean ill never go back. Plus I love my bosses, I love that I get on so well with my them, they are definitely 2 of my favourite people here!

Here’s to playing basketball, writing stories about each other on the whiteboard, moving house on Sunday, green t-shirts, “Just kidding!”, Steph duct taping the bathroom door shut!, making cookies and putting in a 1.5 cup of salt instead of sugar including Bradens reaction, “Good choice of words”, the taking of our winter staff photo, “I hope they had a photocopier in those days it would suck if you had to write those all out by hand…” “Eh you do realise that the printing press was invented in the 1400’s?!”, Activia pear yogart, going round all the summer cabins acquiring stuff for our room in Spring [we even found a microwave!!!], new spring staff arriving next week, Helen Keller, the sound of ice cracking, the surprise that Lindsay left for Steph, “gunshot wedding!” to buying an all in one bug net, Yetunde letting me use her flat for the weekend, walking into Rosseau with Tom, Bodger and badger, and to climbing the CN Tower for the world wildlife foundation at the end of April.

The pictures our of the winter staff, the second one makes me laugh its just so random! No one was ready for the picture at all, expect Lindsay who is sitting perfectly with the ESBMLM Thropy.

The Patrol, China town & back to ropes.

I spent last weekend in Toronto. We left early on Thursday morning got to Lindsay’s house after a few detours about 3.30 and went shopping in Bolton, watched a few movies that night [ Children of men, Little Miss Sunshine & Stranger than fiction ] all worth a watch. Friday night we were made to go to this horrendous Korean karaoke place by Lindsay’s brother. It was so wacky and loud that I ended up wondering around China town for an hour. Saturday we went into Toronto again and went to an outdoors shop to equip ourselves for the spring [ rain trousers and a bug suit for me! ] We had dinner in the nicest restaurant its called Rich tree. When you arrive you’re given a swipe card and you go around lots of dinner stations and order the food you want and pay at the end the total on your card. The food was so good great change from camp food. Then off to the Snow Patrol concert which was amazing! Not much else to say apart from it was nice to hear the Northern Ireland accent again. It was funny the girl next to me said “You talk like the singer!” Sunday we spent the day about the house and then came back up the road to camp. This week at work was pretty good think I had the best group of kids I’ve had to date even wish they could have stayed longer. Because the snow has melted we're back to doing otdoor ropes not as much fun as skiing and tubing! Since I left last weekend I decided to stay here for Easter it’s been very relaxing, we finished at lunch time on Thursday. Had dinner out with my bosses and tonight Tom and I are being taken out for dinner by the head chef then having an Indianan Jones night. Have set up a projector in the staff lounge and we will all have a sofa each! It’s nice to kinda have the place to yourself- There are only 4 of us on site at the minute.

Here’s to having the house to myself, to playing basketball, to acquiring stuff!, having to move house for the Spring, “eh do you know what that means?”, the snow melting, giving up fizzy drinks, the skunks moving from under our house to under the arts and crafts room, “you do realise you cant lie!”, Angelo putting a waist harness on as a chest harness!, that even though Ive been here for nearly 7 months I still try to get in to vehicles at the wrong side doesnt matter if Im the passenger or the driver, Video taping Tom after he got his wisdom teeth out and to putting a ten pound weight in Lindsay’s back pack